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Furman's Legacy of Slavery: A Digital Exhibition: Founding a University-High Hills to Winnsboro
Furman students standing next to Winnsboro historical marker
Image credit: Seeking Abraham Walking Tour, Brandon Inabinet
Look closerIn 1837, the school relocated in Winnsboro, SC, in the Fairfield District. The now called The Furman Institution, found a home near the plantation of the Reverend Jonathan Davis, the Reverend James C. Furman’s father-in-law. Davis, a Baptist minister and chairman of the Furman Board of Trustees, owned more than seventy enslaved laborers and used his wealth to help fund the construction of the campus. For the next fourteen years, the campus would run working farm and plantation of 557 acres, providing experiential learning opportunities for faculty and students. This experiment proved to be a disaster in terms of resolving retention issues among students who did not want to engage in farm work.
Brick from the Furman Institution, Winnsboro Campus
Furman University Special Collections and Archives
This brick is from the Winnsboro campus. Note the impression made twice by three fingers on the surface of the brick, evidence of its maker's hand.
Whose fingers are those impressed on this construction brick?
Stewardship Report to the Furman Board of Trustees
RG 45/004 Winnsboro, Board of Trustees, Box 1, 1839
Furman University Special Collections and Archives
In this semiannual report to the trustees, the campus steward reports on the revenues and expenses occurred since the previous report of December 1838. Of special note on page two of the five page report are revenues of $643.08 from the sale of cotton the previous autumn, and expenses of over $700 paid to five individuals for the hire of enslaved individuals to work on the plantation.