Scott, Cornelius Chapman, 1855-1922.

African American educator and Methodist minister of S.C.; born, Sept. 1855 at Fort Johnson on James Island (Charleston County, S.C.). He was the fifth of eleven children of Tobias Scott and Christiana Harvey Scott, who were free persons of color. Cornelius Scott graduated from the Avery Normal Institute in 1872 at the age of sixteen, afterwhich he attended Claflin University in Orangeburg, S.C., for a year before entering Howard University in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Howard's College Preparatory Department in 1873 and returned to South Carolina to enter the University of South Carolina, which had been integrated during Reconstruction. Scott graduated from the USC in 1877 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and was employed in the public school system. By 1883 he had married Rosa E. Rout, of Charleston. Six of the couple's eight children survived to adulthood. In 1891, Scott received a Master of Arts from Syracuse University and a Doctor of Divinity from Wilberforce University.

In 1886, Scott joined the South Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. His service included appointments to Greenville, Spartanburg, Sumter, Camden, Yorkville, Anderson, Columbia, and Darlington as well as the Bennettsville District Superintendent. He also served as the principal of the African-American graded schools in Spartanburg, Camden, and Yorkville and, in 1907, chaired the first Race Conference in South Carolina.