After teaching and serving as a private in the Civil War, Martin Ambrose Foran (1844-1921) served as a member of the State constitutional convention of Ohio in 1873. Three times, he was elected as a Democrat to the House of Representatives (1883-1889). He served as a judge of the Court of Common Pleas from 1911 until his death in 1921.

William Morris Stewart (1827-1909) moved west from New York in May 1850. Six years after his election as Attorney General in California in 1854, Stewart moved to Virginia City, Nevada, where he was involved in early mining legislation and the development of the Comstock lode. After Nevada entered the Union, Stewart served as a Republican in the U. S. Senate from 1864-1875 and again from 1887-1905. He died in Washington, D.C. on April 23, 1909.

William Gannaway "Parson" Brownlow (1805-1877) was an influential East Tennessee minister, journalist, and governor. In 1838 he became owner/editor of an Elizabethton newspaper popularly known as Brownlow's Whig. His newspaper, which, one the eve of the Civil War, reached nearly eleven thousand subscribers across the nation, moved to Knoxville in 1849. The Parson was a prominent spokesperson for the Whig Party and a staunch defender of the Union. After Tennessee left the Union, Brownlow continued speaking out against the Confederacy. He was eventually jailed in Knoxville and later expelled from the Confederacy for his anti-secession editorials. After traveling on a speaking tour throughout the North, the Parson returned to Knoxville with the Union troops in the fall of 1863, continuing to rail against the Confederacy and secession. In March 1865, Tennessee Unionists chose Brownlow to succeed Andrew Johnson as governor of Tennessee. After two terms as Tennessee's Reconstruction-era governor, Brownlow, in 1869, was chosen to represent the state in the U. S. Senate. He served only one term before returning to Knoxville, where he died on April 28, 1877.