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Senate Years of Service: 1892-1895 Party: Democrat
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HUNTON, Eppa, a Representative and a Senator from Virginia; born near Warrenton, Fauquier
County, Va., September 22, 1822; attended New Baltimore Academy; taught school three years;
studied law; admitted to the bar in 1843 and commenced practice in Brentsville, Va.; served as
colonel, and later general, in the Virginia militia; Commonwealth attorney for Prince William County
1849-1861; member of the Virginia convention at Richmond in February 1861 and advocated
secession; entered the Confederate Army as colonel of the Eighth Regiment, Virginia Infantry;
promoted to brigadier general after the Battle of Gettysburg and served through the remainder of the
Civil War; resumed the practice of law; elected as a Democrat to the Forty-third and to the three
succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1873-March 3, 1881); was not a candidate for renomination in
1880; chairman, Committee on Revolutionary Pensions (Forty-fourth Congress), Committee on the
District of Columbia (Forty-sixth Congress); appointed a member of the Electoral Commission created
by act of Congress in 1877 to decide the contests in various States in the presidential election of 1876;
resumed the practice of law; appointed and subsequently elected as a Democrat to the United States
Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of John S. Barbour and served from May 28, 1892, to
March 3, 1895; was not a candidate for renomination in 1894; resumed the practice of law in
Warrenton, Va.; died in Richmond, Va., October 11, 1908; interment in Hollywood Cemetery.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Hunton, Eppa. The Autobiography of Eppa
Hunton. Richmond: William Byrd Press, 1933.
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