Erskine College, located in Due West in Abbeville County, was founded by the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in 1839, and named in honor of the Scottish founder of the denomination, Ebenezer Erskine. It was one of several denominational colleges begun in the two decades after the heresy trial of South Carolina College President Thomas Cooper in 1832. Though he was acquitted and resigned from the presidency, many churches established their own colleges rather than risk their sons being educated by a state college with suspect theology. A century after its beginnings as a men's school, cheerleaders at the now coeducational Erskine College pose in this 1940 photograph.
Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.
