Ignatius Elgin Shumate

{{Short description|American teacher and lawyer}}

Ignatius Elgin Shumate (December 1834, in Loudoun County, Virginia{{cite book|editor=Allen Daniel Candler and Clement Anselm Evans|title=Georgia: Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions, and Persons Arranged in Cyclopedic Form |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BJ0SAAAAYAAJ&q=ignatius+elgin+shumate&pg=PA284|volume=III|year=1906|publisher=State historical association|location=Atlanta|pages=284–287}} – September 9, 1907, in Dalton, Georgia){{cite news|url=http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/ngnewspapers/id:ngc1908-0118|title=Memorial Services Well Attended: large crowd paid tribute to the late Col. I. E. Shumate|last=Maddox|first=Sam P., R. J. McCamy, C. D. McCutcheon, W. C. Martin, and Geo. G. Glenn|date=April 9, 1908|work=The Dalton Citizen|access-date=25 March 2018|location=Dalton, Georgia}}{{Dead link|date=September 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} was a teacher, colonel in the Confederate Army, and lawyer.

He graduated in 1858 with distinction from Emory and Henry College, later received a master's degree from the same school, and then served on the faculty.

After the American Civil War began, he moved to Dalton, Georgia, where his wife had family. Dalton became an important post with an army supply depot, and Shumate became a "clerk and assistant in the subsistence department" under General Joseph E. Johnston.{{cite journal|title=Col. I. E. Shumate|journal=Confederate Veteran|year=1908|volume=16|page=285|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=851HAQAAMAAJ&q=col.+i.e.+shumate&pg=PA285|access-date=March 24, 2018}}

After the end of the war, Shumate practiced law and was elected to the Georgia House in 1868 as a Democrat.{{cite book|last=Avery|first=Isaac Wheeler|title=The History of the State of Georgia from 1850 to 1881: Embracing the Three Important Epochs: the Decade Before the War of 1861-5; the War; the Period of Reconstruction|url=https://archive.org/details/historyofstateof01aver|year=1881|publisher=Brown & Derby|location=Georgia|page=[https://archive.org/details/historyofstateof01aver/page/397 397]}} His work in the House was respected enough that one writer called him "perhaps its most brilliant member".{{cite book|last=Knight|first=Lucian Lamar|authorlink=Lucian Lamar Knight|title=A Standard History of Georgia and Georgians|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CmETAAAAYAAJ&q=i.e.+shumate&pg=PA839|volume=2|year=1917|publisher=Lewis publishing Company|page=839|isbn=9785876667304}} Cherokee Circuit Court adjourned early on the day of his memorial service, and the court accepted a report on the service.