Relic Rooms 1893-1930
In the Fall Semester of 1893, Clemson University opened its doors to the first matriculation of new college students to Clemson Agricultural College at Fort Hill. The Fort Hill dwelling house simultaneously opened it's Relic Rooms to the public. In the Clemson University Board of Trustees Minutes of September 13, 1893, the Board of Trustees resolution recorded, “That a house and the Calhoun Library be assigned to Mr. Calhoun, ant that in lieu of house rent he take charge and care of the Relic Room.”
A photograph of the Relic Room at Fort Hill shows the parlor at Fort Hill with Thomas Clemson’s art collection covering the walls. The items that Thomas Clemson enumerated to remain at Fort Hill included his thrown chair from King Leopold I, his George Washington Windsor arm chair, a pair of striped stuffed chairs, and the Calhoun’s dining table and chairs among other items out of view and publications including the first yearbook the Oconee, prerecession of Taps.
In 1905, The Clemson College Literary magazine “The Clemson Chronicle” devoted coverage to an in-depth description of the Fort Hill museum. In a series of three articles, guest contributor Annie White Mell, wife of Clemson College President Patrick Hues Mell. The glowing description provides one of the best documentary sources of the interior staging of Fort Hill in the early 20th century and the artifact collection. Around 1910, the regent for the local Andrew Pickens Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution undertook as a chapter project a reinstallation of the artifacts in John C. Calhoun’s Office. The work was later an entry in the reminiscences entitled “Long, Long, Ago”by Grace Ward Calhoun (Mrs. Fred Harvey Hall Calhoun). The manuscript states that the chapter had located a sketch of the office in a magazine article and recreated that room arrangement.
