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.
Bibliography:
Pritchard, Claudius Hornby, Jr. Colonel D. Wyatt Aiken, 1828-1887, South Carolina’s Militant Agrarian. Hampden-Sydney, Va.: Privately printed, 1970.
