Ruffner, William Henry, 1824-1908

William Henry Ruffner was born February 11, 1824, the son of Henry Ruffner, a Presbyterian minister and college president. He graduated from Washington College (Lexington, Va.) where his father served, in 1842. Ruffner attended Union Theological Seminary (Richmond, Va.) in 1845 and 1846, and graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1847. He married Harriet Anne Gray of Collicello, Va. in 1850. Ordained by the Presbytery of Philadelphia in 1852, he served for a year as pastor of Seventh Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia, Pa.). Ruffner returned to the Shenandoah Valley in 1854, eventually resigning from the ministry. From 1870 to 1882, he was Virginia's first Superintendent of Public Instruction. Late in life he served as co-editor of the Education Journal of Virginia and the New England Journal of Education, and took up geology. He died in Asheville, N.C., November 24, 1908.

William H. Ruffner (1824-1908) was born in Lexington, Virginia. After attending college and seminary, he retired from the ministry in 1852 and returned to Virginia to farm. Following the Civil War, he became an advocate for public education, serving as the first superintendent for public instruction in Virginia from 1870 until 1882. Ruffner was a trustee for Washington College and Washington and Lee University from mid-1860s to the mid-1870s, and on the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College Board of Visitors from 1872 until about 1880. He went on to the presidency of the Farmville Normal School (now Longwood College) from 1884 to 1887, then moved to surveying, geology, and theological scholarship. He died in North Carolina in 1908.

Virginia State Superintendent of Public Education, 1870-1882; first president of the Female Normal School at Longville, 1884-1887.