Ben tillman biography

In 1868, Benjamin Ryan Tillman, Jr. was married to Sallie Starke, daughter of Samuel C. Starke of Elbert County, GA. They had five children.

Tillman was a Captain of the Edgefield Hussars, a militia company from 1884-1890.

He was also for a time Chairman of the Democratic organization in Edgefield County. Gradually, his focus became the depressed condition of farming interests in South Carolina and he began his self-education concerning its causes and issues.

In August of 1885, Tillman made his first public address before a farmer's society in Bennettsville, in which the causes of agricultural depression were set forth with great boldness and force, and the reform of the board of agriculture, together with the establishment of an experimental farm and of the Farmer's Institute were urged as measures of relief.

This speech gave rise to a controversy which very soon degenerated into a war of denunciation against the innovator, who was contemptuously styled as the "Agricultural