Clemson University - Taps Yearbook (Clemson, SC)

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The Hatch Act, passed In 1887, gave additional Funds picultural research The agitation for a sep- arate Agricultural College made the Unlversitj Trus- tees hasten In their efforts to develop the agricultural work. In May, 1888, i ' 1 acres of land were pun near the present fair grounds Experiment stations were established in Darlington and Spartanburg. ii was in April ol that same year, 1888, that Mr. Clemson died. CHAPTER III. The agitation t divorce the Agricultural and Me- chanical College from the University, in whose classi- cal atmosphere it was claimed to be languishing, was begun by Captain mow Senator) B. It. Tillman at the Bennettsvllle meeting t the South Carolina Agricul- tural Society in August, 1885. Tin- following year, 1886, the farmers met in con- vention at the call of Capt. Tillman, and demanded that the Legislature establish tor them a separate Agricultural College. In the tall of that same year, Mr. clemson. hearing ol Capt Tillman ' s activities, in- vited him to visit him. During the conference, whic ' i v. is also attended by Col. II. W. Simpson and Col. D. K. Norris. Col Simpson pointed out a legal flaw in Mr. Clemson ' s will, whereupon Mr. Clemson called upon him to re-write it. This he did. making of it and instrument that withstood every legal assault. winning its final triumph in the Supreme Court of the United States. The conference was to send ( apt Tillman hack into the State with renewed hope and added zeal. For he saw in the Clemson bequest a turning point in the struggle which the Farmers I rention had initiated. Krom one end of the State to the other, his cr. was for a separate college for the farmers. With his writings and his eloquence he made converts to the cause, and with his harsh in- vective, drove opposition to cover. To Tillman as to no other man. Clemson College is due. Hut for his leadership and power, Mr. Clem- son ' s vision ot an Agricultural College -it the home of his great father-in-law would never have been ful- filled, and Col Simpson ' s work in drawing the will would have gone tor naught. In 1889 the Legislature accepted Mr. Clemson ' s be- quest, the presiding officer. Lieut. Gov. V. L. Mauldin, casting the deciding vote in the Senate. Alter con- siderable delay. Gov. Richardson signed the Act. and the Clemson Agricultural College ot South Carolina at Port Hill became an established tact. In the fight for acceptance in the House. Judge W. C Benet was the leading figure. In the act ot acceptance, the Legislature used tin- following signticant words : The State ot South Carolina herchv expressly de- clares that it accepts the devise and bequest ot Thomas (. Clemson subject to the terms and conditions set forth in his last will and testament. Chief of these terms and conditions were the fol- lowing : ill That the State of South Carolina would erect and support at the homestead of John C. Calhoun an Agricultural and Mechanical College to he known as The Clemson Agricultural College ll 8 I IJi That the Governing Hoard should consist of 13 members, ot whom Beven should he life and self-per- Ing members, the other six to he selected hy the State in such manner as tin- Legislature should : Ibe. Ill accepting the last condition, the Legislature di- rected that nine votes would he neo.-ss.ii v to transact all fiscal affairs, thus giving veto power to tic Trustees in all matters of expenditure ot funds The land script and Hatch funds that had come to the t ' liivcrsitv were now diverted to Clemson College, as was practically ail the property ot the 1 ilina College of Agriculture and Mechanic in December, 1890, ( ' apt Tillman became Governor ot South Carolina, and under his guidance the lature laid the foundations of Clemson ' s growth and present greatness bj giving to the College for its erection and maintenance the fertilizer tax over and above the cost of inspection and anal CHAPTER IV. The first meeting ot the Hoard of Trustees was in the siiring ot 1891. Mr. Clemson had named in his will as Life Trustees. It. V. Simpson and If. K, Norris. ot Pendleton; B. It. Tillman, ot Trenton; M. L. Don- aldson, ot Greenville; K. E. Bowen, ot Pickens; .1 E Bradley, ot Abbeville, and .1. E. Wannamaker Matthews. The Legislature elected .1. L. Orr, of Greenville; .1. E. Tindal, of Pinewood; E. T. stack- house, ot Little Koch : Alan Johnstone, of Newberrv ■ H Hardin, ol Chester, and D. T. Bedfearr, of Mt. Croghan. Col. K W Simpson was elected President of the Hoard and served in that position for seventeen years No man in South Carolina ever loved ( leu better, or served it more faithfully than did tl Soman, whom .Mr. Clemson spoke of in his writings as my trusted friend. The cornerstone of the College was laid with Masonic rites .lu 1. and the doors opened to students in July, 1893. Enrollment the first - was 146. Trot. H. A. Strode ot Virginia was the tils ' President. CHAPTER V. From small beginnings, Clemson College has grown to he a veritable young giant among Colleges. Its attendance has doubled since the first year, its area has increased from Ml to 1554 acres, its property from about $250,000 to more than one and a third million. Its graduates number 1,459. The number of individ- uals who have attended reaches over 5,600, and the number of matriculations 15,9 Clemson College is not a college merely — it is a great public service Corporation whose worth must be measured by the total of the service it renders Through its extension work and other public activities, the College campus has been extended to include the entire State. The institution has indeed become the fireside university of our agricultural people. This is an historical sketch, not an argument. Whether it were wise to create a separate Agricultural and Mechanical College, located in one corner ot the State, apart from the State University, is now an academic question. To speculate upon the chances that agricultural and mechanical education would have to develop in the classical atmosphere of the Southern State University ot thirty years ago is like- rutlle. In the face ot an accomplished fact, logic and lamentation are alike impotent. South Carolinians want to know, not what might have been done, but what has actually been accom- plished. In Clemson College itself is the answer ! w ii an President. Clemson Agricultural College I 9 I

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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.

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ViOW s ffi L II 1 n 0RPRR.0FB00K5 I. ADMINISTRATION I. CLASHES H. MILITARY IVATHLE TICS V. ORATORY VI.PVBLICATI0N5 VH. 5 AT IKE, VHI. ORGANIZATIONS IX.CLVB5 X. ADV KTOE, MENT.S