#64: Clemson's founding, Dorn Gold Mine, and a lecture on The Battle of Kings Mountain
For South Carolina history lovers far and wide! Enjoy weekly SC history and upcoming SC historical events
Welcome to the first 100 days of the South Carolina History Newsletter! My name is Kate Fowler and I live in Greenville, SC. I have a 9-5 job in marketing, and outside of work, have a deep love of history. I started this newsletter as a passion project to learn more about our beautiful state and build a community of fellow SC history lovers along the way! To establish a foundation for the newsletter and to grow my expertise on a wide variety of South Carolina historical topics, this past February I challenged myself to post 100 newsletters in 100 days. After this coming May 20th, the newsletter will become weekly. Thank you for joining the journey!
Dear reader,
Welcome to Newsletter #64 of The South Carolina History Newsletter! I’m so happy you’re here.
Here’s a little welcome/update audio message:
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And now, let’s learn some South Carolina history!
Yours truly,
Kate
(Writing from Greenville, SC)
➳ Featured SC History Event
Please enjoy our featured SC History Event below, and click here to visit my SC History Events Calendar that organizes all the upcoming SC history events I have discovered. Please let me know if you’d like to add an event to the calendar! Reply to this email or send me a note at schistorynewsletter@gmail.com.
Wednesday, April 17th, 1:00 pm | “Gumption, Grit and Glory: The Battle of Kings Mountain” | Horry County Museum | Conway, SC | FREE Event
“The 2024 Horry County Museum Documentary Film Series continues with Gumption, Grit & Glory: The Battle of Kings Mountain. Shot on site at Kings Mountain National Historic Park, this locally produced documentary tells how the ‘Over-Mountain Men’, a group of Scots-Irish volunteers from the backcountry of the Carolinas, Virginia and Tennessee, helped to change the course of the American Revolution. The film is free to the public and will be shown at 1:00 PM, Wednesday, April 17th, at the Horry County Museum, located at 805 Main Street in Conway. The Horry County Museum Documentary Film Matinees will continue throughout 2024. For a list of films, visit our website at www.horrycountymuseum.org. For more information, call the Horry County Museum at 843-915-5320 or e-mail hcg.museum@horrycountysc.gov.”
➳ SC History Fun Facts
I.
Did you know that the founding of Clemson University started with the fiery speeches of agrarian reformer and politician “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman?
Listen to this section in the mini audio voiceover below!
In the late 1880s, agrarian reformer Ben Tillman (later called “Pitchfork Ben”) was the leader of the politically powerful Farmers’ Association.
Tillman was unimpressed with the agricultural offerings at South Carolina College (modern day University of South Carolina), and he pushed for the establishment of “a separate agricultural college in South Carolina.”
The movement had been thwarted by conservatives in state government, who did not want a new state-funded college “to compete for funding or prestige with South Carolina College.”
In 1886, through a letter-writing campaign to state newspapers and statewide stump-speaking tours, Tillman harassed the "Bourbon" Democratic state government — criticizing it for its “corruption and mismanagement of the agricultural department at South Carolina College in Columbia.”
Tillman was a fiery orator. His speeches railing against Charleston, Lowcountry, and Columbia politicians won him the adoration of the state's white Upcountry farmers and white mill workers.
Tillman denounced the state’s leadership as a “ring” of “broken-down politicians and old superannuated Bourbon aristocrats, who are thoroughly incompetent, who worship the past, and are incapable of progress of any sort, but who boldly assume to govern us by divine right.”
Tillman argued that the Bourbon Democrats’ educational institutions demonstrated their uselessness. To Tillman, South Carolina College produced “helpless beings,” while the Citadel was “a military dude factory.”
In the heat of this political battle, Tillman and his supporters benefited from a fortuitous turn of events.
In 1888, Thomas G. Clemson, son-in-law of John C. Calhoun, died and left his Fort Hill estate in Oconee County and an $80,000 endowment to the state in order to create a separate agricultural college from the University of South Carolina.
Tillman and his followers seized on the Clemson will and “canvassed the state” urging the General Assembly to accept the bequest and its terms.
Conservative governor John P. Richardson and trustees of South Carolina College led the opposition, arguing instead that the “Clemson bequest be used to strengthen the agricultural program already in place at South Carolina College.”
After almost a year of bitter public debate, in December 1888 the General Assembly passed the Clemson College bill, which a “reluctant” Governor Richardson signed the following year.
Besides the Clemson bequest, additional funding came from the federal government through the Hatch Act and Morrill Act, which provided funds in support of agricultural and land grant institutions.
Ben Tillman would later become governor of South Carolina from 1890-1894, and Senator from 1895-1918.
During Tillman’s governorship, there was a “dramatic rise in the number of lynchings of African-Americans in South Carolina and across the South as a whole.”
Perhaps most damaging in the long run was Tillman’s rhetoric over the course of his career that bolstered the idea that “white violence was justified and to be expected whenever white supremacy was challenged.”
Clemson’s most recognizable campus building was originally known as the “Main Building” and was designed by architects Alexander C. Bruce and Thomas H. Morgan of Atlanta. Construction began in late 1890 and was complete when the school opened in 1893.
Main Building was renamed Tillman Hall in Ben Tillman’s honor in 1946.
Since the late 1960s Tillman Hall has been the home of the university’s School of Education, and its auditorium hosts lectures, concerts, and other events.
In recent years, there has been controversy about whether or not Clemson should rename Tillman Hall building, given Tillman’s stance on white supremacy.
From a Clemson News press release from 2020:
The Clemson University Board of Trustees today approved changing the name of the University’s Honors College to the Clemson University Honors College, effective immediately. The college has been named the Calhoun Honors College since 1982. The trustees also approved a resolution respectfully requesting authority from the South Carolina General Assembly to restore Tillman Hall to its original name of the Main Building, commonly called “Old Main”.
“Clemson University has a long-celebrated history of tradition and excellence, but we must recognize there are central figures in Clemson’s history whose ideals, beliefs and actions do not represent the university’s core values of respect and diversity,” said Chairman Smyth McKissick. “Today’s action by the Board acknowledges that now is the time to move forward together as a more unified Clemson Family in order to make our university stronger today and into the future.”
Tillman Hall has not yet been renamed and debate on this subject continues to this day.
(Note from Kate: There is so much Clemson history to dive into. I will definitely cover more Clemson topics in future newsletters!)
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my sources for this section
Please leave a comment below about Clemson history you’d like me to dive into next!
II.
Did you know that one of South Carolina’s most significant gold mines led to the naming of McCormick, SC?
(Note from Kate: Thank you to subscriber Sarah Wadsworth Bowers for suggesting this topic!)
Listen to this section in the mini audio voiceover below!
The Dorn Mill is one of the most important gold mine sites in South Carolina. It is located near McCormick in McCormick County, South Carolina.
Area resident William B. Dorn discovered gold there and developed this mine which “excavated nearly one million dollars in gold before the vein was exhausted in the late 1850s.”
Dorn used slaves to excavate the dirt and employed several different types of mills to process the gold.
Dorn became a wealthy man but lost much of his fortune after the Civil War.
The mine was sold in 1869 to inventor Cyrus McCormick.
McCormick was famous for the invention of the mechanical reaper. With this invention McCormick had “singlehandedly increased farms' potential yield at least tenfold, with minimal effort by farmers. In 1851, McCormick's machine became an international sensation. He won the Gold Medal at the London Crystal Palace Exposition of that year, then went on to “stun audiences in Hamburg, Vienna, and Paris.” McCormick was elected into the French Academy of Sciences for "having done more for agriculture than any other living man."
Back at the Dorn gold mine, McCormick “spent over $200,000 in a futile search for another rich strike.”
In 1882, McCormick ceased his search for gold and began selling his land which would become the town of McCormick.
Most of the late 19th and 20th century mining took place northeast of the Dorn mine, thus preserving the integrity of the original site. The mine has not been significantly altered.
The mine was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my sources for this section
Have you been to the Dorn Gold Mine? If so, please leave a comment below to tell us about your experience!
➳ Quote from an SC historical figure
“It can hardly be expected that any Negro would regret the death of Benjamin Tillman. His attacks on our race have been too unbridled and outrageous for that. And yet it is our duty to understand this man in relation to his time. He represented the rebound of the unlettered white proletariat of the South from the oppression of slavery to new industrial and political freedom. The visible sign of their former degradation was the Negro. They kicked him because he was kickable and stood for what they hated; but they must as they grow in knowledge and power come to realize that the Negro far from being the cause of their former suffering was their co-sufferer with them.
Someday a greater than Tillman Blease and Vardaman, will rise in the South to lead the white laborers and small farmer, and he will greet the Negro as a friend and helper and build with him and not on him. This leader is not yet come, but the death of Tillman foretells his coming and the real enfranchisement of the Negro will herald his birth.”
— August 1918, a quote from African-American civil rights activist and intellectual W.E.B. DuBois shortly after Tillman’s death and published in The Crisis, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) journal for which Dubois served as editor
The Founding of Clemson article sources:
“Benjamin Ryan Tillman | Clemson University, South Carolina.” Clemson University, South Carolina, https://www.clemson.edu/about/history/bios/ben-tillman.html. Accessed 14 Apr. 2024.
“Clemson Trustees Approve Honors College Name Change; Request Authority to Restore Original Name of Tillman Hall | Clemson News.” Clemson News, 12 June 2020, https://news.clemson.edu/clemson-trustees-approve-honors-college-name-change-request-authority-to-restore-original-name-of-tillman-hall/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2024.
Howe, Linda. “Clemson University | South Carolina Encyclopedia.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/clemson-university/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2024.
Kantrowitz, Stephen. “Tillman, Benjamin Ryan | South Carolina Encyclopedia.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/tillman-benjamin-ryan/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2024.
Sauls, Bradley S. “Tillman Hall | South Carolina Encyclopedia.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/tillman-hall/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2024.
Dorn Mine article sources:
“Cyrus McCormick.” We Are Invention Education | Lemelson, https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/cyrus-mccormick. Accessed 14 Apr. 2024.
“Dorn’s Mill / Dorn Gold Mine.” The Historical Marker Database, https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=243241. Accessed 14 Apr. 2024.
“National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: Dorn Gold Mine.” Nationalregister.sc.gov. http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/mccormick/S10817733009/S10817733009.pdf. Accessed 14 Apr. 2024.
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Harvey Gantt integrated Clemson University in 1963 by entering into Brackett Hall on the Clemson University campus. If you stand at Brackett’s front door and walk north-north west for five minutes you will be at Tillman Hall. If you walk due south from Tillman Hall for six minutes you arrive at the Fort Hill house. If you walk south-east from the Fort Hill house for 16 minutes you arrive at the Strom Thurmond Center. If you stand at the Strom Thurman Center and walk north for 7 minutes you arrive back at Brackett Hall. In a hilly walk of just over half an hour you can encompass the entire racial history of Clemson University, from slavery to Jim Crow to racial integration.
Just a clarification: Main Building was renamed Tillman Hall in 1946.