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- Biographical Souvenir of the States of Georgia and Florida
William C. Bass
Dr. William C. Bass, president of the Wesleyan Female College, Macon, Ga., was born in August Ga., January 13, 1831, the youngest of six children ? Henry, Daniel, Glover, Amelia, Anna and our subject ? born to Rev. Henry and Amelia M. (Love) Bass. Rev. Henry Bass was a native of Connecticut, a son of Daniel Bass, born December 9, 1786. He was taken to North Carolina when a child, thence went to South Carolina, was for forty years a member of the conference of the latter State, and died in May, 1860. Mrs. Amelia M. Bass was a native of Georgia, and a daughter of Alexander Love, a native of Kentucky.
William C. Bass was educated at Cokesbury, S.C., and at Emory College, Oxford, Ga., from which latter he graduated in 1852. He then took charge of a schoola t Greensborough, Ga., for two years, was licensed to preach, and went to Madison, Ga., where he precached regularly, and also held the chair of Natural Science in the Madison Female College for five years. In the fall of 1859 he removed to Macon, and accepted the same chair in the Wesleyan Female College, which he filled until July, 1874, when he was elected president of the institution, succeeding Dr. E.H. Myers, and still holds this position, preaching the meanwhile. During the administration of Dr. Bass, the college building has been enlarged (having received a donation of $125,000 from George L. Sency, of New York City), and the doctor has recently added telegraphy, stenography and type-writing to the branches previously taught. The institution has a larger patronage than it has enjoyed for many year past, the average attendance being 200 pupils, the credit of which is due largely to the skill, energy and executive ability of Dr. Bass.
In July, 1854, the doctor married Miss Ann O. Nickelson, of Greensborough, daughter of James B. and Anna M. (Willy) Nickelson, and this union has been blessed by the birth of six children, viz: Minnie, James O., Henry B., Willie G., Julian P. and Eugene L. Of these children, Miss Minnie Bass was married to R.F. Burden; James O., Henry B. and Eugene L. died in childhood, and Willie G. married Clandia Taylor, of Monroe County, Ga. The doctor is a Master Mason, and a member of the I.O.O.F., and is universally recognized not only as one of the best educators in the South, but as an eloquent preacher and finished gentleman.
Columbus Daily Enquirer, 16 Nov 1894
A Notable Death In Macon
The Distinguished Ex-President Of Wesleyan Passes Away
Macon, Ga., November 15 ? (Special). Dr. W. C. Bass, ex president of Wesleyan Female College, died this morning at the residence of R.F. Burden, in this city, after a proctracted illness. He was paralyzed, and, though conscious, unable to speak. His death was a shock to this community, and expressions of regret are universal.
William Capers Bass was born January 13, 1831. His father, Henry Bass, presiding elder of the Augusta district, moved to South Carolina, and at Cokesbury W.C. Bass was educated. He entered Oxford in 1850, graduated in 1852 as D.D. He took a position at Greensboro, S.C., as assistant to Crosby W. Smith. In July, 1854, he married Octavia Nicholson, who survives him. Later he was a professor in the Madison Female College, Greensboro; in October 1859 he was elected professor of natural science at Washington, which position he held until 1874, when he was made president, and so remained until the spring of this year, when he resigned on account of ill health.
The funeral takes place tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 o?clock from the Mullberry Street Methodist church, and will be one of the largest ever seen in Macon.
Men of Mark in Georgia (1911)
William Capers Bass
The Reverend Doctor W.C. Bass, than whom Georgia never had a more valuable citizen, was born in Augusta, Georgia, on January 13, 1831, and died in Macon, Georgia, on November 15 1894. Though a minister of the gospel and an active preacher, his life work was in the school room, and in his thirty-five years of connection with the Wesleyan Female College of Macon, he rendered to the State a service which will be producing fruit for generations to come.
His father, the Reverend Henry Bass, was born in Connecticut, December 9, 1776, son of Daniel Bass. When a child, his people moved to North Carolina, and thence he moved to South Carolina. Arriving at manhood, he became a Methodist minister and was for forty years a most useful member of the South Carolina Conference, surviving until May, 1860. Doctor Bass? mother, Amelia M. Lo9ve, was a native of Georgia, daughter of Alexander Love, who was a native of Kentucky. Doctor Bass was the youngest of six children.
On July 25, 1854, he was married to Miss Octavia Nickelson of Greensboro, Georgia, daughter of James Blake and Ann Maria (Willy) Nickelson. To them were born six children, of whom the survivors are: Minnie, now Mrs. R.F. Burden, of Macon (her husband being a leading business man of that city), and William G. Bass, who married Miss Claudia Taylor, of Monroe county, Georgia, Julian P. bass, who married Miss Mamie Jeffreys, of Jacksonville, Florida, died in Macon in October, 906. The other three children died in childhood. Mrs. Bass survives, in excellent health, though now seventy-seven years of age, and it is to her labor of love that we are largely indebted for the facts contained in this brief biography.
Doctor Bass was educate at Cokesbury, South Carolina, and at Emory College, Oxford, Georgia, and was graduated from the latter named institution in 1852. His original intention had been to follow the law, but he felt that he was called to the ministry, and so abandoned his intention. Singularly enough, though he desired earnestly to enter the work as an itinerant minister of the Methodist Church, it was so ordained that he never held a regular appointment from the Conference during life as an itinerant preacher. It seems that he had incurred some debt in securing his education. Not wishing to be hampered by that, he concluded to teach until the debt was paid. So he went to Greensboro, Georgia, as an assistant to Doctor C.W. Smith in the Greensboro School for Boys, and there was laid the foundation of that beautiful friendship between these two men, both then young, which continued for life. After one year, Doctor Smith was elected a professor in Wesleyan Female College, and Mr. Bass was left as principal of the school, which position he retained for two years. he was then elected to the chair of natural science in the Madison Female College, Madison, Georgia. He had been there but one year when he had an invitation to become professor of natural science in Wesleyan Female College at Macon. This he declined because of his conviction that it would not be just to the people at Madison. So he remained with them until at the close of his fifth year he was tendered the position in Wesleyan and accepted. The remaining thirty-five years of his life were spent with Wesleyan. He filled the chair of natural science until 1874, when he was elected president, as successor of Doctor E.H. Myers. In the meantime, his lifelong friend, Doctor Cosby W. Smith, had been professor of mathematics at Wesleyan; and these two, being to each other as David and Jonathan, living under the same roof for thirty years, associated themselves together in the lease of the school. This partnership continued until the sudden death of Doctor Smith in 1888, when Doctor Bass became sole lessee. It will be recalled by many people that Wesleyan is the oldest distinctively female college in the world. Naturally it shared in the misfortunes of the Southern people and had a hard struggle for existence. It was indeed fortunate for the school that in those hard years, a man of Doctor Bass' ability was put at the head of it. During his administration, George I. Seney, a generous hearted man of New York City, made a donation of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, which made possible the rebuilding of the college on lines commensurate with its needs. There was no endowment. The country was poor, and yet Doctor Bass brought the school up to an average attendance of two hundred and fifty, which was indeed a most remarkable showing. The Macon Telegraph on the day after his death gave an extended account of his life, prepared by his friend, Doctor J. O. A. Clarke, while living, and who had preceded Doctor Bass to the grave; and followed that by an editorial in which it made some statements worth noticing. It said that he occupied the place where he was most needed; that he was that rare combination, an earnest preacher, a good teacher and an excellent business man; and concluded its editorial with this statement: "Men who have done so much, and all of it so well as Doctor Bass, can afford to die." As an illustration of his business capacity, it may be mentioned that despite the large donation from Mr. Seney, the trustees found themselves unable to carry out their plans without an issue of bonds. Their only income was from what the lessees could produce. Such was the business ability of Doctor Bass that every engagement was met; the interest on the bonds paid, and the bonds gradually retired; and the college placed upon a solid basis with high credit. In one year he graduated as many as sixty young women, and in another fifty-eight. At the end of his life, of the more than one thousand three hundred and forty-seven graduates turned out by the Wesleyan up to that time, seven hundred and thirty had been graduated under his administration. Of the one hundred and thirty-four graduates in music, one hundred and thirty-three had received their diplomas at his hands. Sometimes as many as forty preachers' children a year were being given education, free of tuition and with reduced rates for board; and sometimes in addition to these forty preachers' children there would be as many as forty other daughters of poor men getting the same advantages; and as Doctor Clarke said, all of this came out of the pockets of Doctor Bass and Doctor Smith, themselves poor men, and as their financial statements showed to the board of trustees, their net income often less than that of a circuit rider. For himself, Doctor Bass cared nothing for money all the use he had for money was to build up Wesleyan and to help other people. He was a fluent writer, rarely rewriting anything, seldom making an erasure, and his writing carried weight. He managed the entire work of the college down to the minutest details; even the domestic department, with the assistance of a housekeeper. He was his own purchasing agent; his own bookkeeper; filled the chair of moral and mental philosophy, and preached regularly on Sunday, often twice a day. One who knew him most intimately said that he was not a brilliant preacher, but he was always clear and logical; that the parables were his favorite themes; that he was always acceptable and greatly beloved by his congregations. He was a man of indomitable energy. His scholastic labors have been mentioned. He is entitled to a more specific mention of his preaching work. For twenty years he maintained a monthly appointment at Swift Creek; had another at Bass (both founded by himself, and one of them called by his name), and maintained another monthly appointment for thirty-five years in Damascus. Though never actually in the itinerant work, he was from 1867 to the end of life a continuous member of the South Georgia Conference, being regularly appointed year after year to the college. During the last two years of his life his health was feeble, but he stood at his post until June, 1894, when he gave up his position, moved to the home of his son-in-law, Mr. R. F. Burden, and passed away a few months later. It is said of him that he was sincerely mourned by none more than by the servants who had been under his control, and that the colored people with whom he had come in contact throughout the country still hold his name in loving remembrance. He left no fortune in money but thousands of young women throughout the country, many of them now elderly women, who were under his forming hand for longer or shorter periods, cherish most lovingly the memory of the good man who strove so hard to do his whole duty by them, and it is probably not an exaggerated statement when it is said, as was said at the time of his death by the people of Macon, that no man had ever lived in Georgia who in a lifetime of sixty-three years had compassed greater or more beneficent results. A. B. CALDWELL.
Abbeville Press and Banner
Abbeville, South Carolina
Wednesday, November 28, 1894
William Capers Bass, D.D. (Doctor of Divinity)
Over the electric wires there has never flashed the name of a nobler man than the one to whom the following sad telegram relates:
Macon, Georgia, November 14, 1894
To Reverend S. H. Browne, Columbia, South Carolina:
Dr Bass fell sweetly asleep in Jesus at five o??clock this morning. Interment in Macon, Friday afternoon. R.F. Burden.
Thus was conveyed to us the saddening, though not unexpected, news of the death of a devoted disciple of Jesus, a pure and upright manly man, - a man who, for the past twenty years, has been the foremost education of women in the Southern Methodist Church.
William Capers Bass, fifth child of Reverend Henry and Mrs. Amelia Martin Bass, was born in Augusta, Georgia, January 13, 1831; joined the M.E. Church, South, at Cokesbury, South Carolina, August 22, 1848 and was happily converted five days later; graduated in Emory College, Oxford, Georgia, in 1852 (from which institution he subsequently received the degree of Doctor of Divinity); the same year he entered his chosen profession - teaching - and located at Greensboro, Georgia. In October, 1852, he was licensed by the old Walker Church, Greene County, Georgia, to preach the gospel, and in its historic pulpit, where the sainted Bishop Pierce preaches his first sermon, he, too, began his career as a clergyman. In July, 1854, he was most happily married to Miss Octavia Nicholson, who was thereafter his life-long inspiration and comfort. In 1859 Professor Bass, who was then with the Madison Female College, finally accepted the chair of natural sciences in the faculty of Wesleyan Female College, Macon, Georgia. He was elected president of this ??mother of female colleges? in 1874, and continued its faithful and successful head until June, 1894, when physical disabilities compelled him to seek entire rest.
Such are the seemingly dry dates of the distinctive events of Dr. Bass?? life. Time and space would fail us in an effort to adequately sketch the features of his career, or to limn the grand character of the man. Amidst his multitudinous and arduous college duties he maintained regular appointments at different churches near Macon, and this spiritual ministration to the poor was a joy to priest no less than people.
A few days ago Dr. Bass was stricken with paralysis, and on Thursday morning November 15, 1894, the pure spirit returned to heaven whence it came. Then ended the life of a man whose character was conspicuously unspotted from the world; no better, truer man lived, no man who rendered more deeply valuable service in the households of Southern Methodism is held in reverential recollection than William Capers Bass.
While the cloud of affliction that rests upon his loved ones is heavy, it has the illumining lining of certain hope in the glorious resurrection, in the joyful re-union where will be no more parting.
Mr. Bass leaves a widow, one daughter, Mrs. R.F. Burden, and two sons, Messrs, William and Julian Bass, all residents of Macon; one brother, Reverend Henry A. Bass, of Sumter County, South Carolina, and one sister, who is the wife of this editor.
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Bassett Family Association Database
1831 - 1894 (63 years)