Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of James Buchanan Richmond of Lee, Virginia
In Turkey Cove, in Lee County, Virginia, the ridges and coves held more than farms, churches, and family names. They also produced men who carried the mountain counties into courtrooms, army camps, railroad offices, constitutional debates, and Washington politics. One of them was James Buchanan Richmond, usually written James B. Richmond or J. B. Richmond in the records.
Richmond was born in Turkey Cove on February 27, 1842. His later public life belonged heavily to Scott County and Gate City, but his beginning was in Lee County, in the same far southwestern Virginia world that shaped many of the region’s nineteenth century lawyers, soldiers, judges, and officeholders.
The official congressional record gives the outline of a life that moved through nearly every major public arena of postwar Southwest Virginia. Richmond attended Emory and Henry College, studied law, and practiced in the circuit and county courts of Lee, Scott, and Wise counties, as well as in the court of appeals at Wytheville. That legal circuit tells its own story. Before paved roads, modern courthouses, and professionalized politics, a lawyer in the mountains often became a traveler between county seats, family disputes, land cases, criminal trials, and public office.
Richmond’s career would eventually carry him from those county courts to the Virginia House of Delegates, the United States House of Representatives, the Scott County bench, railroad law, banking, and the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901 to 1902. Yet the place to begin is still Lee County, because Turkey Cove gave him the world he first understood.
A Lawyer in the Mountain Counties
Richmond’s education at Emory and Henry placed him within one of Southwest Virginia’s important educational traditions. He was not presented in the 1879 Congressional Directory as a man of elite eastern schooling. That contemporary directory described his education as limited, but it also recorded the important fact that he had entered the law and practiced across several mountain counties.
That matters because law was one of the main ladders of public life in nineteenth century Appalachia. Courthouses were not only places for trials. They were where land titles were argued, estates were settled, roads were petitioned for, marriages were recorded, local politics took shape, and reputations were made. A lawyer who could stand before juries in Lee, Scott, Wise, and Wytheville could become known across the district long before he ever stood before voters for Congress.
By the time Richmond became a public figure, Southwest Virginia was still dealing with the consequences of war, debt, railroads, Reconstruction, and the difficult work of rebuilding local authority. Men like Richmond moved through that unsettled world as lawyers first and politicians second.
The Civil War Record
Richmond’s Civil War service is important, but it should be written carefully because the surviving summaries do not all state it the same way. The official United States House biography says he served as an orderly sergeant and was promoted to captain of Company A, Fiftieth Regiment, Virginia Infantry. It then places him as major in the Sixty-fourth Virginia Regiment and later as lieutenant colonel of that same regiment.
Virginia Tech’s finding aid for the James B. Richmond Poetry Book gives a slightly different early regiment, identifying him as captain of Company A of the Fifteenth Virginia Infantry before listing the same later movement into the Sixty-fourth Virginia. Until the compiled Confederate service records are checked card by card, the safest statement is that Richmond’s public biographies agree on his later service as major and lieutenant colonel in the Sixty-fourth Virginia, while they differ on how to name his first regiment.
The Sixty-fourth Virginia Mounted Infantry was one of the military units most closely tied to the mountain counties of far southwestern Virginia. The National Park Service summary says the regiment was organized in December 1862 by consolidating the Twenty-first and Twenty-ninth Battalions Virginia Infantry. Before September 1, 1863, it was known as the Sixty-fourth Infantry, and after that date it was also called the Sixty-fourth Cavalry. A large part of the regiment was captured at Cumberland Gap on September 9, 1863, and later service carried the unit into conflicts in East Tennessee, western Virginia, and North Carolina.
The same National Park Service unit summary lists Lieutenant Colonel James B. Richmond among the field officers, along with Auburn L. Pridemore, Campbell Slemp, and Harvey Gray. These names show how closely military service, local prestige, and later politics were tied together in the mountain counties. In Richmond’s case, the war did not end his public life. It became one chapter in a longer regional career.
Into the Virginia House of Delegates
After the war, Richmond returned to law and public service. In 1874 and 1875, he served in the Virginia House of Delegates. The official DOME record of the Virginia House of Delegates lists him as James Buchanan Richmond, serving from Scott County as a Democrat.
The session record gives a small but useful window into his work. Richmond served on the Committees on Enrolled Bills, Federal Relations and Resolutions, and Officers and Offices at the Capitol. Those committee names do not sound dramatic today, but they placed him inside the machinery of state government during a period when Virginia was still wrestling with postwar politics, public debt, local governance, and the balance between older Democratic power and newer political movements.
His state service also marked a shift in his public identity. He had been born in Lee County and practiced across Lee, Scott, and Wise, but by the 1870s his official political base was Scott County. The courthouse town then known as Estillville, later Gate City, became the center of much of his later life.
The Ninth District and Congress
Richmond’s largest office came with his election as a Democrat to the Forty-sixth Congress. He served from March 4, 1879, to March 3, 1881, representing Virginia’s Ninth District.
The 1879 Congressional Directory is one of the best contemporary sources for this part of his life. It listed him as James Buchanan Richmond of Estillville and placed him in a district that covered a wide sweep of southwestern Virginia counties, including Lee, Scott, Wise, Russell, Washington, Tazewell, Smyth, Wythe, Pulaski, Roanoke, Montgomery, Giles, Craig, Bland, and Buchanan.
The same directory gave vote totals from the election. Richmond was elected as a Democrat with 5,120 votes, defeating several opponents, including Fayette McMullin, listed as an Independent, who received 4,829 votes. Newbery, another Independent, received 4,640 votes, and Camp, a Republican, received 613 votes.
Those numbers show a divided mountain district. Richmond did not enter Congress from a quiet political landscape. He came from a region where Democrats, Independents, Republicans, former Confederates, debt politics, and local loyalties all collided. The Ninth District was large, rugged, and politically complicated. Richmond’s term in Washington lasted only one Congress, but it placed a Turkey Cove native inside the national government during a tense period of post-Reconstruction politics.
His official House biography does not preserve a long list of speeches or landmark laws tied to his name. That absence may be part of why he is not widely remembered today. But for Lee and Scott counties, the significance is still real. Richmond was one of the mountain men who carried the concerns, loyalties, and political divisions of far southwestern Virginia into Congress.
The Private Poet
One of the most revealing sources for Richmond is not a court record, election return, or government directory. It is a manuscript book of poetry.
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives holds the James B. Richmond Poetry Book, dated 1873 to 1883. The finding aid describes it as a single manuscript book written by Richmond, with many poems dated and located. Some poems were occasional pieces written in response to particular events. Others reflected on his departure from the United States House of Representatives, the Civil War, and religious subjects.
That source adds something important to the public record. Richmond was not only an officeholder moving from one position to another. He was also a man who wrote privately about war, faith, memory, and disappointment. The poetry book covers the years before, during, and after his congressional service, which makes it one of the best personal windows into how he understood his own life.
For historians, this kind of source can be more valuable than a polished biography. Official records tell what offices a man held. A manuscript tells what he chose to write down when he was not standing before a judge, a legislature, or a voter.
Judge, Railroad Lawyer, and Banker
After Congress, Richmond remained active in public and business life. The official House biography says he served as county judge of Scott County from 1886 to 1892. This was a powerful local role. In a rural county, a judge was more than a distant legal figure. He stood near the center of local order, property disputes, criminal proceedings, and civic authority.
Richmond also became chief counsel for the South Atlantic and Ohio Railroad. That detail connects him to one of the great changes in late nineteenth century Appalachia. Railroads altered the mountain counties by opening markets, moving timber and minerals, reshaping county seats, and drawing outside capital into places that had once been tied mainly to wagon roads, rivers, and courthouse towns.
Gate City and Scott County felt those changes. The old courthouse town had long served travelers moving through Big Moccasin Gap. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, railroads and related industries made the region part of a wider commercial world. Richmond’s work as railroad counsel placed him inside that transformation.
His involvement in banking belongs to the same story. Lawyers, judges, railroad men, and bankers often overlapped in small towns because public trust and business opportunity moved through the same narrow circles. Richmond’s later life shows how Southwest Virginia’s courthouse leadership adapted to the age of rail and finance.
The Constitutional Convention of 1901 to 1902
Richmond’s final major public role came when he served as a delegate to Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1901 to 1902. The Virginia House of Delegates DOME profile lists his service in the convention, and the official journal of the convention remains an important primary source for researchers who want to trace his attendance, votes, and committee work.
This convention has a long and troubling shadow. It produced the Constitution of 1902, which reshaped Virginia politics for much of the twentieth century. Modern historical summaries emphasize that the constitution disenfranchised large numbers of African Americans and poor white voters. It also created the State Corporation Commission, which gave the state a new way to regulate corporations and railroads.
Richmond’s presence at the convention places him in one of the most consequential political gatherings in Virginia history. It was not simply a meeting of lawyers revising technical language. It was a convention that decided who would hold political power, who would be shut out of the electorate, and how the state would manage the new corporate and railroad age.
For an Appalachian biography, this part of Richmond’s life matters because it connects the mountain counties to statewide decisions. Men from Lee, Scott, Wise, and neighboring counties were not outside Virginia history. They were part of it, including the parts that later generations must examine with care.
Death at Baltimore and Burial at Gate City
James Buchanan Richmond died in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 30, 1910. The official House biography says he was buried in Estil Cemetery at Gate City, Virginia.
A newspaper death notice published in The Freelance of Fredericksburg and later transcribed in Scott County obituary collections described him as Col. James B. Richmond of Gate City, age sixty-eight, and said he died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The notice remembered him as a Confederate officer, a congressman, and a member of Virginia’s last constitutional convention. It also said he was survived by his wife, a daughter, and a son.
One caution is worth noting. That notice says Richmond was elected to Congress in 1876, while the official congressional sources place his service in the Forty-sixth Congress from 1879 to 1881 after the 1878 election. This is a small example of why newspaper notices are useful but should be checked against official records.
Richmond’s burial at Gate City brought his life back to the mountain region where most of his public work had been done. He had been born in Lee County, practiced law across the nearby counties, built a career from Scott County, and died with a record that stretched from the Civil War to the early twentieth century.
Why James Buchanan Richmond Matters
James Buchanan Richmond is not remembered today in the way some governors, generals, or senators are remembered. His congressional career lasted one term. His name is easy to confuse with President James Buchanan. Some of the sources even disagree on details of his military record.
Yet Richmond matters because his life follows the path of nineteenth century Appalachian public leadership. He came from a cove in Lee County, made a profession in the law, served in the Confederate army, entered state politics, represented the Ninth District in Congress, became a county judge, advised a railroad, took part in banking, wrote poetry, and helped revise Virginia’s constitution.
His story is also a reminder that local history should not stop at birthplaces and office titles. The richest picture of Richmond comes from putting different kinds of records beside one another. The Congressional Directory shows the politician. The House biography gives the public chronology. The Virginia DOME record places him in state government. The National Park Service unit history places him in the Civil War. The poetry manuscript suggests an inner life. The constitutional convention records place him in a statewide debate with consequences far beyond his own county.
From Turkey Cove to Gate City, from county courtrooms to Washington, and from wartime service to private verse, James Buchanan Richmond left a trail across the public life of Southwest Virginia. He belongs in the history of Lee County not only because he was born there, but because his life shows how deeply a mountain county could be tied to the larger story of Virginia and the nation.
Sources & Further Reading
History, Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives. “RICHMOND, James Buchanan.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/R/RICHMOND,-James-Buchanan-(R000234)/
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. “RICHMOND, James Buchanan.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/R000234
United States Congress. Congressional Directory for the Forty-Sixth Congress, First Session. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1879. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDIR-1879-04-12/text/CDIR-1879-04-12.txt
United States Congress. Congressional Directory. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDIR-1880-01-01/text/CDIR-1880-01-01.txt
United States Congress. Congressional Directory. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1881. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDIR-1881-01-21/text/CDIR-1881-01-21.txt
Virginia House of Delegates Clerk’s Office. “James Buchanan Richmond.” House of Delegates History, DOME. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://history.house.virginia.gov/members/6513
Virginia House of Delegates Clerk’s Office. “James Buchanan Richmond Service by Session, 1874–1875.” House of Delegates History, DOME. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://history.house.virginia.gov/members/6513
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “James B. Richmond Poetry Book, Ms-2010-051.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/resources/2604
National Park Service. “64th Regiment, Virginia Mounted Infantry.” Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=CVA0064RI
National Park Service. “50th Regiment, Virginia Infantry.” Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=CVA0050RI
Virginia Constitutional Convention. Journal of the Constitutional Convention of Virginia: Held in the City of Richmond, Beginning June 12th, 1901. Richmond: J. H. O’Bannon, 1901–1902. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008919744
Virginia Constitutional Convention. Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention, State of Virginia: Held in the City of Richmond June 12, 1901, to June 26, 1902. Richmond: Hermitage Press, 1906. https://archive.org/details/reportofproceedi11virg
Encyclopedia Virginia. “Constitutional Convention, Virginia, 1901–1902.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/constitutional-convention-virginia-1901-1902/
Encyclopedia Virginia. “Members of the United States House of Representatives from Virginia.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/members-of-the-united-states-house-of-representatives-from-virginia/
Tyler, Lyon Gardiner, ed. Men of Mark in Virginia: Ideals of American Life. Vol. 3. Washington, DC: Men of Mark Publishing Company, 1907. https://ldsgenealogy.com/books2/menofmarkinvirgi03tyle_0.pdf
Addington, Robert M. History of Scott County, Virginia. Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press, 1932. https://www.seekingmyroots.com/members/files/H011614.pdf
McDanel, Ralph Clipman. The Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901–1902. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928. https://archive.org/stream/TheVirginiaConstitutionalConventionOf1901-1902/VCC3_djvu.txt
Online Books Page. “Virginia Constitutional Convention, 1901–1902.” University of Pennsylvania. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/who/Virginia.%20Constitutional%20Convention%20%281901-1902%29
Genealogy Trails. “Scott County, Virginia Obituaries and Death Notices.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://genealogytrails.com/vir/scott/obits.html
Find a Grave. “James Buchanan Richmond.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/
Library of Congress. “James Buchanan Richmond, Brady-Handy Photograph Collection.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/
National Archives and Records Administration. “Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Virginia, Record Group 109.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war/confederate/service-records
Fold3. “Confederate Service Records, Virginia.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.fold3.com/
Library of Virginia. “Virginia Memory and Archival Collections.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/
Virginia Chronicle. “Richmond Dispatch, July 27, 1901.” Library of Virginia. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RD19010727.1.2
Author Note: This article follows James Buchanan Richmond through official records, military summaries, legislative sources, and archival leads tied to Lee and Scott counties. Readers with family papers, courthouse records, cemetery photographs, or additional Richmond material are welcome to help strengthen the local record.