Furman Admissions

You’re currently standing outside of the Admissions Office. This granite slab is taken from the Faculty Residence naer Winnsboro, Fairfield County (image attached as it looks today, with granite slabs as hitching posts for horses out front).

It's humorous--a monument to Furman's biggest admissions failure sitting outside of its Admissions office: the Winnsboro labor experiment.

The Furman Academy and Theological Institute had a hard time finding a home. Begun in Edgefield in 1826, the school moved to the High Hills of Santee (also in the Midlands of South Carolina) after only a few years.

It wasn’t until 1835 when school leaders proposed the idea of moving the Furman Institute to Fairfield County. Rev. Jonathan Davis was appointed to be president of the Furman’s Board of Trustees, which was fitting. Davis was a massively wealthy cotton planter and slaveholder, like many of Winnsboro's white residents, and prominent Baptist politician. Rev. Davis used that wealth to buy 500 acres of land near Fairfield Baptist Church as sight for the new campus.

When the institute first opened in February of 1837, it was a building that measured 120ft by 40ft (a marker stands in its site, pictured). Across the road, the Faculty Residence was built, also a single two-story building. All students were required to work on the farm each day for two and a half hours, and the teachers were expected to be present while the students worked.

From there, things started to fall apart. The school had a hard time attracting students. The ones admitted were not of the caliber of the first generation. Telling white sons of privelege to farm the fields usually worked by slave labor was a tough sell.

The students took to drinking and terrible behavior. Perhaps most phenomenally, on May 1st of the first year, students burnt down the university building by accident and killed one of their fellow students in doing so.

In order to prevent another disaster, students were put in a semi-circle of cabins (built in 1838) around the main building, to be watched by their faculty but without living in the university building itself and risking its existence again. The cabins were placed around the burn site and, in the middle, the new three-story “fire proof” building was rebuilt.

Indeed, we can do more than imagine that the sons of privelege didn't enjoy the several hours of labor and the racial politics it involved--living in cabins doing work under a watchful eye of faculty. When the board began discussing the need to move the institution in the 1840s, future president McGlothlin cited the need for a place with cooler climate and a “larger proportion of white people.” In 1850, it was decided that the new institute would be moved to Greenville.

Reflective Questions:

Given limited glimpses prospective students get in a quick tour, how can Admissions work to enhance Furman's diversity?

How does student labor and privelege play a role in educational inequities today?

Suggested Readings:

"History of the Brown-Hawthorne House and its Furman Institute Structural Components"

Baptist Beginnings in Education, W. J. McGlothlin, Sunday School Board, 1926.

The Life Work of James Clement Furman, H. T. Cook, Alester G. Furman, 1926.

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