Charles J. Faulkner

Who was Charles J. Faulkner?

Charles James Faulkner was a United States Senator from West Virginia and the son of Charles James Faulkner, a U.S. Representative from Virginia and West Virginia. Born on the family estate, "Boydville," near Martinsburg, Virginia, he accompanied his father, who was U.S. Minister to France, to that country in 1859; he attended school in Paris and Switzerland. He returned to the United States in 1861, and during the Civil War entered the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington in 1862. He served with the cadets in the Battle of New Market and, after the war, graduated from the law department of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, where he was a member of St. Anthony Hall, in 1868. He was admitted to the bar in 1868 and commenced practice in Martinsburg.

In 1887, Faulkner was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate; he was reelected in 1893 and served from March 4, 1887, to March 4, 1899. While in the Senate, he was chairman of the Committee on Territories. In 1898 he was appointed a member of the International Joint High Commission of the United States and Great Britain.