S.C. Encyclopedia | A historically black college in Columbia, Benedict College was founded in 1870 on the site of an eighty-acre plantation. Rhode Island native Bathsheba Benedict, serving with the Baptist Home Mission Society, purchased the property with the long-term goal of educating recently emancipated African Americans.

Originally named Benedict Institute, the school began with a class of ten men, one building (a dilapidated former slave master’s house), and one teacher, the Reverend Timothy L. Dodge, a college-educated northern minister who would become the school’s first president. These first students followed a curriculum of grammar school subjects, Bible study, and theology. Later, additional courses were added to train Benedict’s students for work as teachers and ministers.