James Mitchell Ashley
U. S. House of Representatives, Ohio, 1859-1869
Born: November 14, 1824, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Died: September 16, 1896, Alma, Gratiot County, Michigan.
- Instructed himself in elementary subjects while employed as a clerk on boats operating on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
- Editor of the Pittsburgh Dispatch, and afterwards of the Democrat, in Portsmouth, Ohio.
- Studied law, was admitted to the Ohio bar, 1849, but never practiced.
- Moved to Toledo, Ohio, and engaged in the wholesale drug business.
- Elected as a Ohio Republican to the Thirty-sixth and to the four succeeding U. S. Congresses, March 4, 1859 - March 3, 1869.
- Unsuccessful Ohio Republican candidate for re-election, 1868, to the Forty-first Congress.
- Delegate to the Philadelphia Loyalists' Convention, 1866.
- Governor of the Territory of Montana, 1869-1870.
- Constructed the Toledo, Ann Arbor & Northern Railroad, and served as its president, 1877-1893.
Buried: Woodlawn Cemetery, Toledo, Ohio.
(Source: U.S. Congress. House. Biographical Directory Of The American Congress 1774-1949, 85th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 607 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950), pp. 759-2057.)