I've been the archivist of Wofford College and the South Carolina United Methodist since 1999. I'll be sharing college, Methodist, and local history, documents, photographs, and other interesting stories on this blog, which I've been keeping since December 2007.
David Duncan Wallace was one of Wofford’s more prolific scholars and authors – both in the early twentieth century and throughout the college’s history. Today, I’m sharing an essay he published on the life of John Wesley. For the two of you who don’t know who Wesley was, he was an Anglican priest and, more importantly for our purposes, the founder of Methodism.
No doubt Wallace, a Methodist himself and a history professor in a Methodist-related institution, felt that Methodists in South Carolina needed a short, readable yet scholarly treatment of Wesley’s life. So, he wrote and published this pamphlet. When we found it in Wallace’s papers, I decided to scan the text and create a digital edition. It’s available on our website for anyone to read and print.
Over the past year, we’ve been trying to increase the number of items that are in the archives digital collection. One of the college’s older documents is the 1855 College Catalogue, the first published by the college.
The college catalogues contain most of the important information, including the names of all of the trustees, faculty members, students, and graduates, at least in these earliest years. They also contain all of the admissions requirements, the course of study, and all of the rules of conduct and student fees.
For example, if you wanted to see the courses that a student had to take each year in the 1850s, you’d look at this page:
All of these early catalogues are linked from the Archives Digital Collections Page. And, you can click on each image for a larger version.
REMARKS GIVEN BY JAMES MARION BOYD TO NEW STUDENTS AND STUDENT BODY OF WOFFORD COLLEGE, SEPTEMBER 1893
The Rev. J. Marion Boyd was, in the fall of 1893, a member of Wofford’s Board of Trustees and a Methodist minister in South Carolina. At the time that he gave these remarks in chapel, he was the presiding elder of the Spartanburg District, an office that we today call the district superintendent. His parsonage was just a few blocks from the college, on North Church Street near Central Methodist Church. He must have been a well-regarded leader in the South Carolina Methodist Conference, because he was in his eleventh year as a presiding elder, having spent 4 years in the Marion District, 4 years in the Charleston District, and was soon to begin his fourth and final year in the Spartanburg District. As it happened, he died less than five months after making these remarks, on February 25, 1894. A copy of these remarks was recently given to the archives by Dr. Bill Whetsell ’62, who is Rev. Boyd’s great-grandson. Many of these observations remain as true today as they were in 1893.
These students would have heard the welcome address in chapel earlier in the semester.
Two days ago, I had the pleasure of worshipping quite near the grave of Benjamin Wofford, the founder of this institution; and as I greeted his relatives and friends on the spot where he once mingled his voice in song and prayer, I remembered with increasing admiration that good man, through whose marvelous gift we are here to welcome you tonight, and to greet you, as part of a mighty host whose views of life and duty and privilege have been broadened and rendered more certain.
I know not what are the powers and enjoyment and employment of those who have rendered faithful service to their generation and have passed away. I know not whether they have knowledge of events still happening among the living. These are hidden things. But if this be so, that they still take interest in the affairs of men, who can doubt that the illustrious founder of Wofford is more than a silent spectator of this scene! One thing we do know that his master remembers his deeds and will compensate at the resurrection of the just.
What an outflow from a single act of a good man! Think of the thousands of young men who have thronged this hall at its annual opening, and of their equipment for life received here. Some of them have completed their work and others are still prosecuting theirs! What mighty streams of intellectual and moral forces have flowed from this fountain of knowledge, and each student has been a tributary helping to widen and deepen the augmenting current.
You are here, young gentleuen, not to take part in “hazing” the freshmen or in suffering the indignities which freshmen once endured on entering an institution of learning. You are here as serious students of Wofford. Welcome the timid freshman or sophomore, to extend a junior’s – yes, a brother’s hand, with song and good cheer to prepare the way for a most successful and pleasing year’s work.
Already you have felt the clasp of friendship and received a cordial welcome from —–, the representatives of the —–, and I, now as a member of the Board of Trustees, bid you thrice welcome. I do this more really as a friend of the fathers and mothers of many of you, and again I bid you thrice welcome. In years past I have often been entertained in the homes from which many of you come. I have kneeled with your parents in prayers and it does my heart good to know that the Lord has blessed them and you so that you are here tonight, a favored group of young men, whether you be a senior, a junior, a sophomore, or a freshman, I congratulate you. Indeed I do.
Remember that you are now and henceforth to conduct yourself in keeping with your high ideals. Don’t disappoint the expectations of your parents, your friends, and your fellow students. Yes, “look after my boy,” write Christian fathers and mothers. You are the subjects of their prayers and Christian solicitude.
Honor this institution, this earnest and competent faculty, your parents, and above all, yourselves, by honoring your God in a life of good and faithful service.
This weekend at Commencement, as has been the tradition since 2004, the fifty year class has met to celebrate the golden anniversary of their graduation from Wofford. They join the campus community for the Baccalaureate service, hold a reunion together afterward, then march in regalia with the seniors and the faculty as they escort the graduating class into the world of alumni. It’s a nice tradition, and it actually harkens back to earlier days, when the annual alumni meeting took place during Commencement, class reunions were held, and the seniors and alumni together held the alumni-senior banquet. Often the alumni would sponsor an address – where a noteworthy alum would present some kind of speech or oration.
In these days, the speechmaking and orating aren’t really part of the event – though some people from the class and the college do make some remarks at their dinner.
So what was going on around campus when the Class of 1962 were part of the student body?
When they enrolled in September 1958 as freshmen, they found a freshman president – Dr. Charles F. Marsh. Several first-year professors were there with them – including professors William Parker in physics, David Prince in education, and Fred Adams in sociology.
During the class’s time at Wofford, Main Building was renovated to within an inch of its life, the old Cleveland Science Hall was replaced by the new, modern Milliken Science Hall, and the science annex was renovated and became the Black Music-Arts Center. Forty years later, current students have used the new Milliken Science Center, with renovations to the 1961 wing, a renovated Main Building, and a new Montgomery Music Center.
Students read about movies in the Old Gold and Black and saw them at Spartanburg’s downtown movie theaters. They watched TV in the Greene lounge, or perhaps in a fraternity house, although they probably could choose between only 2 or maybe 3 TV stations. They complained about the food in Buice’s Bistro, and laughed at the number of squirrels roaming around campus. They danced (!) to the tunes of Buddy Morrow and his Night Train orchestra at the winter ball. Many of them pledged one of the fraternities.
Professors Ross Bayard, John Bullard, and Marcus Griffin joined the community during their senior year. During that year, the class pushed for an increase in the student activity fee. The comprehensive fee was $1,440 for resident students and $770 for day students. This was lower than Converse, Furman, Davidson, Sewanee, Randolph-Macon, and other peer colleges. There were 832 members of the student body in 1961-62, and 138 students graduated with the class of 1962. We’ve almost doubled the student body, and the class of 2012 was more than twice as large as the class of ’62.
College officials were thinking about what it meant to be part of a liberal arts college. President Marsh, in a state of the college address, told the students that “we want you to feel that our academic standards in the fullest sense of the term are high. Second, we want your college years to be years of cultural and aesthetic growth, and to be years in which your understanding of world problems is broadened. We want literature, the fine arts, music, and appreciation of the cultures of other parts of the world to become treasured parts of your lives. Finally, we want you to get the full benefit of being a part of a Christian college. In this connection, we want to help you grow in grace spiritually while you are here, and build a reasoned philosophy of life and traits of personality and character that accompany a permanent set of values.”
Many of them will be happy to know that those same kinds of questions are still being discussed here today.
I’m hoping to write about some of Wofford’s Commencement traditions this month. I also like to share new things that come across my desk. And I like to share old documents when I find them. Today, you get a three-fer. A new package of items archival arrived in my mailbox this afternoon. One of the new documents was a 1922 Commencement invitation and program. Below are the pages.
First Page of the program
The page below shows the annual events, debates, and reunion of graduates that took place as part of Commencement Week.
Events of the first three days
This page shows the major Commencement addresses – the religious service, the president’s address, and the graduation ceremony itself. The Speaker, former Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels of North Carolina, is perhaps best remembered as the man who was Franklin Roosevelt’s boss at the Navy Department during the Wilson administration.
Events of the final two days
These are the members of the class. The program belonged to Guy M. Nelson. Graduation takes up considerably fewer days now, though it remains one of the highlights of the year.
Saturday, May 5 marks the 20th anniversary of the dedication of the Franklin W. Olin Building. The building opened in February 1992, though it was not 100% complete, and so the formal dedication, with fairly elaborate ceremonies, took place near the end of the spring.
The Olin Building Dedication Program
For those of us who have been around the college for a while, it’s hard to believe that twenty years have passed. And it’s hard to remember what a big deal the Olin Foundation grant was at the time, and what a game-changer the building was for the college.
Before Olin, we didn’t really have much in the way of educational technology. Most of our classrooms were pretty old-fashioned, with old desks, chalkboards, and for the most part, the rooms were all the same shade of off-white. The Olin Building was colorful (most of us were unfamiliar with peach, salmon, light blue, and lavender classrooms!), the desks and chairs were modern, and many of the rooms had video presenters, whiteboards, and lots more computers. The teaching theater, with its long desks and comfortable chairs, quickly became a popular meeting space. Olin replaced other places on campus where students wanted to study, and its computer labs were a considerable improvement over the old VAX lab in Main.
The Olin Foundation had rejected our initial grant request, prompting the college to refine and articulate its vision in a year-long planning process. They liked what they had encouraged us to do, and in 1989, awarded us a $5.5 million grant for this building, which was to house Wofford’s foreign languages, mathematics, computer science, and education departments. Information technology would be in the building as well. Other departments later moved to the building. Dr. B. G. Stephens managed much of the building’s planning and early use.
Roger Milliken, Olin President Lawrence Milas, President Joe Lesesne, and Dr. Larry McGehee
The college, with the leadership of Dr. Larry McGehee, planned a series of events to celebrate the building’s dedication. The dedication itself, held on the lawn in front of the building, featured representatives of the Olin Foundation, the campus, and the community. Four local fourth-graders, who would be potential members of Wofford’s class of 2004, were invited to cut the ribbon, and the college commissioned a work of music, the F. W. Olin Overture, to commemorate the occasion. The Olin Foundation folks told the college that they’d never had a musical work written for them before. I can say, from my readings in college records, that Larry McGehee was thinking about and planning the festivities a year in advance, and it set a pattern for really nice campus celebratory events in years to come.
Fourth-graders cut the ribbon
As part of the festivities, the college hosted a symposium where 15 leaders in education and other fields talked about the liberal arts college’s mission, technology, and the role of the liberal arts in a good society. The symposium was recorded and later broadcast on South Carolina Educational Television.
I remember marching in the procession to the Olin Building for the dedication as a sophomore, and I remember the excitement that came with dedicating a very forward-looking addition to the campus. I also remember taking a class in the teaching theater in its first semester. It is hard to believe that there was a time that Olin was the newest and best thing on campus, but it’s important to remember that it was just the first of many steps toward creating a better Wofford.
We’re heading into Commencement season, that period from late April through May where we celebrate the achievements of our graduating class and prepare to send them off into the world. Last week, we celebrated Phi Beta Kappa Day by inducting 35 of our students and recent graduates into the nation’s oldest scholarly honor society. This week we’ll hold the annual honors convocation, and everything culminates in Commencement weekend, which is now less than 3 weeks away.
Wofford has a number of Commencement traditions, and over the next few weeks, I’ll try to talk about some of them. I’ll also try to highlight some stories of graduations and classes in the past.
Class of 1912 in their junior year
One hundred years ago, the Class of 1912 was preparing to graduate. They numbered some 47 young men, a good bit smaller than our current senior class. The history of their class, published in the Bohemian, noted than when they first gathered as a class on Sept. 16, 1908, they found 82 members of the class. They remembered looking with “reverent awe” at the seniors and with “holy horror” at the faculty.
Their history recounted the inter-class football and baseball championships – there was no intercollegiate football in their four years – as well as the winners of various oratorical contests. They must have been good at baseball, for their class won the campus tournament for three consecutive years. Forty-one of the graduates came from South Carolina, the others were from North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Texas.
J. Lyles Glenn '12
A number of the class went on to have interesting careers. The catcher on the varsity baseball team, J. Lyles Glenn, became a Rhodes scholar, only the college’s second alum to hold that distinction. Another classmate, Robert L. Meriwether, was the head of the USC history department and founder of the South Caroliniana Library, one of the state’s foremost archival collections of South Carolina history. Another graduate of the class of 1912, Philip M. Hamer, was on the history faculty at the University of Tennessee, produced a scholarly history of Tennessee that was akin to that of South Carolina by his mentor David Duncan Wallace. In 1935, he joined the staff of the newly-created National Archives, and went on to head the National Historical Publications Commission in the National Archives. He also edited the papers of Henry Laurens.
Philip M. Hamer '12
Dr. Hamer was also the president of the Southern Historical Association for a term.
There are, of course, others who made a name for themselves and did honor to the college. Wofford may have changed a great deal in the last century, but students still gather in Main Building, still work for the approval and respect of their professors, and still celebrate their graduation with friends, classmates, and family members.
I really can’t imagine how David Duncan Wallace wrote all of the things he published.
Wallace, who was arguably the foremost South Carolina historian of his day, generally taught a full load of courses, which in his day was five classes. In the early 1920s, for example, he was teaching two sections of a course in European history, and in alternate years was teaching American and British history. Additionally, he taught a political science course and an economics course. Later, when a sociology-political science professor joined the faculty, he expanded to offer a fourth year of modern history as well as a second economics course.
Since Wofford in the 1920s and 1930s was offering master of arts degrees, Wallace also had to teach graduate courses and supervise master’s research. The faculty was much smaller, and most professors had to serve on multiple faculty committees.
With all of this, how could he possibly find time to research and write as many books, articles, and lectures as he did? I guess his commute from his home to his office may have helped – he lived in the campus house that Dean Roberta Bigger now occupies. And I guess without having to worry about watching Mad Men or American Idol, he had lots of time to read.
Wallace held deep affection for both Wofford and South Carolina. His great-grandfather, David Duncan, was on the college’s original faculty, and his father graduated from Wofford in 1871. He himself was an 1894 graduate of the college, and after taking his PhD in history at Vanderbilt and teaching at the Carlisle Fitting School in Bamberg, SC, he became the head of Wofford’s Department of History and Economics. He held the chair of history until his retirement in 1947, at which time he was asked to write the centennial history of the college.
In addition to the college’s history, Wallace wrote several books about South Carolina. His Civil Government of South Carolina was published in 1905, and Civil Government of the United States in 1906. A combined version of these books appeared in the 1930s. He also wrote A Life of Henry Laurens about one of South Carolina’s founding fathers. In the 1910s, he wrote The Government of England: National, Local, and Imperial. No doubt these books all came out of his Wofford courses. His Constitutional History of South Carolina came from his doctoral dissertation. But his magnum opus, the work that will undoubtedly never be supplanted, was his 3-volume History of South Carolina. He took four years’ leave from the faculty to prepare this monumental narrative history of the state. A fourth volume, the biographical book, paid for the cost of the book. The History of South Carolina remains an invaluable resource today simply because it was so comprehensive in its coverage of the state’s first 250 years.
As if this wasn’t enough, Dunc Wallace wrote at least two book manuscripts that were never published. He was commissioned to write a history of William Gregg and the Graniteville Company, and a biography of Martin W. Gary, both of which were never published. He became something of an expert on the state’s constitutional history, even pointing out in the 1920s some of the flaws in the constitution of 1895, a constitution that is still in largely in effect. He was part of the first generation of PhD historians in the United States, and his scholarship was rigorous, though it does reflect the prevailing attitudes toward race and region of his day.
Two of Wallace’s students, Charles Cauthen and Lewis Jones, succeeded him in the Wofford history department, and other students went on to earn graduate degrees in history and teach elsewhere. As a professional historian, I am myself only one step removed from Wallace, for I studied South Carolina history under Lewis Jones. I may actually be the last person who is able to make that claim, as I was the youngest person in Dr. Jones’ last South Carolina history class at Wofford.
For his books and his students, and for his public work on behalf of South Carolina’s history, Wallace deserves to be remembered.
This bulletin, published for Wofford’s 75th anniversary in 1929, talks about the college’s early history and mission, but it is by and large a forward-looking, not a backward-looking document.
It goes into some detail about the fairly small number of large gifts that the college had received over its history, and so in no small part it’s a reminder to all of the college’s constituents that greater financial support would be necessary to sustain Wofford.
It also talks about some of the college’s practical needs – a new residence hall, a new heating plant, a new dining room and kitchen, more classroom space. (Some things change, some things stay the same!)
It does not neglect making the case that a liberal arts education is not just about making a living, but also about making a life and serving the public.
Here are some pages from the bulletin. Click on them for larger images.
Recently I asked my student assistant, senior history major Kit Candler, to look through the ROTC/Military Science Department files (a collection she had helped process) and locate some images for an online display.
So, here’s a link to a Flickr gallery of some photographs and documents from the ROTC Papers. The gallery includes scans of some ROTC histories, commissioning programs, insignia, and pictures of some events throughout the detachment’s history. I hope you enjoy flipping through the gallery. I’d embed it as a slideshow, but WordPress won’t let me do it!
David Duncan Wallace was one of Wofford’s more prolific scholars and authors – both in the early twentieth century and throughout the college’s history. Today, I’m sharing an essay he published on the life of John Wesley. For the two of you who don’t know who Wesley was, he was an Anglican priest and, more importantly for our purposes, the founder of Methodism.
