James Guthrie

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Birth Date

1792-12-05

Death Date

1869-03-13

Gender

Race Description

White

Entity Type

Person

"James Guthrie" in the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition, discovery.civilwargovernors.org/document/N00000831, (accessed November 4, 2025).

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Louisville, Kentucky, attorney, businessman, and politician. Kentucky native. Married to Eliza Churchill Prather Guthrie. Father of Mary Elizabeth Guthrie Caperton, Ann Augusta Guthrie Caldwell, and Sarah Julia Guthrie Smith. Attended McAllister’s Academy and Bardstown Academy. Owned flatboats and commenced trade in New Orleans, Louisiana. Admitted to the bar in 1817. Moved to Louisville in 1820. Appointed commonwealth’s attorney by John Adair in 1820. Practiced law in Bardstown, Kentucky, and Louisville. Member of the City of Louisville Board of Trustees. Democratic member of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from 1827 to 1831. Member of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from 1831 to 1840. Member of the 1849 Kentucky Constitutional Convention from Jefferson County, Kentucky. Founded and served as president of the University of Louisville in Louisville. Secretary of the Treasury under President Franklin Pierce from 1853 to 1857. President of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company in Louisville from 1860 to 1868. President of the Louisville and Portland Canal Company. Delegate to the 1861 Washington Peace Convention in Washington, District of Columbia. Democratic member of the United States Senate from Kentucky from 1865 to 1868.

Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, 4th Ward City of Louisville, p. 70.
Baber, George. “James Guthrie: Lawyer, Financier and Statesman: The Outline of a Great Kentuckian.” The Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society, Vol. 10. Frankfort, Kentucky: The Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society, 1912, 9-12.
Cotterill, Robert S. “James Guthrie - Kentuckian, 1792-1869.” Register of Kentucky State Historical Society 20, no. 60 (September, 1922), 290-296.
Robertson, Gabrielle. "James Guthrie." Chicago: University of Chicago Dissertation, 1920.
Wells, Donald R. “James Guthrie.” Biographical Dictionary of the United States Secretaries of the Treasury, 1789 - 1995. Ed. Bernard S. Katz and C. Daniel Vencill. Wesport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996, 182-185.
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, s.v. “Guthrie, James,” (http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=G000534) (accessed January 11, 2017).
Charles Lanman, Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States (Washington: J. M. Morrison, 1887), 206.
Find A Grave, James Guthrie (December 5, 1792-March 13, 1869), Memorial #6654125, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6654125 (accessed July 25, 2019).
“Our Honored Dead: Funeral Obsequies of the Late James Guthrie,” Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.), March 16, 1869.
“Guthrie, James,” The Kentucky Encyclopedia, ed. John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 396.

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