John Goff Ballentine


John Goff Ballentine was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives for Tennessee's 7th congressional district and a colonel in the Confederate army.

Biography

Ballentine was born on May 20, 1825 in Pulaski, Tennessee in Giles County son of Andrew Mitchell and Mary Tuttle Goff Ballentine. He graduated from Wurtemberg Academy in 1841, from the University of Nashville in 1845, and from the law department of Harvard University in 1848. He was a member of the faculty of Livingston Law School in New York. He commenced the practice of law in Pulaski.

Career

Ballentine moved to Panola County, Mississippi about 1854, continued the practice of law, and engaged in the extensive family agricultural pursuits. There he met and married Miss Mary E. Laird, daughter of Dr. Henry Laird of Belmont. The couple had four children. He settled in Memphis, Tennessee in 1860. He served as a colonel in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. After the war, he returned to Pulaski, Tennessee.
Elected as a Democrat to the Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Congresses, Ballentine served from March 4, 1883 to March 3, 1887. He declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1886 and retired from active pursuits.
With several African Americans named Ballentine descendant from Pulaski, Tennessee, and given Pulaski’s history as being the birthplace of the KKK and that John fought for the confederacy, his agricultural pursuits and more, it is rightful to presume he was a slave owner. Whether his enslaved African American laborers simply took his name or were fathered by him is unknown. One man of significance, however, is George W. Ballentine, grandfather of Thomas Jefferson Ballentine Jr., an African American chemist from Pulaski, Tennessee. Thomas grew up attending Bridgeforth High School, named for his maternal grandfather, and went on to study in Georgia where he met his wife, Wilhelmina, and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees. Thomas went on to be a lab chemist in Mississippi and eventually, in 1964, moved his family to Houston to take a job at NASA. Thomas was a chemical engineer at NASA for 25 years before retiring then coming out of retirement to work another 7 years at Lockheed Martin. May his legacy long outshine the Colonel from whom he was given his surname.

Death

Ballentine died in Pulaski, Tennessee on November 23, 1915. He is interred at the New Pulaski Cemetery.