William Wightman probably had more influence on the early
history of Wofford than anybody other than Benjamin Wofford.
As the first person named as a trustee in Benjamin Wofford’s
will, as the chairman of the board of trustees until the college opened, as a
member of the building committee, and finally, as the college’s first
president, William Wightman influenced almost every aspect of the young
college. That begs some questions: what influenced him, what kind of speaker and
writer was he, and what was he like as the college’s first leader? Fortunately, we have some of President
Wightman’s papers in the archives.
Born in Charleston in 1808, William Wightman graduated as
the valedictorian from the College of Charleston in 1827 at the age of 19. (A
copy of the valedictory address is in the archives.) His parents had roots in English Methodism,
and his mother, Matilda Williams Wightman, and her parents were active in
leading Methodist circles in Britain.
The family attended Trinity Methodist Church in Charleston. After his graduation, he joined the South
Carolina Methodist Conference and served churches in the South Carolina Pee
Dee, in Camden, Abbeville, Orangeburg, and Charleston for six years. In 1834, at age 26, he became the financial
agent of Randolph-Macon College, the denomination’s college in Virginia and one
of the few Methodist colleges in the South.
After three years, he became a professor of literature. He returned to South Carolina in 1839 as a
presiding elder of the Cokesbury District, and in 1841, he became the editor of
the four-year old Southern Christian Advocate.
He remained in Charleston at the Advocate’s helm until moving to
Spartanburg in 1854 to take the college’s helm.
One of his contemporaries called him the “magnus apollo” of
the South Carolina Conference. His
varied positions –a circuit riding minister, a fund-raiser for a college, an instructor, a church
administrator, and a newspaper editor – must have given him a different outlook
on life than if he had but one of those experiences. By the time he was in his mid-40s, he had
over twenty years of service in South Carolina Methodist circles as well as
connections, thanks to Randolph-Macon and the Advocate, around the South. In the founding of a new college, he could
call upon friends with expertise elsewhere, and in the years that the college
was being built, he could promote it from the pages of the church’s
newspaper. Many Methodists around the
region would have heard of him and would have read his words every week. Few college presidents today have that kind
of pulpit or influence.
Wightman, of course, gave the address at the laying of the cornerstone and at the first commencement in 1855. These are in his papers, as are a number of his other addresses and sermons. Perhaps soon I'll be able to add some digital versions of these addresses and we can all see the kind of things he talked about.
As it turns out, Wightman’s tenure at Wofford was but a
short one. He left in 1859 to found
another college, this one the Southern University in Greensboro, Alabama. That college later merged with Birmingham
College to form Birmingham-Southern College.
After seven years in Alabama, he was elected a bishop, and returned to
make his headquarters in the Ansonborough section of Charleston. He lived there in the Holy City with his
second wife, who he had married in 1863, until his death in 1882. His youngest daughter, May, lived much of her
life in Charleston, and after her death, many of her father’s papers, consisting
largely of speeches and sermons, came to the archives.