2014 Meeting Information 
13 
WOFFORD COLLEGE 
A History of Wofford, 1854-2010 
On July 4, 1851, the future Methodist Bishop William Wightman came to a 
beautiful site on a high ridge overlooking the tiny courthouse village of 
Spartanburg, South Carolina. As more than 4,000 people looked on, he 
made the keynote address while local Masons laid the cornerstone for 
Wofford College. A distinguished professor and journalist as well as a 
clergyman, Wightman stressed that the new institution would pattern itself 
after neither the South’s then-elitist public universities nor the narrowly 
sectarian colleges sponsored by some denominations. Instead, he argued, “It 
is impossible to conceive of greater benefits—to the individual or to society— 
than those embraced in the gift of a liberal education, combining moral 
principle ... with the enlightened and cultivated understanding which is the 
product of thorough scholarship.” 
Wofford College later experienced both good times and hard times, but it 
stands more than 150 years later as one of a handful of pre-Civil War 
American colleges operating continuously and successfully on its original 
campus. It has offered carefully selected students a respected academic 
program, tempered with concern for the individual. It has respected the 
virtues of continuity and heritage while responding with energy, optimism and 
excitement to the challenges of a changing world. 
Like many of America’s philanthropic 
institutions, Wofford College came about 
because of the vision and generosity of 
an individual. Benjamin Wofford was born in 
rural Spartanburg County on October 19, 
1780. Sometime during the great frontier 
revivals of the early 19th century, he joined 
the Methodist church and served as a circuit 
rider (itinerant preacher) for several years. 
In 1807, he married Anna Todd and settled 
down on her family’s prosperous farm on 
the Tyger River. From this happy but 
childless marriage, which ended with Anna’s 
death in 1835, Mr. Wofford acquired the 
beginnings of his fortune. At the age of 56, 
the widower married a much younger 
woman from Virginia, Maria Barron. They 
moved to a home on Spartanburg’s courthouse square, where he could 
concentrate on investments in finance and manufacturing. It was there that 
Benjamin Wofford died on December 2, 1850, leaving a bequest of $100,000 
to “establish a college of literary, classical and scientific education to be 
located in my native district and to be under the control and management of 
