Wofford College - From The Archives

"Brighten the corner where you are:" Coleman B. Waller's Wofford

Coleman B. "Frog" Waller was a longtime member of Wofford's science faculty, serving from 1904 to 1947.  Yet he's one of those names that has sort of disappeared into the annals of campus history, referenced only at the annual presentation of the chemistry department's senior award, which is named for him.  Dr. Waller was 

Born in Greenwood, C. B. Waller came to Wofford as a student in the late 1880s and graduated in 1892.  After teaching for a year, he went to graduate study at Vanderbilt, where he took a course in chemistry, physics, and mathematics.  He taught at Vanderbilt and at Clemson while working on his Ph. D., which he completed in 1903.  Immediately elected to a chair in science at Wofford, he was also given a year's leave to pursue studies in biology at Johns Hopkins.  Evidently, in those days, scientists had to wear many hats.  

In addition to carrying a heavy load in the sciences - heading the biology and chemistry departments, inaugurating the new Cleveland Science Hall in 1904 - Dr. Waller stayed busy in the church and in the community.  He was elected to city council, serving through a time period where the city moved to a commission form of government.  He was a member of the city's board of health, and he served as a consultant to the city water works on bacteriology and chemistry.  He was at various times a member of all three of the city's large Methodist churches.  He joined Central Methodist when he first came to Wofford, but changed his membership to Bethel Methodist to help that church grow.  He was successful in that mission as the church moved to a new location - its present location - and built a large new sanctuary during his early years there. After a quarter century, he moved to another growing church, Trinity Methodist in Converse Heights, where he remained for the rest of his life.   

He was, according to legend, the first member of the Wofford faculty to own a car, a Dodge "touring car."  Most interestingly, he built his own home on the campus, betwen the home where Dr. John Clinkscales lived and the home where Dr. Daniel DuPre lived.  If it's not obvious to you based on the names of those two houses, here's another clue.  The Kilgo-Clinkscales House is where the dean of the college lives, and the DuPre house has become the DuPre Administration Building.  Dr. Waller's house, which is in between the two, became the president's house in 1942.  Dr. Waller's agreement with the trustees was that he could build the house, but they had the right to purchase it from him if they needed it later.  The Wallers had no children, so for some twenty years, they let Wofford students live with them.  Some thirteen students shared their campus home during the 1930s and 1940s, all of whom went on to distinguished careers in the ministry, in education, or in other fields.  The Wallers acknowledged that they thought of these young men as the sons they never had.  

With a number of other great faculty members. Dr. Waller retired in 1947, but he continued teaching at Spartanburg Methodist College until his death in 1957.  In talking about his life of service, people at Wofford remembered his motto, which was to "Brighten the corner where you are."  

The Student Body, circa 1900

It might be difficult, if not impossible, to get Wofford's entire student body on the front steps of Main Building today.  Senior class photos most always happen there, but many of the early student body pictures were also taken in front of Old Main.  These photos of the student body come from 1897, 1898, and 1900 and are part of the archives collection. 

In the late 1890s, the student body usually numbered about 200, with about 10 professors.
 
Of course, old photographs fascinate us for many reasons, and students, alumni, and friends alike always pause as they quietly examine these old artifacts.  They are much more than just objects of antiquarian or sentimental interest, however,  There's much we can learn from these documents.  For example, when I pass one of these photos around a group of students, I ask them to look carefully and tell me if they spot something they aren't used to seeing.  Invariably, someone spots the women.  These photos document the presence of women in the student body well before the 1970s. 

More than that, photographs help us put a face on the past.  How many times a day do we who work and study here pass those front steps without truly thinking of how long that building has stood on that site, or remembering how many people have gone before us to build up this college.   

Top: The student body in 1897. 
Middle: The student body and faculty in 1898
Bottom: The student body and faculty in 1900

John C. Kilgo, Wofford alum, educator, and Methodist Bishop

John Carlisle Kilgo is probably better known for playing a leading role in the transformation of Trinity College into Duke University, but he learned much about higher education as a student and faculty member at Wofford.

Born in Laurens in 1861, the son of a Methodist minister, Kilgo enrolled at Wofford in 1880.  He soon had to leave, however, as his poor eyesight made it difficult for him to study.  He entered the South Carolina Methodist Annual Conference in 1882 and served churches for several years, and in 1888, he was called back to Wofford to become the college's financial agent.  He studied privately with Professor Henry Nelson Snyder, and though he never took a bachelor's degree, the college gave him an honorary master's degree in 1892.  He was appointed acting professor of metaphysics and political science, a position he held from 1891 to 1894. 

As financial agent of the college, he functioned primarily as the college's fund-raiser and public spokesman.  The college's president in those days was Dr. James H. Carlisle, who was a revered teacher and ethical leader on campus and in the state.  Carlisle, however, was very much averse to raising money and refused to do it.  Partly due to their age differences, Carlisle was in his mid-60s and had been on campus longer than anyone else, and Kilgo was in his 30s, and partly due to their difference in outlook, there were tensions between Kilgo and some of the younger faculty and Carlisle and the older professors.  Carlisle began to believe that Kilgo wanted his job, and was heard to tell friends that if he wanted it, he could have it.  Despite these tensions, Kilgo was successful as a financial agent, as the faculty in 1890 received their full pay for the first time in over 25 years.  

Kilgo's role as financial agent brought him into contact with Methodists all over the state, and perhaps got him noticed outside of the state as well.  In 1894, the 33-year old Kilgo received an offer from Trinity College that he could not refuse when the growing North Carolina Methodist college elected him as its president. 

From 1894 to 1910, Kilgo helped build the college, which had moved to Durham with a very small endowment only two years earlier.  By the time he left Trinity to become a bishop in 1910, Trinity had the largest endowment of any southern college, thanks in large part to Kilgo's cultivation of the Duke family. 

Some of the lessons Kilgo learned as a fund-raiser at Wofford informed his views on education in the south.  He believed that the Methodist Church was neglecting its historic duty toward education and that the church had become lukewarm toward its college. He felt that raising money from large numbers of people in the south was difficult because southerners could not visualize the large amounts of money needed for higher education.  He felt that education in the South was handicapped by weak preparatory schools and low collegiate standards.  Still, he believed strongly in church-related higher education and worked tirelessly in that cause. 

 Kilgo believed Trinity and other colleges should make public opinion, not follow it.  He became a critic of southern conservatism and believed that the colleges in the region should help break the stranglehold that the past had on the region.  He believed in industrialization in the region and was also an early liberal on racial issues.  He championed academic freedom, defending faculty members who took unpopular stands on issues. 

Elected a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1910, he continued to work in support of Methodist higher education.  He served as chair of Trinity's board of trustees, and remained a forceful preacher and public speaker until his death in 1922 in Charlotte. 

More little-known facts

Here are a few more little-known facts and quotes about Wofford, collected from various sources. 

The first Wofford faculty member to hold the Doctor of Philosophy degree was William M. Baskervill, who studied at the University of Leipzig in Germany before coming to teach at Wofford in 1876.  Baskervill left Wofford to finish his Ph.D. at Leipzig in the 1878-1879 academic year, then returned to Wofford from 1879 to 1881, before leaving to take a post at Vanderbilt.  Baskervill had been influenced by other German-trained faculty members at Randolph-Macon, and was part of a community of southern scholars studying in Germany.  One of his students at Wofford was James H. Kirkland, who also earned a Leipzig doctorate before joining the Vanderbilt faculty.  Baskervill and Kirkland both taught Henry Nelson Snyder at Vanderbilt before Snyder joined the Wofford faculty.  The doctor of philosophy was a fairly new degree in the 1870s, so it's not unusual that Wofford would not have had a faculty member with that degree until then. 

Greek letter fraternities came to Wofford in 1869 when William A. Rogers, a student from Washington College in Virginia, arrived to enroll at Wofford with a reference from Robert E. Lee.  A member of Kappa Alpha Order, Rogers organized the fraternity at Wofford.  Subsequently, Chi Psi fraternity was organized in 1869, Chi Phi in 1871, Sigma Alpha Epsilon in 1885, Pi Kappa Alpha in 1891, and Kappa Sigma in 1894.  When the college banned fraternities in 1904, most of these chapters went underground.  Chi Phi and Chi Psi did not return to campus when fraternities were again allowed to organize in 1915.  The other four remain active on campus today. 

As a result of the Civil War, Wofford suffered financially for decades.  D. D. Wallace's History of Wofford College noted that in 1890-91, the trustees were able to pay the faculty their full salaries for the first time since the Civil War. 

"Wofford students have always been characterized by great respect for authority" - D. D. Wallace, History of Wofford College, p. 118. 

"I never met a Wofford man who didn't have a smart mouth." - Bishop Will Willimon's sergeant at ROTC summer camp, following a pithy question by Willimon on the mine-field training course, as repeated in Willimon's 1994 Wofford commencement address. 

There's a million of these, and I hope to keep sharing them. 

The many lives of the Daniel Building

The Charles E. Daniel Building, across the street from Main Building and the Sandor Teszler Library, is sort of the quiet neighbor on the street.  Quiet and nondescript though it may seem, it has an interesting past.  In its first life, it was the college's first free-standing library. 

 The college received a bequest of $10,000 in 1906 from Miss Julia Smith, the daughter of longtime English professor Whitefoord Smith (yes, that's not a mis-spelling), who had served on the faculty from 1855 to 1891.  A subsequent gift of $10,000 from longtime major donor E. L. Archer (he helped finish paying for Alumni Hall to boot) helped the college get the library project underway.  It opened in 1910.  The original library wasn't as large as the building is today; the wings were added in 1947 as a way of expanding the reading room and stack space.  The post-World War II renovation, like the original construction, was necessary because of a growing student body and faculty and the need for space for more books. 

The building continued to serve as the Whitefoord Smith Library, though it was later simply the library, until 1969.  When the college opened the new library, the one we currently occupy, in 1969, the old library was converted for use as a classroom and faculty office building.  The art and music faculty and classrooms moved from the Black Science Annex into the ground floor of the newly-named Charles E. Daniel Building.  The departments of government, philosophy, art history, mathematics, accounting, and education, along with a few other assorted professors, moved into the seventeen faculty offices.  Daniel 204, with its elevated horseshoe-shaped desks, was the first classroom of its type on campus, presaging similar classrooms in the Olin Building by 20 years.  The building was also fully air-conditioned, something we take for granted now but which was not universal on campus in that day.  A casualty of the renovation was the blocking in of several of the building's windows.  Many students and faculty criticized the decision to block in some of the windows, though the inside appearance was improved by the renovation. 

Some departments moved out of the Daniel Building when Olin opened in 1992, but philosophers, political scientists, art historians and musicians and Wofford's ROTC detachment still call Daniel home. 

In upcoming weeks, I hope to talk about some of the legendary faculty and famous alumni that have walked the campus.  Before Interim is over, I also want to talk about some interesting Interims from years past.  And, since I'm participating in an Interim myself this year, one that is studying Wofford's oral history, perhaps you'll hear something about that as well.