Union-Caddo County Louisiana Archives Biographies.....Pleasant, Ruffin June 2, 1871 - 
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Mike Miller http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00004.html#0000912 July 23, 2013, 3:51 pm

Source: A History of Louisiana, v.3, pp. 3-4
Author: Henry E. Chambers

HON. RUFFIN G. PLEASANT, who was governor of Louisiana during the period of the 
World war, from 1916 to 1920, has accumulated many other honors during a 
lifetime of effective service as a lawyer and public official. His home is at 
Shreveport.

	Governor Pleasant was born at Shiloh, in Union Parish, Louisiana, June 
2, 1871, son of Benjamin Franklin and Martha Washington (Dudy) Pleasant. He 
attended school at Shiloh and Farmerville, attended Ruston College in 1886, and 
Mount Lebanon College in 1887-89, and was a student in Louisiana State 
University from 1890 to 1894, graduating with the A. B. degree in the latter 
year. He studied law in the Harvard Summer School in 1895, and in Yale Law 
School in 1896-97, and was an instructor in the Louisiana State University in 
1897-98.

	With the outbreak of the Spanish-American war in the spring of 1898 he 
served as lieutenant-colonel of the first Louisiana Regiment of Infantry, 
United States Volunteers. In addition to his general law course he also studied 
Louisiana law, and after being mustered out of military service he located at 
Shreveport, where he continued his law studies in the office of Mr. L. E. 
Thomas. He was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1899, and for a quarter of a 
century has been one of the able members of the Shreveport bar.

	In the meantime a succession of public responsibilities have come to 
him. He was city attorney of Shreveport from 1902 to 1908, served as assistant 
attorney general of Louisiana under Judge Walter Guion, attorney general from 
1908 to 1912, and in 1913 was elected attorney general, serving from June 1, 
1912, to 1916. His service as governor was a four-year term from 1916 to 1920. 
As war governor he had charge of all the war activities of this state, which 
ranked among the highest in the nation for contributions both in volunteer 
soldiers and in financial support. Since retiring from the office of governor 
he has resumed the private practice of law at Shreveport.

	He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1916, and 
was elected and served as a member of the Louisiana Constitutional Convention 
of 1921. He was elected delegate at large to the Democratic National Convention 
in 1924.

	Governor Pleasant married, February 14, 1906, Miss Anne Ector, of 
Shreveport. Her father was the brilliant Texan, Brigadier-General Ector of 
Marshall, who went into the Confederate army as a private and came out with the 
rank of brigadier-general, subsequently serving as chief justice of the 
criminal division of the Supreme Court of Texas, and one of the counties in 
Western Texas is named for him.

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