Though private education was more emphasized than public education before the War Between the States, some poor schools and academies were in operation. The first public school house in Laurens County was established in 1810 as a free school or “poor school” for anyone who wanted an education. The school was located on the Laurens-Newberry County line near the Belfast House, the home of John D. Simpson and birthplace of William D. Simpson. The school was funded in 1808 through the estate lands of Dr. Thomas Wadsworth of Charleston in honor of the Revolutionary veterans of the 9thBattalion of lower Laurens District. The Wadsworth poor school carried on until the War, doing much good. Poor children attended for free. Others supplemented the fund. The endowment invested in Confederate bonds and was lost during the war. The first school house in Laurensville was later on Reedy Fork Creek near the residence of Colonel Ball, and its first teacher was Charles Stone. But there were others. Laurensville Male Academy stood on the corner of Main and Academy Streets.
One of the more well known institutions of learning in Laurens County was Laurensville Female College. It was housed in a large brick building on the corner of Main and Church Streets in Laurens behind the Baptist Church.[1]The Laurensville Female College was composed of Primary, Academic, and Collegiate departments. With three stories, fifteen rooms, a museum, and a 1,000 volume library, "this institution was the most celebrated female institution in upper Carolina. . . In the departments of music and art she cannot be excelled by any in the State." Founded in 1858, the school closed during the War, but reopened and struggled through Reconstruction caused by differences which arose and indebtedness which involved a lawsuit in 1875. By 1887, however, the school would rebound to success and have 160 students enrolled.[2]
One mile northeast of Martin's Depot (present Joanna) was a school in the 1860's in a small cabin. Rev. Barnett Smith, the famous Methodist circuit rider, and Billy Metts were the school’s teachers in 1877.[3]
In Clinton, Mr. James Wright had a Methodist union Sabbath school until the war came. A later public subscription got a school building built,[4] but by 1864 near the end of the Uncivil War, Mrs. R.S. Dunlap described the Clinton Academy thus, “The old academy building had gone to ruin, needed paint, all the glasses had been destroyed in the windows, some of the sashes had been carried off and the building was wholly unfit for school purposes in the winter.”[5]
The Clinton Library Society had public lectures for a dime admission at the Female Academy in April 1872 to raise money for a library. With people beginning to move into Clinton again, Dr. Jacobs, ever the visionary, held a meeting on August 31, 1872, in R.N.S. Young's store with the men who had built the Female Academy building and proposed a Clinton High School, coeducational, with a male, female, and music teacher. The men agreed. Dr. Jacobs was made President, and anyone could vote on the board for a $20 contribution. In October Thomas Craig gave land worth $100 for the school, and by December they had a curriculum. In the 1873‑74 academic year, the school had forty‑two pupils. Mr. Nickels J. Holmes[6]and his sister were the first teachers.[7]Jacobs was just getting started. He wrote in his journal in June 1874: “I hereby resolve to establish a college in the town of Clinton, as well as other institutions. I do it for the glory of God and to show that a poor country pastor, living in the least of villages, can do, if he will, great things for God.[8]
Dr. Jacobs was sensing God’s leadership in other similar areas. Seeing the great need of post-War orphans abounding across the South, Jacobs wrote in his diary in July 1872, " If one dollar is offered me for the Home of the Fatherless this month or one child is tendered me I will take it as God's call to this work, and if I enter upon it then my lot is fixed for life in Clinton."
On Christmas morning, 1872, a little homeless boy appeared on his doorstep looking for a warm place. He noticed his hand clutching something tightly, and he opened it revealing a 50 cent piece. When asked what it was for, the boy said, "I am going to give it to you to build that home for orphans." Jacobs refused the money, but the boy left it, and there were no contributions for a month. Then his daughter Florence gave him her savings, and he had a dollar and only a thousand to go. That night Jacobs received five dollars from a man in Charleston. An Illinois woman sent five dollars more, and a Clinton woman gave three dollars. He was on his way. In 1873, Jacobs raised $1360, and he quarried the granite for the first building from a nearby quarry. On January 6, 1874, Jacobs bought and staked land for an orphanage. Construction began May 5, and the cornerstone was laid the 28th.[9] The first building of Thornwell Orphanage, the Home of Peace, was completed October 1, 1875.[10]
[1] Garlington, 46.
[2] Garlington, 47, 49‑50. See Appendix D. Scrapbook, 514. Jean Witherspoon Dillon, History of Laurens, South Carolina, (Presbyterian College, May 22, 1945), 8, adds: "Some differences arose and there was indebtedness which involved a lawsuit about 1875."
[4] Jacobs, Literary, 13.
[6] Nickels J. Holmes, son of the Presbyterian church planter Zelotes Lee Holmes (builder of the Octagon House and church planter of the First Presbyterian Churches in Clinton and Spartanburg), was educated at the University of Edinburgh, was later the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC’s West End. Holmes would nearer the turn of the century become involved in the Holiness Movement and afterwards join the emerging Pentecostal movement, helping frame what would become the International Pentecostal Holiness Church and found what would become Holmes Bible College in Greenville, SC. The session of Second Presbyterian Church revoked his ordination when Holmes accepted the Pentecostal doctrine, but he never acknowledged their action.
[7] Jacobs, Literary, 24‑25. In October 1880, Dr. Jacobs suggested the high school be made a college, and M.S. Bailey approved. Professor William States Lee of Edisto Island and Rev. Zelotes Lee Holmes were the first professors. The prep school was in the charge of "an excellent lady." "It was with a little degree of surprise at our own audacity and of amusement on the part of the town people that we made an announcement of what we had done upon the streets.[sic] It was to be a town institution only, co‑educational to care for our sons and daughters."
[8] Jacobs, Life, 122.
[9] Jacobs, Life, 100, 120; Literary, 81.
[10] Nancy Parks, "Thornwell, Tribute to Founder, William Jacobs," Laurens Advertiser, June 10, 1970.
