Prince George-Amelia County Virginia USGenWeb Archives Biographies.....Ruffin, Edmund 1794 - 1865
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Alice Warner http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00015.html#0003503 August 12, 2008, 5:48 pm

Author: James Grant Wilson and John Fiske

RUFFIN, Edmund, agriculturist, b. in Prince George county, Va., 5 Jan., 1794; d.
on his estate of Redmoor in Amelia county, Va., 15 June, 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 fertilizer of poor soil, by the use of which
millions of dollars were added to the value of the real estate of eastern
Virginia. He was a state-rights man and a seccessionist, and was a member of the
Palmetto guard of South Carolina. At the beginning of the Civil War he went to
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 Apr 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. 1783; and a Progress to the Mines" by William Byrd, of
Westover(Petersburg, 1841; 2d ed., 2 vols., Albany 1866).

Additional Comments:
Appleton's Cyclopaedia of Biography, Vol. V Pickering-Sumter; 1900

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