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Inside Furman is published monthly during the school year by the Furman University Department of Marketing and Public Relations. For story ideas, e-mail John Roberts, editor.
GWC: a part
of our history
By Judy Bainbridge
Fifty-five percent of Furman's students are women; 349 women work here. But the university community knows little about the female half of its history.
Since we celebrate our 175th anniversary this year, we should. We trace our heritage to the 1826 founding of the all-male Furman Academy and Theological Institution in Edgefield.
But our female roots are deeper.
In 1820 Greenville established academies for boys and girls where Heritage Green is now located. (Think Academy Street.) The Female Academy's first principal was a Baptist minister who became chairman of the board that started the Furman Institution.
In 1854, the South Carolina Baptist Convention chartered a "female college of high order" on academy lands transferred to Furman's trustees. (Think College Street.) The property was conveyed with the trust that the university would forever keep male and female schools in Greenville. The Greenville Female Baptist College (the awkward "Baptist" was soon dropped) opened in January 1855, just four years after the university began classes on the bluff above the Reedy River, a mile away.
They were closely connected. Furman trustees controlled the woman's college; Furman professors were its first faculty and frequently taught part-time there in later years.
James Clement Furman, the university president, and Charles Judson, its treasurer, were college presidents during the Civil War, when the university was closed.
But women's education was considered far less important than men's. Furman began with a $75,000 endowment; the Convention made the female college a proprietary institution, rented by its president. University trustees' major concern was that the college's debts (there were many) would not hurt Furman's assets.
GFC, as it was called, had an inspiring Lady Principal, Mary Judson, Charles' sister, who believed in women's right to an equal education. She encouraged generations of students to "do or die for intellectual freedom."
After 1894, the female college was no longer proprietary. In 1908 it finally became independent of university control. President David Ramsay changed its name to the Greenville Womans College and rapidly improved its standards and facilities. But without an endowment, the college could not be accredited. Furman finally attained that goal in December 1924, and in the same month learned that it was a beneficiary of The Duke Endowment.
Duke Endowment funds allowed Furman to survive the Great Depression. GWC was not as fortunate. In 1931, bleeding red ink, it began coordinating with Furman. In 1937 the school officially became the university's woman's college.
Coordination meant buses and taxis shuttling students between "the Hill" (the men's campus) and "the Zoo" (the women's). After World War II, trustees decided to build a large new coeducational campus. In 1961, women joined men at the "new" Furman, and their 140-year-old campus was demolished.
The only reminders of its history are the GWC seal above Judson Hall, the "shack" across the lake, and Mary Judson's portrait in the board room of the administration building.