Kanawha County, WV Biographies

AVIS, Samuel Brashear
(1872—1924)

AVIS, Samuel Brashear, a Representative from West Virginia; born in Harrisonburg, Rockingham County, Va., February 19, 1872; attended the public schools and Staunton (Va.) Military Academy; was graduated from the law department of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va.; was admitted to the bar in 1893 and commenced practice in Charleston, W.Va.; commissioned senior captain of Company A, Second West Virginia Volunteer Infantry, during the Spanish-American War in 1898; served until 1899, when he was honorably discharged; prosecuting attorney of Kanawha County, W.Va., from January 1, 1900, to December 31, 1912; assistant United States attorney for the southern district of West Virginia from August 22 to November 15, 1904; elected as a Republican to the Sixty-third Congress (March 4, 1913-March 3, 1915); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1914 to the Sixty-fourth Congress; resumed the practice of law; was killed by lightning in Charleston, W.Va., June 8, 1924; interment in Spring Hill Cemetery, Spring Hill, W.Va.

[Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present - Submitted by Anna Newell]

HON. JOHN E. KENNA, of West Virginia
JOHN E. KENNA, of Charleston, was born the 10th of April, 1848, in Valcoulou, Virginia (now West Virginia). He lived on a farm until the breaking out of the late civil war, when he entered the Confederate Army as a private, serving till the close of the war, when he surrendered at Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1865. After the war he attended, St. Vincent's College, in Wheeling, West Virginia, then read law in Charleston, and in June, 1870, he was admitted to the Bar. He has since then practiced law in Charleston. He was elected Prosecuting Attorney for Kanawha County in 1872, and served in that capacity four years. In 1875 he was chosen by the Bar in the respective counties under statutory provision to hold the Circuit Courts of Lincoln and Wayne Counties. He was a member of the Forty-fifth, Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh Congresses, and had been elected to the Forty-eighth Congress when he was elected to the United States Senate, as a Democrat.

In a speech in the Senate on the subject of interstate commerce Mr. Kenna said:
"The proposition of the Senator from Minnesota, like the proposition of every Senator on this floor who urges opposition to the amendment, that the railroad should not only be allowed, but should be required, to charge reasonable rates, involves us in the old geometrical question as to the size of a lump of chalk. What constitutes a reasonable rate is precisely the thing which the people of this country are unwilling to leave to the arbitrary discretion of the railroad commission. I do not want to interrupt my friend, the Senator from North Carolina, in his speech, but I do want to reiterate the fact that in the amendment of my colleague which was adopted yesterday, and which seems to be the bone of contention here, the simple principle is announced that without interfering with railroad rates-I dislike to hear the term 'rates' mentioned in the line of this discussion, because there is no question of rates involved in it-without reference to any kind or character whatever to interference with the traffic of railroads or their freights, it has been deemed by the friends of this measure a reasonable limitation that they should not be allowed to charge more in gross, more for a shorter haul, even if that shorter haul be ten miles, than for a longer haul, even if that longer haul be a thousand miles. It is an equalization which is essential to restoring to Congress a prerogative which has heretofore been usurped by the railroad companies of this country to control its interstate commerce, and to give to the West or any other section the great markets of the East, giving to the one to the exclusion of the other. That is the real principle involved in it after all."
[Source: "Our Great Men or the Leaders of the Nation", 1887 - Transcribed by Laurie Selpien]

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