Source:  The South in the Building of the Nation.  
Richmond, Va.: The Southern Historical Publication Society, 1909.
Volume XI, pages 176-177

Allen Taylor CAPERTON


CAPERTON, Allen Taylor, politician: b. Monroe county (now West), Va., Nov. 21, 
1810; d. Washington, D. C., July 26, 1876.  He was the son of Hugh Caperton 
(1780-1847), a native of Virginia, member of the states assembly and Congress. 
Allen T. Caperton was educated at the University of Virginia and Yale College, 
graduating from the latter in 1839.  He read law in Staunton, Va., was admitted
to the bar, and before leaving the profession to enter politics gained marked 
distinction.  He was also one of the early directors of the greatest of Virginia's
ante-bellum internal improvements, the James River and Kanawha Canal.  Mr. Caperton
was a member of the Whig party, and as such received his election to the Virginia 
assembly, serving through a period of nearly twenty years as member of the house 
of delegates and senate.  Mr. Caperton's sympathies were markedly Southern at the 
time of the War of Secession.  He was a member of the Virginia secession convention,
voting in affirmative on the ordinance which carried the state from the Union.  Mr. 
Caperton was a member of the Confederate senate, 1863-65.  After the war he was 
instrumental in developing the mining, agricultural and timber interests in West 
Virginia, and in 1875 was elected to the United States senate from West Virginia, 
dying within less than a year after taking his seat in that body.


Submitted by Valerie Crook, vfcrook @trellis.net, January 1999.