Representative David Emmons Johnston

David Emmons Johnston (April 10, 1845 – July 7, 1917) was an American lawyer, jurist, author, and Democratic politician from West Virginia who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1899 to 1901. Over the course of a long public career that spanned the post–Civil War and Gilded Age eras, he held local, state, and federal office and became known both for his legal work and for his later writings on regional history and his experiences in the Civil War.

Johnston was born in Pearisburg, Giles County, Virginia, on April 10, 1845. He grew up in the mountain region that would later be divided between Virginia and the new state of West Virginia during the Civil War. His early life unfolded in a rural community shaped by agriculture and small-town commerce, an environment that would inform both his later legal practice and his historical writings about the Middle New River settlements.

In April 1861, at the outset of the Civil War, Johnston enlisted in the Confederate Army. He served for four years in the 7th Virginia Infantry Regiment, part of Kemper’s Brigade in Pickett’s Division of the Army of Northern Virginia. During this period he saw extended field service with one of the most active Confederate commands, an experience he would later recount in detail in his memoir, “The Story of a Confederate Boy in the Civil War,” published in 1914. After the war, he returned to civilian life in a South undergoing Reconstruction and turned his attention to the study of law.

Johnston read law in the traditional manner and was admitted to the bar in Giles County, Virginia, in 1867. He began the practice of law in his native Pearisburg, building a regional practice in the years immediately following the Civil War. In 1870 he moved across the newly established state line to Mercer County, West Virginia, where he continued his legal career. His professional competence and growing reputation soon led to positions of public responsibility in his adopted state.

In Mercer County, Johnston served as prosecuting attorney from 1872 to 1876, representing the state in criminal matters and helping to shape the administration of justice in a region still adjusting to the social and political changes of the postwar era. In 1878 he was elected to the West Virginia Senate, entering state-level legislative service, although he resigned his seat after a brief tenure. Two years later, in 1880, he was elected judge of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of West Virginia. He held that judicial post from 1880 to 1888, presiding over a broad range of civil and criminal cases and further consolidating his standing as a leading legal figure in southern West Virginia.

Johnston’s judicial and legal experience provided the foundation for his subsequent national service. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-sixth Congress, representing West Virginia in the United States House of Representatives from March 4, 1899, to March 3, 1901. During his single term in Congress he participated in the legislative process at a time of significant national change, as the United States grappled with the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, questions of territorial expansion, and the economic and social issues of the turn of the twentieth century. As a Democratic representative from West Virginia, he took part in the democratic process and represented the interests of his constituents in this evolving national context. His candidacy for re-election in 1900 was unsuccessful, and his congressional service concluded at the end of the Fifty-sixth Congress.

After leaving Congress, Johnston returned to his legal and literary pursuits. In 1906 he published “A History of Middle New River Settlements and Contiguous Territory,” a substantial historical work that documented the settlement, development, and notable families of the region straddling southwestern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia. This volume, together with his later Civil War memoir, reflected both his deep attachment to the area where he had been born and practiced law and his desire to preserve its history for future generations.

In 1908 Johnston moved to Portland, Oregon, where he resumed the practice of law on the Pacific Coast. He continued his professional work there during his later years, maintaining his engagement with the legal profession far from the Appalachian communities where he had first established his career. He died at his home in Portland on July 7, 1917. Johnston was buried in Mount Scott Park Cemetery, now known as Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery, in Portland, closing a life that had carried him from the Confederate ranks in Virginia through judicial and congressional service in West Virginia to a final legal career in the Pacific Northwest.