Clemson University - Taps Yearbook (Clemson, SC)

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2 DEDICATION KNOWING that to Senator Benjamin Ryan Tillman we are profoundly indebted for the conception of the great educational plan of our College; and that to his untiring energies is due in great part the present success of the institution; and feeling keenly a desire to show our appreciation of a life spent so unselfishly in the interest of our Alma Mater; to him we dedicate this record of our Academic, Athletic, and Social life. . ' . . ' . . . . ' .

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Hon. B. R. Tillman BENJAMIN RYAN TILLMAN, industrial, educational and political reformer and Statesman, twice Governor of his native State, now serving his third term as a Senator of the United States, was born in Edgefield County (then District), South Carolina, August 11, 1847. The sub- ject of this short sketch was the youngest of eleven children and was but two years old when his father died. The father, whose name in full was given the baby boy, was, we read, a farmer, a man of bright mind and nervous tempera- ment and a great reader. The mother, Sophia Ann (Hancock) Tillman, was a woman of phenomenal strength, mentally, morally, physically and, in every way and for good, she impressed herself powerfully on her son. Often has Senator Tillman been heard to say that all that he is he attributes to his mother and to his wife. Ben Tillman ' s early life was passed in the country, on his mother ' s planta- tion, with eighty slaves. George Galphin, at Bethany Academy, gave him his schooling. The lad had the use of a good library, and read voraciously, espe- cially works of fiction and poetry. In July, 1864, he stopped school to join the Confederate Army, was stricken with a severe illness which caused the loss of his left eye and kept him an invalid for two years. For wellnigh twenty years he was a farmer in his native county. He took an active part in the stirring days of Reconstruction, and has published some valuable reminiscenses of the disturbances at Hamburg and Ellerton of the times of negro ascendency, when was endangered the civilization of the Cavalier and the Puritan. The immediate success of Clemson College (which opened its doors in July, 1893), far beyond the wildest dreams of its founders, induced Governor Tillman during his administration to recommend and secure the establishment of a similar school for girls and young women at the Winthrop Normal and Industrial College of South Carolina. Fort Hill! Rock Hill! What short, suggestive names! Ele- vation! Strength! Everlastingness ! Would you see Benjamin Ryan Tillman ' s monument? Look around the walls of Winthrop and Clemson. Better still, consider the lives of thousands and thou- sands of our girls and our boys, our young women and our young men; and their ever-widening and enriching influences on things material and mental and moral and spiritual of our commonwealth. In the fall of 1893, when Clemson was but a few weeks old, Governor Tillman heard a Clemson student — a poor boy from near the seacoast — deliver, at a liter- ary society celebration in the Chapel, a speech on Education and Progress. Pro- nouncing it the finest college boy ' s speech that he had ever listened to, the Governor quietly handed the College Treasurer ten dollars, with the request that he place it to the credit of the boy ' s account and say nothing about it to anyone. When asked what advice he would give young Americans, Senator Tillman answered: Be in earnest; be willing to work and to stick to it; to learn to speak the truth and practice no guile; to deal honestly with all men, and to live soberly and simply.