Greenville history: Before Furman University, there was Furman Fitting School

Before Furman University constructed its first building above the Reedy River, its first preparatory classes had already begun.

In their initial advertisement for the new Greenville institution, trustees announced in December 1850 that “a classical school” preparatory to The Furman University would open in February 1851. Tuition would be $40 a year; the annual cost of room and board, $100.

The first principal was Peter Edwards, a well-educated young biblical scholar who had been teaching at the Furman Theological Institute. He held classes on the second floor of McBee Hall on Main Street.

That school, which effectively closed the already faltering Greenville Male Academy, was essential for students wanting a college education, given the lack of public education and the varying levels of private tutoring.

These first preparatory classes were the beginning of a tradition of high school-level education at Furman that lasted, on and off, for nearly 60 years. Those classes, as well as those at the university, ended at the start of the Civil War but resumed in 1866.  In 1869 the university, under intense financial pressures -- it was sliding into bankruptcy -- canceled the preparatory program

When trustees resumed it in 1879, classes were taught wherever a room was available — sometimes on the campus, sometimes in the old Galliard schoolhouse in the West End or the former Baptist Church on McBee Avenue. Instructors were generally recent Furman graduates teaching a year or two while deciding on a career; the position was a kind of revolving academic door.

Initially, out-of-town students at both the university and in the preparatory program boarded with families in town (for moral Baptist influences and no cost to the university), but by the late 1880s, students were allowed to  organize themselves into “messes” for shared dining and room expenses. Eventually messes occupied three on-campus cottages.

But in 1899, the university received a legacy that allowed it to construct a 38-room student dormitory, complete with dining facilities. Enough money remained after an appeal to local businessmen to build a small, cheap ($3,000) classroom building for the preparatory program.

It became the Furman Fitting School, opened in the fall of 1900. Its tin-roofed brick classroom building included an auditorium seating about 100, four recitation rooms, and two faculty offices. The school was “under the management” of Hugh C. Haynsworth, at the remarkably high salary of $1,000 a year, including supervising students at Mess Three. He had two assistants. Haynsworth held a master’s degree in English and had done further graduate work, which might have led to the generous-for-Furman salary.

By the end of September 1900, the school enrolled 87 full-time students and 24 part-time ones. Prices hadn’t changed much since 1850. Tuition was $50 in the classical program and $40 in the entirely English one, while room and board averaged $8-$10 monthly, and laundry was $7.

The term “fitting school” was not new to Greenville. The Wofford Fitting School had been successful in Spartanburg for 15 years, and there were several more academies with the same title in South Carolina, as well as Emory and Henry Fitting School in Virginia.

It certainly filled a void. Public education had begun in Greenville in 1888, but in 1900 the Central School on Westfield Street offered only eight grades. It would add a ninth grade five years later. 

The school was, the trustees reported, “supplying a long-felt need in the way of education for young boys that are not sufficiently advanced to enter colleges.” Classes included English, mathematics, history of England, Scotland, and Germany. Latin and Greek were offered for the many students planning on ministerial careers. Botany was taught using Furman “equipment.” 

The Fitting School was far more organized than the preparatory program had been. It had a literary society that debated issues of the time, its own not-very-extensive library, and sports. This included football (banned between 1905 and 1914), baseball, track, and after 1912, basketball teams.

The Wofford Fitting School became its earliest and most frequent athletic rival. The Greenville News, reporting on a disappointing Wofford win, pointed out that its baseball team’s “grown-up fellows had a shortstop weighing 150 pounds” while the “Furman team is a knee pants crowd.” Given college admission at 15 or 16, the three-year curriculum at the Fitting School would have drawn 11- or 12-year-olds—knee pants indeed!

For a single year the school, like so many others in the South, also had military training. In 1901-1902, John Moore taught mathematics and was director of cadets. The boys had impressive uniforms to wear in downtown Greenville, but in the 1902-1903 catalog, all mention of the military emphasis vanishes, and Moore just taught math. It might have been canceled because so many students were pre-ministerial and objected to the military presence. 

The Fitting School was evidently doing well enough by 1907 to commandeer a former library room in Richard Furman Hall and to construct a dormitory. Beginning in 1908, its students — generally about 130 boys in three grades, eighth through 11th — had the luxury of their own three-story dormitory, complete with dining facilities and a reading room.

Among its occupants were two youngsters from Cuba, sent by Baptist missionaries to the island, who must have introduced a more cosmopolitan atmosphere. Faculty members lived on each dormitory floor.

The curriculum seems to have been relatively intense, with tests in every subject each Thursday, six-week reports sent home to parents, and Honor Rolls regularly published in The Greenville News. In January 1901, for example, a headline announced the first class' honors to Rhett Sloan with a 98 and J. Clifton Plowden with 97. The school’s calendar paralleled Furman’s.

Every year was described in newspapers as “the very best in its history,” and enrollment was consistent. Instructors usually held M.A, degrees, and many went from the Fitting School to the university or other colleges. There was, however, little stability in its management, since the school had six heads during its 16 years of operation.

It might not have come as a surprise in March 1916 when trustees voted to close the school. Their reasons were varied: The headmaster had resigned (again); Greenville’s Central School was finally adding a 10th grade; the university needed the dormitory space.

In addition, South Carolina Baptists were overloaded with academies, four of them in the Upstate. While the Fitting School might have been the strongest of the schools and had the advantage of being on the campus, it was still expendable.

Its dormitory immediately became McGee Hall, a residence for Furman sophomores and juniors. The classroom building, after being painted white and rented out for a couple of years, became the home of the Kappa Alpha Fraternity

Both were demolished when the Bell Tower Shopping Mall was built in the late 1960s. The Fitting School and indeed the university’s century-long downtown presence have been almost totally forgotten.

Judy Bainbridge, a local historian and author of seven books about Greenville history, is a retired professor emerita of English from Furman University, who has served on the Board of Trustees for the Greenville Library and the Greenville Historic Preservation Commission, and was for 26 years a member of the Greenville Urban League. She writes a weekly local history column for The Greenville News. You can reach her at Judy.Bainbride@furman.edu.