Overview

At the close of the nineteenth century, the members of the Women’s Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church were concerned that many Americans in isolated areas were not receiving a proper education. The women decided to establish church supported schools in areas where there were no public services. In many cases, the young people who came to these mission schools had no prior formal education. They purchased property in the Swannanoa Valley near Asheville in 1893.

In 1894, the Asheville Farm School officially opened with 25 boys attending and a professional staff of three people. It was not until 1923 that the school had its first graduating class. In 1936, the first post high school programs in vocational training were begun. It was hoped that this type of training would give the students more prospects in the job market. In 1942, the junior college division was established. The Asheville Farm School continued as a boys unit in high school studies. The Dorland-Bell School of Hot Springs was joined with the Farm School, which brought high school age girls to campus. The Warren Wilson Vocational Junior College was joined with them under our one administration.

After WWII, the public education system in North Carolina improved dramatically, and the need for the mission’s high school diminished. The last high school class was graduated in 1957, and the school remained a junior college until March 1966 when it was established as the four year Warren Wilson College, offering six majors. In 1972, the National Board of Missions deeded the WWC property over to the college’s Board of Trustees.

Since the 1970s, Warren Wilson College has grown and changed into the contemporary liberal arts institution that it is today, but we haven’t forgotten our roots in the Asheville Farm School. We remain dedicated to a curriculum of “learning by doing,” which informs our commitments to community engagement, our work program, and our emphasis on original student research.

Warren Hugh Wilson (1867 – 1937)

沃伦·威尔逊出生在宾夕法尼亚州的蒂迪奥特附近，他的青少年时期是在布拉德福德附近度过的，1879年，他的父亲举家迁往那里。He graduated in 1890 from Oberlin College and moved to New York City where he became the first secretary of the YMCA and edited its magazine,The Intercollegian. While serving in this position Wilson became acquainted with James B. Reynolds, the social reformer, and Jacob Riis, a progressive young reporter for The New York Sun who would later become well-known for his improvement of slums in New York and for his writing.

A decision to enter the ministry came in 1891 and that same year, Wilson entered Union Theological Seminary in New York. While at the seminary he also took geology and criminology courses at Columbia University. One of the criminology courses was taught by Franklin H. Giddings, who held the first chair in sociology in any university in the world. In Wilson’s last year at the seminary he began working in a Sunday School program in Quaker Hill, New York.

1894年从神学院毕业后，威尔逊被邀请到贵格会山做全职工作。在那里，他遇到了伊利诺斯州橡树公园的Pauline Lane，两人于1895年6月20日结婚。由于威尔逊的努力，同年在贵格山组织了一个教堂，并被命名为基督教堂。从1899年到1908年，威尔逊在纽约布鲁克林的阿灵顿大道长老会教堂担任牧师。

在那里，他进入哥伦比亚大学，在富兰克林·h·吉丁斯的指导下攻读博士学位。威尔逊的博士论文和另一名学生的论文一起提交，被称为“美国乡村生活社会学的第一批研究”。它的标题是《贵格会山:社会学研究》。

Warren Wilson received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1908 and that same year joined the staff of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as one of two superintendents in the Department of Church & Labor. In 1901 he became superintendent of the Department of Church and Country Life. The department was the only one of its kind maintained by any religious body. Wilson helped other religious bodies organize departments similar to his and through his writings influenced the development of rural church policy. Wilson insisted that “the church was a social as well as a divine institution” and suggested “innovations and additions” to the programs of rural churches, such as soil conservation and recreation activities.2

Wilson’s tenure at the Department of Church & Country Life came at a time when there was a rising interest in, and concern for, rural life. In 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed his famous Country Life Commission. A rural church movement complemented this rising national interest in rural life. According to Professor Dwight Sanderson of Cornell University, this rural church movement owed its origin to the work of Warren H. Wilson.

Wilson’s years at the Department of Church and Country Life were full. He conducted surveys and did research on rural churches; held rural life conferences; and began summer schools for rural pastors which, at the time of his death, extended throughout the United States.

Warren Wilson died just prior to his 70th birthday on March 1, 1937. He and Mrs. Wilson had four children: Margaret, Julius Lane, John Albert and Agnes Elizabeth. Wilson’s published works included twelve books and pamphlets, thirteen periodical articles, seven parts of series, six addresses and seventeen surveys.

1942年，美国长老会家庭使命委员会关闭了位于北卡罗莱纳温泉市的Dorland-Bell女子学校，并将学校与理事会设在后者的阿什维尔男子农场学校合并。与此同时，董事会创建了一所专科学院，并决定将新学校命名为沃伦·h·威尔逊职业专科学院，以纪念沃伦·h·威尔逊的生活和工作。

Footnotes:

1) Sanderson, Dwight.Rural Sociology and Rural Social Organization(New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1942), p. 717. Quoted in Seth W. Hester, The Life and Work of Warren H. Wilson and Their Significance in the Beginnings of the Rural Church Movement in America (an unpublished thesis submitted to the Department of Rural Sociology at Drew Theological Seminary of Drew University in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Madison, NJ, 1946).

2) “Warren Hugh Wilson,” article in The Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement Two, p. 726f.

3) Sanderson, op. cit., p. 716. Quoted in Hester, op. cit., p. 45.