It is common knowledge among the Clemson faithful that the Fort Hill Plantation that Thomas Green Clemson bequeathed to the State of South Carolina upon his death in 1888 for the establishment of what eventually became the Clemson University, was originally owned by one of South Carolina’s most influential antebellum politicians, John Caldwell Calhoun. Thomas Clemson joined the Calhoun clan by marriage in 1838, when he married John C. Calhoun’s daughter Anna Calhoun. Clemson eventually gained title to Fort Hill via his wife’s inheritance of her father’s property in 1872, which then passed to him upon her death in 1875.
Historical Eye of the Tiger: Clemson @ FSU
