Whittemore, Benjamin Franklin, 1824-1894.

Politician in South Carolina government during Reconstruction; native of Malden (Middlesex County, Massachusetts); following Civil War, settled in Darlington, S.C.

Ordained a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, New England Conference, 1859; during Civil War, served as chaplain of the 53rd Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers and the 30th Regiment, Massachusetts Veteran Volunteers. Assistant superintendent of education for eastern South Carolina, 1865; founder and first editor, in 1865, of newspaper, The New Era (Darlington, S.C.); chairman of Committee on Bill of Rights at the 1868 S.C. State Constitutional Convention; delegate to the 1868 Republican National Convention in Chicago; served, July 1868-Feb. 1870, as member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina in the fortieth and forty-first Congresses; S.C. State Senator from Darlington, 1870-1877; served as Lieutenant Colonel, 1873-1874, on the staff of S.C. Gov. Daniel Henry Chamberlain.