Aiken, David Wyatt

AIKEN, David Wyatt,  (father of Wyatt Aiken and cousin of William Aiken), a Representative from South Carolina; born in Winnsboro, Fairfield County, S.C., March 17, 1828; received his early education under private tutors; attended Mount Zion Institute, Winnsboro, and was graduated from South Carolina University, at Columbia, in 1849; taught school two years; engaged in agricultural pursuits in 1852; during the Civil War served in the Confederate Army as a private; appointed adjutant and later elected colonel of the Seventh Regiment of Volunteers; relieved from service by reason of wounds received on September 17, 1862, at Antietam; member of the State house of representatives 1864-1866; secretary and treasurer, Agricultural and Mechanical Society of South Carolina, 1869; member, executive committee, National Grange, 1873-1885, and served as chairman, 1875; delegate to the Democratic National Convention at St. Louis in 1876; elected as a Democrat to the Forty-fifth and to the four succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1877-March 3, 1887); chairman, Committee on Education (Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Congresses); was not a candidate for renomination in 1886, being an invalid throughout his last term; died in Cokesbury, S.C., April 6, 1887; interment in Magnolia Cemetery, Greenwood, S.C.