The Educational Philanthropy of Charles Upham Shepard: Pinehurst Tea School and St. Barnabas Mission School in South Carolina

• In Event: Philanthropy as Innovation, 1880-1950

Abstract

In 1888, noted chemist and medical doctor Charles Upham Shepard established a working tea farm on the remnants of an old 600-acre plantation in Summerville, South Carolina. He employed black children as tea pickers, building a schoolhouse on the property to attract children to the job. At the same time, he also founded a school for poor Native American children in a nearby town. This study tells the story of both these schools—the Pinehurst Tea School and St. Barnabas Mission school—while highlighting Shepard’s involvement as a philanthropist and benefactor. The author looks at how both schools fit into existing scholarship about child labor and racially-segregated school enrollment in the post-Reconstruction American South.

Author

• Mindy Spearman, Clemson University