PROMINENT PERSONS
1^7
to his church at Staunton, from which he
resigned in 1873, being appointed a South-
ern Baptist missionary to Rome, Italy. He
\vas co-editor of the '"Christian Review" for
two years, and since 1876 was one of the edi-
tors of "II Seminatore," a monthly Baptist
magazine published in Rome. The degree
of Doctor of Divinity was given him by
Richmond College and the University of
Chicago in 1872. His publications include
"Oakland Stories," "Costar Grew," "Roger
Bernard, the Pastor's Son." and "Walter
Ennis," a tale of the early Virginia Baptists.
Ruffin, Edmund, was born in Prince George county, Virginia, January 5, 1794. He was a son of George Rufifin, who served in the Virginia legislature and Jane Lucas, his first wife. He was grandson of Ed- mund Ruffin and Jane Skipwith, daughter of Sir William Skipwith, baronet, of Meck- lenburg county, Virginia. He attended Wil- liam and Mary College in 1810-12, but neg- lected his studies and was suspended. He at once enlisted in a volunteer company and served against the British from August 12, 1812, to February, 1813, when, his father having died, he left the army to take care of an estate at "Coggin's Point," James river. Here he began a long career of activity of mind and body. He devoted himself to prac- tical farming and extensive reading. He read as much as eight hours each day and covered not only all the books available on agriculture and science, but he was thor- oughly versed in Biblical, historical, eco- nomic and political literature. He amassed one of the largest and most valuable private libraries in Virginia. He had an inventive genius and contrived various home-made pieces of machinery to save labor on his
farm. In 1818 he was secretary of the
United Agricultural Society of Virginia, in
1823-1826 he was a state senator, in 1840 he
v,-as secretary of the State Board of Agri-
culture, in 1842 he was agricultural surveyor
of the state of South Carolina, in 1845 he
was president of the Virginia State Agri-
cultural Society, and iri 1854 he was agricul-
tural commissioner of the state. As an agri-
culturalist he anticipated most of the im-
provements in modern farming — the use of
the legumes and marl as fertilizers of poor
soil, drainage and blind ditching and the five
field rotation of crops. By following these
methods and by a judicious employment of
negro labor, he increased the value of his
estate from $25,000 to $200,000, and, his ex-
ample being followed by all the other plant-
ers, the lands of tidewater Virginia increased,
in the brief space of thirteen years. 1837-
1850, to an amount valued at $23,000,000.
The most famous of his works was an "Essay
on Calcareous Manures," published in 1835,
which went through four editions, increasing
in size at each edition till from one hundred
and sixteen pages it reached in 1852, four
hundred and ninety pages. In another pam-
phlet he pressed the importance of an agri-
cultural college and was the first in the
United States to outline the course of study
for such an institution. He was editor of the
"Farmer's Register" and the "Bank Re-
former." In 1855 he gave up farming, divid-
ed his estate among his children, and devoted
himself to politics. He had started life as an
opponent of slavery and rather Federalistic
in his views and became a strong advocate of
the institution and an extreme states rights
man. He favored nullification in 1832 and
joined the Whig party of states rights and
voted for Harrison. Having proved to his
