How well do you know Wake Forest history?

Get to know our Mother So Dear!

When I first set foot on Wake Forest’s campus, I knew it was the place for me.

After being accepted and later attending freshman orientation, I thought I had been told everything there was to know about our Mother So Dear.

However, this semester at Wake Forest, I am in Professor Jenny Puckett and Professor Marybeth Wallace’s First Year Seminar titled “Modern Wake Forest: A Living History.” This class alone has taught me that there is so much more to the name Wake Forest.

Our founder and first president, Samuel Wait, just barely got the charter for our school

When Samuel Wait took the idea of founding the school to the North Carolina state legislature, the legislators were quite against it. They voted, and the vote was 29 to 29, so it was up to one man to break this tie: William Dunn Moseley. Moseley, the Speaker of the Senate at the time, decided to approve Wait’s plan, and Wait obtained a charter successfully. Had it not been for Moseley, there might not have been a Wake Forest!

Samuel Wait. Color print res, Baptist Historical Collection, photo courtesy of Wake Forest University.

The social life at Wake Forest College was comprised of one society, the Polemic Society, but when the student body grew, they split into two literary societies that debated with each other.

Students wanted to refine their debate skills and get better at learning, so they formed the Philomathesian Literary Society and the Euzelian Literary Society. “Philomathesian” comes from Greek meaning “love of learning,” and “Euzelian” also was derived from Greek, meaning “zeal for good.” The debaters would meet after classes ended for the day, and they enjoyed the friendly competition. They often spoke about a wide range of topics in order to try to broaden their knowledge in any way possible.

Philomathesian Banner by David Bustill Bowser. Photo courtesy of ZSR.

One man saved Wake Forest College from permanently closing.

James Purefoy was the treasurer of Wake Forest in 1861, the year the Civil War began. Mr. Purefoy, like every other man in the South in charge of a large sum of money, was under pressure to invest all of Wake Forest’s money in confederate bonds.

However, Purefoy was skeptical of this new confederacy, so he decided to invest some money and kept the rest saved. It was this money he saved that saved Wake Forest as a whole because when the South lost the war, many people living in the South were left with nothing. The saved money was important in order to bring in professors and restart schooling; this alone revived Wake Forest.

Old Campus Building. Photo courtesy of Wake Forest Historical Museum.

Wake Forest became a private institution because of Jabez Abel Bostwick.

The sixth president of Wake Forest, President Charles Elisha Taylor, needed to increase the endowment of Wake Forest, so he wrote to several wealthy men in New York City in order to meet with them to discuss funding. Only one man wrote back: Jabez Abel Bostwick. Bostwick was the treasurer of Standard Oil Company and worked for the Rockefellers; Taylor wrote a proposal for the school’s growth, and amazingly, Bostwick agreed to give money to Taylor. Bostwick gave Taylor $100,000 at first, and this doubled the endowment at that time.

Soon after, when Bostwick died in a freak accident, his will mentioned that all of his shares of Standard Oil Stock were to go to Wake Forest. With his stock, Wake Forest obtained $1.5 million, and this is how Wake Forest became private. It makes sense why there is a freshman dormitory with the name Bostwick!

Prior to having the Scales Fine Arts Center at our university, the theater program was housed in the original Reynolds Wing of the library.

The sixth, seventh and eighth floors of the Reynolds Wing of the library were not stacks then – it used to be a makeshift theater! Students would learn, practice and perform in this confined space. Since the actors did not have a proper place to act, sing and dance, President James Ralph Scales, a huge patron of the arts, decided to change that. He also planned the facility to include music, which had been in the lower auditorium of Wait Chapel, and art.

The arts at Wake Forest would not have become as strong as it is now without President Scales’ vision.

James Ralph Scales, 1988. Painted by Ray Goodbred. Portrait Collection, POR2007.1.78. Photo courtesy of Wake Forest University Art Collections.

This is only a taste of the rich history of Wake Forest University! For more information, check out ZSR’s Special Collections and any book ever written about Wake’s past—it is fascinating to see how we have grown from our roots.

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