Rufus A. Ayers

Who was Rufus A. Ayers?

Rufus A. Ayers was a Virginia lawyer, businessman, and politician, who served as Attorney General of Virginia.

Ayers was born in Bedford County, Virginia. His family set out for Texas, but passed through Goodson en route, and decided to stay there. Ayers attended Goodson Academy until it was closed at the start of the Civil War. He never went to school again, for the rest of his life. At age 14, young Ayers ran away and joined the Confederate Army. Although under age, Ayers served for some months as a soldier in East Tennessee.

After the war, Ayers went into business at age 19 in Estillville, now Gate City, Virginia. Encouraged by his uncle, a judge in Bedford, he began to study law and was admitted to the bar in 1872. In 1875, Ayers became the Commonwealth's Attorney for Scott County, Virginia, serving until 1879. Expanding his political career, Ayers served as reading clerk for the House of Delegates from 1875 to 1879, and was appointed a district supervisor by President Rutherford B. Hayes for the 1880 census.

Ayers became one of Southwest Virginia's industrial development leaders. In 1876, Ayers obtained a charter for a railroad from Bristol to Big Stone Gap. That same year he founded the Scott Banner. He participated in the founding of Virginia Coal & Iron Co., which became Virginia's largest coal company, and many other coal companies, as well as banks, a telephone company, and other businesses, and he owned the Big Stone Gap Post.