Photo Courtesy of Connie Shumate
Captain James Harvey French, the youngest of three brothers, became the first principal of
the new Concord Normal School in 1875. He was educated at Georgetown College, D.C. and
was also a graduate of Virginia University. French served as attorney for the Commonwealth of
Virginia before serving in the Confederate Army.
According to history, he was a man of ‘splendid physique, scholarly attainments, tender and
sympathetic’. Captain French was one of the foremost scholars and active educators of the
newly formed state of West Virginia and his seventeen years of service as Principal of Concord
Normal School ‘has left an impress upon our educational system that will never be effaced’.
Captain French became ill in early December of 1891. After being confined to his room for
about five days, he died on December 11 after a case of La Grippe. Members of the faculty and
students buried him on school property. Today, an imposing marble obelisk marks his resting
place