Hervey Deskins (d. 7 June 1868), member of the Convention of 1861, was born in Tazewell County, most likely in the first years of the nineteenth century, and was the son of Stephen Deskins, a farmer, and Ann McIntosh Deskins. He learned to read and write, unlike his father, and he impressed local leaders as a promising young man. In 1821 he became a county constable, and three years later he was appointed deputy sheriff. In 1827 Deskins won the first of two consecutive terms representing Tazewell in the House of Delegates. He served during both terms on a committee to examine the state of the penitentiary and during the second on the Committee to Examine the Bonds of Public Officers. On 6 May 1828 in Montgomery County he married Nancy P. Howe, a native of Pulaski County. They had no children.
Deskins moved to Floyd County shortly after its founding in 1831. Along with a business partner, he established himself as a merchant at the county seat of Jacksonville (later the town of Floyd) and in 1833 received a license to sell spirits. Over the years, Deskins acquired a number of properties and became one of Floyd's wealthiest citizens. In 1849 he was one of the county's stock commissioners for the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad Company, a line that linked Floyd to more-commercialized areas of the state. In a county with few slaveholders and a small percentage of enslaved workers, he owned eleven in 1850 and nine in 1860.
Deskins's prosperity corresponded with a high local political status. Named to the county court in 1833, he was a justice of the peace for most of the rest of his life. Deskins took a particular interest in education and beginning in 1847 served as the county's superintendent of schools, in which capacity he controlled Floyd's Literary Fund allocation. He aligned with the Democratic Party throughout his career. Elected to the House of Delegates in 1836, Deskins represented Floyd for three consecutive terms, returned for three more terms beginning in 1840, and represented the county again during the 1845–1846 and 1850–1851 assemblies. Using what influence he wielded largely on constituent services, he usually sat on inconsequential committees in the House, although he was named to the Committee of Schools and Colleges in 1836 and to the Committee of Privileges and Elections in 1838. He also chaired the Committee on Trade and Mechanic Arts during the 1850–1851 session. In 1855 Deskins was elected to represent Carroll, Floyd, Grayson, Montgomery, and Pulaski Counties in the Senate of Virginia. He served again during the 1857–1858 assembly. He sat on the Committee on Agriculture and Commerce and chaired the Joint Committee on the Armory.
On 4 February 1861 Floyd County voters elected Deskins as a Unionist to the convention called to consider secession. He served on no convention committees and never spoke in the formal proceedings. Deskins joined the majority in voting on 4 April to keep Virginia in the Union and again with the majority on 17 April when the convention approved the Ordinance of Secession. Although not listed in the convention journal as among the members who signed the ordinance on 14 June, he put his name to the document and also attended the convention sessions that met in June and in November and December 1861.
Floyd County voters unanimously approved Deskins's vote on secession, but this unanimity reflected the intimidation of the county's many Unionists. As war weariness increased, pro-Union sentiment became more prevalent, and violence flared between Confederate partisans and Unionists. Having been elected presiding justice of the county court in 1860, Deskins worked throughout the Civil War to balance the demands of state and Confederate authorities in Richmond with his commitment to protect local citizens increasingly resentful of the war's impoverishing effects. In spite of instituting county patrols intended to ferret out Unionists and Confederate deserters, Deskins had to defend himself against charges of disloyalty. He resigned from the court after the war.
Deskins's wife died on 30 April 1852, and on 27 November 1855 he married Sarah "Sallie" F. Duke, a Charlottesville resident more than twenty-one years his junior and the sister of Richard Thomas Walker Duke (1822–1898), later a member of the House of Representatives. She died on 30 July 1858, a half-year after the birth of a daughter. Hervey Deskins died on 7 June 1868 at the home of his sister Elizabeth Deskins Godbey and was buried in the Jacksonville (later Floyd) Cemetery.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in William H. Gaines, Biographical Register of Members: Virginia State Convention of 1861 (1969), 31, and Amos D. Wood, Floyd County: A History of Its People and Places (1981), 48–49; Montgomery Co. Marriage Register; Albemarle Co. Marriage Register (age fifty on 27 Nov. 1855); correspondence, including signatures with spelling of first name, in John Letcher Executive Papers and William Smith Executive Papers, both Record Group 3, Library of Virginia, and at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond; Tazewell Co. Deed Book, 10:3; Tazewell Co. Order Book (1820–1825), 61, 324; Floyd Co. Deed Book, A:236, B:78, 125, C:138–139, D:366, E:199, 420, F:47, 109, 335, G:196, H:114, 285, K:26–27; Floyd Co. Order Book (1831–1843), 104; Lynchburg Daily Virginian, 7 Feb. 1861; George H. Reese and William H. Gaines Jr., eds., Proceedings of the Virginia State Convention of 1861 (1965), 3:163, 4:144; Rand Dotson, "'The Grave and Scandalous Evil Infected to Your People': The Erosion of Confederate Loyalty in Floyd County, Virginia," Virginia Magazine of History and Culture 108 (2000): 393–434; Floyd Co. Will Book, D:253; death notice in Petersburg Index, 17 June 1868; gravestone with inscription, "departed this life June 7th 1868 in the 64th year of his age."