I think T. S. Eliot was off by a few months.
I think T. S. Eliot was off by a few months.
Posted at 10:06 AM in Methodist | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Last Sunday, I traveled down to the small town of Saluda, SC to speak as part of St. Paul United Methodist Church's homecoming celebration. I'm not ordained, so I'm not sure if I can legally call what I did preaching, but my address took the place of the sermon. I like to refer to these kind of addresses as "history sermons." I was invited to do one of these a few years ago, so it did not feel quite so odd this time.
Posted at 12:07 PM in Methodist | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
For whom was Leonard Auditorium named?
Posted at 03:52 PM in Alumni, Buildings, Methodist | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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 19th 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 32nd 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.
Posted at 02:52 PM in Faculty, Methodist | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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.
Posted at 04:16 PM in Methodist | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
In addition to sharing some of Wofford's history or the history of Methodism in South Carolina on this blog, sometimes I highlight new collections, interesting documents, or old photographs. Today, I'm hlghlighting a collection of photographs that my student assistants and I have been working on for several months. Several years ago, I found an old photo album maintained by a Methodist minister from the late 19th century. With a better scanner and better ways to present these images, my student assistants scanned all of the indivudal photos in the album. Over the past few weeks, I've been trying to get them uploaded to Flickr and labeled in such a way that a researcher could find them.
Posted at 11:33 AM in Methodist, Photographs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
This morning, I was leafing through a 1925 issue of the Southern Christian Advocate, the Methodist newspaper for South Carolina, in search of an answer to a patron's query when I found a special issue on women's foreign and home missionary work. I noticed the picture of Mary Winn, who was a South Carolina Methodist missionary in China for a number of years from the early 1920s to the late 1940s. Her name and picture jumped out at me because some years ago, we received a batch of letters she wrote to her family in the College Place neighborhood of Columbia. Her letters have been processed and are available here in the library. Here's the link to the collection. One of the benefits of working in these records over a number of years is that you see so many connections between different parts of the collection. I noticed in her letter that she talked about learning Chinese and teaching English in a missionary school for girls in Soochow, China, and she commented on how difficult it was for her to learn the Chinese characters. I am sure many of our students at Wofford today who are studying Chinese would agree with her.
Posted at 04:39 PM in Methodist | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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.
Posted at 03:40 PM in Methodist | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
In answering reference questions and looking up obituaries in the Advocate, South Carolina's Methodist newspaper, I occasionally come across stories that give a bit of the flavor of their day. Last Saturday, between the football game and a reception on campus, I copied an obituary and discovered a column in an October 1961 issue of the Advocate by Bishop Paul Hardin Jr, Wofford Class of 1924. Bishop Hardin, who served as South Carolina's Methodist bishop from 1960 to 1972 and oversaw the desegregation of South Carolina's Methodist Conference, wrote a "bishop's notes" column most weeks. Here are some excerpts from one of his columns.
As soon as these notes are written I will join the trustees, faculty, students and friends of Columbia College in a service for the Breaking of Ground for the new Science building at that fine institution. On October the 17th my schedule will take me to Spartanburg Junior College (Now SMC) and on October 21 I will take part in the formal reopening of the Main Building at Wofford. Just a few days from now I will meet with the Committee on Higher Education of the Alabama-West Florida Conference, where a campaign for our colleges and Wesley Foundations has gone well beyond the million dollar mark. I mention these engagements to remind you that The Methodist Church is fully committed to the task of providing excellent church-related colleges schools and colleges for the benefit of our people and the nation at large. By comparison with some other denominations we do pitifully little for our church-supported educational institutions. I have been worried by the fact at many of our people and churches have made no payment on e pledges wwich they made during e campaign of 1959. The Methodist Higher Education FUnd is essential to the continuing development and strengthening of our colleges.
Tuesday, October 31st is Reformation Day and Sunday, October 29 is Reformation Sunday. I hope that our ministers will observe it, not in a negative way by denouncing another faith but in a positive way by taking the opportunity to let our people know more about the basic beliefs of Protestants in general and Methodists in particular.
By the time you read these notes I will have been to Joanna (SC) for homecoming and the dedication of the educational building. It is truly a "homecoming" for me for nearly fifty-right years ago I was born there. While I make mention of many places and people in these notes, let us not forget that the Church has one main purpose and goal -- to seek and to save the lost. Let us be forever busy at that task!
Posted at 03:45 PM in Methodist | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
On Saturday morning, February 9, I am giving an address to the South Carolina Annual Conference Historical Society on the history of Methodism in Spartanburg. The Historical Society is a group of lay and clergy Methodists from throughout South Carolina who share an interest in the history and heritage of United Methodism. The group meets twice a year, in February and October, often in local churches.
In my research for the address, I looked at some of the things that have made Spartanburg more of a Methodist town than most of us would realize. The city is home to two Methodist church-related colleges, but in its history, other Methodist agencies found their homes in the Hub City.
Of course, there are many different kinds of churches. One of the city's older churches is Silver Hill United Methodist Church. It's the oldest African-American Methodist congregation in the city, dating back to 1869. Tradition holds that as the first permanent church building was being built, church members placed silver dollars under each corner of the new church on a hill, giving the name "Silver Hill." For generations of Methodists in Spartanburg, Silver Hill was the center of the community.
Silver Hill was founded by the Reverend James R. Rosemond, who also served as the church's first minister. He was held in such high esteem by black Methodists in his day that he came to be called "Father Rosemond," an unusual title for a Methodist elder.
Father Rosemond founded a large number of African-American Methodist churches in the Upcountry - from Anderson and Oconee counties in the west through York and Chester counties in the east. Rosemond's is an inspiring story; he was born in slavery and separated from his parents at age six. He was sent to live with a Methodist minister's family, and early on felt a call to preach. As a young adult, he was licensed to exhort, which was something like today's lay speaker, and much later, was licensed as a "colored preacher" in the 1850s. After emancipation, he was ordained into the Methodist ministry and sent to minister to the freedmen in the Upcountry. He faced no small amount of hostility from white Carolinians, but was able to establish churches nonetheless.
He returned to Spartanburg in his last years, and at least one of his daughters remained a member of and Sunday school teacher at Silver Hill for years. His daughter Mary went to Claflin University in Orangeburg as well as Scotia Seminary in North Carolina and became an important teacher and civic worker in Spartanburg. She founded the Carrier Street School, which was later named in her honor. Her name: Mary H. Wright. The school still operates on Spartanburg's Southside.
Silver Hill Church moved from its home on North Converse Street to a new location west of downtown in the late 1990s.
The photos, of Silver Hill, of Rev. James R. Rosemond, and of the interior of Sliver Hill, come from the History of Silver Hill United Methodist Church, 1869-1981, edited by Mac Goodwin and published by the church in 1981.
Posted at 04:41 PM in African-American History, Methodist | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

