FREE: Frances Harrison Pierpont FDC

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State founder Francis Harrison Pierpont, first and only governor of the Reorganized Government of Virginia. He was a great-grandson of Col. Zackquill Morgan, founder of Morgantown. He received his middle name in honor of Gen. William Henry Harrison, under whom his father was serving at the time of his birth. Often called "the Father of West Virginia," Pierpont's statue stands in Statuary Hall in the Capitol Building in Washington, one of two West Virginians so recognized. In the opening days of the Civil War, Pierpont spoke frequently and forcefully for the Union and against secession. He was a representative to the First and Second Wheeling Conventions in 1861, where he worked with other conservatives such as Willey to delay the immediate declaration of a new state, which he believed to be unconstitutional. On June 20, 1861, Pierpont was unanimously elected as governor of the unionist Reorganized State of Virginia, which sat at Wheeling until West Virginia entered the Union two years later.