Category: Documents

For over 150 years, the Main Building’s voice has rested in the top of its west tower in the form of a 700-pound bell.

Wofford’s bell was cast by the Meneely Bell Foundry in West Troy, New York.  Andrew Meneely started the foundry in 1826, after an apprenticeship with Julius Hanks, who was one of the earliest bell founders in America.  (Hanks was a relative of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s mother.)  A split between Meneely’s three sons led to the formation of a second Meneely Foundry in 1870, across the river in Troy, NY.

Together, the two Meneely companies produced an estimated 65,000 bells, many of which hang in churches and colleges throughout the United States.  Bell experts regard Meneely products as being among the finest cast in America.  Both companies went out of business in the early 1950s, due partly to increasing metal prices and partly to the increasing popularity of electronic bells and chimes.  Because of the Meneely family’s position as being among the earliest and foremost bell founders, a Meneely bell today can be a valuable artifact.

The Wofford bell, inscribed “From Meneely’s, West Troy, NY, 1854,” weighs approximately 700 pounds.  The bell is 33 inches in diameter and is supposedly pitched at “B.”  It is held in place by heavy oak timbers about 20 feet below the apex of the west tower roof.

James H. Carlisle, Jr., a member of the class of 1885 and son of the College’s third president, wrote in his Memories of Wofford College manuscript, held in the college archives and available online, that the original faculty members and their wives all went to see the bell before it was placed in the tower.  “This bell,” Carlisle wrote, “has always been noted for the purity and clearness of its tone.  Farmers living four miles from the city tell the time of day by the ringing of the bell.”

When he was the editor of the Old Gold and Black in 1937, Dr. Lewis P. Jones ’38 climbed into the bell tower to survey the campus and examine the bell.  “One rarely notices the bell,” he wrote, “yet it is the main regulator of life at Wofford.”  Counting the number of rings each time the bell signaled a class change, Dr. Jones found that the clapper struck the bell some 1,300 times each week.  Generations of Wofford students made bell-ringing into a part time job, earning scholarships by signaling class changes each day.

Throughout the years, the bell has been the object of student pranks.  The rope has occasionally been cut and the bell’s clapper has been removed on occasion, perhaps by students hoping to postpone a test.  The clapper, the device that actually makes the bell ring when the rope is pulled, was also occasionally stolen by students from other colleges as an intercollegiate prank.

In 2001, the college undertook to restore the bell.  The Verdin Company, a nationally known clock and bell firm headquartered in Cincinnati, installed a new clapper and related hardware along with a new striking mechanism that will allow the bell to be rung by a digital bell controller.  The days of a student receiving a scholarship to ring the bell each hour have long since passed into history.  Today, the bell rings each hour and tolls as students march to baccalaureate and to commencement.

Anyone who has been around Wofford for any length of time knows that Main Building is the heart of the college.  For nearly half a century, it was, quite simply, the college.  No other public buildings existed on the campus.  Though it has been modified a number of times and completely renovated on two occasions, Main Building has always existed in one form or another.

It has existed in its most elemental form ever since the fourth day of July in 1851, when Benjamin Wofford’s hand-picked trustees, joined by friends from South Carolina’s Methodist Conference, and hundreds of citizens of Spartanburg, gathered to lay its cornerstone.  Some four thousand strong, they met on the courthouse square and marched in a procession to a plot of land on the city’s northern border, a plot selected by the trustees and described by the Carolina Spartan as a “most lovely elevation, embracing lawn and woodland, about one half to three-fourths of a mile north of the Court-House.”

The trustees had a plan, prepared by Charleston architect Edward C. Jones, for an Italianate, three story building with twin towers.  Following Trustee chairman and future president William M. Wightman’s fifty-minute address, and with rites led by Spartanburg’s Masonic lodge, the trustees laid the cornerstone.  The cornerstone itself, “a fine specimen of granite” from a nearby quarry, was presented by Major H. J. Dean. It contained a lead box, into which the participants placed a Bible, a copy of
Benjamin Wofford’s will, a lock of his hair and of Maria Wofford’s hair, a copy of the Southern Christian Advocate and the Spartan, and a police report with some statistical information about Spartanburg. In addition, various civic groups, including the Sons of Temperance, the Odd Fellows and the Masons placed materials about their organizations into the cornerstone, and the building committee placed a silver medal engraved with the name of the founder, the date, and the amount of the bequest. Members of the audience placed a few other items in the box, and it was sealed.

Almost a year passed before the building committee signed a contract to build the Main Building, and three years passed before the college opened its doors on August 1, 1854. Meanwhile, in what perhaps is the first example of what we now call “the Wofford way,” the cornerstone’s
location was forgotten. The Spartan wrote that it was in the southeast corner of the building, though Masonic custom would have placed it in the northeast corner. Some speculated that the building might have been built such that the cornerstone was beneath an internal wall.

By the early 1950s, with the college’s centennial looming, officials began to search for the cornerstone in earnest. While he was reading an old issue of the Advocate in November 1953, freshman George Duffie
discovered that the cornerstone was in the northeast corner of the building. On March 2, 1954, the lead box
was removed from the cornerstone, but a leak in the box had caused most of the contents to be ruined. After a few months of display in the library, the contents were replaced in the cornerstone in a ceremony on Founder’s Day 1954. A plaque above the cornerstone will keep members of the community from forgetting
where the cornerstone rests in 2054.

Pictured: a daguerreotype of Main Building, the oldest photograph of the campus, and a portrait of William Wightman, the college’s first president.

The following articles and images are excerpts from the December 1914
and January 1915 issues of the Wofford College Journal, the college’s literary
magazine. Before the days of the Old Gold and Black, the Journal played the role of the campus
newspaper, and included editorials, stories about life on campus, and coverage
of athletic events.  Though many things have changed at Wofford
since 1914, students then as now enjoyed celebrating the holidays with friends,
family members, and fellow students. And
they were proud of their football team, too.

Thanksgiving Day

The
Thanksgiving Holidays are over, and we are looking forward eagerly to the 23^rd,
when we shall board the Carolina Special for the Christmas Holidays. 

Thanksgiving
Day was spent in various ways by the students. Many of them that live in neighboring towns went home and spent the day
with loved ones, but quite a number stayed on the campus. The latter group probably enjoyed the day most,
for there were various attractions in the city to amuse and entertain
them. But the one thing that interested
them most was the large and bounteous boxes from home. After the excitement of the day was over,
many groups gathered in secluded rooms and midnight feasts were in order
everywhere. Many happy hours were spent
in this way, after which all were ready for work again.

The holiday
was brightened up very much by the faces of several old Wofford men on the
campus. Some of them came to see the football
game and old college mates…

In 1914, the college most likely held classes on the Friday
and Saturday after Thanksgiving, so no student was able to travel too far from
campus for the holiday.

January 1915

On December
19 many bright and happy faces were seen to leave the campus and board the
trains for home. Some had to go far, but
all went “home,” and that meant for each joy and happiness. The Freshmen, especially, were
delighted. Many and old boy said that
their love for home and the dear home folks increased every year they were
absent.

But, as
every good thing is destined to end, so were the Christmas holidays, and on
January 5^th Wofford opened her doors again and we had to go to
work. We are glad to see that most of
the boys were able to return to college after spending the holidays with their
parents and friends, but we are sorry to hear that a few of our best fellows
were not able to come back on account of financial and other reasons.

We are
quite sure, however, that those who have returned have resolved to begin the
new year aright and do the best work in the history of their college life. Examinations are upon us now, but we must
pass them creditably, since the faculty has given us such a long period of rest
and recreation.