Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 3.djvu/245

 PROMINENT PERSONS

209

president of the State University of Mis- souri, and served until the curators sus- pended the work of the university during the civil war ; was principal of a female seminary in St. Louis, 1865-69; life insur- ance state agent and superintendent, also public lecturer, 1869-89. and in the latter named year rejoined his family in Rich- mond, Virginia, and engaged in literary work; he edited a complete edition of "Re- ports of Chancellor George Wythe, with a Memoir of the Author;" a new edition of Hening & Munford's "Virginia Reports," and contributed to law journals in New York City ; he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the State Univer- sity of Missouri in 1894, and in 1896 was made secretary of the Virginia Society of the Sons of the American Revolution ; he married, May 26, 1842, Virginia Maury, daughter of the Rt. Rev. James Hervey Otey. He died in 1904.

Broadhead, James O., was born in Albe- marle county, Virginia, May 19, 1819. He was educated at the high school, and when sixteen years of age studied one year at the University of Virginia. In June, 1837, he removed to Missouri, where he studied law in the office of Edward Bates for three years. In 1841 he began the practice of law in Pike county, Missouri, and in 1845 was elected as a delegate to the constitu- tional convention of the state. In 1846 he was elected to the state legislature from Pike county, and in 1850 to the state senate, and served in that capacity four years. In 1859 he located in St. Louis, and in Febru- ary, 1861, he was appointed United States district attorney of Missouri, but resigned when he found that it interferred with his duties as a delegate to the state convention,

VIR— 14

"for vindicating the sovereignty of the state, and the protection of its institutions." Under tlie provisions of resolutions offered by Mr. Broadhead, this convention abolished the existing state government and established a provisional government, which for the first three years of the civil war managed its affairs, raising and organizing a military force in support of the United States gov- ernment. He was commissioned lieutenant- colonel of the Third Missouri Cavalry, and was assigned to duty on the staff of Gen- eral Schofield, as provost marshal-general of the department of Missouri. In 1876 he was appointed by President Grant as coun- sel on the part of the government in the prosecution of the "whiskey frauds." In 1S78 he was chosen president of the Amer- ican Bar Association, which met at Sara- toga, New York. In 1882 he was elected a representative to the forty-eighth congress as a Democrat, and in 1885 was appointed by the government as special agent to make preliminary search of the record of the French archives in the matter of the French spoliation claims, making his report in Oc- tc>ber, 1885. He was United States minister to Switzerland, 1893-97, and on his return he took up the practice of his profession. He died in St. Louis, Missouri, August 7, 1898.

Hays, William, born in Richmond, \^ir- ginia, in 1819; was a student in the United States Military .Academy, from which he was graduated in 1840; was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant in 1847, captain in 1853, and major in 1863; he served through- out the Mexican war with the light artil- lery : was wounded at Molino del Rey, and brevetted captain and major; was engaged in the Seminole Indian wars for one year,