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Henry Clay Ragland

Henry Clay Ragland (May 7, 1844-May 1, 1911) was a Logan County newspaper publisher and lawyer who founded the Logan County Banner in 1888. Ragland was born in Goochland County, Virginia, the son of Hugh N. and Eliza Eades Ragland. He enlisted in Company B, 5th Virginia Cavalry, on his 17th birthday and served in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia until captured by Union troops near Luray, Virginia, in 1864. He spent the remainder of the war in Point Lookout prison in Maryland.

Ragland worked as a teacher in Goochland County before moving to Wayne County, in 1870. He learned printing from H. K. Shumate and moved to Logan in 1874. He married Louisa Buskirk on January 9, 1878, and became friends with James Andrew Nighbert, the town’s leading merchant, thus finding his place in the community. Ragland made his newspaper a voice for Logan County and the Democratic Party. He was a leading local booster and a proponent of industrialization. He argued for the creation of a coal-mining and railroad economy, and that goal was achieved when the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad and Island Creek Coal Company arrived in Logan County a few years before Ragland’s death.

Written by Robert Y. Spence