Rev. Franklin Gillette Smith

Rev. Franklin Gillette Smith. B. December 13, 1797 – D. August 4, 1866. , Born in Vermont, Franklin G. Smith moved to the South once he had completed his formal education at Middlebury College and the Princeton Theological Seminary. He worked as a teacher in Georgia before settling in Lynchburg, Virginia. There, he was ordained as an Episcopal minister, served as Rector of St. Paul's Church, and opened a girls' school. He also met his wife, Sarah, in Lynchburg – he performed her first husband's funeral., Members of the Episcopal Church, knowing Smith's reputation as an educator, recruited him to move to Columbia to take charge of the new Columbia Female Institute, an all-girl school. In the Spring of 1837, the Smith family made the journey from Lynchburg, VÀ to Columbia, TN by wagon so that he could, with Sarah's help, lead the Institute. They would continue at the Institute until 1852 when Rev. Smith opened his own girls' school, the Columbia Athenaeum., Smith was progressive when it came to female education. He believed women could learn everything that men could, and, at the Athenaeum, he set about teaching his students everything from advance math to sciences and foreign languages. Simply put, everything that well-educated men learned, he taught to young ladies in a time where women were thought inferior., When Tennessee seceded from the Union in 1861, Rev. Smith, despite his Yankee birth, became an ardent supporter of the Confederacy and personally outfitted a company of Confederate Infantry (Company B, 2nd Tennessee). Forced to leave his home, Smith refugeed to Memphis and, later, Mobile, Alabama where he worked on several different war-time projects, including the building of submarines. (Smith had previously designed a submarine in 1861 that is believed to be the basis of Charleston's famous H.L. Hunley)., With the fall of the Confederacy, Rev. Smith returned home to open his school once more. Through his hard work and determination, the Athenaeum opened again in the Fall of 1865, but the stress of war and ongoing Reconstruction had taken its toll on the elder educator. He died August 4, 1866 just a few days shy of the school's upcoming Fall Session., Rev. Smith, his wife Sarah, and several of their children are buried under the large oak tree ahead. Their Columbia home, the Athenaeum Rectory, still stands today near Downtown on Athenaeum Street.