Prince George-Amelia County Virginia USGenWeb Archives Biographies.....Ruffin, Edmund January 5, 1794 - June 15, 1865
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Alice Warner http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00015.html#0003503 July 23, 2008, 10:10 am

Author: James Grant Wilson and John Fiske (ed.)

RUFFIN, Edmund (ruf'-fin), agriculturist, b. in Prince George county, Va., 5
Jan., 1794; d. on his estate of Redmoor, in Amelia county, Va., 15 Jun 1865. In
1810-'12 he attended William and Mary college. He served in the legislature, was
secretary of the state board of agriculture, agricultural surveyor of South
Carolina, for many years was president of the Virginia agricultural society, and
was the discoverer of the value of marl as a fertilizer of poor soil, by the use
of which millions of dollars were addred to the value of the real estate of
eastern Virginia. He was a state-rights man and a secessionist, and was a member
of the Palmetto guard of South Carolina, and, by order of Gen. Beauregard, his
company was ordered to open fire on Fort Sumter, and as the oldest member he was
selected by his comrades to fire the first gun, 12 April 1861. He shot himself
because he was unwilling to live under the U.S. government. Among other
agricultural papers he edited the "Farmer's Register" from 1833 till 1842, and
he also published "Essay on Calcarcous Manures" (Richmond, 1831); "Essay on
Agricultural Education" (1833); "Anticipations of the Future to serve as Lessons
for the Present Time (1860); and edited "The Westover Manuscripts, containing
the History of the Dividing-Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina; a Journey
to the Land of Eden, A. D. 1793; and a Progress to the Mines," by William Byrd,
of Westover (Petersburg, 1841; 2d ed., 2 vols., Albany 1866).

Additional Comments:
Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography
Vol V. Pickering - Sumter
Revised Edition 1900

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