Samuel Escue Tillman

Military career Tillman proved an excellent cadet, graduating 3rd out of 39 in the USMA graduating class of 1869. Tillman spent fifteen months on the frontier at Fort Riley, Kansas, then returned to the academy for a period as assistant professor of mathematics. The following years would see Tillman alternating tours between teaching assignments at the academy and surveying the last unexplored portions of the American West. In addition to involvement in expeditions to explore and map parts of the western states of Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, Tillman was detailed for a year as assistant astronomer on the national expedition to Northern Tasmania observe the Transit of Venus. but resigned in 1881, after he was given permanent assignment at West Point as professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology.

Lieutenant Tillman sat on the board of inquiry concerning the alleged assault by cadets on Johnson Chesnut Whittaker. As full professor Tillman was given responsibility for redesigning the physical science curriculum at the academy; U.S. Army Adjutant General Richard C. Drum ordered Tillman and fellow academy instructor George L. Andrews to visit Harvard, Yale, and other American institutions of higher learning to investigate new educational technologies in order to incorporate them into the curriculum.

The next thirty years of Tillman's life were devoted to writing and teaching at the academy. He wrote for popular periodicals like Popular Science and Cosmopolitan and literary journals like American Monthly Review of Reviews. Tillman authored several science textbooks for use by academy instructors, notably the physics work Elementary Lessons in Heat (1889), Descriptive General Chemistry (1897), and A text-book of Important Minerals and Rocks (1900). He was responsible for the academy's mineralogical and geological cabinet. Tillman also wrote a series of memoirs which have been featured in the works of Miami University historian Dwight L. Smith.

Toward the end of his career, Tillman was presented with an honorary degree from Yale University in 1906. In 1911, after 44 years of active U.S. Army service in the classroom and field, Tillman was retired. Tillman settled in Princeton, New Jersey, continuing to write, presenting A Review of West Point's History before the New York Historical Society in October, 1915. When Colonel Tillman was recalled from retirement to serve as USMA superintendent in June, 1917,

While Superintendent of West Point, Tillman refused repeated requests to add military aviation to the curriculum.

Legacy Samuel Escue Tillman died June 24, 1942, at the home of his daughter, Katherine Tillman Martin, in Southampton, New York, and was buried at West Point Cemetery two days later. According to his obituary, he was survived by one brother, A.H. Tillman, who served for a time as United States district attorney in Washington D.C. Four brothers had preceded him in death, or Mount Sanford for the non-existent Mount Tillman.

In 2008, Kent Biffle of the Dallas Morning News reported receiving newspaper clippings from a local lawyer and historian on the subject of UFO sightings in Stephenville, Texas. Apparently in 1897, widespread newspaper reports of a cigar-shaped flying object started to circulate in the Midwest and Southwest. Responding to sightings previously reported in the Morning News, on April 17, 1897, one respected Erath County farmer, C.L. McIlhany discovered such a craft had landed on his property, and reported two human operators, a pilot and an engineer, who gave their names as "S.E. Tilman" and "A.E. Dolbear."

Selected works by Tillman