How Campbell University began

#CampbellFoundersWeek Coverage

Tuesday: How Campbell University began

Before we were Campbell University, we were Campbell College. Before that, we were Campbell Junior College; and before that, Buies Creek Academy (BCA).

Perhaps you’ve heard this founding, growth, and changes over the past 128 years described as the “Big Miracle at Little Buies Creek” or the “great American story.” Both fitting. What makes them so?

A gritty, faithful start.

Today, as part of our coverage of our inaugural #CampbellFoundersWeek, we look at that start. Why did J.A. Campbell found Buies Creek Academy in 1887? And how did BCA endure its early challenges, including a fire that destroyed nearly all of campus?

We’ll have more information about Founding President J.A. Campbell (and his wife, Cornelia Pearson Campbell) on Friday, when we’ll hold the unveiling ceremony of his statue in front of Kivett at 3 p.m. For now, here are five stories about him and others who founded Buies Creek Academy and ensured its survival, shaping the Campbell University we now know:

The one about the mustache

J.A. Campbell in front of Buies Creek Academy’s first building.

Though the parents of J.A. Campbell (1862-1934) had little formal education, they valued education and encouraged their son to read. So “Jim Archie,” as his parents called him, grew up in Harnett County at the time of the Civil War and Reconstruction with “his nose always in a book,” his childhood friends would say. He especially loved the Bible, which he read daily. “Jim Archie” jut wanted to learn.

His parents enrolled him in subscription school when he was 6; and at age 10, he attended grammar school (alongside with his father) for two months. He didn’t attend school regularly beyond that.

But every so often, his father managed to get hold of schoolbooks. “Jim Archie” read them all, and every other book, magazine, and newspaper he could get his hands on. At age 17, he took up Latin and headed to Apex, more than 30 miles away, to attend boarding school.

Within a year, he began his teaching career. He was only 18 years old. An 18-year-old teaching students just a year or two younger? He thought he needed to look older. So he grew a mustache. It became a signature look he maintained for the rest of his life. Well, pretty much the rest of his life.

As his wife, Cornelia Pearson Campbell (1865-1963), told his biographer Bernadette Woodlief Hoyle (1912-1989), her husband had a playful spirit and “the saving grace of good humor.” Every blue moon he would shave his mustache “just to see what people say,” she told the biographer. “It would always bring a laugh for he’d worn it so long that he looked [strange] without it.”

The one about the books

The earliest photo of BCA faculty. J.A. Campbell is standing far right.

After teaching for four years, J.A. Campbell enrolled at Wake Forest College with plans to become a Baptist preacher, like his father. A-year-and-a-half into his studies, during the summer of 1886, he returned to Harnett County to work and help pay the mortgage for his family’s farm, going door-to-door selling two books: “The Story of the Bible” and “The Story of the Baptist.”

One evening he came upon the home of William Pearson, an elder leader of the Buies Creek community. Pearson was familiar with the 24-year-old Campbell. He knew the young man had been recently ordained as a Baptist minister, had been attending Wake Forest while pastoring Hector’s Creek Baptist Church, and once had been the principal of a boarding school his daughter, Cornelia, attended. Pearson asked Campbell his plans for the future.

The first class schedule

Morning

8:30 School begins

8:30-8:45 Religions exercises

8:45-9 First spelling class

9-9:25 Higher English grammar

9:25-9:50 Graded Less. grammar

9:50-10:10 Third Latin

10:10-10:20 Recess

10:20-10:40 Compsition & Rhetoric

10:40-11 Elementary geography

11-11:20 Manual of Geography

11:20-11:20 Second Latin

11:40 to noon First Latin, penmanship

noon-1 Recess

Afternoon

1-1:25 Fifth reader

1:25-1:50 Fourth reader

1:50-2 First reader

2-2:10 Spelling class

2:30-2:55 Common School Arith.

2:55-3:05 Recess

3:05-3:30 Intermedi. Arith.

3:30-3:50 Algebra

3:50-4 Primary Arithmetic

4-4:30 Vocal music

Not to sell books, Campbell told him. He hadn’t been having much success with that. He also didn’t plan to return to Wake Forest after the summer, he told him, because he wanted to continue to earn money to help his family. In fact, he had a job offer to pastor four churches and head a school in eastern North Carolina for a handsome salary of $800 a year, he told Pearson. But he had a dilemma: He wanted to stay in Harnett County and help the people where he grew up.

Pearson wondered aloud: What if you started a school here? There hadn’t been one in Buies Creek for at least three years, Pearson said. The state of North Carolina, still struggling in the aftermath of the Civil War, operated few public schools, most in urban areas. Churches and private citizens established schools to fill the gaps. It was time that happened in Buies Creek, Pearson said.

He pointedly asked Campbell: What if Buies Creek — and its entire population of seven families — pooled together its money and resources to build a schoolhouse? Would you start the school and lead it?

Yes, Campbell said. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

The one about the first Wednesday

BCA students in front of the schoolhouse in 1899.

By November 1886 the Buies Creek community had collected $350 and begun building a 40×22-foot one-room schoolhouse on an acre of donated land. J.A. Campbell had been looking forward to the opening of the school — Buies Creek Academy (BCA) — “like a little boy,” according to his biographer. But a brutal winter delayed construction, bringing into doubt whether BCA would begin in January as planned.

The community rallied around Campbell and BCA again. The local Baptist church offered him space for a classroom in its facility at no cost. So BCA opened on the day Campbell said it would open in the pamphlets and letters he sent to other pastors, former professors, and college classmates seeking students: Jan. 5, 1887 — a Wednesday.

On his way to class that first morning — a cold day with snow on the ground — Campbell yelled out, riding horse-and-buggy: “On the way to Buies Creek Academy!”

As students entered the makeshift classroom, he greeted each one: “Well, well. You’ve come to schooll! Now, I wonder if you can spell by heart?”

Sixteen students, ranging from ages 6 to 21, showed up for classes that Wednesday, while five older boys helped to build the schoolhouse, bringing the total first-day enrollment to 21.

The first students

  • H.S. Bryd*
  • J.M. Byrd
  • Flossie A. Byrd
  • Mamie A. Byrd
  • W. Frank Ennis
  • J.A. Ennis
  • D. Mc. Hamilton*
  • J.A. Hamilton
  • J.F. Hamilton*
  • J.H. Hamilton
  • Harvey M. Holloman
  • E.B. Johnson
  • Willis R. Johnson
  • Clarence McNeill
  • E.F. McNeill
  • J.H. McNeill*
  • W.H. McNeill
  • Cornelia F. Pearson
  • John S. Pearson
  • Jimmie Patterson
  • Lonnie Stewart*

*The five boys who helped build the schoolhouse and began attending classes after its completion.

Campbell was ecstatic. Ever the Baptist preacher, he delivered a short message to students to start the day. According to his biographer, he told them:

“School was the greatest opportunity in the world. Here they would not only learn to read, to write, to become educated men and women, to become leaders, but most of all it was their chance to improve themselves, to open the door to a new world, the world of books.”

Then he read scripture and led the students in the singing of one of his favorite hymns, “Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me.”

That first month of BCA’s existence brought a new face to the classroom nearly every day. By the end of the first term, BCA was meeting in its one-room schoolhouse and enrolled 91 students. “Meeting in the church” to start the school, Campbell told others, “was sort of like a blessing.”

The one about “ad astra per aspera”

A fire destroyed nearly all of BCA’s facilities in December 1900.

When J.A. Campbell heard from others outside of Buies Creek about the school he started, it wasn’t uncommon for him to receive a response like: “A school in the backwoods?! How will it survive?”

Buies Creek had a population of seven families — nearly all earning income from farming. The community received mail once a week. The nearest train station was 30 miles away. And nearly 25 percent of the voting population alone couldn’t read. The community was poverty-stricken.

The first faculty

  • J.A. Campbell (principal)
  • Nolia Benson (music)
  • E.B. Johnson (penmanship)
  • Cornelia F. Pearson*

*Began as a student and soon joined the staff to work with the younger students; married J.A. Campbell in 1890.

But Campbell believed “In adversity there is strength.” In a chapel service during BCA’s infancy, he told students: “Prosperity reveals our weaknesses, adversity our strength. Let us not despise that which shows us our better selves.”

BCA thrived. By the end of the 19th century, BCA enrolled more than 300 students and had a strong reputation. Regional publications and educational leaders were regularly giving BCA high praise, such as calling it “one of the greatest education institutions in the South” and “worthy of people’s confidence and esteem.” The school adopted the motto: “Ad astra per aspera,” or “To the stars through difficulty.”

In January 1900, Campbell wrote in his newspaper, The Little River Record: “Many of those who prepared here [at BCA] have gone out to form other institutions, to preach Christ, to fill places of honor and trust in every work of life. Through influences set in motion here thousands will come at last to glory. . . . We are rejoicing in the great things that are being done for the people.”

Things got only better during the fall 1900 term. In his annual yuletide message delivered on Wednesday, Dec. 20, 1900, Campbell told students and staff they had more to be thankful for than ever before and that BCA was “prepared to be a great part of the greatest century.”

Then, that same day, the fires began. At 8:30 p.m., a tenant house near BCA burned to the ground. At about 2:30 a.m., another fire destroyed a home belonging to a BCA teacher. Less than an hour later, BCA’s schoolhouse was up in flames. “It was undoubtedly the work of enemies,” The Harnett County Banner reported. Nearly all of BCA was in ashes, save for the tabernacle.

When Campbell saw the destruction on the morning of Dec. 21, 1900, he dropped to his knees and sobbed. It was near the last day of the term, and students were heading home for Christmas. Campbell felt like he couldn’t bear it, his biographer reported. “There’s no chance to go on,” he thought. “There was nothing to come back to. . . . I couldn’t build again.”

A student spotted Campbell staring at the remains that morning. He walked up to his principal, hugged him, and told him: “Dear teacher, cheer up. We boys are going to stand by you, and we are going to put up a brick building.”

The student was poor; he couldn’t even afford a train ticket to get home for the break. “Poor in money,” Campbell later recalled, according to his biographer, “but rich in faith and love and nobility.”

The one about the camels

BCA students and the partially constructed Kivett Hall in 1902.

Campbell University’s first sports teams were nicknamed the Hornets. That mascot gave way to the Camels in 1934, the same year J.A. Campbell died. Where did “the Camels” come from?

One urban legend suggests the nickname derived from people mishearing or mispronouncing the “Campbell” name. Another one has it that students in the early 1930s imagined their own slogan for the school: “I’d walk a mile for a camel.” But there’s little archival support for these tales. The most likely origin goes back to 1900 — and to the fire.

The morning after nearly all of Buies Creek Academy burned down, Z.T. Kivett visited J.A. Campbell at home. A builder and contractor who had several children enrolled at BCA, Kivett found Campbell still in bed, distraught. Campbell couldn’t speak, only weep.

Kivett went to Campbell’s bedside and pulled at his wrist, urging him: “Time’s wasting, Jim Archie! Get out of that bed! Whoever saw a camel without a hump on it? Now, you get out and get a hump on you! We’ve got work to do!”

From then on “all Mr. Campbell had in mind was to get back to school,” his wife told his biographer. Campbell also wrote in The Little River Record: “If I leave here the people are ruined. I cannot go. I would, I think, be happier over yonder in a log building, with these people who love me so well and to whom I have given my life, than in a brick building elsewhere. Pray for us.”

The next day Kivett moved his family to campus to live in a “shanty” and oversee BCA’s rebuilding. He led the efforts to renovate the spared tabernacle and turn it into a makeshift school. Within 20 days of the fire, BCA reopened in the tabernacle.

Classes were held in the temporary quarters over the next three years as Kivett took charge of constructing a large brick building to house BCA. Male students often spent their Saturdays helping build it. The school opened the building in 1903 and named it in Kivett’s honor.

Of Kivett, and others who helped rebuild BCA, Campbell wrote: “We desire to return our sincere and heartfelt thanks.”

Editor’s Note: Information and content for these pieces were drawn from the writings of Bernadette Woodlief Hoyle (1912-1989), a historian of Campbell University and biographer of J.A. Campbell; the 2012 book “Campbell University: Celebrating 125 years of faith, learning, and service” by Lloyd Johnson; the book “Campbell College: Big Miracle in Little Buies Creek” by J. Winston Pearce; and the article “The True Origin of the Camel” by Ronnie W. Faulkner.

Another helpful resource was historical information that University Archives provided and prepared for the book “Campbell University: Celebrating 125 years of faith, learning, and service” and the “Blast from the Past” exhibit that will be held Thursday in Marshbanks’ President’s Dining Room from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m and 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Those were worked on the “Blast from the Past” exhibit are Kendra Erickson, an adjunct in history; Marie Berry, head of access services, Wiggins Memorial Library; Dorothea Stewart Gilbert, director and curator of Lundy-Fetterman Museum; Amanda Evans, a senior history major; Kaela McCoy, a sophomore studio art major; Sean Neal, a senior graphic design and communication studies major; and Katelyn Billheimer, a 2014 alumna.

Plus: Read more about the university’s history

In recent years, Campbell Magazine has published numerous articles related to the university’s history that span events and personalities throughout Campbell’s 128 years. They include:

“For decades, Dean Burkot made Campbell College — now University — run like a well-oiled machine. He was a busy man, and the light in his office often burned well into the night, especially around registration and graduation.”

 Burkot: The Renaissance Man

A 2009 trip to Mississippi inspired Campbell President Jerry Wallace to move on establishing North Carolina’s first medical school in 35 years. But the idea was planted much, much earlier.

 A Bold Step

It was Neil Matthews who helped build the Baptist church that still stands today on campus, and it was Neil’s house — the one he rented from the Campbell family and that once stood within eye-shot of J.A. Campbell’s home — that served as a meeting place where discussions about the future of the school were held.

 Rooted in Campbell

A new pharmacy school and its young dean proved the critics wrong 30 years ago.

 The Maddox Legacy

How the 2003 master plan transformed Campbell Univeristy

 Then, now and next

The Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine wouldn’t have been possible if not first for the success of the university’s law and pharmacy schools

 What came before

Marie Mason served Campbell (and her country) as a nurse in the 1940s.

 The first nurse

Cordell Wise is a significant figure in Campbell’s history, whether he believes it or not.

 Forgotten First

 

 

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Tuesday’s event

Founders Week Game: The Campbell men’s basketball team will host Presbyterian in Gore Arena at 7 p.m. for the inaugural Founders Week Game. There’ll be a J.A. Campbell Look-A-Like contest, with a $250 cash prize awarded at halftime to the student who most resembles our founding president. As a bonus, we’re giving away Gaylord bobbleheads to the first 1,887 fans. Doors open at 6 p.m.

Coming Wednesday: #CampbellDay

We’re debuting #CampbellDay Wednesday. Our whimsical 64-second animation video explains the day and how you can help us celebrate our university:

And while we have your attention, join our Thunderclap campaign to help us spread the word about #CampbellDay.

Help us tell the story

Tag all social media content related to this week’s activities and events #CampbellFoundersWeek. We’ll retweet and repost some of our favorites, and share a few on Campbell.edu. We’ve already received a few that made the cut, like this one:

[4 selected #CampbellFoundersWeek tweets]

 

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