Wofford College - From The Archives

Cleveland Science Hall

When Henry Nelson Snyder became president of Wofford in 1902, he knew the college's physical facilities were becoming inadequate.  During the first ten years of his administration, Snyder brought more new buildings to the campus than had been built since the original campus was built.  In addition to a residence hall and a new library, Snyder moved the science departments into a brand new science hall, the first new academic building on campus since Main Building.  

The story goes that Professor Daniel DuPre, who was the head of the science faculty, approached his Wofford classmate John Bomar Cleveland, then one of the wealthiest members both of the alumni association and in Spartanburg, with a bold proposition.  "John, you're well off financially, you ought to do something for your college.  We need some help to build a new science hall."  After asking for a ballpark figure, Cleveland considered the request silently for several moments.  Then, he told Professor DuPre to go ahead with the plan and to send all the bills to him.  

The bills totaled some $25,000.  And John B. Cleveland, for whom the science hall was named, paid them all.  With some occasional modifications and renovations, the building continued to be the home of science at Wofford until the early 1960s.  

Those renovations began very quickly.  The building was built with running water and electric lights, but space was soon at a premium.  Students dug out a room under the southeast corner of the first floor in 1910 to build an electrical laboratory.  During the 1930s, using National Youth Administration labor, students with shovels and picks dug out even more space in the basement.   Professor E. H. Shuler, who taught applied math and surveying, supervised the work, which added lab and storage space.  The Spartanburg County Foundation donated a planetarium, which was installed in the dome.  

The occasional coat of paint was about all the college could afford for maintenance, and soon the building was no longer adequate for science education - an annex provided additional classroom space as the student body grew after World War II.  By 1959, with plans to build a new science building underway, the Cleveland Science Hall was demolished. 

 

Bishop A. Coke Smith

There’s a story, and I can’t find the citation this morning, that a man had moved from Columbia to Spartanburg in the late 19^th century, but was shortly thereafter seen on the streets of Columbia.  When a friend inquired why he was back in the capital city, the man replied that to live in Spartanburg, one had to accept three things as fact, that Wofford College was the greatest  educational institution since Oxford, that Dr. James Carlisle, Wofford’s president, was the greatest astronomer since Copernicus, and that Wofford professor Coke Smith was the greatest pulpit orator since Saint Paul.  And he’d be darned if he could accept them all! 

Alexander Coke Smith may not have been the greatest pulpit orator since Paul, but he must have been pretty good, because within two years of his graduation from Wofford, he had been assigned to Washington Street Methodist Church in Columbia, which, despite its encounter with fire in 1865, was arguably the most important Methodist pulpit in the most important city in the Conference. 

Born in Lynchburg, in Sumter County, in 1849, Coke Smith was the son of The Rev. William H. Smith, a member of the South Carolina Annual Conference.  He studied at Wofford from 1868 to 1872, and after his graduation, he taught in the Reidville, SC high school for a term.  He joined the South Carolina Conference in December 1872 and was appointed to the church in Cheraw.  The next year, he was sent to Washington Street Church in Columbia, where he served for three years.  This was quite a leap for someone who was so new in the ministry, for Washington Street was (and remains) a large and influential congregation.  At the end of 1876, he was sent to Greenville, where he served Buncombe Street Church for four years.  He then went to Trinity in Charleston, serving for three years, and at that point, he was made the presiding elder for the Columbia District.  Before he had passed his 32^nd birthday, he had been appointed to large churches in three of the state’s largest cities, and had met with success in each appointment. 

In 1884, he was named to fill a vacancy on Wofford’s board of trustees, and in 1886, when Wofford professor William Wallace Duncan was elected a bishop, Smith was elected to fill his chair on the Wofford faculty.  At the same time, the trustees voted to relieve Smith of the teaching obligations that came with being Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, the chair to which he had just been named, so that he might work on behalf of the college in the churches around the state.  By the 1880s, it had become common for one of the faculty members to act as financial agent of the college, serving essentially as the college’s development officer.  W. W. Duncan did this, as did Coke Smith, and later, John C. Kilgo.  All three were effective in raising funds and promoting the college to Methodists in the state, and each man used his position to launch himself to an even higher position in the church hierarchy.  Smith also served as the college’s treasurer, handling much of the institution’s business. 

After four years at Wofford, Smith was elected one of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s missionary secretaries by the General Conference.  He left that position quickly to take a professorship  of practical theology at Vanderbilt’s divinity school.  After two years, he moved back into the local church, but this time, in Virginia.  He served in the Old Dominion until his election as a bishop in 1902.  He actually came close to being elected in 1898, and in 1891 and 1901, he had attended the great ecumenical conferences.  It's unfortunate that his time in the episcopacy was actually quite short, for he died in Asheville, NC in December 1906.  

Aerial Photos of the Wofford Campus

Today I posted a series of aerial photos of the campus to my Flickr page and made them available from the Wofford Archives web page.  

Photos do more than simply let you see what a place looked like at a specific time, though that's certainly important.  More than that, they tell a story.  This series of photos shows how, slowly but surely, the Wofford of today grew out of a small collection of buildings.  Many of the buildings in these pictures are still with us, though modified.  Some buildings deteriorated to the point that they no longer served a purpose and were demolished.  We haven't torn down many buildings here, but some have been.  

These photos document the changing landscape of the campus over the past 90 years.  When I see a picture of the campus, I generally use the presence or absence of certain buildings to establish a date or an approximate date for the building.  Of course, sometimes the best we can do is guess within a certain range.  

The earliest photo appears to be from the 1920s.  That's about as specific as I can get, because we didn't build things quite as often back then as we have in recent years.  

Here's the 1920s photo

Here is a slide show of the various images.

Enjoy the slides.  If you want to see full versions of the images, see the set on Flickr.  You can also check out other collections I've posted there.  

What's an Annual Conference?

I haven't written much about the Methodist half of my job lately.  In fact, I have been a little bit remiss in maintaining the blog since Commencement on May 17.  Since graduation, I've been catching up on some reference questions and trying to get ready to process some interesting collections this summer.  I still intend on posting some information about the Class of 1959, who celebrated the 50th anniversary of their graduation this year.  

This week, I attended the Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church in South Carolina.  An Annual Conference is a confusing term, for it is a geographic region, a meeting, and an organization.  The South Carolina Annual Conference is an organization that includes all of the United Methodist congregations in the geographic area of South Carolina, and that meets once a year.  All ordained Methodist clergy - elders and deacons - are members of the conference, and they are appointed annually by our bishop to serve the churches in the state.  They, together with local pastors and lay representatives from all of the churches, meet once a year (or more often, if a special session is called) to conduct the church's business.  

I am a lay member of the South Carolina conference not because I'm the conference's archivist, but because I have been selected by my local congregation.  However, my local congregation selects me largely because I'm the conference archivist and it's helpful that I attend.  

So, what does this organization do?  Well, there's a lot of sitting in meetings.  We hear reports from various conference boards, commissions, and committees.  We talk about ministry plans for the upcoming year.  This year, there was a lot of talk about new church starts, and most of the worship leaders were ministers involved in starting new churches.  We also talk about our work in supporting the conference's retirement homes, the children's home, ministries for people with special needs, and for our four colleges.  We allocate money in our budget to support these, and also to pay for important items like retirement pensions, insurance for clergy, and for global ministries.  We give awards - and the commission I work with recognized a number of churches for their work in preserving church history.  We also proposed naming a church in Chesterfield County a historic site of South Carolina Methodism.  There's time for worship, and for fellowship.  

The fellowship is especially important because clergy are actually not members of local churches - their church membership rests in the Annual Conference, so in a very real sense, the Annual Conference is their church.  Most of the clergy know each other - many have been coming to Conference for years - or decades.  Many of them attended seminary together, served in neighboring churches before being sent to churches far apart, or have served on conference boards together.  Conference is the one time each year where they are all together.  It sort of makes some of us in the laity feel like we're standing around the edges watching the fellowship.  One retired minister who attends my local church - who has known me since I was three years old - told me on Monday that this was his 60th consecutive Annual Conference, and also his last.  I pause here to reflect on how the conference, the state, and ministry in general have changed since he entered the ministry some 60 years ago.  

And in fact, that's the main reason I attend the conference: to act in a limited way as a collector of information, of stories, and of memories.  I talked with at least three district superintendents about church records, and with several lay members who have done research in the archives.  I do my bit of advocacy for the archives and for historic preservation.  I sort of stand out at conference because of my age - until people look at my nametag, they often think I'm in the clergy because there aren't many youngish lay representatives.  Someone in the elevator recognized my name on my nametag and offered that she had expected that the archivist would be a little older.  I've been attending conferences myself since 1993, when I was one of Wofford chaplain Talmage Skinner's student workers helping to run the behind-the-scenes logistics.  This was my 7th year as a lay member, which is amazing considering I'm not even 40 yet.  Part of my job is to collect materials that document the session, but also to collect those things that don't always get written down.  

So that's Annual Conference in a nutshell.  

Commencement

Last spring, I wrote several blog posts about various Commencements at Wofford and the traditions that had grown up around this highlight of the academic year.  Rather than re-write some of those entries, I'm going to refer you back to a few of them.  

In one entry, I talked about the assorted traditions of walking through the gates, of the Commencement Bibles, and of the ceremony itself.  

In another post, I talked about "Commencement Season" - all of the events that surround the actual graduation ceremony.  In years gone by, Commencement lasted four or five days.

And in another, I shared a selection from a radio interview with President Henry Nelson Snyder where he talked about the American college commencement.  

Next week, I'll talk about a few other Commencement-related items - including a retrospective on what Commencement was like in 1959, and perhaps 1859 and 1909 as well.  Stay tuned!

And, if you will permit a moment of personal privilege, I will note that my classmates and I from the class of 1994 graduated from Wofford fifteen years ago today.  

John G. Clinkscales: The Mathematician-Politician

Say, did you hear the one about the math professor who ran for governor?  

That sounds like a joke, but in the case of Dr. John G. Clinkscales, it’s a true story.  In 1914, running on a platform of compulsory public education, Clinkscales won some 40,000 votes and placed fourth in the race.  That may not sound like much of an achievement, but every one of the three men who finished ahead of him at some point served as the Palmetto state’s governor. 

Born in Abbeville County in 1855, John George Clinkscales came to Wofford as a student in 1872.  He graduated in 1876, and in 1889, returned to take a master of arts degree.  He continued his education with further study at Cornell and Johns Hopkins.  Before he came to Wofford in 1899, he taught at Clemson for five years, at Columbia College for four, and at Williamston Female College for one.  The latter two colleges were both Methodist-related, and the latter has since become Lander University.  Before he began his college teaching career, he taught in the public schools of Spartanburg County, and for four years, he was the superintendent of education in Anderson County.  In 1912, Erskine College awarded him an honorary doctor of laws degree. 

He became a popular professor of mathematics and astronomy in 1899, probably taking many of the classes previously taught by President James H. Carlisle.  However, one of the reasons he was brought to Wofford was his speaking ability.  Dr. Carlisle did not want to undertake the public relations aspects of the presidency, so over the course of his administration, several faculty members undertook these duties.  Clinkscales became a popular figure on the lecture circuit, speaking in churches and civic groups around the state.  On top of his teaching responsibilities, he was for a quarter century one of Wofford’s “field representatives” – traveling the state as an ambassador of the college – a task he continued even when Henry Nelson Snyder became president and took to the circuit himself.  No doubt this involved a mixture of student recruitment, alumni relations, fund-raising, and otherwise showing Wofford’s colors throughout the state.  It also probably put him in touch with Wofford alumni, Methodists, and other citizens around the state and helped him immensely in his subsequent campaign for governor. 

Clinkscales was also something of a writer.  From one of his personal experiences came his first book, How Zach Came to College, published in 1904.  The book tells the story an uneducated young man who came from a Western North Carolina valley to attend Wofford in the 1870s.  In fact, the story is somewhat fictionalized as there were actually two brothers, Zachary T. Whiteside and his brother, Andrew S. “Zeb” Whiteside, who were both part of the Class of 1877.  Zach and Zeb did not have much money, and as such they lived in spare rooms in Main Building, cooking their meals.  Soon other students joined them, and from that the college’s first dining hall emerged.  Dr. Clinkscales would have been a student at the same time as these two, and I would not be surprised if their story made its way into his speeches, and eventually into a book. 

As a lifelong advocate for public education, Clinkscales entered the 1914 race for governor not because he thought he could win, but because he thought somebody should speak for education.  In those days, all of the candidates for statewide office traveled the state together for a stump meeting in each county, and each had an opportunity to speak.  Clinkscales was tired of the level of anti-progressive demagoguery that he had been hearing for years in state politics, and told friends that if someone wouldn’t run on behalf of compulsory education, then he would.  He kept his word.  His platform was fairly advanced for the day, and the two leading progressive candidates had much better political organizations.  In defeat, his campaign had more influence than many other losing efforts in that at its next session, the legislature approved and the governor signed a bill enacting compulsory school attendance. 

Clinkscales continued to be an active speaker, Methodist layman, and advocate of education in the state.  He gave up his field work in the late 1920s, and declining health forced him to stop teaching in the late 1930s.  He continued to live in his campus home – now called the Kilgo-Clinkscales House – until his death on January 1, 1942.  

Photos: Clinkscales' portrait, presently on display in the Daniel Building, a photo of Clinkscales taken by Herbert Hucks '34 at Commencement in the late 1930s.

Baseball pictures

Just about everyone who visits the archives or looks in one of our display cases enjoys looking at our old photos.  I like to pass these around when student groups come in for classes because often, the subjects are things with which students today can relate.  Yesterday, I gave a presentation to two sections of the history research methods class, a course required of all history majors at Wofford.  I took it myself about 17 years ago.  (Now I feel old.)  I passed around a photo of the student body from 1899 as an example of how photographs can be viewed as evidence.  In this case, the photograph is evidence that we had women students at Wofford during those years.  Here's a link to that photo.  

I also showed them some photos of baseball teams.  Since we are nearing the end of college baseball season, and I've neglected to talk very much about baseball this spring, here are pictures of two of our older teams - one from 1895, the other from 1914.  During this era, baseball was arguably more popular on campus than football, which was banned by many colleges, including Wofford, for many years because of the violent nature of the game.  The 1895 team was especially good, with the likes of A. M. Chreitzberg, the left-most player on the first row, who was one of the college's first pitchers to throw a curve ball.  He allegedly learned to throw a curve by milking the family cow.  He was a fairly recent inductee into the Wofford athletic hall of fame.  

Here's the 1914 team below:

This summer, my student assistants and I will be working on digitizing many of these older college photos - sports teams, literary societies, class photos - so that we'll be able to make them more widely available on the web.  Stay tuned!  (Yes, we librarians and archivists stick around for the summer while our faculty colleagues undertake other projects!)  

Advice to the Class of 1959

We're moving into Commencement season, and preparations are already well underway for that happy time of the year when we send our newest graduates out into the world.  Last year I wrote a series of posts about Commencement traditions, and I invite you to check some of those out again if you are interested.  

One of the newer traditions that we've established in the past five years is to invite the 50-year class, in this case the class of 1959, to attend and participate in Commencement weekend.  They'll have their official reunion after the Baccalaureate service on Saturday night, May 16, and they'll lead the Class of 2009 into the Commencement exercises on Sunday morning, May 17.  

I've looked through a lot of material about the years from 1955-59 at Wofford recently (more about that in the next few weeks as well) and on a few occasions this year, I've talked about things that happened around here during their senior year.  Continuing that trend, here are some words of advide to the freshmen of 1955 (that is, the class of 1959) from the student handbook from their freshman year.  

Books and Supplies

You'll find the college book store in the canteen in the basement of Greene Hall.  In addition to scholastic supplies you can find drugs and sundries, stationery, Wofford shirts, pennants, and of course Rat Caps.  

Campus Dress

While the college was once referred to as "the Oxford of the South" (By whom, I do not know!), remember that formal wear is not the ordered dress as you will soon see.  Dress comfortably, neatly, but suits and ties are not required.  

Chapel

All students are required to attend chapel exercises.  Four absences for which no accounting is required are permitted in any one semester, but if a student's unexcused absences reach five during any one semester, HE SHALL BE EXCLUDED FROM COLLEGE.  

Dropping Class

You can not drop a class by merely ceasing to attend.  (Actually, this advice needs to be repeated today!)   

Mail

You have been assigned a mailbox in the post office in the north end of Carlisle Hall.  It is your responsibility to keep it dust free.  Write a letter and you'll get one.  Mail enters the college once daily at 8 am.  

Some things change, some things don't.  

Admissions, the 1909 version

Some months ago, I posted information on how one got admitted to Wofford in 1854.  Today, I've got the catalog information from 1909.  South Carolina had more public schools by then, and schools had started offering credits, or units, in various subjects.  Many colleges in the state began accepting students without examination if they could provide a certificate from a reputable high school that they had taken a certain number of "units" and students then were as concerned about having the correct number of units as students today are about standardized test scores, AP exams, and such other measures.  

Here's the text of the 1909 catalog relative to admissions requirements.  After that, I'm including the glowing language about the healthfulness and intellectual climate of the campus and community.  

Admissions Requirements, 1909-10

Students applying for admission to the Freshman class must furnish satisfactory evidence of their fitness to do the work either by examination or by certificates from approved schools and teachers. All certificates must be specific as to the subjects studied, the amount of work completed, and the time devoted to it.

In estimating the applicant's attainments the "unit" system will be used, in which each unit of credit represents a course of one high school year of thirty-six weeks, five periods a week, in any particular study. Applicants for admission must present fourteen units from the list described below. Ten and one-half units must be English Grammar, Composition and Rhetoric, and Literature (3), Algebra through Quadratics (1 1/2), Plane Geometry (1), United States History (1), and foreign language or languages (4). If Latin is offered for admission not less than three (3) units will be accepted.

Not more than four (4) units of conditions will be allowed to entering students, and these conditions must be worked off by the end of the second year. All conditioned students will be registered in the college catalogue as "conditioned students" until they have worked off their conditions. All students who are pursuing a regular degree course and have not more than one study behind will be registered in the college catalogue as "regular"; those who have more than one study behind or are not pursuing a degree course will be registered as "irregular."

Situation and Surroundings

situation.—No better climate can be found anywhere for intellectual work than that of the high Piedmont region of upper Carolina. It is salubrious and bracing, and stimulates mind and body to do their best.

health.—There is perhaps no healthier place in the South than Spartanburg.  The Wofford College campus, upon which the students live, is a high, well drained hill, removed from the dust and smoke and noise of the city. Students thus have within reach all the conveniences of the city, together with the healthful benefits of the country. Besides these natural surroundings, so conducive to health, oversight is taken, as far as possible, of the exercise and sports of students. A thoroughly equipped Gymnasium, under the care of a competent director, has been found of inestimable value, not only in preserving health, but in aiding the growing bodies of young men to a state of vigorous natural development.

social and intellectual surroundings.—Spartanburg furnishes an excellent social and intellectual atmosphere. The best entertainments—entertainments that make for the highest refinement—are constantly within reach of the student. Music by famous musicians, lectures by men of world-wide reputa­tion, readings by authors who are making the literature of the day, are all means of general culture that help to educate in the best sense the students of Wofford

Alumni Judges

I've talked a lot in the past year about faculty of years past, of buildings on the campus, and about various student activities and ceremonies.  I haven't written much about alumni.  Over the next few weeks, I'm going to try to highlight some noteworthy alumni who have distinguished themselves - and the college - in their professions. 

We've never had an alum to become a justice of the United States Supreme Court, but by my count, we've had three judges serve on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the fourth circuit.  One, Judge Dennis Shedd, of the class of 1975, is a current member of that court.  Another, Judge Clyde Hamilton, class of 1956, was a district judge from 1982 to1991, and became a member of the Fourth Circuit Court in 1991.  Another member of that court served long ago.  Charles Albert Woods, of Wofford's class of 1872, was the college's first prominent jurist.  Born near Darlington in 1852, Judge Woods taught and read law after graduating from Wofford.  He began practicing law in Marion, SC in 1873.  He became more successful when he partnered with Henry McIver, and his success continued after McIver was elected to the state supreme court in 1877.  He was a community leader in Marion throughout the late 19th century, and in 1902, he became president of the South Carolina Bar Association.  The next year, Wofford gave him an honorary doctorate.  He also served on Wofford's board of trustees.  In 1903, he was elected to a seat on the state supreme court, a seat made vacant by the death of his mentor, Chief Justice McIver.  After ten years on the state's highest court, Justice Woods was named by President Woodrow Wilson to a seat on the 4th circuit court of appeals in Richmond, VA.  He served on that court until his death in 1925.  One item in the file suggest he was at least considered for an appointment to the U. S. Supreme Court in 1916, an appointment that eventually went to Louis Brandeis.  When he died in 1925, he was the presiding judge and senior member of the circuit court

Several South Carolina Supreme Court justices have earned Wofford degrees.  A few years ago, three of the five sitting justices were Wofford alumni - justices John Waller, E. C. Burnett III, and Costa Pleicones.  The first Wofford alum to become Chief Justice of South Carolina was John G. Stabler, a member of the class of 1905, who joined the supreme court in 1926 and became chief justice in 1935.  In later years, C. Bruce Littlejohn, of the class of 1934, served as chief justice for 16 months in 1984 and 1985.  

Chief Justice Stabler graduated from Wofford in 1905 and taught Latin at the college's Carlisle Fitting School in Bamberg.  Taking a law degree from USC in 1908, he practiced law in St. Matthews, SC, in Calhoun County.  He was active in his local Methodist church and in civic actiities, and in 1920, was elected to the state senate by the voters in his county.  He served for six years, as in January 1926 he was elected by the General Assembly to the state supreme court. He took his seat in July.  In 1935, he was elected chief justice, and served until his death in 1940.  

Chief Justice Littlejohn graduated from Wofford
 in 1935 - he actually left the college for law school in 1933 and upon completion of two years in law school, Wofford gave him his AB degree.  He finished law school, started practicing law, and won the first of 5 terms in the state house of representatives all within a few months, in 1936.  He saw service in World War II, serving as an army lawyer and prosecutor in some of the postwar war crimes trials.  Returning to the legislature in 1947 at the head of a young veterans' movement, he was elected speaker of the house.  Two years later, he was elected to the circuit court, where he served until his election to the state supreme court in 1966.  After almost 18 years as an associate justice, he was elected chief justice in 1984.  His tenure saw a number of important reforms, and he helped revise a number of judicial procedures.  

Of course, other Wofford alumni have held high positions in the practice of law, and quite a few others have been federal district judges, South Carolina circuit court judges, United States Attorneys (including the current U.S. Attorney for South Carolina), South Carolina attorneys general, and bar association presidents.  Those serving today continue a proud tradition of Wofford graduates who have contributed to the law and the judiciary.