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VOL ONE El V E
NUJIVLH SEVENTEEN
[SENEFACTOHS OF WOJTAKHOOD
Captain and Mrs. H. H. Tift Pour Lobe, Dollars and blessings Into Hessie Tift College.
STRIKE for God and Eternity!” “I
strike for the Alumnae of Monroe Col
lege!” “I strike for the trustees and the
people of Forsyth!” ‘‘l strike for the
Baptists of Georgia, who are back of
this institution!” “I strike for my dear
old Christian Mother!” “I strike for the
girls of the future!”
With these ringing, magic words,
I
punctuated at the end of each exclamation with a
stroke of the pick, her eyes turned heavenward, and
her face transfigured as she uttered each sentence
and delivered each stroke, Mrs. Bessie Willingham
Tift, wife of Capt. H. H. Tift, the great South Geor
gia financier and philanthropist, broke dirt several
years ago for a new building at Monroe College, For
syth, Georgia.
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CAPTAIN H. H. TIFT.
The school was her Alma Mater. Its place in the
educational world had been modest, solid but not
conspicuous. .Little did Miss Bessie Willingham, of
Albany, Georgia, dream as she strolled at twilight
on the campus and studied within the walls of the
single building constituting the plant of Monroe Col
lege that that Institution would come, within her
lifetime to be one of the very greatest in the South,
and that she, under God, would strike the fetters of
obscurity and financial limitations and give to her
beloved Alma Mater its present freedom and reg
nant fame and power.
ATLANTA, GA., JUNE 16 1910.
It is a great thing for the world when the right
kind of woman marries the right kind of man! And
Bessie Tift College today is the queenly child of
such a sacred union.
She Rejoiced At Its Renaissance.
When the Georgia Baptist Convention woke up to
the fact that it had never acknowledged organic
guardianship of female education, and decided to ac
cept Monroe College and stand back of it for the
purpose of giving “the best possible education, un
der the best possible conditions at the lowest pos
sible cost,” one of the happiest women in Georgia
was Mrs. H. H. Tift, of Tifton. Her heart already
open, she began at once to open her own private
purse for the upbuilding of the institution. She
touched the electric button that made possible the
winning of the five thousand dollars so generously
offered by that great Christian woman, Mrs. W. H.
Wiggs, the movement which ended in the comple
tion of the handsome new dormitory of one hundred
rooms, known as Addie Upshaw Hall, named in
honor of the mother of William D. Upshaw, who
gave several years, without salary, as Field Secre
tary of the institution.
As a memorial of her inspiring gift, the mail)
building was named by the trustees, “the Walton H.
Wiggs Hall,” and the first dormitory which marked
the beginning of the institution’s new life was
named for Mrs. Tift. Capt. Tift was just beginning
to be interested now, and he said: “There must be
symmetry on the campus.” At the cost of nearly
forty thousand dollars additional Tift hall was made
a thing of beauty and a joy forever, containing about
eighty bed-rooms, beside parlors, and the most spa
cious dining room of any woman’s college in the
State.
Mrs. Tift herself is a beautiful, queenly illustration
of the truth of their college song:
We now salute fair Bessie Tist —her mission is
sublime!
She holds her hand to every girl knows the
worth of time— * '
She bears aloft the standard high th X
alone,
And not the “incident of birth,” should make a
woman’s throne.
All of this work of reorganization and construc
tion was done under the masterful leadership of the
President, Dr. Chas. H. Spurgeon Jackson, whose
genius as an educator and educational builder can
only be understood by those who have come in close
contact with his life. But Capt. Tift’s benefactions
did not stop with the superb completion of Tift Hall.
His unselfish money, like the influence of his con
secrated wife, flowed as a stream of beauty and
blessing into every department of the institution’s
enlargement, until the trustees, out of everlasting
gratitude, voted to follow the example of so many
other institutions, in enshrining the name of gen
erous benefactors, and “Monroe College,” which
bore only the name of the county in which it was
located, was given the name of Bessie Tift College.
This, be it said, in justice to their unostentatious
spirit, was an honor conferred over the protest of
Mr. and Mrs. Tift. And now Capt. Tift comes with
the princely offer of sixty thousand dollars, provided
the friends of the institution will raise Three hun
dred thousand for endowment. He believes, like
many other philanthropists, in the wholesome doc
trine of stimulation, and the campaign for reaching
and stimulating the people to meet this offer is now
under way.
Among other notable gifts to the institution may
be mentioned five thousand dollars from Mr. E. F.
Chambliss, of Fitzgerald, in honor of his little daugh
ter, and five thousand dollars from Mi', and Mrs.
Wadley Garbutt, also of Fitzgerald.
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MRS. H. H. TIFT.
The college has grown since President Jackson
came to the helm from one building and less than
one hundred boarders to eight or ten magnificent
buildings and an enrollment of nearly four hundred
students.
The recent commencement, with the sermon by
Dr. Archibald Cree, of Moultrie, Ga., and the literary
address by Dr. Ashby Jones, of Augusta, was sur
passingly brilliant.
A Summer School for Music and Letters will be
conducted, while many of the faculty will study dur
ing their vacation in Europe.
TWO DOLLARS iA YEAR.
EIVE CENTS A COPY.
