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Page 9 text:
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W. E. Burnett Gymnasium, now the Music Hall. Cleveland Street when students boarded there. A CENTURY OF PROGRESS The last dawn had risen on Benjamin Wofford. The lean, lanky ex-circuit rider, grim and avaricious of countenance whom men called miser, lay dying in the early hours of morning, at peace with the world. Upon his tomb in a back-country church- yard were carved these words: He gave to the country and to the church an institution for the benefit of which countless thousands yet unborn may have reason to be thankful and reverence the owner ' s name. Wofford is gone but in a sense he lives still in the hearts, hopes, and dreams of those whose footsteps have echoed down through the years across a campus, rich in the memories and traditions of the past. He was in a sense more important in death than in hfe, for this tall, sinister figure, whose one good eye gleamed balefully from behind thick green spectacles, left a legacy which no man could anticipate from a miser ' s horde. Upon this slender foundation has been reared an edifice of spiritual grandeur, which over the past hundred years of progress has sent its graduates into every station of hfe, and has sent its graduates to the far-flung corners of the globe. It is our inten- tion to trace within these pages the amazing growth of Wofford College since the first students entered the original classrooms a century ago. The past is spent but the glorious tradition which it has woven will live on in perpetuity so long as there are Wofford men who love and revere their Alma Mater. We intend in this volume to restore through the medium of word and picture som.ething of the lustre of bygone days, to revive a fireside memory or two for an old graduate here and there who may out of curiosity leaf through these pages and remember men long dead and events as long forgotten with nostalgic reminiscence. Within these pages are, for example, to be found photographs of past presidents of the college, who step by step have raised the institution they served from the depths of poverty and despair to the pinnacle of success and prosperity — men who though gone and largely forgotten by a student body, which if it thinks of them at all, thinks only of mute chapel portraits of unknown figures of yesteryear, dressed in the picturesque costume of an era long past, hve on in the lasting monuments of bricks, stone, and mortar which surround us in the quiet beauty of a campus scene. There is on another page, for example, a photograph of Bishop W. M. Wightman who made the keynote address at the laying of Wofford ' s famous cornerstone, a monument not merely to things physical, but even more a spiritual dedication initiating a milestone in the history of education which can never be forgotten. A few lines from this magnificent oration of a man who was destined to serve as the first president of the college and the first chairman of the Board of Trustees might not be inappropriate here. And now having drawn upon your patience thus far, we address ourselves to the laying of this cornerstone. We lay it for thee and in the name of the Holy Ghost, for the good of posterity we plant the foundation of this institution. After the lapse of ages, and amid whatever chances or changes may in the eventful future befall our political institutions, may this corner- stone support a fabric still flourishing in its early freshness. And sooner crumble this granite into dust than perish from the minds and hearts of our countrymen and successors the great principles which have t his day been enunciated and which lie at the foundation of all our virtues as individuals, all our glory as a nation. Even as Wightman spoke these words the storm clouds of secession were gathering ominously over the nation and many of the South ' s traditional institutions were being grievously threatened. War came, but even amid the clash of musketry and the roar of cannon, the college continued to operate, though it was at the time httle more than a Greek classical school with only a handful of students too young to engage in the mighty struggle going on around them. In connection with this dramatic era might be mentioned the 5
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Page 10 text:
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Raising the colors towards the end of World War I. dr.imaric legend of the lost cornerstone. A block of hollowed- out granite of considerable size was chosen to serve as a foun- dation stone for the Main Building, and consequently as a subject of the lines quoted above from Bishop Wightman ' s stirring address. Within its hollowed interior was placed a large lead box containing numerous valuable documents relating to the founding of the college and to the personal history of the founder and his family. There was, up until a very recent date, a fabulous legend current, sprung from sources unknown, the gist of which was as follows. Toward the close of the War Between the States, according to the legend. Union cavalry swept down through this section of the South, burning and pillaging. The favorite targets of their looting were the cornerstones of old buildings which often contained priceless relics and occa- sional!) items of monetary value in the form of bonds and securities. One dark winter ' s night, late in the war, (so goes one version of the story) word was received in Spartanburg that a detachment of blue-clad cavalry was approaching the town. The freemasons who had presided over the laying of the cornerstone feared that the object of their attentions a decade before might be stolen by the marauders, and, that same night, removed the granite block from its original position on the northeast corner of the building and concealed it, so went the since discredited legend, in some other portion of the edifice, possibly in one of the tall towers flanking the portico. The exact location of the cornerstone was forgotten in the turmoil of those turbulent days and until ver) ' recently eluded discovery, remaining the source of heated speculation down through the ears. Duiing the days of reconstruction, amid the disorder of the timcN, the aliiablc relic was forgotten. The men who re- mo ed it that dark, siorm - night dared to trust no one with their secret in the da s when the carpetbaggers rided and ruin was spix ' ad throughotu the land. S the time the lawless era had ended, all who knew the exact location of the missing relic were eithei ' dead or hail v.tnished, none knew where. So went a rom.mtic legeni.1 groiuul n absurdit but marxeloush ' fasci- n.itnig ne ei tlieless. I here was, however, one salient fact of undoubted truth ui this extremeU colorful saga of another da ' . 1 lie cornerstone was lost; whether h carelessness or in some manner more thrdhng ' as not known. The question of its location was agitated by college antiquarians down through the years and just prior to the writing of this article was still an unsolved enigma. It was only during this the centennial year, however, that a really scientific and systematic search was insti- tuted for the missing memorial, involving the most modern scientific equipment and the finest scholarship available. A mine detector was to be employed to comb every inch of the century- old Main Building in studied determination to divest her silent walls of the mysterious secret they had held so long. The search commenced on an unusually warm and sunny November morning and ended three hours later in apparent failure. Only once was there a strong reaction from the me- chanical device employed, and this to the great disappointment of the curious onlookers turned out to be only a rusty nail of no great antiquity. It remained for a freshman, George Duffie, to find information leading to the location of the long-sought objects of such frantic searching. While browsing through moldering piles of old and dusty manuscripts, lying neglected and forgotten upon an obscure shelf in an almost unused corner of the Whiteford Smith Library, Duffie and a companion stumbled across an antedated copy of the Southern Christian Advocate containing an article from the pen of Bishop Wight- man, locating in precise detail the exact position of the missing granite. On the basis of this new information the search was renewed, this time at the northea.st corner of the Main Building, resulting very quickly in the uncovering of the long-sought foundation monument. Ante-Bellum days saw not only the disappearance of the cornerstone but more happily the steady expansion of the college both in regard to physical plant and enrollment. It was during this era under the able leadership of the col- lege ' s second president, gray-bearded A. M. Shipp, that the lit- erary societies and the Greek letter social fraternities began to rise into prominence. After President Shipp resigned in 187 5 the college entered upon a great period of physical expansion. In Shipp ' s day the entire physical plant was to all intents and purposes concentrated in what is today Main Building, including classrooms, dormitory space and dining hall and library. Greek and Latin were the principal subjects taught and they were Senior class at the turn of the century, about 1897. 6
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