Journalist and author Ben Robertson (Benjamin Franklin Robertson, Jr.) was born on June 22, 1903 in Calhoun (which was renamed Clemson in 1943), and he died on February 22, 1943 at the age of 39 in a plane crash while he was a war correspondent during World War II. He was buried at the city-owned West View Cemetery in Liberty, the town in which he and his sister, Mary, lived with their aunt and uncle following the passing of their mother when Ben was seven until their father remarried three years later.

Robertson authored three books, Travelers’ Rest (published in 1938 by Cottonfield Publishers, founded by Robertson), I Saw England (published in 1941 by Knopf, founded by Blanche and Alfred Knopf), and Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory (published in 1942 by Knopf).

He was a 1923 graduate of Clemson College (now Clemson University), where he earned a degree in horticulture. (At the time, Clemson was an agricultural school and did not offer a liberal arts degree.) Robertson graduated in 1926 from the University of Missouri, where he earned a degree in journalism.