Oswald Tilghman

Oswald Tilghman (March 7, 1841 – June 17, 1932) was an officer of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War; a lawyer; Maryland politician; Maryland Senator, Talbot County, (1894–96); Secretary of State of Maryland (1904–08); affiliate of the Maryland Democratic Party; author; and was active in veteran affairs. Native of Talbot County, Maryland. Early life and ancestry Col. Oswald Tilghman, Esq. was born on March 7, 1841, on a colonial Talbot County plantation known as Plimhimmon, near Oxford, Maryland, on March 7, 1841. His father, General Tench Tilghman (a graduate of West Point military academy), and his mother was a daughter of John Leeds Kerr, United States Senator of Maryland from 1841 to 1843. Matthew Tilghman, an ancestor, was a member of the Continental Congress at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and Colonel Tench Tilghman, another ancestor, served as aide-de-camp to General George Washington in the Continental Army. Oswald Tilghman was educated at the Maryland Military Academy in Oxford, Maryland. After his education, he moved to Texas in 1859 and settled in Washington County. As a descendant of Colonel Tench Tilghman, Oswald was admitted as a hereditary member of The Society of the Cincinnati in the state of Maryland in 1882. He later served as president of the Maryland Society from 1907 to 1931.