Born: March 20, 1861, Tallassee, Alabama.
Died: September 2, 1943, Atlanta, Georgia.
Buried: Westview Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia.
Charles was the son of minister James Lafayette Tillman and Mary Fletcher Davis, husband of Anna Killingsworth, and father of Hope Tillman Burns.
He worked with his father, a preacher, in evangelism, as well as painting houses, working as a traveling salesman for a music company out of Raleigh, North Carolina, and sang on a traveling wagon advertising Wizard Oil.
He began his career in 1887 as a singing evangelist. He formed his own music publishing house in Atlanta, Georgia, and put out 20 Gospel song Collections.
At one time, he was song leader at the Indian Spring Holiness Camp Meeting in Flovilla, Georgia. He was the first to publish the spiritual Old-Time Religion, which he heard blacks singing at a camp meeting in Lexington, South Carolina.
His works include: