Cornelius Chapman Scott papers, 1872-1916.

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Scott, Cornelius Chapman, 1855-1922. Cornelius Chapman Scott papers, 1872-1916.

Cornelius Chapman Scott papers, 1872-1916.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/676988053

Letters discuss C.C. Scott's life as a college student at Howard University during Reconstruction and his career as a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church at various locations around S.C. Letters to Scott's parents discuss college life in Washington, D.C., and Columbia, S.C.; letter, 10 Oct. 1872, re Scott's voyage by sea from Charleston, S.C., his bouts of seasickness, arrival at Howard University, a description of the campus, his expenses, the warm welcome received from classmates, among them Alonzo Townsend and T. McCants Stewart (who would later attend the University of South Carolina), an account of a football game with three Chinese students enrolled at Howard and other classmates who included a student from Africa and two Native Americans, a female and "a little boy picked up on the plains by Gen. Howard." Letter, 2 Apr. 1873, re events in Washington, D.C., including several murders and hangings, small pox, a fire, and the sinking of the steamship Atlantic, his examinations and a speaking contest in which Alonzo [Townsend] and Thomas [McCants] Stewart participated, his visit to a medical museum where he viewed displays of skeletons and a small mummified Indian baby, and comments on nepotism at Claflin College. Letter, 25 July 1873, references his summer job as a waiter at the Metropolitan Hotel [presumably the establishment that operated ca. 70 years on Pennsylvania Avenue] reporting that he was "getting on very well considering my dislike for the business" and notes that a group of Indians begged every day at the city's hotels. Scott also expresses frustration at the carelessness of a faculty member in grading examinations and recording the grades; letter, 27 Nov. 1873, re deaths of two female students, one of whom was the Native American pupil Minnie Pappan. The letter includes poems he wrote in memory of the women. Letter 19 Oct. 1874, from Mortimer A. Warren, principal of the University of South Carolina's Normal School to Tobias Scott, father of C.C. Scott, re Scott's interest in his son learning to play the organ. Warren advises the elder Scott that his son does not have adequate time for organ lessons and needs instead to focus on his studies. "If he keeps on with his Latin and other studies, perhaps he might sometime be a minister, and I am sure you would rather he would be a minister and preach from the pulpit than an organist and play in the gallery!" Warren closes by expressing hope that he will soon have something to report on Cornelius Scott's sister and brother, Martha and Robert, who are both enrolled in the Normal School. While assigned to the Greenville Circuit, Scott was involved in a racial incident at the segregated opera house which he describes in great detail in a letter to his father on 8 April 1880. Scott attended a performance of a panorama sponsored by the white Presbyterian church. He purchased a full ticket and took his seat. Shortly thereafter, an employee asked him to move to the gallery. Scott refused and a policeman was called. The officer escorted Scott outside and the proprietors refunded his money. Scott consulted a lawyer but decided his fee was too high to bring a case against the proprietors of the opera house, "[w]hen I went to the Opera House I hadn't the slightest idea of being interfered with as I had heard that colored people had sat down stairs before." Additional materials include letter, 23 Apr. 1916, from L[ewis] M[arion] Dunton of Claflin College, offering advice re a controversy at a church in "B[ennetts]ville," S.C., to which Scott had recently been assigned; Scott's certificate of grades from the Fall 1872 term at Howard University and letter notifying Scott of his admission to the University of South Carolina in the spring of 1874.

16 items.

University of South Carolina, System Library Service, University Libraries