Author: information_management

Sports

Baseball, 1903

Post author By information_management
Post date February 28, 2008

Wofford students were playing baseball several years before the first football game. Legend holds that the first games on campus were between students and some of the federal soldiers stationed in Spartanburg during Reconstruction.

Below is an excerpt from the June 1903 Wofford College Journal detailing some of the exploits of the 1903 baseball season.

A very successful season in the baseball line has just been completed by the Wofford team. From first to last the members of the team have been faithful in their practicing, earnest in their efforts, and determined in their purpose to represent the college well. They have played will, and the whole college community appreciates to the fullest the high character of ball playing the boys have done. During the entire season there were fourteen games played with other colleges — and out of these fourteen we won eight and yielded six.Not all the games were what would be considered excellent games. Those played with the North Carolina teams, with the possible exception of the one with Trinity College, were splendid exhibitions of base ball playing. The game with the University of North Carolina, in which the University won by a score of 2 to 0, was perhaps the most beautiful game that has ever been play(ed) on our grounds.

In the Trinity game, about which mention has been made, neither team played the usual game. Trinity was broken up, having just played several hard games. Wofford’s pitcher (was) disabled and the team in general playing at low ebb.

The Davidson game was fast and exciting — keeping the enthusiasts guessing as to which team should strike the decisive blow. Davidson came out in the lead by one point, the score being 3 to 2.

The Wake Forest boys put up a good game, but from the beginning it was evident that Wofford’s team was the stronger.

The games in the State, some of them were good. We lost two games to Clemson College, one to Erskine.

The tour through Tennessee resulted most successfully to our team. In the three games played our boys were triumphant, winning too off University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and taking one from Sewanee.

Photos: The 1903 baseball team, the team from 1905.

Documents

Will the real Benjamin Wofford please stand up?

Post author By information_management
Post date February 26, 2008

I’ve been trying to add more history content to the college archives website, and I have felt for some time that we needed a new biography of Benjamin Wofford.

Our founder has been the subject of quite a few talks over the years, and many speakers have tried to figure out what inspired Benjamin Wofford to make such a substantial gift to found a college. Authors of articles have tried to tease out meaning from various anecdotes. And there’s a good reason for this.

Ben didn’t leave much of a paper trail. There’s no diary, no letters, no essays, no voluminous correspondence. All we have are reminiscences. The only reason have been able to document as much about him as we have is because of his wealth. So, writers and speakers have taken what we know and added in a few anecdotes about Ben that have come down through stories told by other speakers. There’s a lot of folklore about Ben Wofford, but are those stories true?

I decided that I wanted to write a new biographical sketch about our founder, and I have tried to go back to the sources that exist and to try to stick as much as possible to the facts that we can document. If you’re interested, you can follow the link below to the article on the college website.

http://www.wofford.edu/library/archives/benjamin-wofford.aspx

African-American History

Some “firsts”

Post author By information_management
Post date February 22, 2008

We’ve spent the past few weeks exploring some of the history behind the college’s desegregation, and have talked about the college’s first African-American student and graduate. Several other “firsts” are also worth noting.

At first, the college did not make any special effort to recruit black students, though the administration and faculty welcomed those who enrolled. In the late 1960s, however, under President Paul Hardin III, the college made a greater effort to recruit African-American students. Ned Sydnor ‘55, who was director of special educational activities in the late 1960s, worked to recruit minority students.

In 1970, the college appointed its first African-American administrator when President Hardin named Bobby E. Leach, a teacher and assistant principal at Carver High School, to be assistant dean of students and director of the Residence Hall Education Program. RHEP was designed to create new learning opportunities in the residence halls, but Leach’s presence on campus was another signal that the college was trying to make greater strides toward integration. Leach left Wofford in 1973 and later became Vice President for Student Affairs at Florida State University. He died in 1989.

The college granted its first honorary degree to an African-American in 1972.
Bishop James S. Thomas was a South Carolina native who graduated from Claflin University and Gammon Theological Seminary before earning a Ph.D. at Cornell University. Elected a bishop in 1964 to serve the predominantly white Iowa Annual Conference, Thomas was one of the earliest African-American bishops to serve a predominantly white area. He had served churches in South Carolina before teaching at Gammon Seminary, and later served as an officer of the Methodist Church’s board of education and other leading United Methodist Church positions.

One of the early tests of the college’s speakers policy came when comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory accepted an invitation to speak on campus in 1969.

The announcement that Gregory, who had led protests in other parts of the country and who had spoken on many college campuses in the late 1960s, alarmed some alumni and friends of the college in Spartanburg.
One letter-writer wrote that he had “grave doubts that I am doing right by supporting Wofford at this time. Spartanburg has been relatively free of serious civil disorders, but this is not likely to continue if ‘civil rights’ leaders are given a forum on your campus, since violence, mayhem, and property destruction are their aims. It seems to follow them everywhere.”
A Wofford student investigated the “alarmed and disturbed” reaction in the area, finding that Gregory’s civil rights activism was the reason for much of the criticism.

However, just before Gregory was scheduled to speak, his appeal of a resisting-arrest conviction was denied and he had to report for a five-month jail sentence.
Gregory did eventually make it to Wofford.

Nine years later, in 1978, he spoke at Wofford at the invitation of the campus cultural and religious affairs committee.

Photos, from top: Dean Bobby E. Leach; Bishop James S. Thomas with President Paul Hardin III; Comedian Dick Gregory.

African-American History

Desegregation at Wofford – Part 3

Post author By information_management
Post date February 19, 2008

While commendations and condemnations continued to arrive in
the daily mail throughout the summer of 1964, the Marsh administration moved
forward with plans to admit Wofford’s first African-American student.

President Marsh informed the trustees that the college had
received inquiries from two seniors at Spartanburg’s Carver High School on the day the Board voted to expand the admissions policy. These inquiries came before the public announcement of the policy change, but acting under Marsh’s direction, Registrar and Admissions Director Bates Scoggins sent
the students an application packet. A few days later, three more inquiries from Carver students arrived and were handled the same way. After the public announcement, three students from another Spartanburg County high school visited the admissions office and were given application
materials.

As of June 3, only one student of the eight had actually submitted an application, a student at Carver High School. He had good recommendations and high class rank, according to Marsh, and when his file was complete, the admissions committee would make a decision. Marsh believed it was likely that the committee would find him eligible for admission.

The committee did find him eligible, and in September 1964,
Albert Gray of Spartanburg enrolled, becoming Wofford’s first African-American student. The AP wire story read as follows:

“Spartanburg, SC, Sept. 8 (AP).—Albert Gray, 18, of Spartanburg, became Wofford College’s first Negro student yesterday.

“He enrolled at the Methodist school as a freshman. He will major in sociology.
“Young Gray finished third in his class atCarver High School here. His father is a construction
worker at the World’s Fair in New York.
“‘I made the decision to enter Wofford myself,’ the student
told newsmen. He called the school ‘a wonderful
college’ and said he was not influenced to register by any group.”

Gray’s enrollment at Wofford was interrupted by a summons from the Army to serve in Vietnam. Though he had failed to pass a physical when he applied for ROTC, he passed it when he was later drafted. After he returned from Vietnam, he came back to Wofford and finished his degree in 1971. After becoming a successful businessman in Spartanburg, Mr. Gray joined the Wofford Board of Trustees.

In a 1992 interview in the Old Gold and Black, Mr. Gray attributed his decision to enroll at Wofford as a “mixture of necessity and youthful naiveté.” “You had to be rather naïve to do what I did. I didn’t have any fear.”

The next fall, freshman Douglas L. Jones enrolled as the college’s second African-American student. At Wofford, he wrote in the Old Gold and Black, was in the Baptist
Student Union, ROTC, and Hyperopics. He lived on campus as a freshman, but lived off campus after that. He started off as a math major but was inspired, he later explained, by Professor Dan Olds
to add a physics major as well. He graduated in 1969, becoming the college’s first black graduate. He went on to graduate school at USC, and pursued an engineering career. He works for Michelin as a customer engineering support manager. Two of his children are also Wofford alums.

Pictures: Albert Gray as a first year student; Doug Jones,
President Joe Lesesne, and Albert Gray in 1999, on the 35^th anniversary of Gray’s enrollment and the 30^th anniversary of Jones’ graduation. Also, President Charles Marsh’s letter to the campus announcing Gray’s enrollment.

African-American History Documents

Support for Desegregation

Post author By information_management
Post date February 15, 2008

Lest I leave you with the belief that the college’s alumni, Methodist friends, and others opposed the college’s decision to desegregate, today I’m sharing a few letters from supporters of the decision.

J. Claude Evans, a 1937 Wofford graduate, was serving as chaplain of Southern Methodist University in 1964. He had taken his seminary degree at Duke and had received an honorary degree from Wofford in 1957. He had entered the ministry in South Carolina in 1940, serving churches in Columbia, Walhalla, McCormick, and Clemson before becoming editor of the South Carolina Methodist Advocate in 1953. In 1958, he left the state to become chaplain at SMU.

I especially note his wording – his son had called long-distance, a rarity in those days – to share the news. Evans sympathized with the difficult decision Marsh and the trustees had to make. “But it places Wofford squarely behind the tenable educational theory that capacity to learn, and not race, should be the standard for admission.”

Wallace Fridy also wrote to support the decision. Fridy was a minister serving the St. John’s Methodist Church in Anderson. He was a Clemson graduate who had earned his seminary degree at Yale before entering the ministry in South Carolina. He had served several large churches in the state, and had represented the state at General and Jurisdictional Conferences. “You have certainly acted wisely and well in making this declaration of purpose. So, ‘mid the communications you will perhaps receive of the negative nature, I would like to add my positive word of appreciation. You have taken the wise and right course,” Fridy wrote.

The third letter comes from The Rev. T. Carlisle Cannon, who was older than the other two men. He was a Citadel graduate who entered the ministry in 1923 after graduating from Emory. He had served all over the state, from Pickens to Newberry to Columbia to Edgefield, and had been Sumter District Superintendent in the 1950s. His is perhaps the most emphatic letter in support of the college. Perhaps that’s because he was also a member of Wofford’s board of trustees.

“If there was ever a time when our Christian leaders in Church and State should speak out clearly and boldly about the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man, it is now. Our Christian colleges and universities cannot afford to lag behind in this all-important manner.”

African-American History Documents

Desegregation at Wofford – Part 2

Last Tuesday’s blog post talked about the early administrative and trustee deliberations about desegregation at the college. Today’s post talks about the final decision to desegregate, the announcement, and the reaction.

Throughout the spring of 1964, Wofford trustees considered the desegregation issue. The special study committee of the Board of Trustees, chaired by the Rev. Dr. Francis T. Cunningham, reported to the February and May meetings of the board with its recommendation that “no qualified student be barred from Wofford College on account of race.” The board discussed the matter at both meetings, though the minutes do not indicate anything of the substance of the discussion. At the May 12, 1964 meeting, the board voted to endorse the college’s statement of admissions as it was printed in the catalogue, with the assurance “that said statement of admissions policy is applicable to all students who may apply, regardless of race or creed.”

The board left it to President Marsh’s discretion as to when and how to make the announcement of this decision. He waited a week before notifying the faculty, staff, and students. No official press release was made, but within a day of the announcement to the campus, the local news media were on the story.

Marsh wrote to the trustees on June 3 to update them on the reaction to the announcement and to talk about plans for implementing the decision. He told the trustees that his office “has received both favorable and unfavorable comments on the action of the Board. The twenty-five favorable communications have come from a variety of sources—alumni and non-alumni, lay and ministerial—and have been most heartening. Four have included financial contributions. In addition to the two communications from churches withdrawing financial support, we have received eighteen other unfavorable communications. Six have been anonymous and of a scurrilous nature. Four have been sincere letters expressing sorrow and withholding fairly regular financial support. We have had no unfavorable comment from students or faculty members and no student withdrawals which appear to be related to our recent action. Our Alumni and Commencement exercises were well attended and happy occasions with no untoward incidents.”

Marsh continued to receive mail from various college constituents throughout the summer. The archives has several folders of letters from all over the state and from other parts of the country expressing support for the decision, opposition to the decision, or outright disgust with Marsh and the college. Some of the letters are quite harsh in their criticism.

Marsh and the trustees anticipated the controversy would boil over at the meeting of the South Carolina Methodist Annual Conference in June. Marsh pre-empted an attack from churches and lay members who objected to desegregation by taking the floor before the appointed time and making a strong statement explaining how and why the college chose to act as it had. Though there was a debate, supporters of the college prevailed in a floor vote.
All that remained was for the college to weather the criticism and to successfully admit and enroll the first African-American student.

We’ll save that for next time.

Click on the images to see a larger version.

African-American History Methodist

Silver Hill – Spartanburg’s oldest African-American Methodist Church

Post author By information_management
Post date February 8, 2008

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.

African-American History

Desegregation at Wofford – Part 1

Post author By information_management
Post date February 5, 2008

February is Black History Month, and I think it’s appropriate to take a few moments to look at how Wofford arrived at its decision, in 1964, to desegregate the college. Anyone who is more interested in this subject will find a wealth of materials in President Charles F. Marsh’s papers. This will be the first of several posts on this topic. Today – the preliminaries.

President Marsh and the trustees of the college could clearly see that they were going to have to confront the issue of segregation at the college. The decision was for the trustees to make, but they had to consider the opinions of the various constituencies of the college – the faculty, the student body, the alumni, friends of the college, and most significantly, South Carolina Methodists. In 1962 and 1963, as public colleges and universities throughout the region desegregated, usually under court order, Wofford’s officers began quietly to plan for desegregation. They knew, from public sentiment, that they had a lot of work to do.

At its 1962 session, the South Carolina Annual Conference of the Methodist Church soundly defeated a resolution calling for the desegregation of both Wofford and Columbia College in 1963. Proposed by the Rev. James Copeland, then serving churches in Woodruff, SC, the resolution called for all church-wide projects in the state be open to all persons, and Copeland specifically urged the conference to open the two colleges to African-Americans in September 1963. After some discussion, the motion was defeated in a standing vote, with observers noting only about twenty individuals standing in support.

In the fall of 1963, President Marsh presented his thoughts on desegregation to the Board of Trustees. He wrote:

As one individual, whose personal ideas and attitudes have been shaped by his own experiences and environment over the years, I have no personal objection to the admission of fully qualified Negro students to Wofford and, indeed, see strong moral and ethical reasons why they should be granted this opportunity. As a longtime resident of two Southern States, on the other hand, I am sympathetically aware of the strong personal feelings of some members of this Board and many other constituents of the College against the admission of Negroes to Wofford.

As the officially selected leaders of the College, however, our personal desires or opinions with respect to this highly controversial matter must be secondary to a careful analysis of the significant facts and their bearing upon the continued ability of the College to perform its functions as a first-rate educational institution of the Methodist Church.

Dr. Marsh went on to list potential adverse effects of a decision to desegregate, which included

1. Sadness and bitterness concerning the college on the part of some of its alumni, supporters, and friends.

2. Loss of financial support from some South Carolina Methodist churches.

3. Loss of financial support from some individual alumni and other supporters.

4. Withdrawal of some students from college and decline in application from some prospective students.

5. Complications in housing, social life, and attitudes of students and faculty toward Negroes who may be admitted.

He also listed adverse effects of a decision to remain segregated

1. Ineligibility for substantial financial grants by private foundations

2. Ineligibility for National Science Foundation grants

3. Possible ineligibility for National Defense Loans for students (our most attractive loans to students at present)

4. Possibility that the 1964 General Conference may withhold National Methodist Scholarships and Loans from segregated institutions

5. Loss of support – financial and otherwise – from alumni
6. Increasing difficulty in attracting qualified students and faculty.
7. Increasing isolation from the main currents of educational and religious policy and practice.
All but 13 of the 76 four-year Methodist colleges, all eight of the Methodist universities, and all twelve of the seminaries accept qualified Negro students.

Marsh made other points that he wanted the trustees to consider. As a result, the trustees appointed a special study committee, which met several times in 1963 and early 1964. The study committee recommended that the college desegregate, and reported its action to the full board, which held off for several months before making its final decision.

Sports

Basket-ball, 1916

Post author By information_management
Post date February 1, 2008

In recent posts, I’ve neglected Wofford’s long history of intercollegiate athletics. Since we’re presently in the thick of Southern Conference basketball play, I thought it would be appropriate to put up a sketch of an earlier basketball season. This snippet comes from the 1916 Bohemian and talks about a few games from that year.

When the call was issued for candidates for the basket-ball team last winter, there were many out to try their skill at throwing baskets. There were only two regulars back from the championship team of the year before, but they made up in quality what was lacking in quantity.
Captain Patterson, All-State Guard and Collins, All-State Centre, furnished a good nucleus to build a team around. All of the second-string men of the previous year were back also, and some good material was uncovered in the Freshman class. We secured the services of Mr. L. J. Denning as coach and to his careful work the success of the team may be in large measure ascribed.

The first game of the season was played with Furman, on our court, on December 19. The Terriers were thirsting for revenge for the defeat in football, and went into the game with the intention of making it a slaughter. During the first half the weight of the heavy Baptist team offset in some degree the superior speed and passing of Wofford and the score at the end of the period was only 14 to 10 against them. The Terriers came back, however, to start the second half and, playing with a rush that swept the Furman five off its feet, went far on into the lead. The Baptists never had a chance to rally, and all the way through the last half the game was a veritable riot. The score at the end of the second half was 50 to 12, with Furman holding the smaller figure.

Presbyterian College came up on the following Wednesday [in February] and went down in one of the roughest and most bitterly contested fights of the season. Wofford got a slight lead in the first few minutes, and held it doggedly to the end, in spite of P. C.’s hardest efforts. The final count was 34 to 26, with the Terriers on top.

February 18 was set aside for Erskine’s slaughter, and the job was well done. Rushing their opponents off their feet, and with a whirlwind attack at the start, the Terriers kept them on the run, and the count at the end was 61 to 19. Turner featured the contest, with 31 of Wofford’s 61 points.

Turner would be Henry Grady Turner, whose sweater was featured in an earlier blog post.

Photographs: The 1915-16 Varsity basketball team, and individual shots of team members Patterson and Collins.

Alumni

Samuel Dibble: Wofford’s First Graduate

Post author By information_management
Post date January 29, 2008

Wofford’s first graduate set the bar high for all of the men and women who followed him

Samuel Dibble, who earned Wofford’s first bachelor’s degree on July 16, 1856, later became the first of ten Wofford alumni to serve in the United States Congress. A native of Charleston, Dibble was
born on September 16, 1837. His father was a hat maker with Connecticut roots. Dibble received some of his early education in New England and the rest in Charleston. In 1853, he enrolled at the College of Charleston. Late in the spring of 1855, a disagreement between students and faculty members led a large number of students to leave the college. Dibble, who was a Methodist, transferred to Wofford in the fall of 1855. He entered the junior class, but took the senior coursework in addition to the junior courses.

After the excitement of South Carolina’s largest city, Spartanburg likely was awfully quiet for the young Dibble. Perhaps the lack of diversions accounts for his ability to take two years’ worth of courses in one year.

In October 1855, he wrote his brother Virgil about life in Spartanburg, in the house where he was boarding, and about college:

The weather has been pleasant for some time past. Several persons in the house have colds, but so far I am clear, and will try and keep so. Mr. Fripp and myself have a comfortable room… with the additional comfort of a fireplace. I am gradually getting over being foolishly homesick, and am tolerably well satisfied with my situation. I spoke in the chapel of the college on Thursday last. It is the custom to speak selected pieces. I gave them “The Future.”

I am getting used to the college, and like it very well, if they would only have regularity in ringing the bells; but they vary from about ten minutes before to ten minute after the proper hour in ringing the first time, and ring the second at the right time, thus creating great confusion… Add to this that college time is different from every other in the place, and is changed every two or three months as [Professor Herman] Baer’s watch is regulated, which is the college time, there being no clock on the premises.

Dibble lamented the lack of news in Spartanburg. “I saw the first Charleston paper I have seen since I left Charleston this morning. The papers here have hardly any news at all, and what they have [is] very uninteresting. I wish you would send me some paper with interesting news about once a week.”

About two weeks later, Dibble wrote to ask his brother to send him some books he needed for his courses. He asked for a copy of “Antigone of Sophocles” and “Cicero de Oratore” because he was using borrowed copies and they could not be found for purchase in Spartanburg.

Dibble did not make the trip to Charleston for Christmas, remaining in Spartanburg. The college likely did not take a lengthy Christmas break as they did in subsequent years. Also, the railroad had not reached Spartanburg in 1855, making the trip even harder. He wrote on Christmas Eve to tell his brother of his holiday plans:

I suppose you would like to know how I expect to spend Christmas. Well, in the morning I do not know exactly what I shall do. I suppose I will dine with Mrs. Choice’s mother, Mrs. Cleveland, as the family is invited, and myself too. I have been invited to go on a partridge hunt in the afternoon, but do not know whether I shall go or not. The party tomorrow afternoon will consist of from a dozen to twenty of the young ladies and gentlemen of the village, and will be a very pleasant one without doubt, and I would go with great willingness and eagerness if I were not ashamed of my horsemanship. I suppose you will be shooting crackers, and setting off wheel rockets, etc, as usual on Christmas. I have been trying to get some wheel-rockets or something of the kind, but even firecrackers are not to be got here. Tomorrow night I expect to go to a “candy-pulling” at Miss Bobo’s, and hope to have a great deal of enjoyment.

As the only graduate in July 1856, Dibble gave the valedictory address on the subject of “Genius.”

It was reported to have been a good speech, though the fact that many of the other addresses that day were in Latin may have added to its impact. Dibble received his diploma and King James Bible from the faculty and headed to Orangeburg, where he taught, read law, and married. Dibble soon married Mary Christiana Lewis of Orangeburg.

In 1878, Dibble was invited to give the annual address before Wofford’s literary societies during Commencement week. His address, “The Duty of the State in Regard to Education” was widely distributed in pamphlet form. The talk was an argument in favor of compulsory public education, which was, at least in South Carolina, a position about 40 years ahead of its time.

Following his service in the General Assembly, Dibble won a special election for a seat in the U. S. Congress to replace the 1880 election winner, who had died. Dibble ran for the seat again in the fall of 1882, winning that and three subsequent elections.

With the rise of the Tillman movement in South Carolina, Dibble did not seek reelection in 1890 and retired from Congress in 1891. He returned to Orangeburg where he continued to work in his business interests, including banking, practicing law, and serving as president of the Bowman and Branchville Railroad. In 1894, he received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Wofford, becoming only the second layman to receive an
honorary doctorate from the college.

The “Grand old man” of Orangeburg, as he was known, died on September 16,1913 and is buried in Orangeburg.

There’s a longer version of this biography on the Archives website. That article includes information about his service in the Civil War and his service in Congress.

Photos include a portrait of Samuel Dibble, a copy of his 1856 Wofford diploma, and a photo of part of his family.