Benjamin Franklin WHITTEMORE, Congress, SC (1824-1894)

WHITTEMORE, Benjamin Franklin, a Representative from South Carolina; born in Malden, Middlesex County, Mass., May 18, 1824; attended the public schools of Worcester, and received an academic education at Amherst; engaged in mercantile pursuits until 1859; studied theology and became a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church of the New England Conference in 1859; during the Civil War served as chaplain of the Fifty-third Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, and later with the Thirtieth Regiment, Veteran Volunteers; after the war settled in Darlington, S.C.; delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1867; elected president of the Republican State executive board in 1867; founded the New Era in Darlington; member of the State senate in 1868; delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1868; upon the readmission of South Carolina to representation was elected as a Republican to the Fortieth and Forty-first Congresses and served from July 18, 1868, to February 24, 1870, when he resigned, pending the investigation of his conduct in connection with certain appointments to the United States Military and Naval Academies; censured by the House of Representatives on February 24, 1870, following his resignation; presented credentials of a second election to the same Congress on June 18, 1870, but the House declined to allow him to take his seat; again a member of the State senate in 1877; resigned from the State senate and returned to Massachusetts, settling in Woburn; became a publisher; died in Montvale, Mass., on January 25, 1894; interment in the Salem Street Cemetery, Woburn, Mass.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present