The Furman Academy and Theological Institute

Edgefield County, 1826

Although the Reverend Richard Furman died the year before, the founding of The Furman Academy and Theological Institute in Edgefield in 1826 fulfilled a lifelong vision of the Baptist leader. As the pastor of Charleston’s First Baptist Church from 1787 until his death in 1824, Furman had promoted both religious education for ministers and general academic education for the laity. In 1821, Furman and a small group of Baptist ministers established the South Carolina Baptist Convention, which “considered as a primary object”...“the gratuitous education of indigent, pious young men, designated for the gospel ministry” through “the organization and support of a seminary of learning in this state”...“under the patronage of the general convention.” In its first twenty-five years, the university struggled to survive financially. It tested three locations before its move to Greenville in 1851.

The Furman Institution in Winnsboro

Fairfield County, 1837-1850

In 1837, the school, now called The Furman Institution, relocated to land in Fairfield County near the plantation of the Reverend Jonathan Davis, the Reverend James C. Furman’s father-in-law. "In 1837, the school moved again to Winnsboro in Fairfield County and briefly added a manual labor component to the curriculum. The new site was near to the plantation of James C. Furman’s father-in-law, the Reverend Jonathan Davis, a Baptist minister and chairman of the Furman Board of Trustees, who owned more than seventy slaves and used that wealth to build the campus." "James C. Furman’s own slaveholdings in Winnsboro (mostly gained through his marriage), when he moved to Greenville in 1850-1851, were 56 in number...".