Bicentennial Exhibition Part I on display at Duke Library

As part of Furman’s ongoing bicentennial commemoration, the James B. Duke Library presents an exhibition about Furman’s first 100 years. “Furman’s First Century: A Bicentennial Exhibition, Part I 1826-1926” runs through May 2026 and is located in the 2nd floor gallery of the library. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Poster by Rick Jones ’90, Furman University Libraries.

The exhibition traces Furman’s 1826 roots as the Furman Academy and Theological Institution in Edgefield, South Carolina, to the High Hills of the Santee in Sumter County in 1829, to its move to Winnsboro, South Carolina, in 1837, and to its location south of the Reedy River in downtown Greenville when the university was chartered in 1851. In the 1850s, Furman University shared faculty and administrators with Greenville Baptist Female College, later renamed Greenville Woman’s College, which merged with Furman in the 1930s.

Jeffrey Makala, associate director for Special Collections and university archivist, says the exhibition represents a tale of two colleges whose shared Baptist heritage shaped Furman in many obvious and nuanced ways.

“The core tenets of providing a solid liberal arts-based residential education for young people, whatever their intended professions, and sending them out into the world well-prepared for life’s challenges, is something that has remained constant,” Makala wrote. “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.”