Joab Mauldin
Lesesne Jr.
Four To Be Inducted Into Erskine College Academic Hall Of Fame
A former governor, a former college president, a professor and a pastor will be inducted this week into the Erskine College Academic Hall of Fame.
Joab Mauldin Lesesne, the former president of Wofford College whose father was president of Erskine, will be inducted along with the late minister/historian Samuel Andrew Agnew, Erskine professor Ebenezer Bogues Kennedy and former Alabama Gov. Benjamin Meek Miller.
Erskine, one of the few colleges in the nation with an academic hall of fame, will induct the four new members based on the following accomplishments:
JOAB MAULDIN LESESNE JR.
(b. 1937)
Lesesne was born June 21, 1937, in Greenville. He grew up in Due West where his father, Joab Mauldin Lesesne Sr. served as a professor of history and president of Erskine College. Joe attended the public schools of Due West, received a bachelor’s degree from Erskine, and master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the University of South Carolina.
He is a graduate of the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University and the U.S. Army War College, and has received honorary doctorates from Coastal Carolina and Lander universities, Columbia College, the University of South Carolina, Furman University and Erskine College.
In 1958, he married Ruth Osborne, a 1959 Erskine graduate, and they have four children: Julie Lesesne, Lyle Lesesne Pritchard, Joey Lesesne and Harry Lesesne, who followed his father and grandfather by earning a Ph.D. in history at the University of South Carolina. The Lesesnes have 10 grandchildren.
In 1964, after serving as a professor of history at USC Coastal, he joined the Wofford College faculty as assistant professor of history. He left the classroom to serve as assistant dean and director of the interim (1967-68), director of development (1968-69), dean of the college (1969-72), and in 1972 was elected president, a position he held for 28 years. After retiring in 2000, he was named visiting professor of history and tight ends coach for the Wofford Terriers, whom he helped lead to the 2003 Southern Conference championship.
During his tenure as Wofford president, the number of majors offered by the college increased to 23 from 15, and the faculty grew to 71 from 59. Enrollment held constant as the SAT average grew to 1,200. All major guides recognized the college as one of the nation’s best 300 colleges. He increased the campus to 145 acres from 75 and oversaw 17 major capital projects, including a $15 million sports complex and a technology-rich academic building that became a national model. Under his guidance the endowment increased to more than $100 million from $3.5 million.
Lesesne has a rich legacy of service to his state, region and nation. He retired from the S.C. National Guard as a major general. He served as chairman of the board of directors of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities; as president of the Southern University Conference and the National Association of Schools and Colleges of the United Methodist Church; as a member of the board of directors of the American Council on Education; and as a member of the Commission on National Challenges in Higher Education. He has served numerous local and state organizations, including the S.C. Department of Archives and History as vice chairman; the Southern Governors’ Commission on the Future of the South; the S.C. Association of Colleges and Universities as president; and the S.C. Higher Education Commission. Since retiring he has served on the Erskine College board of trustees and as chairman of the South Carolina Natural Resources Commission.
The honors and awards that Lesesne has received are too numerous to name but include the Sergeant William Jasper Award, South Carolina State Chamber of Commerce (1995), and the Order of the Palmetto (2000).
SAMUEL ANDREW AGNEW
(1833-1902)
Agnew was born Nov. 22, 1833, in Abbeville District, South Carolina, the son of Enoch and Letitia Simpson Todd Agnew. His father was the fourth generation of his family to live at the headwaters of Long Cane Creek and he served as the community’s doctor. In 1831, his sister Elizabeth married the Rev. E.E. Pressly, who was then in his first year as pastor of the Due West Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.
In 1839, Agnew’s uncle, E.E. Pressly, became the founding president of Erskine College, and his family moved to Due West, where his father was the only physician. At age 11, he entered Erskine’s preparatory department, graduating from the college at the age of 19 in 1852. In 1845, his father gave up his medical practice to open the town’s second mercantile establishment. He also served on Due West’s first town council. In 1852, he moved his family to Tippah County, Miss., where he lived until his death in 1871.
Agnew was a diligent student at Erskine, where he joined the Euphemian Literary Society. In 1851, he began a journal that he kept for nearly 50 years. In his childhood, he joined the Due West ARP Church and in 1852 joined the Bethany, Miss., ARP church. He took a theology course at Erskine Seminary and also studied under his uncle, the Rev. J.L. Young, pastor of Bethany Church.
The Memphis Presbytery ordained him in 1859. After a year as a missionary in Madison County, Miss., he began supplying Hopewell Church, Union County, Mississippi, and was installed as pastor in 1870. In 1868, he had been installed as pastor of Bethany Church, Lee County, Mississippi, a pastorate that continued until his death on July 15, 1902. In 1899, he demitted the Hopewell pastorate, which for 40 years had required him to make an overnight journey on horseback, often in bad weather.
Agnew received the honorary doctor of divinity from his alma mater in 1892. His mind was well trained by wide and varied reading and research. He possessed one of the largest private libraries in the Synod, buying books from Philadelphia and New York and subscribing to numerous periodicals. He kept copies of the Due West Telescope and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian as well as scrapbooks of clippings. “The Centennial History of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church” said of him: “His sermons were plain, practical, thoughtful and helpful. Though not possessed of a good delivery, his preaching was earnest, impressive, edifying and comforting.”
He wrote histories of three ARP churches in northeast Mississippi, as well as articles in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian valuable for the history of Due West and Erskine College. His most important contribution to historical scholarship was his diary, a significant source for the social history of the small communities of northeast Mississippi, in the heart of what may be called “Faulkner country.” William Faulkner’s great-grandfather, known in fiction as “the Old Colonel,” was frequently cited in Agnew’s diary. The diary provides pictures of life on the front lines of the war from 1862-65. The Battle of Brice’s Cross Roads was fought between the Bethany church grounds and Agnew’s house. For the rest of his life he would guide visitors to the battle site, now a National Historic Site.
Agnew was first married to Nannie E. McKell of Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, who died in 1868. Both children from the marriage died in infancy. In 1875, he married Rachel Janie Peoples, with whom he had nine children, two of whom died in childhood, leaving four sons and three daughters. Agnew often suffered ill health, but was faithful to the service of his church, his congregations and his family throughout his life.
EBENEZER BOGUES KENNEDY
(1871-1962)
Kennedy, son of William Patton and Margaret Elizabeth McClain Kennedy, was born Nov. 2, 1871, near Long Cane Creek in Abbeville County, South Carolina. He was one of eight children. His parents moved the family to Due West in 1884 to afford their children better educational advantages.
He finished the preparatory schools of Due West. He then entered Erskine College in 1885 at the early age of 13. After his graduation from Erskine in 1889, he taught school for six years. Four of those years he taught in public schools in South Carolina, Alabama and Texas. During two of those years (1892-94), he taught Greek and German at Erskine College. He attended Yale University for a year and received a master’s degree in June 1896. In the fall of that year, he entered Erskine Theological Seminary and graduated in 1898. Kennedy was honored in 1916 when Presbyterian College conferred upon him the doctor of divinity degree.
Even before he graduated from seminary, he received a call from the Bartow Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Florida. Kennedy pastured the Bartow church until 1905, when he accepted a call to the Abbeville Associate Reformed Presbyterian pastorate. In 1913, he was elected chairman of Latin and French at Erskine and resigned as pastor at Abbeville.
During his 35-year tenure at Erskine, he spent several summers in study at other schools, including Columbia, Cornell and Harvard universities in the United States, Magill University in Canada, and la Sorbonne in Paris, France. He retired from Erskine in 1948 at the age of 77. While teaching at Erskine, he frequently served local churches as a supply minister.
In 1922, he became the minister of the Bethlehem Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and he remained there until 1962. Kennedy served the ARP denomination not only as a pastor and teacher, but also as a member of various committees and boards and as a Clerk of Synod for 40 years.
He was a surrogate father to his widowed sister’s daughter, Margrette Kennedy Moore, from the time she was six years old until she graduated from the Due West Woman’s College.
Kennedy died on Nov. 25, 1962, three weeks after his 91st birthday.
The E.B. Kennedy Scholarships were established at Erskine College to honor his memory. Two full-cost, merit scholarships are given annually to incoming freshmen who exhibit the exemplary characteristics so evident in Kennedy’s life: Christian commitment, leadership, vigorous outlook and scholastic achievement.
BENJAMIN MEEK MILLER
(1864-1944)
Miller was born March 13, 1864 in Oak Hill, Wilcox County, Alabama, to the Rev. Dr. John and Sarah Pressly Miller. John Miller, a member of the second graduating class at Erskine College in 1843, was pastor of Lebanon Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, president of Wilcox Female Institute, and a preacher, poet, orator and educator so highly regarded that he was offered the presidency of Erskine College in 1858. Sarah Miller was the daughter of Dr. Samuel Pressly, who was instrumental in the founding of Erskine Theological Seminary.
Benjamin Meek Miller had a distinguished academic career at Erskine. Popularly known as “Meek,” he joined the Euphemian Literary Society and graduated with class honors in 1884. Upon his return to Alabama, he became principal of Lower Peachtree Academy before entering the University of Alabama Law School, from which he graduated in 1889. He was married in 1892 to Margaret Otis, and they had a son and a daughter. From 1889-1904, he practiced law in Camden with his brother, Joseph Neely Miller. From 1904-21, he served as a judge of the Alabama Circuit Court. He was an associate justice of the Alabama Supreme Court from 1921-28.
In 1930, at the age of 66, Benjamin Miller ran for governor of Alabama, attacking the political power of the Ku Klux Klan. He was nominated in the Democratic primary and won the general election. When he became governor on Jan. 19, 1931, Miller found a state in crisis. The nation was in the middle of the Great Depression. Alabama’s debt was huge, revenues were at an all-time low, and schools were on the brink of closing. Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) was deeply in debt and embroiled in controversy over the university presidency. In March 1931, nine black teenagers, later known as the “Scottsboro Boys,” were arrested for the alleged rape of two white girls, Miller called out the National Guard to save them from a lynch mob.
The Auburn controversy and Scottsboro case were to plague the governor the remainder of his term, but they failed to divert his focus from Alabama’s fiscal crisis. He had a study made of the state government by the Brookings Institution and saw that decreased spending alone would not solve the state’s financial problems. He proposed a state income tax instead of a sales tax that would burden the unemployed and on his third attempt before the legislature secured passage of a law allowing the state to collect an income tax. His other accomplishments included passage of a state inheritance tax, adoption of a budget control act, drastic cuts in salaries of state employees, and judicial reform to encourage fair trials. Miller declared a bank holiday in Alabama before President Franklin D. Roosevelt did so for the nation. His cooperation with the Roosevelt Administration helped bring jobs to Alabama through federal creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority and Civil Works Administration and the passage of the Agriculture Adjustment Act.
At the completion of his term in 1935, Benjamin Miller returned to his law practice in Camden. He died Feb. 6, 1944, at the home of his daughter in Selma, Ala.
