“For the purpose of establishing and endowing a college for literary, classical, and scientific education, to be located in my native district Spartanburg, and to be under the control and management of the Methodist Episcopal Church of my native state, South Carolina, I order $100,000 to be delivered to trustees…”
So began item 26 of the will of the Rev. Benjamin Wofford, which he signed on Feb. 1, 1850, 175 years ago this winter.
Wofford’s decision to bequeath most of his estate to establish a college did not happen overnight, and over the past 175 years, many friends of the college have speculated on his motives. Some have given credit to his mother, who died with a book in her lap, for instilling in him the importance of education. Others noted the influence of two particularly well-read Methodist ministers. Still others have credited his first wife, Anna Todd Wofford, both for nurturing the idea of founding a college and for providing much of the funding from her inheritance.
One conversation in the summer of 1849 may have helped Wofford cement his plans. A friend, the Rev. Hugh Andrew Crawford Walker, who was an agent of the American Bible Society, paid the older minister a visit at his Spartanburg home. With only two parties to the conversation, we don’t have a lot of concrete evidence as to what transpired. We do have the will, and we have Rev. Walker’s account of the meeting, which he shared with President James H. Carlisle some 35 years later.
The transcript of that conversation tells of some misunderstandings that Wofford had been laboring under about the desire for a Methodist-related college in South Carolina. It also suggests that Wofford was intent on giving “the greater part of my property to the church” and was thinking of making several smaller gifts to church organizations. Walker said that he shared with Wofford his fears regarding taking that action. Walker believed Wofford would end up doing comparatively little good by spreading the funds so thinly. Walker then asked a question that reverberates down to us today: “Why not found a college, spreading, working, increasing in power and goodness through the ages as they come?”
At the end of the conversation, according to Walker, Wofford said, “I am quite pleased that a college should be founded.” Then Wofford asked Walker to write up a paper on what they had discussed and send it to him quickly, because he felt his time was short. Within a few months, the will was drafted.
We have no other source to corroborate or contradict Walker’s account of the conversation, and we are relying on a memory shared with Carlisle some 35 years later. Walker himself was named in the will to the provisional board of trustees, and except for three years, he served on the board until 1883. So no matter what influence he had on Wofford’s decision, he was closely involved with the college’s growth for its first three decades, and moreover, Walker’s brother-in-law was the Rev. William Wightman, Wofford College’s first president.
Several of the provisions in the will do give some indication of Wofford’s thoughts. He wanted the college to be in Spartanburg, a growing town where he had become wealthy, and he wanted it to be related to the Methodist Church in South Carolina, which did not at that point have a college. He also wanted to be sure the college had necessary permanent funds to start, so half of his gift was for an endowment.
The signing of the will on Feb. 1, 1850, set in motion a plan, and after his death on Dec. 2, 1850, his executors and the provisional board of trustees took the steps to bring his vision to fruition.
Just over four years after he signed the will, and less than four years after his death, a college that the trustees named in his honor opened in a building that still stands at the center of the campus. As the inscription on his and Anna Todd Wofford’s tombstone 70 yards from the building notes, “Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice.” If you seek his monument, look around.