Soule University, War and Disease

[Letter from B.T. Kavanaugh to F.A. Mood]
1867 

This scrapbook arranged by C.C. Cody contains correspondence between B.T. Kavanaugh, a professor at Soule University, and F.A. Mood, the future founder of Southwestern University who was offered the presidency of Soule. Mood had initially rejected a professorship at Soule, but kept contact with several faculty members including Kavanaugh On Christmas Eve, 1867, Kavanaugh writes a tragic account of the state of Soule University after in the midst of the yellow fever epidemic:

Our University here has suffered severely with the Church and Country by reason of the Epidemic which was very distructive [sic] of life, and all our immediate prospects here. Our Halls were closed for nearly all the Summer or fall session – indeed it is closed still awaiting the beginning of the next session, on the 4th of Jany. One of our professors fell victim to the disease, Dr. T.H. Kavanaugh, Prof. of Natural Science – my only son. My only single daughter, fell also, in 24 hours after her Bro. leaving me one child living, a married daughter. I had the disease, as did every teacher in both schools, and every person in our town with some 6 or 7 exceptions who kept themselves under strict exclusion. Some 6 or 8 of our advanced students also died, leaving the survivors, both teachers and students, under great depression of spirits.

The Civil War had taken Soule’s students, repurposed its building, and destroyed its endowment. The University was unable to operate until it finally reopened in 1867, when the yellow fever ravaged its population. Shortly thereafter, the prosperity of the surrounding area was also devastated by the loss of cotton crops. Despite Mood’s best efforts as president, Soule University never completely recovered from its misfortunes.

Francis Asbury Mood
[Autobiography]
1875-1883 

F.A. Mood wrote the story of his life for his children, from his childhood to his life as a South Carolina circuit rider to the founding of Southwestern University. In it, F.A. Mood recalls the disheartening state of Soule upon his arrival in 1868:

The aspect of the building was not enlivening. It was a large, rather unsightly rock building, containing a large chapel and some nine rooms, for recitation. Used during the war as a military hospital, its apparatus and library had been nearly all scattered and destroyed and the whole establishment badly defaced. At the close of the war the University was reopened after a fashion, but had scarcely got well under way when yellow fever made its appearance in the town, decimating the inhabitants and remorselessly carrying off students and professors. This was the year preceding my arrival. The building had been unused for months and presented a neglected and dilapidated appearance. The Board of Trustees, however, met in strong force and gave me a warm welcome, placed the entire matter in my hands, as they said – and then dispersed. . . . a debt of seventeen thousand dollars hung over the dilapidated and leaking establishment. This was the last abysm for I had understood in the correspondence that the single redeeming feature in the whole case as that there was no debt. How I came to be thus misled I cannot now explain.

Mood managed to make some necessary physical repairs himself, but in 1869 Soule was sent into a panic by rumors of returning yellow fever. Shortly thereafter, Mood writes, he began to campaign for a central Texas University, “which sealed the final doom of Soule University, but at the same time laid the foundation for its reappearance in more desirable and promising shape elsewhere.”