Benjamin Ryan Tillman ()
Governor of South Carolina;
U.S. Senator
Benjamin Ryan Tillman, (brother of George Dionysius Tillman),
a Senator from South Carolina; born near Trenton, Edgefield County, S.C.,
August 11, 1847; pursued an academic course; left school in 1864 to join the
Confederate Army, but was stricken with a severe illness; engaged in
agricultural pursuits; Governor of South Carolina ; established
Clemson College and Winthrop College while Governor; member of the State
constitutional convention in 1895; elected as a Democrat to the United States
Senate in 1894; reelected in 1901, 1907, and 1913 and served from March 4, 1895,
until his death; censured by the Senate in 1902 after assaulting another Senator on
the Senate floor; chairman, Committee on Revolutionary Claims (Fifty-seventh through
Fifty-ninth Congresses), Committee on Five Civilized Tribes of Indians (Sixty-first
and Sixty-second Congresses), Committee on Naval Affairs (Sixty-third through
Sixty-fifth Congresses); an outspoken populist, Tillman was known as 'Pitchfork Ben'
during his years in the Senate; died in Washington, D.C., July 3, 1918; interment
in Ebenezer Cemetery, Trenton, S.C. Bio. Source Congressional Archives
See the monument erected in honor of him on the Statehouse grounds.