Lewis Ruffner (October 1, 1797 – November 19, 1883) was an American merchant, magistrate, slaveowner and politician who helped found the state of West Virginia.
Fellow legislators named him Major General of the state's militia in 1863, but he declined to accept a commission in the Union Army because salt manufacture was also crucial to the war effort.
After the war, General Ruffner suffered a debilitating injury trying to avert a mob attack and became known as a mentor of Booker T. Washington, his former houseboy.
[6][5] David Ruffner received the property closest to the future city of Charleston (the whole bottom from the mouth of Campbell's Creek to the cross line above Malden), including the famous salt lick, which Joseph Sr. had allowed Elisha Brooks to lease and try to develop.
Soon, David and his brother Joseph Jr. decided to develop it themselves, and after resolving lawsuits involving Dickinson's heirs as well as their brother Abraham's share sold to Andrew Donnally Jr.[7] In 1805 David Ruffner bought a mill and house from George Alderson and moved his family to the "Kanawha Salines" (renamed "Malden" in the 1850s), where he began developing the salt works (a/k/a salines).
[12] Meanwhile, between 1799 and 1812 (when Joseph Jr. moved to Cincinnati), Kanawha County voters several times elected David Ruffner as one of their two representatives (on a part-time basis) in the Virginia House of Delegates.
By 1815 (with demand soaring because the war made British salt unavailable), the number of salt furnaces in the Kanawa Valley had reached 52 and extended four miles below and 3 miles above the original Ruffner operation, and wood to fire the boiling evaporation vats was becoming scarce, until David Ruffner managed to convert that part of the operation to coal, which was discovered nearby.
During his first term, which began in 1821, he served alongside Joseph Lovell (who had helped his father, uncles and neighbors establish the Kanawha Salt Company).
Henry Ruffner published a controversial pamphlet that argued slavery was impeding Virginia's economic development, and after resigning as president of Washington College, spent some time with Lewis and his family in Louisville, before himself returning to Malden.
Union forces destroyed the salt works to stop further shipments of the valuable commodity to the Confederacy, although John P. Hale (who had joined the Confederate Army in 1861) reorganized it in 1864, with "Gen. L. Ruffner" as "General Advisory Agent".
In 1873, he turned over his business affairs to his son Lewis Ruffner Jr. (who had returned to Malden after selling salt in St. Louis, Missouri and Evansville, Indiana) and other trustees for the benefit of his children, reserving only an annuity for himself and his wife.
[16] During the war, the stepfather of Booker T. Washington, who had been a leased slave at the salt works, returned with his newly emancipated family to join them.
According to the first of Washington's autobiographies, Up From Slavery, Mrs. Ruffner had a harsh reputation for her rigid and strict manner, was feared by her servants and could only keep temporary employees due to her demands and expectations.
His youngest son, Ernest Ruffner (who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1867), became a career engineer in the U.S. Army, and for a time supervised the $2 million federal Lock and Dam Improvement Project on the Kanawha River.