“M” is for McCollough, John DeWitt (1822-1902). Minister, architect. Born at Society Hill, McCollough graduated from South Carolina College. He studied for the Episcopal ministry and was ordained in 1850. A craftsman without formal training, he was nevertheless aware of the new ideas that were transforming Episcopal Church architecture. “Ecclesiologists,” influenced by the high-church Oxford movement in England, believed that new churches should mirror fourteenth-century English Gothic design. In the 1850s, McCollough designed or was supervising architect for seven ecclesiological churches: Christ Church, Greenville; St. Stephen’s, Ridgeway; Nativity, Union; Christ Church, Mars Bluff; St. Mark’s Chester; Grace, Anderson; and Advent, Spartanburg. After the Civil War, South Carolinians could not afford to guild expensive churches. So, John DeWitt McCollough created simpler designs for churches at Rock Hill, Gaffney, Clemson, Lancaster, Greenwood, Willington, and Blacksburg.
“M” is for McCollough, John DeWitt (1822-1902)
