Our History: Featured Alumni/ae: Longino, Andrew H., 1880

Governor of Mississippi

Andrew Houston Longino was born in Lawrence County, Mississippi on May 16, 1854. He studied at Mississippi College, where he graduated in 1875, and at the University of Virginia, where he earned a law degree in 1880. He served as a Democrat in the Mississippi State Senate from 1880 to 1884, as a U.S. District Attorney from 1888 to 1890, and as Governor from 1900 to 1904. During his term as Governor, Longino began a campaign to attract new industry to the state, supervised the design and building of a new state capitol still in use, and worked to create both the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the penitentiary at Parchman Farm. Governor Longino also invited President Theodore Roosevelt to a bear hunt in the Mississippi Delta, a trip which became later famous for coining the term “teddy bear” after the President refused to shoot a tethered bear. Longino died at age 87 on February 24, 1942 and was buried at Cedar Lawn Cemetery in Jackson, Mississippi.