Arthur Boreman was born on July 24, 1823, in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, United States, the grandson of John Boreman, a native of Manchester, England, who became a merchant in Philadelphia and assistant paymaster of the Revolutionary army. John Boreman's son, Kenner Seaton Boreman, was a successful merchant in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, and married Sarah Ingram by whom he had seven children, among them Arthur Ingram.
Arthur Boreman prepared for law by a course of reading and observation largely under the direction of his brother William, a distinguished lawyer and member of the Virginia legislature.
Arthur Boreman was admitted to the bar in 1845 and removed the following year to Parkersburg, where he became prominent in the practise of his profession. In 1855-1861 he represented Wood County in the Virginia House of Delegates, being a member of the famous extra session of 1861 which called a convention, without popular referendum, to consider the subject of secession. Boreman had opposed secession in all its phases and especially that by Virginia under the existing circumstances. When the Virginia convention voted to secede, April 17, 1861, he became active in efforts to hold western Virginia in the Union. He was president of a convention that met in Wheeling, June 11, 1861, and reorganized the government of Virginia with a complete set of loyal officials, including United States Senators.
Soon after Boreman became a judge of a circuit court of the reorganized government, which office he held for two years. Meanwhile political events in western Virginia moved rapidly. The reorganized government consented to the dismemberment of Virginia, and West Virginia was admitted to the Union. Officers of the former moved to Alexandria, giving place to those of the new state, among them Boreman, the unanimous choice for governor. He was reelected in 1864 and again in 1866, but before his third term expired, he resigned to accept a seat in the United States Senate, which he occupied from March 4, 1869, to March 4, 1875. In the Senate he served with ability as a member of the committees on Manufactures and Claims and as chairman, in turn, of the committee's on Political Disabilities and Territories. The national political upheavals of the seventies carried West Virginia into the Democratic column and retired Boreman to private life. He resumed the practise of law, and devoted himself to home and church. In 1888 he was reelected to the judgeship which he filled years before and which he continued to hold until his death.
Arthur Boreman was a member of the Republican party; of the Virginia House of Delegates from the Wood County district from 1855 to April 4, 1861.
Arthur Boreman married in 1864 Mrs. Laurane Bullock, daughter of Dr. James Tanner of Wheeling
