Henry G. Davis
Henry Gassaway Davis ( * November 16, 1823 in Woodstock, Howard County, Maryland, † March 11, 1916 in Washington DC) was an American businessman and politician, who represented the state of West Virginia in the U.S. Senate. In the presidential election in 1904 he was the Democratic candidate for the office of Vice-President.
Economic rise
By the year 1843 Henry Davis worked on a farm before he employment as a brakeman and conductor took place at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Later, the company he transferred the management of the station in Piedmont, West Virginia; there he worked on business in the mining and banking industry. 1865 began with the election to the House of Representatives from West Virginia 's political career.
The following year, Davis called the Potomac and Piedmont Coal and Railway Company, a railway company to life, which served mainly his own business interests with the transport of coal and wood. The company was authorized the creation of railway lines in Mineral, Grant, Tucker and Randolph County.
Politicians and entrepreneurs
Davis drove in the subsequent period preceding his political career. He was State Senator in 1869 in West Virginia, two years later, finally a U.S. Senator. In Washington, he spent two full terms in office, before he resigned in 1882 to further candidacy. During his time in Congress, he led among other things, the chair of the Committee on Appropriations.
After leaving the Senate, Davis returned to West Virginia, where he was active in the banking and mining sectors again in Elkins. His company had a total area of 550 square kilometers of land, employed 1600 workers from 16 countries, operating two power plants and nine mines. In 1892, the Davis Coal and Coke Company, which Davis with his son, U.S. Senator Stephen Benton Elkins, led to the largest coal company in the world mattered.
1889 and 1901 took Henry Davis as a U.S. delegate to the respective Pan American conferences. Finally, he was elected in 1904 to the Democratic candidate for the office of Vice President at the side of Alton B. Parker. Both, however, had no chance against the Republican incumbent Theodore Roosevelt and his running mate Charles W. Fairbanks. At 80, Davis is still the oldest vice presidential candidate that has ever been erected by one of the two major parties.
In his last years, Davis served as Chairman of the Pan American Railway Committee. Moreover, he placed a part of his property in Elkins available to be erected was named after him and his son Davis and Elkins College there. He died in 1916 in Washington. His younger brother Thomas was also a politician and sat from 1905 to 1907 for West Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives.