Clemson University - Taps Yearbook (Clemson, SC)

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The Old Kan A Campus Scene.

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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CLEMSON COLLEGE AT FORT HILL. CHAPTER I. With the birth of Thomas (i. Clemson in the city of Philadelphia in July, 1807, the curtain rises on the history of Clemson College. Morrill, Tillman and Simpson, and the other chief figures in the history of its establishment, were not yet born. Leaving home at sixteen, Mr. Clemson went to Eng- land and then to France, where for a time he was a soldier of fortune in the French Revolutions of the early eighties. From fighting he turned to education. and through the assistance of friends, entered the celebrated School of Mines in Paris. After four .years he graduated with high honors as a chemist and engineer. No doubt it was in the atmosphere of this great foreign technical college that he received those impressions which later led him to advocate a technical college for his adopted State, and write i nto his will there can be no permanent improvement in Agricul- ture without a knowledge of those sciences whic.i per- tain particularly thereto. Returning to his native country, Mr. Clemson located in Washington, and there in the practice of the pro- fession of a Mining Engineer, accumulated consid- erable money. In the shape of ti per cent, bonds, $58,539.50 of this money was to be dedicated to the maintenance of Clemson College. In Washington Mr. Clemson met and married Senator Calhoun ' s eldest daughter, and in that marriage Providence fixed the location of Clemson College at the old homestead of John C. Calhoun. | When the war broke out, Mr. Clemson and his only son entered the Confederate service. After the war. Mr. Clemson ' s family located with Mr. Calhoun ' s widow in Pendleton. Here he became an active mem- ber of the now century-old Pendleton Farmers ' Society. and in 1866 was its President. That same year the minutes of the Society show him the Chairman of a Committee which was to appeal to the citizens of the State for aid to furnish an institution for educating our people in the sciences, to the end that our agri- culture may be improved, our worn and impoverished soil be recuperated, and the great natural resources of the State be developed. Again in 1869 we read that Mr. Clemson — Entertained the Society for half an hour on the sub- ject of scientific agriculture and the importance of scientific agricultural education. The history of the Fort Hill property on which the College is located is too long and intricate for this short article. Briefly, the principal facts are these. Mrs. Calhoun died in 1866, leaving a bond and mort- gage on the Fort Hill property, which had been sold to her brother, Andrew I ' . Calhoun, to Mrs. Clemson and her daughter, then Mrs. Gideon Lee of New York. Mrs. Lee died in 1S :S, leaving one daughter, Floride Isabella Lee, and seventeen days later her brother, John Calhoun Clemson, was killed in a collision on the Blue Ridge Railway. After much litigation, the property covered by the mortgage was sold at public auction January 1. 1S77. at Walhalla, and Mr. Clemson as trustee for his wife and granddaughter, bought it in for $15,000. It is said that Mr. Clemson paid $6,964.43 from his private funds to cover the cost of a decade of litigation. in L873 a division of the estate was made between Mrs. Clemson and her granddaughter, (Mis. Lei portion comprised the propert] on which the Hotel and Experiment station are mm located, Lai College bought this for $111. nun.) Mrs. Clemson died in September, 1875, leaving all her property to her husband absolutely and in fee simple, and appointing him as executor ol her will. It had long hern understood between them that which- ever survived would will the propert] to the State for he purpose of establishing an Agricultural College. Nl1 Clemson died on April 6. 1SSS. and was buried in the Episcopal churchyard in Pendleton. In lite be was the moving spirit in South Carolina tor the establishing oi an Agricultural College, and in death he left practically all that he had to that purpose Wi shall see later on bow Mr. Clemson ' s bequest pr ved t le rallying point for those who advocated and were work- ing for a separate Agricultural College, CHAPTER II.— THE MORRILL ACT The Morrill Act. named after its author. Senator Justin Morrill of Vermont, was approved bj President Lincoln in 1862. Under this Act. South Carolina was entitled to 180,000 acres of public lands represented in land script. In 1866, 1868 and again in 1S72. the grant was accepted by the Legislature oi the State, at that time in control of negroes and carpetbaggers, and an Agricultural College set up at i hi 11 in Uni- versity, a negro institution at Orangeburg. As tar as can be traced, the script was sold in .New York at 72 ' 2 c per acre, and the proceeds invested in $191,800 worth of depreciated • ' ■ per cent. State bonds. Later these bonds disappeared. Probably thej were sold and the money squandered. Meanwhile the South Carolina College. Interrupted by the war. was re-opened as the I ' nivcrsity of South Carolina on January 1 . 1866. In 1868 a provision was put into the State Constitution, giving to n. the right to attend the University, and from that date it declined, its doors finally closing June 30, 1S77 In 1879. the whites, being once more in control of the Legislature, made good the State ' s land script by issuing a perpetual 6 per cent. State bond tor $181,900. The interest on this bond was to be divided equally between Claflin University at Orangeburg and an insti- tution in Columbia known as the South Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanics. This College superseding the University, opened in Columbia Oc- tober . .. 1880. In 1882, Dr. John M. MeHrydc. after- wards President of the revived University, was made Tii. lessor of Agriculture and Horticulture. Thirty acres of land adjoining the University campus and forty acres nearby, were used for practical and ex- perimental work in Agriculture. In 188:1 the South Carolina College was re-organ- ize. 1 as such with the Agricultural and Mechanical College as part of it. In October, 1SSS. the second career ot the South Carolina University began with thi Agricultural and Mechanical College as one of its units, the others being the South Carolina College. Claflin University, and the Citadel. The affa Claflin were managed by a Committee of the University Hoard, but the Citadel remained under the manage- ment of its own Hoard.