LaFayette McMullen was an American politician. He served as a Governor of Washington Territory from 1857 to 1859.
Background
LaFayette was born on May 18, 1805, in Bedford County, Virginia, United States. He was a son of John and Mary Wysong McMullen. He had a brother Matthew, who first settled in Scott County, and there married Eliza Jett. The two lived there for some time. About 1860, this couple moved to Pettis County. Another brother Andrew married Polly Newland of Sullivan County, and the two remained in Scott County.
Education
As a child, McMullen attended private schools.
Career
LaFayette McMullen worked as a farmer, stagecoach driver, and teamster. He represented Washington District in the Virginia Senate from 1839 to 1849 and was the Democratic congressman from Rye Cove, Virginia, in the United States House from December 1849 to March 1857.
In 1857, President Buchanan appointed him governor of the Washington Territory. He served until 1858 and then returned to his farm in Smyth County, Virginia.
Defeated for election to the first Confederate House of Representatives, McMullen was elected as a peace candidate to the second House, where he served on the Post Office and Post Roads, Public Buildings, and Territories and Public Lands Committees, and on the select committee on alleged depredations of the Confederate soldiers in southwest Virginia and east Tennessee. In December 1864, he tried to get Congress to take anti-inflationary measures.
When the war ended, he returned to his farm in Smyth County, Virginia where he established a home in Marion. There he operated a store. He served as a director of the Bank of Marion.
Achievements
Politics
McMullen was a Democrat. He opposed secession but supported the Confederacy.
Views
McMullen was an antiadministration man. He advocated price controls, with a fair standard of value for all goods.
Connections
Fayette met and courted Mary Ann Polly Wood and later married her on September 17, 1826. Theirs was a never happy marriage, and no children were born to them.
While in Washington state, he got a divorce from his first wife. Soon he married Mary Jane Wood, no relation to his first wife, who was a native of New York but was living then in Olympia. She was considerably younger than Fayette. He and his second wife had one child, a daughter Mary Fayetta McMullen, born June 6, 1871.