The Terrier Legacy: A History of Wofford College's Mascot
Nothing says fall at Wofford like the smell of a good tailgate, the sight of students painted up and cheering for their classmates, and the sounds of “Touchdown, Terriers!” over the speakers in Gibbs Stadium. The Wofford Terriers are the athletic teams that represent Wofford College, located in Spartanburg, South Carolina. A century ago Wofford athletics teams chose the Boston Terrier as the college’s mascot. The school mascot is the Terrier.
Origins and Evolution of the Mascot
The original college mascot was a pit bull Terrier. dog who was adopted by the 1909 Wofford baseball team. During a close game, he raced out of the stands and drove off an opposing runner who was trying to tie the score.
During the mid 1960s, attendance was down at Wofford football games with students coming in late and leaving early. Dean of Students Philip Covington brought a Boston Terrier to the games, which sat patiently on its leash. Boulware says the first mask was black and made of papier-mache by Converse College art student Winkie Ray. “By the end of the games, the end of my nose would be raw,” he says. “The word crazy has come up as a way to describe me, but everybody’s gotta have their niche. Boulware’s antics as the first Terrier have been recounted at reunions through the years.
Wofford College Athletics
Wofford College competes in intercollegiate sports at the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), primarily competing in the Southern Conference since the 1997-98 academic year. Wofford and the other SoCon members play football in the Football Championship Subdivision. Prior to the 1995-96 year, the Terriers played in Division II in all sports, and until the 1988-89 period, Wofford's athletic teams were members of the NAIA. The Wofford Terriers compete in NCAA Division I in the Southern Conference. Wofford's colors are old gold and black. Wofford offers a self-contained environment (93% of students live on campus).
Football
Wofford fielded its first football team in 1889. That season, Wofford and Furman played the first intercollegiate football game in South Carolina. The football team plays in Gibbs Stadium. Although the sport has a story with the college that traces to the 1860s, the first Wofford team was formed in 1889, though records of that era are thin.
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Basketball
The first basketball teams started in early 1900s, with class teams and a varsity team. The first Wofford game recorded was a 1906 win over Wake Forest. The Terriers' men's basketball team competes in the Southern Conference. They have won 4 regular season SoCon Titles and 5 SoCon Tournament Championships and 1 SoCon Tournament Runner-Up. The Terriers currently hold a 1-5 record in the NCAA Tournament. Wofford has defeated various high major opponents during their 27 years in D1.
Other Sports
The Terriers fielded their first team in 1975, currently competing in the SoCon. Wofford's records include most victories (14) in 1994, fewest losses (3) in 1994 and 2009, 11 consecutive wins in 1994, most goals scored (53) in 1994, fewest goals allowed (14) in 1991.
Traditions and Spirit
Helping Wofford fans gear up in the cutest gold, black and Terrier gear is what Leah Harris ’05 and terriertulles.com do. Wofford played Furman in the home opener this season, and the Campbell family does a house divided as well as anyone else. Some of the college’s most faithful fans are also members of the athletics staff. Few people put in more time than Brent Williamson and Ryan Price. During breaks in the women’s soccer match, Wofford’s athletics marketing staff keeps fans engaged with a game.
Wofford College: A Historical Overview
Wofford College is a private liberal arts college in Spartanburg, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1854, it is one of the few four-year institutions in the southeastern United States founded before the American Civil War that still operates on its original campus. Wofford was founded with a bequest of $100,000 from Benjamin Wofford, a Methodist minister and Spartanburg native who sought to create a college for "literary, classical, and scientific education in my native district of Spartanburg."
Campus and Academics
The Wofford College Historic District consists of the Main Building, which was designed by Edward C. Jones in the Italianate style, and six two-story brick residences. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Construction of the Main Building began in 1852, and the first classes were held in the fall of 1854. 136 full-time faculty teach at the college, 92 percent of whom have earned a doctorate or equivalent terminal degree. The college also offers pre-professional programs in teacher education (secondary certification), dentistry, medicine, law, ministry, engineering, and veterinary science. The Interim program is designed to provide students with opportunities to gain new experiences outside the realm of traditional academics and allows students to become involved in departments outside their academic majors.
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Rankings and Recognition
Forbes ranked Wofford 190th out of the top 500 rated private and public colleges and universities in America for the 2024-25 report. In the 2010 NCAA Division I graduation success report, 9 of 13 Wofford teams posted GRS scores of 100, the highest available mark.
Traditions and Campus Life
Those walking around campus during Homecoming discovered a new set of banners lining the sidewalks. The banners celebrate firsts and other college traditions. There’s a banner to celebrate baseball, the college’s first intercollegiate sport, and another to recognize the first international student. The college bell, the arboretum and Phi Beta Kappa also are commemorated as part of a collection of 25 repeating banners. The Thinking Men banner honors the enslaved workers who constructed Main Building. For the past 16 years, the Carolina Panthers have made their summer training camp home at Wofford. The Shrine Bowl of the Carolinas (a high school all-star football game) is played at Wofford's Gibbs Stadium. Students participate in various service, pre-professional, religious, social, and other student organizations. Student publications at the college started with a literary magazine first published in 1889. The student newspaper, the Old Gold and Black, is published every other week; the yearbook is called The Bohemian. In 1941, the college was awarded a chapter of the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa.
The Legacy of Benjamin Wofford
Like many of America’s philanthropic institutions, Wofford came about because of the vision and generosity of an individual. Benjamin Wofford was born in rural Spartanburg County on Oct. 19, 1780. Sometime during the great frontier revivals of the early 19th century, he joined the Methodist Church and served as a circuit riding itinerant preacher for several years. He traveled in the west, but was not ordained there because that Methodist conference refused to ordain slaveholders, which he was. He was later ordained in South Carolina, which allowed its clergy to own enslaved persons. In 1807, he married Anna Todd and settled down on her family’s prosperous farm on the Tyger River. He left the active ministry upon the death of Anna's parents to manage their holdings. From this marriage, which ended with Anna’s death in 1835, Wofford acquired the beginnings of his fortune. A year later, at the age of 56, the widower married a much younger woman from east Tennessee, Maria Barron. They moved to a home near Spartanburg’s courthouse square, where he could concentrate on investments in finance and manufacturing. It was there that Benjamin Wofford died on Dec. 2, 1850, leaving a bequest of $100,000 to “establish a college of literary, classical and scientific education to be located in my native district and to be under the control and management of the Methodist Church of my native state.” It proved to be one of the largest financial contributions made to American higher education prior to the Civil War. The trustees named in his will met at Spartanburg’s Central Methodist Church and agreed that the college should be located in the village rather than in a rural setting, and acquired the necessary land on the northern edge of the town. The college charter from the South Carolina General Assembly is dated Dec.
Early Years and the Impact of the Civil War
The trustees retained one of the state’s leading architects, Edward C. Jones of Charleston, to design the college’s Main Building and faculty homes. Although landscaping plans were never fully developed in the 19th century, sketches exist to show that the early trustees envisioned a formal network of pathways, lawns and gardens that would have left an impression quite similar to the college's present National Historic District. The original structures included a president’s home (demolished early in the 20th century); four faculty homes (still in use today for various purposes); and the magnificent Main Building. Construction finally began in the summer of 1852 under the supervision of Ephraim Clayton of Asheville, N.C. Records indicate that a number of enslaved persons worked on the various construction teams. Among them were individuals who made the bricks on site and skilled carpenters who executed uniquely beautiful woodwork, including a pulpit and pews for the chapel. In the late summer of 1854, three faculty members and seven students took up their work, with more students arriving in the winter. The prospective students had been tested on their knowledge of English, arithmetic and algebra, ancient and modern geography, and Latin and Greek. By the second year, five faculty members, the full complement envisioned by the trustees, were on campus. In addition to teaching the entire curriculum, they also handled all of the administrative details. The college awarded its first degree in 1856 to Samuel Dibble, a future member of the United States Congress. By 1860, the college had awarded some 48 more degrees, and 79 students were engaged in coursework in the 1859-60 school year. In 1859, President William Wightman resigned to launch yet another Methodist college, one that eventually became Birmingham-Southern in Alabama. His successor, the Rev. Albert M. Shipp, was a respected scholar who was soon confronted with the outbreak of the Civil War. Students formed themselves into a militia company, the “Southern Guards,” which offered its services to South Carolina’s governor. The governor refused, telling them to stay in school. However, many students and young alumni, including two sons of faculty members, were killed in the war. Over the course of the war, the trustees invested their endowment funds, at least $85,000, in soon-to-be-worthless Confederate bonds, bank stocks, and other securities. (The college still has them in its archives.) The situation was quite dire, but the physical plant remained intact and the professors remained at their posts. Shipp remained at the college through the Reconstruction period, departing for a position in Vanderbilt University’s theology school in 1875.
The Carlisle Era and Growth
Nevertheless, Wofford’s history from the end of the Civil War until the early 1900s was dominated by one man - James H. Carlisle. A member of the original faculty and then the 3rd president of the college from 1875 through 1902, he initially taught mathematics and astronomy, but his real strength was his ability to develop alumni of character, one student at a time. Three generations of graduates remembered individual visits with Carlisle in his campus home, now occupied by the dean of students. The curriculum gradually evolved during Carlisle’s administration; for example, he shocked everyone by delivering his first presidential commencement address in English rather than in Latin. Nevertheless, many lasting traditions of Wofford life date from his administration. Four surviving chapters of national social fraternities (Kappa Alpha, 1869; Sigma Alpha Epsilon, 1885; Pi Kappa Alpha, 1891; and Kappa Sigma, 1894) were chartered on the campus. Such organizations owned or rented houses in the Spartanburg village, because in those days, professors lived in college housing while students were expected to make their own arrangements for room and board. To meet some of their needs, the two Whiteside brothers from the North Carolina mountains opened and operated Wofford’s first dining hall in Main Building. Union soldiers in Spartanburg during Reconstruction played baseball with Wofford students, and Wofford and Furman University played South Carolina’s first intercollegiate football game in December 1889. Students participated actively in literary societies, and members held weekly debates and gave regular orations. The societies started the college’s first libraries, and the library’s special collections holds many of those original volumes. That same year, students from the societies organized the college's literary magazine, The Journal. In 1895, delegates from 10 of the leading higher education institutions across the Southeast met in Atlanta to form the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The organization was conceived by Vanderbilt’s Chancellor James H. Kirkland (Wofford Class of 1877), who hoped to challenge peer campuses to attain national standards of academic excellence. Delegates also came from Trinity College in Durham, N.C., which later emerged as Duke University under the presidential leadership of Wofford alumni John C. Kilgo and William Preston Few. Two young faculty members represented Wofford, A.G. “Knotty” Rembert (Class of 1884) and Henry Nelson Snyder. Perhaps it was the Wofford community’s determination to meet the standards for accreditation that later inspired Snyder to turn down an appointment to the faculty at Stanford University to become Carlisle’s successor as president in 1902.
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The Snyder Administration and 20th Century Expansion
It was also true that Spartanburg was no longer a sleepy courthouse village - it had become a major railroad “hub city” and was surrounded by booming textile mills. Local civic leaders launched nearby Converse College, which combined liberal arts education for women with a nationally respected school of music. The first decades of Snyder’s long administration (1902-1942) were a time of tremendous progress. Main Building finally got electric lights and steam heat. Four attractive red-brick buildings were added to the campus - John B. Cleveland Science Hall (1904), Whitefoord Smith Library (1910, now the Daniel Building), Carlisle Memorial Hall (1912, the first large dormitory), and Andrews Field House (1929). Driveways for automobiles were laid out on campus, and rows of water oaks and elms were planted. Enrollment grew beyond 200 students, and by the midpoint of Snyder’s administration, the student body consisted of more than 400 students annually. Wofford began to attract faculty members who were publishing scholarly books in their academic specialties. For example, David Duncan Wallace was the pre-eminent South Carolina historian of the day. James A. Chiles published a widely used textbook, and he and his Wofford students founded the national honorary society for German studies, Delta Phi Alpha. Although eight women graduated from Wofford in the classes of 1901-1904, the trustees abandoned the first attempt at coeducation. The cornerstone of residential campus life was an unwritten honor code, for decades administered with stern-but-fair paternalism by the college’s dean, A. Mason DuPré. A yearbook was first published in 1904, modern student government began in 1909, and the first issue of a campus newspaper, the Old Gold & Black, appeared in 1915. World War I introduced Army officer training to the campus, and at the end of 1919, the Army established an ROTC unit, one of the first such units to be approved at an independent college. Snobbery, drinking, dancing and other alleged excesses contributed to an anti-fraternity “Philanthropean” movement among the students, and the Greek-letter organizations were forced underground for several years. A unique society called the “Senior Order of Gnomes” apparently owed its beginnings to a desire to emphasize and protect certain “old-fashioned” values and traditions associated with the college. Both intramural and intercollegiate sports were popular, with the baseball teams achieving the most prestige. Despite the wide respect Snyder earned in national higher education and Methodist circles, progress in strengthening Wofford’s endowment, which was valued at less than $1 million, was slow. College and community leaders joined in the mid-1920s on a fundraising campaign that did help increase the small endowment. The college was dependent on its annual support from the Methodist Church, which amounted to about one-fourth of the operating budget. This financial weakness became obvious when Southern farm prices collapsed in the 1920s and hard times intensified after the stock market crash of 1929. At the height of the Great Depression, some of the faculty worked without pay for seven months. The college's growing academic reputation made it possible for Wofford to claim a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in 1941, the first time such recognition had been extended to an independent college in South Carolina. Soon after this happy occasion, however, the nation plunged into World War II. Wofford graduates served in the military in large numbers, many as junior combat officers or aviators. Seventy-six alumni and students died in the war.
Wofford's Transformation After World War II
Wofford’s enrollment was so drastically reduced that the Army took over the campus on Feb. 22, 1943, to offer accelerated academic instruction for aviation students on the way to becoming Air Corps officers. After the war, under the stimulus of the G.I. Bill of Rights, enrollment suddenly shot up to 720 during 1947-48. This figure was almost twice the reasonable capacity of Wofford’s facilities, already taxed by two decades of postponed maintenance. Compounding the challenge was the fact that South Carolina Methodists deferred any capital projects or strategic planning while they tried to decide whether they should unify their colleges on a new, rural campus at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The only alumnus to serve as president of Wofford, Dr. Walter K. Greene ’03 thus suffered through a very stressful administration (1942-1951) that today is remembered primarily as a golden age for Terrier athletics. Under the coaching of Phil Dickens, the 1948 football team set a national record with five straight ties. Wofford then won 15 straight games before losing a 1950 Cigar Bowl match with Florida State. Another celebrated achievement was a 19-14 upset of Auburn to open the 1950 season. Born in the years immediately following World War II, the “Baby Boomers” began moving into elementary schools in the 1950s. During the presidential administrations of Francis Pendleton Gaines (1952-1957) and Charles F. Marsh (1958-1968), the Wofford community laid the foundations to serve this much larger college population. Gaines was fortunate to persuade Spartanburg textile executive Roger Milliken to join the board of trustees. Milliken was able to challenge the college in fundraising and long-term planning, and ultimately served for 48 years on the board. Wofford also moved ahead with a series of important building projects that included a complete renovation of Main Building, a new science building, the Sandor Teszler Library, and the Burwell campus center. Four new residence halls built during this period gave occupants a measure of privacy and comfort. Seven fraternity lodges were built on campus to unify and improve Greek life. To teach this larger student body, college officials worked hard to recruit outstanding faculty and provide better pay and benefits. Some legendary professors, such as Lewis P. Jones ’38 in the history department, arrived within a few years after the war. John Q. Hill ’47, a Rhodes scholar, returned to teach mathematics, and W. Raymond Leonard effectively built a modern biology program. Philip S. Covington, who served as the college’s academic dean during the 1950s and 1960s, displayed a remarkable knack for looking beyond an individual’s curriculum vitae to spot great teachers.
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