#56: The founding of USC, Abbeville Opera House, and Family Day at Middleton Place
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 #56 of The South Carolina History Newsletter! I’m so happy you’re here.
Here’s a little welcome/update audio message:
As always, I’d like to also extend a special welcome to the following new free subscribers — woohoo!
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I hope you enjoy today’s newsletter, and as always, please feel free to reply to this email with your ideas and suggestions on South Carolina history you’d like to learn more about. I’m only a click away.
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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.
Saturday, May 11th, 10:00 am - 3:00 pm | “Family Day at Middleton Place” | Middleton Place | Charleston, SC | General Admission starting at $10
“Bring the whole family for a day of celebration, demonstrations, and hands-on activities. Learn about the many skills the free and enslaved people practiced throughout the Lowcountry’s long, rich history. The day will include:
Horse Trimming by Fox & Cedar Farms
Indigo Dying
Wool Felting Crafting with Kim Keelor
African Seed Exchange Project
Colonial Games
Pottery Crafts
Candle Making
John’s Island Knitting Group
Border Collie Demonstrations by Red Creek Farm
Hands-on Brick Making
And more!
Included with General Admission. Children 13 and under receive free general admission on May 11th!”
➳ SC History Fun Facts
I.
Did you know that the University of South Carolina was founded with literary societies for their students that encouraged debates and trained young men to become active in public affairs?
At the turn of the 19th century, tensions had begun to arise between the Lowcountry and the Backcountry on issues “jeopardizing the South Carolina way of life.”
To “promote harmony” between these two regions of the state, the University of South Carolina was founded as “South Carolina College” on December 19, 1801, by an act of the South Carolina General Assembly initiated by Governor John Drayton.
The college opened on January 10th, 1805 with an initial enrollment of 9 students, and incorporated a “traditional classical curriculum.”
The first president of the college was the Baptist minister and theologian Reverend Jonathan Maxcy. Maxcy was an alumnus of Brown University, with an honorary degree from Harvard University. Before coming to South Carolina College, Maxcy had served as the second president of Brown and the third president of Union College. Maxcy's tenure lasted from 1804 through 1820.
Compared to the sprawling campus it has today, when South Carolina College opened in 1805, there was only one building on campus: Rutledge College. The entirety of the college’s activities, student, and academic life was housed in this one place. It served as a “an administrative office, academic building, residence hall, and chapel.” Note that it was also located “one block southeast of the State Capitol.”
However, the master plan for the original campus called for a total of 11 buildings, all facing a “large, lush gathering area.”
In 1807, the original President's House was the next building to be erected.
The building now known as DeSaussure College followed shortly thereafter, and the remaining 8 buildings were constructed over the next several decades.
When completed, all 11 buildings formed a U-shape open to Sumter Street. This modified quadrangle became known as “the Horseshoe.”
Slave labor and slave-made bricks built the original campus. Slave labor also “played a large role in the maintenance operational duties of early campus activities including cleaning of student tenements and faculty duplexes, and the preparation of meals.”
As with other southern universities in the antebellum period, from the beginning, South Carolina College created “literary societies” for students, which were the precursors to modern day fraternities and sororities. Literary societies hosted formal debates on topical issues of the day, and also encouraged their members to write original essays, poetry, music, etc. As a part of their literary work, many literary societies also “collected and maintained their own libraries for the use of the society's members.” College societies were the “training grounds for men in public affairs in the nineteenth century.”
The first literary society at South Carolina College was the Philomathic Society, of which nearly every student at the college was a member. On February 21, 1806, the Philomathic Society split into 2 sister societies: the Clariosophic Society and the Euphradian Society, which still exist at the college today.
Maximillian Laborde, professor of rhetoric at South Carolina College from 1842–65 and honorary member of the Clariosophic Society, wrote: “It is, perhaps, not saying too much to add that in our educational system, [literary societies] are the nursery of eloquence, and they gave the first impulse to many of the distinguished men of Carolina who have added so much to her renown in the halls of the state and national Legislatures.”
South Carolina College acquired a reputation as “the leading institution of the South” and attracted several noteworthy scholars, including Francis Lieber (a pioneer in the fields of law, political science, and sociology), Thomas Cooper (economist, college president and political philosopher), and Joseph LeConte (professor of chemistry and geology).
I look forward to writing more about the history of the University of South Carolina and its distinguished alumni! Also, if you are a fan of Gamecock sports history, our subscriber Alan Piercy is the author of the South by Southeast - A Gamecock History Newsletter, and the book Gamecock Odyssey — you should check them both out! We will have to do some history about the Gamecocks in the newsletter soon!
II.
Let’s look at the history of the Abbeville Opera House
At the turn of the 20th century, there were many "road companies" of shows originally produced in New York. One of the more popular tours “went from New York to Richmond to Atlanta.”
For a number of years, Abbeville served as the “overnight stop” for these touring companies. Since the companies were coming through the town anyway, the Abbeville community began the discuss the idea of their own facility in which to sponsor these shows.
On October 1, 1908, what was then the Abbeville District dedicated a new Abbeville County Courthouse and City Hall. The grand old theatre now known as the Abbeville Opera House was a part of that original pair of buildings "equal in beauty of architecture and modern conveniences of any in the state," according to regional newspaper accounts of the day.
From that time on, all the "greats and near greats" played on the Opera House stage. The theater thrived as a venue for touring productions of “popular Broadway plays and musicals like The Ziegfeld Follies, Shakespeare, Vaudeville acts, minstrel shows and burlesque.”
Beginning in the 1920s, the opera house also became a popular venue for motion pictures, which eventually replaced live theater entirely on its stage.
The Abbeville Opera House continued as a movie theater until the 1950s, when “the accessibility of television caused the death of many of the nation's movie houses.”
The space sat largely unused until the late 1960s, when a local community theater group began a campaign to restore and renovate the opera house to be used for its original purpose: presenting live theater. Today the opera house has been restored in full 1900s style; the only “modern changes to the theater's design are the addition of more comfortable seats and the installation of air-conditioning.”
Today, the refurbished Abbeville Opera House operates year-round. The 218 newly refurbished seats face a 7,800-square-foot stage. The balcony has 92 seats and the turn of the 20th century boxes seat up to 6 people in each of the four box seats. See their lineup of upcoming shows here!
Have you seen a show at the Abbeville Opera House? If so, leave a comment below and tell us about your experience!
➳ Quote from an SC historical figure
“Last Saturday night the Clariosophic Society met again after the three months’ vacation, and we had a very spirited debate afterwards, one more interesting I have not often witnessed. It was advanced by Landrum on the question, “Is there more evidence of the existence of God than of the existence of matter.” That the knowledge of the existence of matter implied or carried with it the idea of a soul, that the soul was immortal not eternal, it must have had an originator, that the originator is God, in fact that the evidence of the existence of a God preceded the knowledge of the existence of matter. By Loque, that the world could not have taken its form and have had all its revolutions and motions from chance, therefore, it must have had a maker, that the idea of the maker goes before the idea of the matter because we see nothing has the marks of design upon it without previously knowing it had an author, and therefore the evidence. These were what I considered the most valid that were used. An election comes off next Saturday night for officers of the Society. Allen and Lipscomb are the candidates for the presidency. I hope that Allen may be elected. This morning I arose a hour before recitation (half past 5 o’clock) put on a clean shirt as I always do on Wednesdays, looked over my lesson, went to recitation, and was not called upon."
— From the diary of Giles Patterson, who kept a journal of his stay at South Carolina College from 1846 to 1848
Sources used in today’s newsletter:
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Great piece, Kate! Thanks for the shoutout as well. Keep up the excellent work!