Rufus A. Ayers

Rufus Adolphus Ayers (May 20, 1849 – May 14, 1926) was a Virginia lawyer, businessman, and politician, who served as Attorney General of Virginia.

Ayers was born in Bedford County, Virginia. His family set out for Texas, but passed through Goodson (now Bristol) en route, and decided to stay there. Ayers attended Goodson Academy until it was closed at the start of the Civil War. He never went to school again, for the rest of his life. At age 14, young Ayers ran away and joined the Confederate Army. Although under age, Ayers served for some months as a soldier in East Tennessee.

After the war, Ayers went into business at age 19 in Estillville, now Gate City, Virginia. Encouraged by his uncle, a judge in Bedford, He participated in the founding of Virginia Coal & Iron Co., which became Virginia's largest coal company, In the general election, Ayers defeated the incumbent Republican Frank S. Blair. Following the inauguration of Lee, Massey, and Ayers in 1886, the Democrats would control Virginia's statewide offices until 1970.

As Attorney General, Ayers was made a defendant in litigation over Virginia's debt, was held in contempt by the United States Circuit Court, and checked into the Richmond city jail on October 10, 1887. On December 5, before a packed courtroom, the Supreme Court of the United States announced its decision to grant Ayers' petition for habeas corpus. The Virginia Coupon issue was not resolved on the merits until 1890. That same year, the New York Times interviewed Ayers, noting that he had spent six days in jail in the Coupon case, and that Ayers had chosen instead of seeking re-election in 1889 to return to Southwest Virginia, "which is now enjoying a genuine boom."

From 1889 to 1892, Ayers had as his law partner Joseph L. Kelly in Estillville. In 1893, along with his successor as Attorney General, R. Taylor Scott, and William F. Rhea from Bristol, Ayers represented Virginia before the Supreme Court in the boundary dispute with Tennessee over "a strip of land about 113 miles in length, and varying from 2 to 8 miles in width," that would have put all of Bristol, Tennessee in Virginia. They lost. In 1895, Ayers moved his family and his law practice from Scott County to Big Stone Gap.

Ayers ran for Congress in 1912 against the Republican, C. Bascom Slemp, his longtime friend, who purchased Ayers' residence in 1929 and used it to house his collections.

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