PUGH, JAMES LAWRENCE Biographies of Barbour County, Alabama

James Lawrence Pugh, of this county, is a native of Butts county, Georgia, where he was born December 12, 1819. His father was a farmer, born in North Carolina; the maiden name of his mother was Tillman. His parents came to Pike county when he was about four years old, and at the age of eleven years he was an orphan. Cast upon the world, in a frontier country, he resorted to divers commendable shifts to make his way. At one time he rode the mail route from Louisville to Franklin, Henry county, Saturdays and Sundays, to get the means to pay his tuition the other portion of the week. For four years he was a salesman in a dry-goods shop in Eufaula, but abandoned that to attend a school, preparatory to a course of law studies. He completed the latter in the office of Hon. John G. Shorter in Eufaula, by the pecuniary assistance of his brother-in-law, Mr. W. L. Cowan. Enrolled as an attorney in 1841, he formed a partnership with Hon. Jefferson Buford which existed for twelve years and was thereafter associated with Hon. E. C. Bullock. He was on the Taylor electoral ticket, and the year after was defeated for congress by Hon. H. W. Hilliard of Montgomery. In 1856 he was an elector on the Buchanan ticket, which was his first official trust. Elected to the congress of the United States in 1859 without opposition, he withdrew with his colleagues when his State seceded from the Union. He shortly after volunteered as a private in the 1st Alabama Infantry and served a year at Pensacola. The same year he was chosen to the 1st Confederate congress without opposition and was re-elected in 1863 over Messrs. J. McC. Wiley and A. W. Starke of Pike, and Dr. Jones of this county. Having served till the overthrow of the Confederacy, he has not since taken an active interest in public affairs. He married a daughter of Gen. John L. Hunter, a wealthy planter of this county.
     Mr. Pugh is large of frame, and compactly built, with an abrupt but cordial address. He is an orator of much force and power; figuratively speaking, "a great bronze battering ram. He harbors the most practical of ideas, and his expressions are strikingly pointed and original. He has one of the most capacious and tenacious legal minds in the State. He is naturally extravagant; there is no half-way house for him in anything. He is the most emphatic man I ever knew. Highly sociable, no man surpasses him in hospitality. He is an interesting companion, instructive, witty, and jovial, and is very generally popular. He is certainly one of the self-made men of the State." -Col. Henry C. Oaks, of Henry  (Alabama, Her History, Resources, War Record, and Public Men, by Willis Brewer, Barrett & Brown, Montgomery, AL, 1872 - vm)