25 Facts About Henry Ruffner

Henry Ruffner, was an educator and Presbyterian minister, who served as president of Washington College.

Joseph Henry Ruffner continued to buy land nearby, as well as the defensive Clendenin Blockhouse, into which his firstborn son David Henry Ruffner, would move in 1796 with his three sons.

David Henry Ruffner received the property closest to the future capital city of Charleston, West Virginia, including the famous salt lick, which his father had allowed Elisha Brooks to lease and try to develop.

Accordingly, in 1805 David Henry Ruffner bought a mill and house from George Alderson and moved his family to Malden, where he began developing the salt works using enslaved labor.

Meanwhile, Tobias Henry Ruffner built his own saline above Campbell's Creek, and between 1799 and 1812, fellow settlers several times elected David Henry Ruffner as one of their two representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates.

In 1817, David and his brothers Joseph Jr and Daniel Henry Ruffner were among the founders of the Kanawha Salt Company, a local trust or salt production monopoly formed at the instigation of lawyer Joseph Lovell.

Young Henry did not show any inclination to be either a farmer nor salt-maker, but became known for his love of reading.

Henry Ruffner mastered McElhenney's classical curriculum by May 1812, then went to Lexington, Virginia, where he attended McElhenney's alma mater, Washington College, and finished the four year curriculum in a year and a half.

Henry Ruffner studied under Professor William Graham.

Henry Ruffner would receive a Doctor of Divinity degree from Princeton in 1838.

On March 30,1819, Ruffner married Sarah M Lyle in Rockbridge County.

Rev Henry Ruffner owned 4 slaves in the 1820 federal census, 6 slaves in the 1830 federal census, and 4 slaves in the 1840 federal census.

Henry Ruffner may have freed his slaves after his 1847 publications discussed below, but is missing from the 1850 census as digitized, though entries include merchant Lewis Ruffner in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as various relative Ruffners in Kanawha County.

In particular, his brother Lewis and uncle Joseph Henry Ruffner were major slaveholders, owning 47 and 25 slaves respectively in Kanawha County in 1850.

In 1819, in addition to his duties at various churches in the area, and with his family's farms, Henry Ruffner returned to Washington College as a professor of ancient languages, holding that post until 1837, during which time he twice served as acting president.

In 1837 Henry Ruffner became the college's president and delivered an inaugural address that emphasized such classic themes as self-control and the importance of education in guiding American society.

In 1847 Henry Ruffner published an anti-slavery pamphlet, Address to the People of West Virginia; showing the Slavery is Injurious to the Public Welfare,.

The pamphlet grew out of a debate that Henry Ruffner had before Lexington's Franklin Society over slavery with Lexington Law School Professor John White Brockenbrough and Virginia Military Institute Professor Francis Henney Smith.

Henry Ruffner's views brought him into conflict with some members of the College and Lexington community, where relations were already strained because of conflicts between the missions of Washington College and the nearby Virginia Military Institute, as well as because of sectarian disputes.

Henry Ruffner was replaced by George Junkin, then president of Lafayette College, who had lost his job at Miami University in Ohio a few years early for his pro-slavery views.

Henry Ruffner spent some time teaching at the University of Virginia in 1850 and 1851; In 1850 he published The Fathers of the Desert.

Apart from his farming activities, Henry Ruffner visited Louisville, Kentucky, where he continued his anti-slavery advocacy.

Henry Ruffner is purported to be the author of a brief attack published around 1849 on Ellwood Fisher's proslavery pamphlet, Lecture on the North and South, though the attribution is questionable.

Henry Ruffner then returned to Kanawha; he delivered a pro-Union speech in on July 4,1856.

Henry Ruffner died at his home in Malden shortly after the Civil War began and western Virginians voted to secede from Virginia.