Patrick H. Mell Presidential Records
Collection
Identifier: Series-0018
This series contains the files of Patrick Hues Mell, President of Clemson College, 1902-1909. Within the files are Mell's correspondence, annual reports of the college, reports of departments within the college, budget summaries, minutes of committees (for example, the Discipline Committee), requests for raises from faculty members, resignations of various faculty and staff members, rosters of various faculty and staff members, rosters of graduates, newspaper clippings, and biographical materials.
The files document the history of Clemson College in the early twentieth century. Topics included in the letters concern conditions at the college; a 1904 listing of buildings and their values; the procurement of funds to build a YMCA building; Clemson's accreditation and efforts to obtain funds from the Carnegie Foundation; cadet discipline; the Pendleton Guards episode in 1908 that resulted in the dismissal of 306 cadets; the cancellation of the contract of Coach Francis Shaughnessy; the resignation of Joseph C. Minus, Commandant; and Mell's relations with members of the Board of Trustees, for example, Benjamin Tillman, John E. Wannamaker, and Alan Johnstone. Other correspondents include coach and engineering professor Walter M. Riggs, attorney Richard W. Simpson, Congressman Frank Lever, college surgeon Alexander M. Redfern, and Benjamin Sloan, President of the University of South Carolina.
Patrick Hues Mell was born 24 May 1850 at Penfield, Georgia, the son of Patrick Hues and Lurene Howard Cooper Mell. After graduating from the University of Georgia in 1871, Mell served as chemist for the state of Georgia. From 1878-1883 Mell served as professor of natural history (later professor of geology and botany) at the Alabama Polytechnical Institute at Auburn, Alabama, and in 1884, he became head of the state weather service of Alabama, where he devised a system of flags designed to signal coming changes in the weather. In both capacities Mell published numerous scientific writings, among them, " Auriferous Slate Deposits of Southern Regions," 1881; Grasses of Alabama, 1889; and Biological Laboratory Methods, 1902.
In 1902 Mell accepted the presidency of Clemson College, succeeding M. B. Hardin. Mell's accomplishments included a faculty reorganization, in which a hierarchy of positions and salaries reduced employee dissatisfaction and resignations, and a separation of the agricultural experiment station from the teaching component of the college in which sufficient time was allowed for professors to teach, researchers to conduct experimental research, and administrators to seek qualified applicants for all positions. A number of difficulties with the Board of Trustees over cadet discipline, especially the Pendleton Guards episode, however, brought Mell into conflict with the Board of Trustees, and on 1 January 1910, Mell resigned his post.
After leaving Clemson, Mell moved to Atlanta where he served as treasurer of the board of missions of the Southern Baptist Convention. Mell died 12 October 1918. He was married to the former Annie White of Athens, Georgia.
2 Cubic Feet
English
The series is arranged alphabetically and chronologically. Most of the files have been photocopied onto acid free bond for preservation.
Office of the President, Clemson University.
Maria Skilton and Mark Schnetzka, student assistants.
Part of the Clemson University Libraries Special Collections and Archives Repository