Representative Daniel Haymond Polsley

Daniel Haymond Polsley (November 28, 1803 – October 14, 1877) was a nineteenth-century lawyer, judge, newspaper editor, and politician who helped form the State of West Virginia and served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives. Born in Palatine near Fairmont, Virginia (now Fairmont, West Virginia), he was the son of Jacob Polsley (1763–1823) and Margaret Haymond Polsley (1769–1830). His maternal grandfather, William Haymond (1740–1821), born in Maryland, had moved across the Appalachians, fought Native Americans on the frontier, and in 1777 commanded Pickett’s Fort on the Monongahela River. An uncle, William C. Haymond, later represented Randolph County in the Virginia General Assembly in the 1836–1837 session. His father, Jacob Polsley, had served as a private in the Berks County, Pennsylvania, militia during the American Revolutionary War before settling west of the mountains. Daniel Polsley grew up in a large family that included an elder brother, John Haymond Polsley (1793–1879), who later moved to Indiana and then Iowa, and whose two sons died fighting for the Union during the Civil War. He also had three elder sisters and two younger sisters who survived to marry: Elizabeth P. Polsley Newbrough (1795–1875), Rowena Polsley Graham (1798–1845), Maria Polsley Billings (1800–1829), Amanda Polsley Hughes (1810–1876), and Paulina Olive Polsley Hall (1813–1852).

Polsley attended local country schools in what was then western Virginia and completed preparatory studies before reading law in the traditional manner. On August 14, 1827, in Wellsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), he married Eliza Villette Brown (1806–1879). Her grandfather, Oliver Brown (1752–1846), had served in the American Revolution on the Massachusetts line before moving to the Virginia mountains, giving the couple a shared family heritage of Revolutionary War service. Daniel and Eliza Polsley had a large family—some sources indicate as many as twelve children—though several died young. Among those who survived to adulthood were John Jacob Polsley (1831–1866), Daniel Willey Polsley (1842–1888), and Edgar Athling Polsley (1847–1925).

Admitted to the bar in 1827, Polsley began his legal career in Wellsburg, the county seat of Brooke County, Virginia (now West Virginia), situated on the Ohio River near Steubenville, Ohio. In addition to practicing law, he became active in journalism and public discourse as editor of the Western Transcript, a local newspaper he directed from 1833 to 1845. In 1845 he moved downstream along the Ohio River to Mason County, Virginia (now West Virginia), where he combined farming with his legal practice. Census records show that he was a slaveholder: in the 1840 census he owned one enslaved person; in the 1850 census he held in bondage a Black woman and a three-year-old mulatto boy; and in the 1860 census he was listed as owning a forty-year-old Black woman, two mulatto boys aged seventeen and four, an eight-year-old Black boy, and a six-year-old Black girl.

With the secession crisis and the outbreak of the Civil War, Polsley emerged as a significant political figure in the Unionist movement in western Virginia. Along with Lewis Wetzel and Charles B. Waggonner, he represented Mason County at the First Wheeling Convention in May 1861, where Unionist leaders organized opposition to Virginia’s secession from the United States. In the General Assembly sessions of the Restored government of Virginia, meeting at Wheeling in July 1861, December 1861–February 1862, May 1862, and December 1862–February 1863, his fellow delegates elected him president of the nascent state’s senate. He subsequently became lieutenant governor of the Restored government of Virginia. Although he was a leading Unionist, Polsley opposed the immediate creation of a separate state from the western counties while much of the electorate was unable to vote because of the war. On August 16, 1861, at the Wheeling Convention, he warned that if the delegates proceeded to direct a division of the state before a free expression of the people could be had, they would commit “a more despotic act than any ever done by the Richmond Convention itself.”

The Civil War also deeply affected Polsley’s family. His sons John Jacob Polsley and Daniel Willey Polsley volunteered to fight for the Union. John Jacob became lieutenant colonel of the 7th West Virginia Cavalry, while Daniel Willey enlisted as a private and rose to the rank of lieutenant. As West Virginia’s separation from Virginia neared completion, Polsley shifted from legislative to judicial service. On June 8, 1863, about two weeks before West Virginia was formally admitted as a separate state on June 20, 1863, he resigned his legislative position to succeed James H. Brown as judge of the seventh judicial circuit of West Virginia. He held that judgeship from 1863 until 1866, when he resigned after being elected to Congress; he was succeeded on the bench by James W. Hoge.

In the 1866 elections, voters of West Virginia’s 3rd congressional district elected Polsley as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives. His term in the Fortieth Congress extended from March 4, 1867, to March 3, 1869, a critical period of Reconstruction in which he participated in the legislative process and represented the interests of his constituents in the newly formed state. As a member of the Republican Party representing West Virginia, he contributed to debates over the postwar settlement and the reintegration of the former Confederate states, aligning with the broader Unionist and Republican program of the era. After serving this single term, he was succeeded by fellow Republican John Witcher, who in turn was followed by a Democrat, reflecting the shifting political currents in West Virginia during Reconstruction.

Following his departure from Congress, Polsley returned to Mason County and resumed the practice of law in Point Pleasant, continuing his professional life in the community where he had long resided. He remained a respected figure in local legal and political circles until his death. Daniel Haymond Polsley died on October 14, 1877, in Mason County, West Virginia. He was interred in Lone Oak Cemetery near Point Pleasant. Other members of his extended family are buried in what became Maple Grove Cemetery in Fairmont, underscoring the family’s longstanding ties to the region that spanned from the early frontier era through the Civil War and Reconstruction.