Furman’s First Century: 
A Bicentennial Exhibition, Part I 
1826-1926

     In its first century alone, Furman University was located in four sites in South Carolina. It began as the Furman Academy and Theological Institution in Edgefield, named by the South Carolina Baptist Convention in honor of the Reverend Richard Furman, who died the previous year. The small school struggled and moved to the High Hills of the Santee in Sumter County in 1829, near where the Furman family had first settled in the 18th century, and where there was a strong Baptist presence. The founders were ambitious, and a new site with a large acreage was acquired in Winnsboro in 1837. The student body there was larger, but never exceeded 100. After many challenges, the institution sought both a state charter to offer Bachelor’s degrees and a move to a more favorable city. Furman University was chartered in 1851 and moved to a site just south of the Reedy River here in Greenville.  

     Also in town was the Greenville Baptist Female College, founded in 1854. The two institutions shared faculty and administrators over time and had a similar mission. The renamed Greenville Woman’s College would eventually merge with Furman in the 1930s, so this exhibition is one attempt at telling the stories of two separate but related institutions. Because of their strong Baptist influence, both schools had deep connections to churches and associations throughout South Carolina and into North Carolina and Georgia from which to draw a student body and as sources of financial support and scholarships. 

    Furman’s and GWC’s first hundred years shaped the university of today in many obvious and subtle ways. The core tenets of providing a solid liberal arts-based residential education for young people, whetever their intended professions, and sending them out into the world well-prepared for life’s challenges, is something that has remained constant. Furman students, alumni, faculty, and staff of today share a lineage partly shaped by those who came before us, with all their successes and their faults, and to whom we can look back with understanding, pride, and the wisdom that comes with knowledge and experience. 

    Many thanks are due to Kristina Switzer for the accompanying gallery portrait guide, to Dr. Nashieli Marcano, to our student workers Lila Dawson ’26, Gracie Moore ’27, and Elizabeth Scott ’26, and especially to Rick Jones ’90 for creating the exhibition poster. 

—Jeffrey Makala, Special Collections and Archives