Presidents of Georgetown College

James L. Reynolds   1849-1851

(Photo Submitted:
University of South Carolinia, South Caroliniana Library)

             When James L. Reynolds arrived at Georgetown College, he found an institution placed on a firm footing.  In the previous nine years, the endowment had increased from $66,000 to $150,000; the number of students had grown from fifty to seventy-seven; literary societies functioned; a female seminary operated; a substantial library existed; a music program had been started; and a curriculum had been established.  Reynolds faced the enviable problem of building more housing for students, to keep boarding costs down.

             Born in Charleston, South Carolina, on March 17, 1812, Reynolds graduated with the first honor from Charleston College, and then went to Newton Theological Seminary in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, to earn his seminary degree.  While serving his first pastorate at Columbia, South Carolina, Reynolds was elected president of Georgetown College in 1849.

             Reynolds’s accomplished little during his two years as president.  In his first year, a prank by students caused the suspension of classes.  One night a group of students took a cannon out into the county near Professor Danford Thomas’s home and fired it.  The concussion must have started Thomas’s buggy rolling, which went into a pond.  Investigations found that the intent was not malicious, but caused the dismissal of five students honorably; the probation of another; and the public censor of Howard Malcolm.  Malcolm was actually a Choctaw Indian from Mississippi who took the name of the former president when he entered Georgetown College.

             The most significant development occurred when the charter of the Kentucky Baptist Education Society was revised.  On the recommendation of a trustee committee on constitution and by-laws, the constituency from which trustees were selected was broadened.  Any person contributing $100 or more after 1840 were members of the society.  Beginning in 1851, trustees were selected by the entire society at its annual meeting during the college’s commencement week in June.

             Reynolds accepted the pastorate of the Second Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia, in 1851, and then went on to teach Latin, and later Moral Philosophy, at South Carolina College (now known as the University of South Carolina), over the next twenty-five years.  After the Civil War, Reynolds, and the entire faculty at South Carolina, was dismissed.  Three years before his death on December 19, 1877, he taught Latin at Furman University.