Joseph Johnson (Virginia politician)  Joseph Ellis Johnson (December 19, 1785 – February 27, 1877) was a farmer, businessman and politician who served as United States Representative and became the 32nd Governor of Virginia from 1852 to 1856, the first Virginia governor to be popularly elected as well as the only Virginia governor from west of the Appalachian mountains. During the American Civil War, he sympathized with the Confederacy, but returned to what had become West Virginia for his final years. Born in Orange County, New York, Johnson moved with his widowed mother Abigail Wright Johnson (1753-1839) and four siblings to Belvidere, New Jersey in 1791 and then to Winchester, Virginia (possibly after a long detour to Suffolk County, Virginia) before moving across the Appalachian Mountains to Bridgeport in what became Harrison County, Virginia (and then West Virginia) in 1801. The sixteen year old Johnson soon got a job helping Ephraim Smith, a local gentleman farmer suffering from ill health, came to manage Smith's land. Three years later, on May 14, 1804, he married one of his employer's daughters, Sarah Smith (1784-1853). At least five of their children died before age 11. However, their son Dr. Benjamin Franklin Johnson (1816-1855) and daughter Catherine Selina Minor (1824-1900) survived and married, although both moved from the area (to Franklin County Ohio and Baltimore, respectively). By 1807, in addition to farming, Johnson rebuilt the Smith mill on Simpson Creek (that had been built circa 1803) that he bought from Smith's widow and heirs. In 1811 the Harrison county government ordered a bridge built about a quarter mile above "Johnson's Mill", the first bridge built in Harrison county outside Clarksburg. Johnson initially became active in local politics as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party (aligned with President Thomas Jefferson). He became the local constable in 1811 and formed one of two or three companies of "Harrison riflemen" that fought the War of 1812. In 1814, Captain Johnson and Captain John McWhorter of the other company led their riflemen to Norfolk, where Johnson and his men helped keep the peace until the war's end in 1815, while McWhorter's men headed west under General (and future President) William H. Harrison to fight in Ohio. Johnson's men were first assigned to the Sixth Regiment of Virginia militia, then to the Fourth Regiment.