Alabama Lieutenant Governors

Robert Fulwood Ligon

Lieutenant Governor: 1874-1876



Lawyer, planter, legislator and Lieutenant-Governor of Alabama, was born December 23, 1823, in Watkinsville, Ga., and died October 11, 1901, in Montgomery; son of Robert and Wilhelmina (Fulwood) Ligon, the former born on the country estate of his parents in Halifax County, Va., removing in 1810 to Georgia, where he practiced law and died at the age of thirty-five; grandson of Joseph and Mary Church Ligon of Halifax County, Va., and of Major Robert and Jane Ware (Hunter) Fulwood of South Carolina and later of Ware County, Ga. The Ligon family is of French Huguenot extraction, the early ancestors going from France to England and thence to America, locating in Virginia and South Carolina, shortly after the Revolutionary War.


Governor Ligon received his early education in the country schools of his native county and in the academy near Watkinsville. Later he attended the Georgia university. In 1844 he removed to Tuskegee, Macon County, where he read law under Judge David Clopton, was admitted to the bar and formed a partnership with his legal mentor. He later removed to Montgomery where he formed a partnership with James E. Cobb. Prior to the War of Secession he was a member of the legislature from Macon County and was State senator in 1864. During the heated campaign that restored white supremacy in the State following the reconstruction period, Senator Ligon was elected lieutenant-governor on the ticket with George S. Houston, governor, the office having been created by the constitution of 1867. It was however abolished in 1875, and not recreated until the adoption of the constitution of 1901.


Lieutenant-Governor Ligon was elected to Congress from the 5th district, 1876-78. He was captain of a company in the Mexican War, 1849; and elected captain of the "Macon Confederates," which was Co. F, 12th Alabama Infantry Regiment, Rodes' division, C. S. Army. He was a Democrat, and canvassed the state during the campaign of 1874, for his party. For many years he was president of the board of trustees, Alabama Female College, and also a trustee of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Auburn.


He was a Methodist and a Mason. Married: in 1850, at Watkinsville, Ga., to Emily, daughter of Edward Courtenay and Caroline Matilda (Brinton) Paine of that place, the former a distinguished lawyer, who had removed from Baltimore, where his parents resided, to Georgia. Mrs. Paine, his wife, was the daughter of Major Henry Bointon, who resided near Philadelphia and was of Quaker ancestry. Children: 1. Carrie, deceased, m. Edward T. Varner, Tuskegee; 2. Emma, m. Richard A. Johnson, Atlanta, Ga.; 3. Cornelia, m. Alexander H. Graham, Dallas, Texas; 4. Mattie, deceased, m. George P. Harrison (q. v.), Opelika; 5. Robert Fulwood, Jr. (q. v.). Last residence: Montgomery.


Thomas McAdory Owen, History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography, (1921), 1046.


William D. Ligon, Jr., The Ligon Family and Connections, Hartford, Conn.: Printed by the Bond Press, (1947).


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