William Hayne Mills Collection
Collection
Identifier: Mss-0088
This collection contains correspondence, essays, photographs, and miscellaneous material gathered and prepared by William Hayne Mills, ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church and faculty member with the Agriculture Economics and Rural Sociobiology Department at Clemson College.
Among the correspondence are items sent and received during the period 1917-1941 documentation donations to the Clemson College Library, ecclesiastical matters within the South Carolina Presbyterian Church, and general items related to Mills' time as professor at Clemson. Essays within this collection primarily focus on agriculture in South Carolina, but several focus on issues concerning the Presbyterian Church along with studies concerning both John C. Calhoun and Andrew Pickens. Two undated photographs depict Mills and his family. Eleven undated photographs depict Beaune, France, where Mills was briefly an instructor with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) after World War I. The bulk of the miscellaneous items in this collection include book reviews, articles/editorials from print to media, and sermons/speeches prepared by W. H. Mills. The remainder of the miscellaneous items largely consists of various agricultural brochures and typed transcripts, including several which document life in Pendleton, South Carolina circa 1819-1860.
William Hayne Mills was born on September 12, 1872 in Winnsboro, South Carolina, the son of Reverend William Wilson Mills and Sarah Edith (Smith) Mills. Mills received his Artium Baccalaureus from Davidson College (Davidson, North Carolina) in 1892 and his Bachelor of Divinity at Columbia Theological Seminary (Decatur, Georgia) in 1897.
Mills was Principal at Bethesda High School from 1892-1894 and was a teacher of Hebrew at Columbia Theological Seminary from 1896-1898. He later served as minister to a number of congregations, including appointments in Clarendon and Williamsburg Counties in South Carolina. From 1903-1906 he served as a home missionary under the Synod of South Carolina. In 1907 he accepted the pastorate of Fort Hill Presbyterian Church in Clemson, South Carolina, a charge in which he remained until 1918 when he joined the faculty at Clemson College with the Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology Department. Mills was, in addition, a trustee at the Penn Normal Industrial and Agricultural School at St. Helena Island, South Carolina and President of the Pendleton (South Carolina) Farmer's Society. As a writer and editor, Mills focused mainly on South Carolina agriculture and Presbyterian ecclesiastical history.
William Hayne Mills married Emma Louise Pressley in 1889 and together they had six children, though only three survived: Edith Louise, William H. Jr., and Mary Leighton. Mills died at age 69 on March 29, 1942.
1.2 Cubic Feet (4 boxes and 1 oversized folder)
English
The files are arranged in alphabetical order according to subject.
Acquired from Mary Stevenson in 1968, accession 68-18, and William Hayne Mills III on May 7, 1999, accession 99-38.
The finding aid and collection were originally processed by graduate student Dave Redekop in 1987. Carl Redd, Project Archivist, edited the finding aid and reprocessed the collection, adding material from accession number 99-38 in May, 2006.
Part of the Clemson University Libraries Special Collections and Archives Repository