Author: Phillip Stone

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.

Categories
Documents Students

T-shirts? In the Archives?

Why would an archives have or want a t-shirt collection?

We don’t have a museum on campus, and while archives have traditionally been about written records, sometimes we collect other things that help document life on the campus.  I would be neglecting part of my role as institutional historian if I didn’t try to collect some representative samples of what public historians call “material culture.”

Now, I don’t intend to turn this into a disquisition on the importance of t-shirts.  But don’t we sometimes hear jokes about how many of them our campus organizations create?  I know I used to have quite a few at home – one for every homecoming, one for spring weekends, and I know people who were in fraternities and sororities have tons of them.  They can be really creative.

We don’t have a lot of t-shirts in the archives…yet.  But here are a few, largely, I suspect, from the 1970s and early 1980s.

First, from the mid-late 1970s – the infamous SUTWAK shirt.  I think Mark Olencki took the photo.

SUTWAK, for the uninitiated, stood for Students United to Win a Keg.

Another group, despairing the impending demolition of old Carlisle Hall, came up with this one.

I don’t know if that’s a play on “Hotel California” or not, but the missing “E” does make you think of low-rent hotels with some of the letters burned out.

Finally, on a more serious note, students of Lewis P. Jones came up with this offering.

I don’t know of any current professors whose faces have appeared on t-shirts, though I do remember a Wofford religion department shirt with the faces of John Bullard, Charlie Barrett, and Bill Mount on one side and the phrase “Nil illegitimi carborundum” on the other (I’ll let you figure out the translation!)- or something close to that.  I wouldn’t mid seeing a few of my faculty colleagues inspire a modern t-shirt!  And if there are other interesting vintage t-shirts out there, let me know!

Categories
Alumni Students

The Class of 1857

We often remember our first graduate, Samuel Dibble of the class of 1856, who was the only student to graduate in that year.  But we don’t talk as much about the second graduate, or for that matter, any of the six graduates of the class of 1857.  Mr. Dibble, as a transfer student from the College of Charleston, managed the amazing feat of completing two years’ work in one academic year.  Several of the 1857 graduates actually enrolled on opening day in 1854.

The first name in the college register is that of James Newton Carlisle, who enrolled in the sophomore class in August 1854, at the opening of the college.  He came from the Goshen Hill section of Union, SC, and was 17 at the time he came to college.  As with each of his classmates, he gave an address at commencement.  His was on “History.”  He received a Wofford master’s degree in 1868.  He apparently was not related, not closely, anyway, to Professor and President James H. Carlisle.

Spencer Morgan Dawkins also enrolled on opening day, entering the sophomore class.  He also came from Union County, though from the area near Pacolet in Spartanburg County.  He was 21 years old.  We don’t know much else, but we do have a receipt for his tuition.  His commencement address was on “Law and Dignity of Labor.”

Four other members of the class of 1857 enrolled and entered the sophomore class in January 1855.  One was George Cofield, who, like his classmate J. N. Carlisle, came from the Goshen Hill section of Union County.  Cofield was 20 and was the second honor graduate of his class.  As such, he gave his salutatory address in Latin, which the newspaper noted that he did acceptably.  He later became president of Spartanburg’s Board of Trade – the chamber of commerce, president of the National Bank of Spartanburg, a fire insurance company, and other businesses.  Cofield served in the South Carolina Volunteers for much of the Civil War.

Robert Edge Bowie, age 18, came to Wofford from Abbeville County.  His 1857 graduation address was an oration on Cicero.

Charles Petty, at age 20, came from the Limestone Springs section of Spartanburg County.  That area is now in Cherokee County.  He had graduated from the St. John’s School in Spartanburg before coming to Wofford.  He was the first honor graduate of the class of 1857, and his address was on “The Dangers and Duties of Educated Men.”  He also offered valedictory remarks. He went on to become a long-time president of the Wofford National Alumni Association and was editor of the Carolina Spartan, the local newspaper.  A Confederate veteran, he served briefly in the legislature.  An active member of the Spartanburg community, he was around to give remarks at the dedication of Wofford’s first library building in 1910, and he died just past his 80th birthday in 1915.

The last of those January 1855 enrollees was William Maxwell Martin.  He enrolled from Richland County, and his father was a Methodist minister in the South Carolina Conference.  His commencement address, “The Calico Flag,” was regarded as the best of the talks.  Martin was later known as the “first martyr of Southern Independence” – they claimed he was the first soldier to die in the Civil War.  He died in February 1861 after suffering from exposure while standing by his cannon at Fort Moultrie.  Martin was an author, with a book entitled “Lyrics and Sketches” published posthumously.  There’s a monument to his memory at Washington Street United Methodist Church in Columbia, where his father served as pastor. 

The six “second graduates” of Wofford College led different careers, and several distinguished themselves as leaders in their communities.  Their service to their college, church, and community set a standard for future Wofford alumni to follow.

Categories
Alumni Photographs Sports

The mysteries of early football

This morning I received a call from an alumnus who wanted to know if I had a photo of the last Wofford football team to defeat South Carolina, which would have occurred sometime around 1900.  He had seen the photo somewhere and wondered if he could get a copy.

I didn’t recall seeing the photo, but considering that I don’t know a lot of the specifics of Wofford’s early athletics history, and also that there are a lot of things in files that I have yet to discover, that doesn’t mean much.  So, I set about the research process.

The alum told me that an ancestor of his had played in the game. That gave me a clue as to where to start looking.  His ancestor enrolled in 1900.  The football media guide lists all of the games our team has played – at least all of the ones for which records have been located.  Sure enough, Wofford beat USC in football on November 18, 1901, by a score of 11-6.  Apparently the game was in Spartanburg.

So, we’ve confirmed that there was a game, and that Wofford won it.  But what of the picture?  (And there are some other questions, but we’ll get to those later.)

We have a collection of football scrapbooks maintained by my predecessor.  Checking in the oldest scrapbook led me to a photocopy of a picture from a Columbia newspaper from 1948.  The photograph recalled a great Wofford team of the past, which it identified as the 1900 team “which defeated the University of South Carolina and Furman and lost only to Clemson in the state.”  But that’s not correct.  The 1900 team did lose to Clemson and Davidson, tied in one game with Furman, and beat Furman in the other game.  There wasn’t a recorded game with USC.  In 1901, Wofford won 3 games – Kings Mountain, Asheville, and USC, and lost games to Georgia Tech, Bingham, and Furman.  So, it goes to show that if you aren’t careful, information recorded in newspaper captions can lead you astray.  Our literary magazine, the Wofford College Journal, acted as the campus newspaper during the first years of the 20th century, and their records echo athletics records, and often provide some details of the game.

So is this a picture of the 1901 team?  The researcher’s ancestor is listed in the photo.  I am guessing that it probably is the photo in question.

But what of my other questions – one has already been satisfied – the alum’s ancestor was in the picture, so I don’t have to break that bad news!  The other one, the assertion that “this was the last time that Wofford beat USC in football” – well, that’s not quite true.  Wofford beat Carolina on November 16, 1917 as well, by a score of 20-0.  Wofford and USC played sporadically in the early years, and even in the 1950s, but those games are rare now.

Photo of the 1901(?) Wofford football team, from the Wofford football scrapbook.  

Categories
Brushes with History Documents

Dickens at 200

I heard on the radio this morning that today is Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday.

My thoughts immediately went to the lock of his hair that is in my office safe.  Yes, you read that right.  Strange things often wind up in archives and special collections.  This was the gift of a Wofford alum some years ago.

I’ve shared this before, but it seemed too good to pass up.  If you’re on campus today, come by and take a look in person if you like.

 

Categories
Academics Students

Interim in recent years

The 1990s and 2000s saw continued change in Interim.  As the Cold War ended and Wofford’s programs abroad offerings increased, faculty and students began to travel to more places outside of Western Europe and the Caribbean.  In the early 1990s, travels to Russia and Eastern Europe became easier – though students had traveled to Czechoslovakia as early as 1969 – and trips to locations in Asia and Africa became more common.  At the same time, internships and service learning opportunities grew considerably.  While pre-medical, pre-law, and accounting internships had early starts, pre-veterinary, pre-dental, congressional, and other pre-professional Interims became popular.  Service-learning Interims also became increasingly popular.  In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for example, several Wofford students and faculty did relief work in Mississippi.

Perhaps the biggest change in Interim hasn’t been the increased travel opportunities or the diverse places students and faculty can travel, or the greater opportunities to see what a career in law, medicine, the ministry, accounting, or in a non-profit might be like.  The on-campus projects themselves have changed.  While offerings in earlier decades focused on reading great books, studying issues, focusing on particular events, or investigating a topic in the professor’s discipline, more recent projects have been more interdisciplinary.

While film interims were popular fairly early, the rise of the VCR and the DVD, and now other streaming video sources, have made them much easier to put together.  The 1990s and early 2000s saw a surge in Interim projects that looked at films.  Lest you think that spending a month watching movies is easy, imagine having to watch and analyze films as texts.  There’s a lot more to teaching and learning with films than eating popcorn.

A number of Interims gave students new experiences and skills, such as welding, cooking, various computer programming projects, digital photography, web design, and quilting.  These projects all had academic and practical components.  One group around 2008 studied the world of professional wrestling, even sponsoring their own January Smackdown!  I witnessed this one myself.

Through the last 45 years, Interim has become one of Wofford’s hallmarks, and students and faculty often talk throughout the fall about what they are going to do in January.  Alumni still talk about things they did in each of their Interims.  I remember studying the Federalist Papers and the Presidents through Biographers’ Eyes.  I took part in a college bowl Interim, where we worked on our own skills, but also sponsored a campus-wide tournament.  Most memorable was my own congressional internship in January 1993 in Sen. Strom Thurmond’s office, where I got to do everything from watch a Supreme Court oral argument, see a president of the United States inaugurated in person, watch Senate committee hearings, and sit in the Senate staff gallery and watch the president’s cabinet confirmed on a voice vote.  Along with those special moments, I also got to spend a month as a Washington commuter, found all sorts of things to do, and learned that living for a while in a big city was kind of fun.

Interim shows that learning happens in classrooms and labs, on tour buses, in internship settings, and in independent research into a topic of student interest.  While calls come periodically for a re-evaluation of the program, and even in the 1970s people wanted to “tighten up” the requirements, the basic structure of the program remains as it was envisioned in 1968.  The types of projects may be very different today (well, except for the perpetual courses on fencing, debating, personal income tax preparation, and theatre performances), but the experience remains much the same.

Categories
Academics Faculty Students

Interim in the Late 1980s

Interim continued to mature in the late 1980s, and although traditional classroom projects continued to dominate, internship opportunities increased. In addition to law, medicine, dentistry, ministry, and accounting, the opportunity to undertake internships in a congressional office became available.

The bicentennial of the Constitution provided an opportunity for a number of inter-related projects in 1988.  Perhaps not coincidentally, Dr. Linton Dunson’s project on “The Philadelphia Convention, 1787” was the first listed project.  Others that related included Dr. Richard Wallace’s “Economic Analysis of Common Law and the Constitution of the United States,” Dr. Tom Thoroughman’s “Evolution of the English Constitution,” Dr. David Tyner’s “Contemporary Perspectives on the Constitution,” Dr. George Martin’s “The Life and Mind of James Madison,” Dr. Ta-Tseng Ling’s “Summing Up at 200: What’s Happened to the Words We Live By,” and a few others.

The college also sponsored a series of talks and a symposium during Interim on “Perspectives on the Constitution” with eight faculty talks throughout the month, two each week. Many of the leaders of constitution-themed Interim projects, including Professors Thoroughman, Martin, Dunson, Tyner, Packer, Simpson, Stephenson, and Wallace lectured on various topics. The symposium featured Nobel laureate Dr. James Buchanan along with Dr. William Leuchtenburg and Dr. Eugene Miller, and the library sponsored a National Archives traveling exhibit on the constitution’s bicentennial.

Travel projects remained fairly heavily focused on Europe and the Caribbean. The traditional Ireland Interim, Vienna, Madrid, the Dominican Republic, and Quebec were among the travel projects offered in 1988.  Britain, Madrid, the Caribbean, and the Bahamas were among the offerings in 1987.

Fencing, debating, and taxation made re-appearances, as did projects on specific books or writers.  The theater and music departments put on a production of Grease, and students undertook independent research on campus and in other parts of the world. One student actually studied the effects of the Chernobyl radiation leak in Norway.  Interim continued to offer students opportunities to explore interesting topics, practice their foreign language skills, see different parts of the world, or explore a career.

Photo: The cast of Grease, 1988.

Categories
Academics Photographs Students

Remember The Cowpens – 1968

One of the 1968 Interim projects deposited some of its materials in the college archives.  Here are some photos from the “Remember The Cowpens” project from that first Interim.

Notice the snow on the ground – let’s just say that when they camped out on the Cowpens battlefield, these students really got to experience what it would have been like 231 years ago this week when Daniel Morgan’s soldiers fought the British under Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton.

 

This project involved studying the Battle of Cowpens from all angles.

Below are some more photos.

The banner, which is also in the college archives, represented a fictitious unit that participated in the re-enactment.  Another photo shows participants attempting to re-create a flanking maneuver – probably part of the famous “double envelopment” executed by Morgan’s men.

Click on each image for a larger version.  These images come from two scrapbooks maintained by students in the project, which means they are 44 years old.

Double Envelopment

Categories
Academics Faculty

Interim in the Late 1970s

By the late 1970s, Wofford’s faculty members had ten years of experience in planning Interim projects.  The process for considering and approving faculty and student proposals had been codified somewhat under assistant dean of the college Jerry Cogdell, who handled much of the administrative work of making Interim run smoothly. Over time, faculty members had become more adept at creating innovative projects, collaborating with each other, and developing new experiences for students.

In 1978 and 1979, projects that have become regular parts of Interim were being offered.  Constance Antonsen was offering a fencing interim, Joe Killian was using the term to organize a college debate team, and students were able to study film as literature. Project offerings saw a mixture of in-class projects, such as Linton Dunson’s study of the Philadelphia Convention, Dennis Dooley’s study of Finnegans Wake, and John Bullard’s project on religious cults, and outside projects, such as field archaeology with Professors Adams, Harrington, and Abercrombie and photography with Vivian Fisher.  The internships that students today value were getting organized, with Don Dobbs’ Institutional Medicine, David Prince’s Student Teaching, and pre-law internships with Dan Maultsby. John Pilley offered a project entitled “Man’s Best Friend” – a study of dogs. Students in that project can say that they knew him well before his national television appearance with Chaser!

The practice of performing a musical had also become established.  Professors J. R. Gross and Vic Bilanchone led a production of The Threepenny Opera in January 1978.  The custom of a joint music-theater performance has continued fairly regularly since the 1970s.

Travel offerings had improved considerably since 1968. In 1978, Vince Miller took a group of students to New York, Professors DeVelasco and Forbes took students to study the Visigoths in Spain, and Dennis Dooley and Ed Henry took students on a literary and cultural tour of Ireland, a practice that Dr. Dooley continued with one of his faculty colleagues virtually every other year until his retirement. In 1979, Tom Thoroughman took students to England to study history there.  Jim Gross, Joe Killian, and Walt Hudgins took students on a 4-week study of arts, culture, and politics in modern Europe. Constance Antonsen took another look at the Renaissance in Italy and France.

Interim, then, by the late 1970s had evolved into something much like students in the 1980s and 1990s would find it.  While some faculty had moved beyond the four walls of the classroom, and internship and travel projects became more common, many professors chose to study a topic different from their discipline but within campus.  After a decade, Interim had become a definite fixture at Wofford.

Categories
Alumni Students

Henry Z. Nabers

Students asked their professors for letters of recommendation even in the 1890s.

Some time back, I got a collection of letters about an alumnus named Henry Z. Nabers, an 1893 Wofford graduate.  Most of the letters were about him rather than by him.  In this case, they were letters from professors and employers attesting to his good character and work qualities.

There was also an interesting gem from President James Carlisle.  Dr. Carlisle, trying to allay young Mr. Nabers’ concerns about the economy, told him that when the Secretary at Washington released his fifty million, some of it would come to him.  A bailout before the term was coined!

To see the collection of letters, go here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/wofford_archives/sets/72157628221332691

 

Categories
Academics Faculty

Early Travel Interims

Last week, I shared some selections from the first Interim catalogue, from January 1968, when Wofford became one of the first colleges in the South, and apparently the first in the Carolinas, to move to the 4-1-4 schedule. The projects varied from those that focused on the classroom to those that used the world as their classroom.

Today, I want to share a little more about some of the projects.  The first Interim featured three international travel projects.  Professor Constance Armitage Antonsen took a group of eighteen students to Italy, where they studied Renaissance art in Florence, Milan, and Rome, with side trips to many of the towns in between Florence and Rome.  The trip concluded with a stop in Madrid on the way home.  Most of the students had already taken the introductory art history course, so the trip reinforced what many of them had seen in the classroom. Professor Antonsen told the Old Gold and Black after the trip that they had seen “virtually every important piece of Italian art.”  Students chose a particular phase of Italian art for more intensive study.

Professor Jacques Forbes took a group of eighteen students to Switzerland. On their fifteen-day trip, students visited Zurich, Lucerne, Berne, Lausanne, St. Moritz, and Geneva, and saw sights ranging from the headquarters of the International Red Cross and the League of Nations. Students researched Swiss culture and prepared papers on various subjects.

A third travel project saw sixty students and four professors travel to Mexico, where the students stayed in private homes with Mexican families.  Each student had assigned tasks, and they met as a group every other day.  The project was led by Professors Paul Lofton, Joe Lesesne, Joaquin Develasco, and Richard Remirez.  The group spent two weeks on campus before traveling to Mexico, concentrating on Mexican history and government.  They spent much of their time in and around Mexico City.

Other on-campus projects involved students examining problems of air pollution in the Spartanburg area, atomic energy, and Great Decisions, 1968.  The Great Decisions project brought a number of regional speakers to campus for discussion and presentations, including former Southern Regional Council president James McBride Dabbs, journalist William D. Workman, attorney and future federal judge Matthew Perry, and a State Department official to talk about Mexico.

These projects took students to other parts of the world and brought the world to Wofford.

Photos (above) – students and Professor Forbes in Switzerland.  (Below) – students and Professor Parker studying nuclear energy at Oak Ridge, TN.