author
B. F. (Benjamin Franklin) Riley
1849–1925
A Baptist minister, educator, and historian, he wrote widely about Alabama, Texas Baptists, and notable Black leaders of his era. His books blend regional history, religious life, and biography in a way that opens a window onto the American South around the turn of the twentieth century.
1 Audiobook
Makers and Romance of Alabama History
by B. F. (Benjamin Franklin) Riley
About the author
Born in Pineville, Alabama, in 1849, Benjamin Franklin Riley studied at Erskine College and later at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Crozer Theological Seminary. He was ordained in 1872 and went on to serve as a Baptist pastor in Alabama and Georgia, building a career that joined preaching, teaching, and historical writing.
Riley also worked in education and academic life. Sources describe him as a college president and later a university professor, and they consistently show how deeply he was involved in Baptist intellectual circles. Alongside that work, he became a prolific author, writing books such as History of Conecuh County, Alabama, History of the Baptists of Texas, Makers and Romance of Alabama History, and The Life and Times of Booker T. Washington.
His writing is especially valuable for readers interested in Southern history, religion, and public life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even when his perspective reflects the assumptions of his own time, his books remain useful as firsthand-era accounts of the people, institutions, and debates that shaped the region before his death in 1925.