Westmoreland Davis

Featured in this oil portrait is Westmoreland Davis (1859–1942), the Democratic governor of Virginia from 1918 to 1922. Elected on a "wet," anti-Prohibition platform, during his term as governor Davis reformed and modernized Virginia government, streamlining the state's fiscal operations and reforming its penal system. An agricultural reformer, he also cofounded the Virginia State Dairymen's Association in 1907 and represented the Progressive farm lobby through his monthly journal the Southern Planter. Davis died on September 22, 1942, at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.