Categories
Alumni Methodist

Bishop Cyrus Dawsey and Methodism in Brazil

Nearly a dozen Wofford alumni have become bishops in the Methodist Church, and two of those have the distinction of having served as bishop in another country.  One of those, Bishop Cyrus B. Dawsey, was a missionary in Brazil for some 32 years before becoming the bishop of the Methodist Church of Brazil.

Born in Galivants Ferry, SC in 1886, Cyrus Bassett Dawsey grew up in Horry County before finishing his secondary education at the Wofford Fitting School in 1906.  He continued on into the college, graduating in 1910.  He must have felt the call to ministry early, for he was licensed to preach in 1906, and in 1911, joined the South Carolina Annual Conference.  He served the Montgomery Memorial Methodist Church in Pacolet, SC, was ordained deacon in 1913.  The Dawsey family had been interested in missionary work, and had considered service in Japan or Cuba, but a visiting preacher at the Spartanburg District Conference in 1913 had presented the case for missionary work in Brazil so strongly that the Spartanburg District agreed to support a family’s work in that country.  And so, in 1914, the Dawsey family found themselves en route to Brazil.

Cyrus Dawsey was transferred to the Methodist Church of Brazil, an autonomous church of Methodism, and ordained elder there in 1915.  After a year of intensive language study in Piracicaba, the family moved to the interior state of Sao Paulo, where they were pioneer Methodists.  While the young minister traveled, almost like one of the Methodist circuit riders in America a century before, Mrs. Dawsey served as teacher, nurse, midwife, and undertaker in the communities where they lived. She organized activities in the churches they served, taught in schools where they existed and created them when they didn’t.  Their mud home had clay floors, kerosene lamps, well water, and straw mattresses.

The Rev. Dawsey largely brought the Methodist Church into existence in the northwest of Sao Paulo State.  He later served as the district superintendent of that area, and one of the schools he founded grew by the 1960s into a large enterprise.  In 1946, the General Conference of the Brazilian Methodist Church elected him to be their bishop, making him only the second American, after South Carolina native John W. Tarboux, to be elected to that post.  Bishops in that church served five year terms, not for life, and he was re-elected five years later.  The Dawseys moved to Piracicaba, where Mrs. Dawsey died in 1948.  Bishop Dawsey retired in 1956.

Four of Bishop Dawsey’s children entered the mission field.  Ethel and her husband founded a school of sacred music to teach choir directors.  Sarah was the principal of Colegio Bennett, a school in Rio de Janeiro.  Agnes and her husband Will Rogers as a minister family in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, where they ministered to the country’s cowboys, or gauchos,  Cyrus, Jr. and his wife served churches around Sao Paulo State, the area of his birth.  Their youngest daughter worked in Columbia, South Carolina’s Bethlehem Center. Many descendants of the Dawsey and Rogers families are still active in missions and in the Methodist ministry in South Carolina.

Upon his retirement after 42 years of service in Brazil, Cyrus B. Dawsey and his second wife, missionary Lillian Knobles Dawsey, retired to Columbia, and the South Carolina Conference elected him as an honorary member.  He remained in Columbia until his death in 1976.

Categories
Documents Photographs

A 1910 Calendar

We added a number of new items to our digital collections page this summer.

One find was a campus calendar from 1910.  Now, the college published calendars fairly regularly in the 1980s and 1990s – often using vintage photos.  This is one of the older campus calendars I’ve come across.

 

All of the pages are availablein Flickr for this 1910 calendar.

 

Categories
Buildings Documents Photographs

We’re underway…

After a summer full of paper processing, scanning collections, and answering reference questions, with a little vacation thrown in during August, and my annual trip to the Society of American Archivists, we’re pack in the swing of things here at the college.

Obviously, the archives blog took a little hiatus during the last 8 or 9 weeks, which I regret.  But, that seems to happen about every summer.

Nevertheless, things were busy, and I hope to roll out a few digital collections for you, my faithful readers, over the next few weeks.  I will try to highlight a few of the projects we worked on this summer, feature a few Wofford indiviauals, and talk about some college traditions.  And always, as interesting things come across my desk, I’ll share them.

Today, I’m sharing an album of campus photos from the 1929-30 school year.  Many of these pictures appeared in the yearbook that year, and I used a few of them in my Wofford pictorial history that I wrote last year.  (Copies are still available if you haven’t gotten yours!)

Here is a link to the pictures.  Click to play the slide show, or to go look at the photos on Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com//photos/wofford_archives/sets/72157627107392443/show/

Categories
Faculty Photographs Students

Mom Helms

A house mother?

Mrs Helms001 That term might sound very quaint, or even archaic, to students today. The idea that an older woman, older than your mom, would be living in an apartment in your residence hall, would supervise or be a part of dorm life, seems a little strange. In fact, I’m not sure students today would be as comfortable with a motherly or grandmotherly figure down the hall as they, um, studied in their rooms.

But from 1933 to 1954, one such woman was the beloved matron, hostess, or house mother, as the term often varied, of Snyder Hall. Mrs. Inez Brown Helms, known to two generations of Wofford students as “Mom Helms,” had been a high school Latin teacher in the South Carolina Lowcountry when, in 1933, she came to work at Wofford. A Columbia College graduate, Mrs. Helms was the widow of a Wofford alumnus, A. T. Helms, who was a lowcountry school superintendant from the class of 1902.

Recently, my student assistants and I went through a scrapbook maintained by the Rev. Dr. John M. Younginer, Jr, a member of Wofford’s Class of 1953, who was director of alumni and public relations in 1954 when Mrs. Helms retired. Dr. Younginer presented the scrapbook to the archives shortly after Mrs. Helms died in 1968. We listed all of the items in the scrapbook, and the finding aid is now available on our website. You can find it here.

Mrs Helms002Among the scrapbook items are news clippings, photos, and letters of appreciation from students, administrators, and alumni. One article about her said that she “was the ideal. Never censorius, she nevertheless commanded respect for her standards. Never puritannical, she nevertheless could deal with the occasional immature pranks of college students.” That statement probably does not even begin to cover the various kind of student pranks that someone like Mrs. Helms observed.

The idea of a hostess or house mother is one that has probably gone for good, but in her time, Inez Helms no doubt comforted an awful lot of lonely, homesick freshmen, advised them on how to deal with roommates, classmates, professors, and the dean, encouraged them when they got a poor grade and congratulated them when they got a good one. No wonder that hundreds of Wofford students thought of her as their mom away from home.

Categories
Methodist Photographs

Presidents of Brazil?

Pres-brazil001 Archives sometimes wind up with odd items in their collections, and no real explanation of how they wound up there.  I was looking through a file of unclassified photos that’s been in the vicinity of my desk for a while today and examined more closely three portraits of men I didn’t recognize.  Often we have portraits of Wofford faculty members or students, or Methodist ministers, and sometimes these students or ministers are hard to identify.  I’d looked at thse portraits before and had never stopped to try to identify them.  But today I decided that I needed to put this question to rest.

And, as it turns out, if I’d looked more closely at the outset, some things would have become obvious.  Each had a name written underneath the portrait, but I hadn’t quite been able to make it out.  But I noticed a reference to Brazil.  And then I realized the picture had a “Sao Paulo” imprint.  And then I saw the word “president.”  So a little trip over to Wikipedia found a list of Presidents of Brazil, and sure enough, I realized that I have portraits of the first three civilian presidents of Brazil on my desk.

After overthrowing Emperor Dom Pedro II in a military coup in 1888, Brazilians wrote a new constitution and established a republic.  The first two presidents were elected by a constituent congress.  The third president of Brazil, pictured above, was Prudente de Morais, and he was the first civilian and first directly-elected president.  Pres-brazil002He served for four years.  His successor, Manuel de Campos Sales, served from 1898 to 1902 as the second civilian president.  The third civilian president and fifth president of the republic, Francisco Rodrigues Alves, served from 1902 to 1906.

Now, how did pictures of the first three civilian presidents of Brazil wind up at Wofford?  I can’t say for sure, but the folder indicates they are part of the Methodist Conference Historical Society Portrait Collection.  Southern Methodists had a number of connections with Brazil in the late 19th and early 20th century.  Historians have written elsewhere of the flight of some southerners to Brazil at the end of the Civil War.  Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1888 (which angered the few remaining slaveholders and led to the coup against the emperor!)  Still, those connections, and missionary work of Southern Methodists in Brazil forged some strong connections.

One Methodist missionary who served in Brazil, John W. Tarboux, graduated from Wofford in 1877.  He and two other ministers formed the Brazil Annual Conference in 1886 – which was apparently the smallest annual conference ever formed in the Methodist Church.  For years he was the president of the Granberry Institute, which he hoped to turn into a Methodist university there. Pres-brazil003 After he retired in 1921, he moved to Miami, but the organizing General Conference of the autonomous Methodist Church of Brazil in 1930 elected him as their first bishop.  Another Wofford alumnus, Cyrus B. Dawsey of the class of 1910, also served as a longtime missionary in Brazil and in 1946 was elected bishop of the Methodist Church in Brazil.  I suspect that these pictures may have come as part of a gift of materials from Bishop Tarboux.

Photos, top to bottom: Presidents Morais, Sales, and Alves, from the Methodist Conference Historical Society Collection.  Click on each image for a larger version.  

Categories
Alumni

What alumni have done for Wofford

Today I made some brief remarks to Wofford's Heritage Society – the group of students who have ancestors who graduated from the college.  They gathered for lunch on this day before Commencement with their parents and other family members, many of whom are alums.  Charlie Gray '72, who admitted me in 1990, asked me to share some details about ways that alumni have helped the college through the years.  This is a little longer than one of my usual posts, but it's still fairly concise.  

On what was probably a very warm day in July 1859, a group of Wofford’s alumni gathered in Main Building and, with the permission of the Board of Trustees, organized an alumni association.  Like ours today, their gathering was held on the day before Commencement, and when the class of 1859 took their degrees the next day, the number of alumni grew from 18 to 32.  By the way, those 14 graduates of the class of 1859 each had to give a speech at graduation on topics ranging from “Americans Abroad” to “Liberty, not Licentiousness.”  Be grateful for that change.  For decades after, alumni gathered and were a part of Wofford’s multi-day Commencement activities.  Along with literary society debates, baccalaureate and graduation, an alumni banquet and alumni address were highlights of Commencement week.  Were this a true alumni address, you could count on me going on for an hour or more about my selected topic.  Fortunately, this is not one of those addresses. 

As a body, Wofford’s alumni have risen to a number of challenges through the years.  In the 1880s, the college needed to build additional student housing.  The trustees planned to build a few small cottages, but the alumni offered to raise funds to build a larger residence for students.  The trustees accepted their offer, and under the leadership of John B. Cleveland of the class of 1869, the alumni raised the funds to build Alumni Hall.  Dedicated in 1888, that building is still standing – we know it today as the home of the admission and financial aid offices. 

About twenty years later, a group of alumni banded together to build another campus residence – this time as a memorial to the college’s late president who had been such a mentor to each of them.  In 1911, the college broke ground on the first James H. Carlisle Hall – which, when it opened the next year, housed all of the freshmen and sophomores.  This alumni gift helped revolutionize student life, putting nearly half of the student body of the day in one residence and providing a dining room for them as well.  

In the 1950s, the alumni responded to another challenge, this one by newly-appointed trustee Roger Milliken.  He pledged that for every 1% increase in the number of alumni donors, he would contribute $1000.  As a result, in 1956, some 74% of Wofford’s alumni made a gift to the college – a national record.  It’s even more remarkable because in 1954, that number was 12%.  I note than in all of these efforts where alumni joined together, their goal was to help Wofford students. 

Alumni loyalty has been one of the strongest features of the college from the very beginning, and that loyalty has produced many multi-generational Wofford families.  At least four of the first seven graduates had descendants who later earned degrees – and the Civil War kept that number from being higher.  One of first graduate Samuel Dibble’s great-great-grandsons is studying here now.  William Wallace Duncan, an 1858 graduate, was the son of an original faculty member, he was himself a professor here, he and his brother were trustees, and his son graduated in 1881.  His daughters both married alums, and a number of their descendants also graduated from Wofford.  They all believed in Wofford enough to entrust their children’s education to the college.  And their children knew enough from their fathers (and now, mothers) about Wofford to know that they wanted to be a part of that legacy.  You don’t have to do too much digging in Wofford history before you run into all of the interconnections among alumni.  I remember asking my predecessor, Herbert Hucks, who graduated in 1934, if he ever thought about going to college anywhere other than his father’s alma mater, and in a word, he replied “no.” 

Earlier I mentioned the word “legacy” – which is the term often applied to students who have a parent, grandparent, or older sibling who attended the college.   Another definition is that it’s a gift, or something handed down or received from the past or from an ancestor or predecessor.  All of us are the beneficiaries of Benjamin Wofford and of the work of faculty and alumni who have long gone on to their reward.  We are here because others worked to build a college, increasing in power and goodness through the ages, and we are here because we all saw something here that we liked and wanted to join.   That legacy goes well beyond the campus. 

Many of the college’s alumni, after leaving this place, have gone out to do great and good things in their communities.  Maybe they served as teachers or principals in their local schools.  Maybe they led civic organizations or served on volunteer boards, or maybe they provided quiet leadership in a difficult time.  And maybe they influenced someone else to come to Wofford. 

And this service relates to an older definition of the word legacy, from the Middle Ages.  It relates to the office of a legate, to a group of people sent on a diplomatic mission.  Essentially, it was another word for an ambassador or envoy.  As legacies, you’re all envoys or ambassadors for Wofford.  My challenge to you, graduates of the class of 2011 or graduates of classes of years ago:  Go out and be good ambassadors of our alma mater. 

Categories
Alumni Documents

Alumni Notes, 1897

One of the most popular sections in each issue of the Wofford Today is the alumni news and notes.  Various college publications have carried alumni news over the years.  In the 1890s and early 1900s, before a separate alumni magazine or campus newspaper existed, the Wofford College Journal, the literary magazine, carried alumni updates. 

Here’s a selection of alumni updates from the December 1897 issue of The Journal.

Bishop W. W. Duncan, class ’58, will preside at the coming Methodist Conference, which convenes at Florence, S. C. on December 8th.  [Interestingly, the South Carolina Conference will meet in Florence this coming June 8.]

L. C. Cannon, ’71, is running the Thompson Gold Mine in Union County.  The senior class under the supervision of Prof. DuPre, will visit the mine sometime in the spring. 

J. E. Wannamaker, class ’72, is manager of one of the largest farms in Orangeburg County.  He expects to raise a bale to the acre on one hundred acres.  In addition to his farm, he is running a large and paying saw-mill business. 

Rev. A. C. Walker ’75, the father of our star baseball pitcher of last season, is preaching at St. Georges. 

S. J. McCoy, class ’95, is teaching school in the Holly Hill Graded School, Berkeley County.  He is also assisting his father on his farm. 

W. H. Breeland, who was a member of the class of ’00, is taking a medical course at the Charleston Medical College. 

H. C. Folk, class of ’80, is running a mammoth mercantile establishment at Bamberg. 

F. C. Cummings, class ’96, is principal of the Pacolet Graded School.

J. J. Cantey, class of ’95, is taking a PhD course at Johns Hopkins University.

C. B. Waller, class ’92, is taking a PhD course at Vanderbilt University.  [Dr. Waller returned to Wofford and taught chemistry until the 1940s.]

J. J. Burnett, class ’84, is a promising young lawyer of the Spartanburg Bar.  He had the high honor of winning the last Greek medal that was offered at Wofford. 

E. D. Smith ’89, a brother of Prof. [A. Coke] Smith, is a member of the legislature from Sumter County, having been elected by the largest vote ever received by any legislator from that county.  [In 1908, he would win the first of six terms in the U. S. Senate.]

L. M. Dantzler, who completed the Soph. year with the Class of ’99, is studying law at the South Carolina College. 

B. F. Wait, class ’95, after leaving Wofford, took his MA at Vanderbilt and is now studying for his PhD at Columbia University in New York, which he will receive in one more year, making him among the youngest PhD’s as he will only then be twenty-one years of age. 

A. H. Moss ’92 is practicing law at Orangeburg.  He has the reputation of being among the best lawyers of that city, and no doubt in a few years, will be among the foremost lawyers in the state. 

S. H. McGhee, class ’95, is teaching school at Dothan, Marion County.  Sam was the tenor singer of the famous quartette of ’95.

J. A. Wiggins, class ’95, is professor in the Denmark Graded School.

W. K. Smith, ’96, is managing his father’s general merchandise store at Brighton, Hampton County. 

S. C. Hodges, ’95, is clerking in a drug store in Greenwood.

Rev. W. J. Snyder, class ’94, is pastor of the Antreville Station, Anderson County.

H. Z. Nabers, ’93, is teaching school at Coronaca, Greenwood County.

Jones Fuller, ’90, is studying medicine at Vanderbilt.

N. D. Lesesne, ’92, is superintendent of education in Williamsburg County.  [His son, J. M. Lesesne, graduated from Wofford in 1919 and became president of Erskine.  His grandson, Joab Lesesne Jr., became president of Wofford in 1972.]

D.T. Outz, class ’75, is cashier of the National Bank of Johnson, SC.

Rev. H. F. Chreitzberg, ’73, was removed from the Reidville, NC station to the Tryon Street Methodist Church, Charlotte, NC, at the recent session of the Western North Carolina Conference. 

From this, you can see the variety of professions Wofford graduates entered after leaving college.  

Categories
Documents Methodist

The Methodist Advocate and Fort Sumter

In searching for an obituary in the 1861 Southern Christian Advocate earlier this week, I decided to see what the state’s Methodist newspaper had to say about the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861. 

April 4, 1861

Fort Sumter stands where it did a week ago and remains the same as to occupancy and surroundings as last week.  It is believed that it will be surrendered to the state authorities – but when?  Who can tell.  We cannot. 

April 18, 1861

Reports on the reduction of Fort Sumter.  The South has used every effort to maintain the peace consistent with her rights and the first principles of self government.  She has made equitable proposals to the North respecting a division of the property jointly owned by the old Confederacy.  She has offered to account fully for all that self defense required her to possess, and on fair terms to receive what still remained in possession of the U. S. Government.   

In this proposed arrangement, Ft. Sumter was included. But the terms were refused, and after waiting long and patiently for its surrender, when at length by the appearance of war vessels off the harbor, it became evident that to wait longer would be defeat and submission, the troops under the direction of President Davis,  last week attacked and took Fort Sumter.  Peace was sought to the last.  The ultimate proposition to Major Anderson was that he should remain unattacked as long as he believed his supplies would hold out, provided that he took no part in an attempt to reinforce or resupply the fort. 

He would not consent to this neutrality.  He forced the attack, which after over 32 hours bombardment resulted in his surrender. 

Our cause is no longer that of the relations of the negro to the white man, but that of constitutional liberty, that of the right of a people composing a large separate section of the race to govern themselves.  It is a question between free institutions and a military despotism.  If our neighbors prefer the latter, let them have it.  We of the South prefer the former and we will have them or consent to take as the alternative utter extermination. 

Without offering too much commentary, I note that the editors took the position that the North forced the South to attack Fort Sumter and that the South had sought peace up until that point.  The rhetoric of submission to defeat, of a choice between military despotism or free institutions had become common in the region by April 1861.  The battle lines had hardened, opinions had become entrenched, and war had become inevitable.  

 

Categories
Documents Students

ROTC at Wofford

I’m reposting the story I wrote in the Spring 2011 Wofford Today here with some of the images – some of which didn’t make the magazine.

By providing students with the opportunity to serve their country, exercise leadership on the campus, and represent the college in the community and elsewhere, ROTC has been a significant part of student life at Wofford since 1919.

During World War I, students at Wofford were organized into a Student Army Training Corps, and campus life was militarized.   Out of a student body of 218, 187 students were part of the training corps during the 1918-1919 school year.  President Henry Nelson Snyder noted in a letter to an alumnus in the army written just two days before the armistice that “We have been turned into a military post” and that the course of study and discipline had been changed to suit the government’s needs.  The end of the war saw the campus returned to civilian control, but the country’s need for a trained officer corps did not go away.

ROTCCharter001

A Reserve Officers’ Training Corps unit was organized at Wofford in October 1919.  An order from the Secretary of War formally established the unit on December 29, 1919.  According to the 1920 Bohemian, the battalion was reorganized in the spring semester, with future South Carolina Governor and U. S. Senator Olin D. Johnston (who had already graduated) as the battalion commander.  The two companies included some 108 students.

ROTC1925photo Participation in ROTC continued to grow through the 1920s.  In 1925, 267 out of 474 students were part of the corps.  Students in ROTC during the 1920s in the basic course studied first aid, military hygiene and sanitation, military courtesy, and lots of infantry drill, physical training, and minor tactics.  In the advanced course, students continued training and drill, but added field engineering, military history, military law, and administration.  In the summer between their junior and senior years, cadets were expected to attend summer camp for six weeks at Camp McClellan, Alabama.  Students in the advanced course received a subsistence allowance of about $108 a year, plus all of their military equipment and uniforms.  Especially during the Great Depression, receiving uniforms that they could also wear to class and a stipend helped keep many a student in college.  Tuition in those years was just under $100 a year, with room and board costing about $200.

Throughout the time period, the college has strongly supported having ROTC at Wofford.  President Snyder wrote to a colleague in another state that “We like the training it furnishes – the drill is excellent for the physical exercise it gives, and the instruction is sufficiently academic to warrant its inclusion in the curriculum.  Great emphasis is made on preparation for citizenship in time of peace.”  During the 1930s, ROTC was housed in the old gym – not Andrews, which was the new gym then – but Burnett Gym, near where the Burwell Building is today.

Anderson Participation in ROTC remained high throughout the 1930s, and well over 1,000 Wofford alumni served in World War II.  After the war, ROTC continued to have a strong presence on campus.  Even during the Vietnam era, participation remained high.  In the fall of 1968, for example, 188 freshmen signed up for ROTC, and in 1969, 67 members of the graduating class of 264 were commissioned.  The advent of Interim made additional training opportunities during the academic year possible, and in 1969, the ROTC band of 44 students participated in one of the largest Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans.  Led by Professor John Coker and then-Major Ed Hall, they were housed on a nearby aircraft carrier during their stay in Louisiana.

A few weeks ago, the military science department transferred three boxes of materials to the archives, so we’ll be going through those scrapbooks and files this summer and adding them to the existing ROTC and military records here in the library.

Do you have any ROTC stories that you’d like to share?  Let me know – you can post them here.

Images: The 1919 order establishing the ROTC unit; one of the ROTC companies in 1925, and ROTC cadet Rodney Anderson’ 79 (now Major General Rodney Anderson) at advanced camp in 1978.  

Categories
Photographs

Spartanburg’s skyline

Asking someone today to describe Spartanburg's skyline can lead to some snarky comments, but this image, taken from the 1961 Bohemian, shows what downtown Spartanburg looked like from Wofford's campus.  The Montgomery Building is still there, though a few others have been lost to time.  

Vista002
Click for a larger image…