Founded in 1845 as the Limestone Springs Female High School by Dr. Thomas Curtis and his son Dr. William Curtis, distinguished Baptist clergymen. The school thrived until falling on hard times during the Civil War and Reconstruction. In 1881 the institution was revived by New York benefactor Peter Cooper as Cooper-Limestone Institute. Renamed Limestone College in 1898.

[Note - when the Limestone Springs Female High School opened in 1845, it was in the town of Limestone Springs in the Spartanburg District. In 1879, the town of Limestone Springs was renamed to Gaffney. In 1897, Cherokee County was created and Cooper-Limestone Institute was now in Gaffney, the new county seat of Cherokee County. The marker above is in Cherokee County.]

Limestone Springs Female High School

On January 22, 1849, a school for the deaf was founded at Cedar Springs, in the Spartanburg District, by the Reverend Newton Pinckney Walker and his wife, Martha Hughston Walker. Five students, including three of Mrs. Walker’s siblings and two former neighbors of Rev. Walker, were the first students. In April of 1855, a department for blind children was added to the school with James S. Henderson as principal, a graduate of the Tennessee School for the Blind.

In 1856, the State of South Carolina purchased the school and 157 acres for $10,759, and the school became the South Carolina Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb and Blind. Walker Hall was designed by noted Charleston architect Edward C. Jones and built betwen 1857 and 1859.

Wofford College, charted in 1851, was established by a $100,000 bequest from the Rev. Benjamin Wofford of Spartanburg, who envisioned a college for 'literary, classical, and scientific education' affiliated with the Methodist Church. The college opened in the fall of 1854 and still occupies its historic campus, listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Wofford's Phi Beta Kappa chapter, charted in 1941, was the first at a private college in South Carolina.

On December 16, 1852, the South Carolina General Assembly passed an Act to appropriate $3,500 for the erection of a suitable building or buildings at Cedar Springs, in the Spartanburg District, for the education of the deaf and dumb of this State, and named Newton Pinckney Walker as the principal of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum aforesaid. On that same date, the General Assembly passed another Act to appropriate $150 per year per student at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum.

Also on December 21, 1858, the South Carolina General Assembly passed another Act, which included the incorporation of the The Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina in the Kershaw District, named seven (7) trustees, authorized assets up to $100,000, and chartered the Seminary for twenty-one (21) years (Section V).

[The Seminary was located in Camden, SC where Bishop Thomas Davis resided. It opened on January 18, 1859, with three students and four faculty members. In October of 1859, William Porcher DuBose entered this seminary. It closed on June 30, 1862, because of the American Civil War. The Seminary re-opened in October of 1866 in Spartanburg, on the campus of what had been St. John's College. It suspended operation in October of 1868. The Seminary trained about twelve men for the ordained ministry.]

While minister of Duncan Memorial Methodist Church, the Rev. David E. Camak established the Textile Industrial Institute in the dwelling across the street to educate cotton mill workers. The institute opened Sept. 5, 1911, and its operation was soon assumed by the Methodist Church; it became a junior college in 1927. In 1974, the school was renamed Spartanburg Methodist College.

Built in 1948 on the site of Reidville Female College (operated 1871-1910), one of two private schools founded in 1857 by Rev. Robert Harden Reid and located on lands given by James N. Gaston, James Wakefield, and Anthony Wakefield. Reidville Male Academy (1857-1905) occupied building 1/2 mile east. The schools were combined in 1905.