1889

1889 in Clemson History

Events that occurred in 1889:

• The South Carolina general assembly, amidst bitter conflict, votes to accept Thomas Green Clemson's bequest of his Fort Hill property and lands to establish an agricultural college and land-grant school. The result is the founding of Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina. "The Act of Acceptance, though passed by the Legislature in 1888, was printed in the Acts of 1889." (See November 27, 1889.) (Bryan, Wright, "Clemson: An Informal History of the University 1889-1979", The R. L. Bryan Company, Columbia, South Carolina, 1979, ISBN 0-934870-01-2, page 28.)

(The ONLY official names Clemson has ever had are: Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina and Clemson University. That being said, the Board of Trustees sub-headed an 1893 Prospectus of Clemson Agricultural College, "To be Opened July 6, 1893", "S. C. A. & M. College.")

• Henry Aubrey Strode closes Kenmore University High School, a prepatory school for the University of Virginia, in Amherst county, Virginia, to become head of the mathematics department at the University of Mississippi.
• The Easley Oil Mill Inc. is founded, the first corporation in Pickens County. It was organized and built in 1889, and will operate until 1951. Some of the original organizers were: R. F. Smith, W. M. Hagood, R. F. Lenhart, A. G. Wyatt, D. F. Bradley and J. M. Geer. (Hamilton, Hugh, "Oil Mill was first corporation in Pickens County", The Easley Progress, Easley, South Carolina, 2 October 1974.)
• March 9: The Minutes of the Board of Trustees state that at a meeting of the Board on March 9, 1889 it was resolved "that the main building shall be known and called the Agricultural Building." Evidently it was so designated for the next three or four years. (Unpublished files of J. C. Littlejohn, Box 69, Special Collections, Strom Thurmond Institute).
• June 6: Richard Newman Brackett marries Bessie Brandon Craig in Atlanta.
• The Trustee House is completed with funds from the fertilizer tax, the first building erected on the new campus.
• The first intercollegiate football game in the state of South Carolina is played between Wofford and Furman. The Methodists win, five goals to one. (Lander, Jr., Ernest McPherson "Whitey", "A History of South Carolina", The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1960, page 147.)
• John Heisman concludes third of three years as a player at Brown University.
• November 27: After waiting for the resolution of the court challenge to the Thomas Green Clemson will by the father of Floride Isabella Lee, Clemson's granddaughter, to be resolved, South Carolina Governor John P. Richardson signs the Clemson acceptance bill, thus making 1889 the official date of the institution's founding. (Bryan, Wright, "Clemson: An Informal History of the University 1889-1979", The R. L. Bryan Company, Columbia, South Carolina, 1979, ISBN 0-934870-01-2, page 28.)

1888

The 1880's

1890