Funding for Furman Hall was contested in 1901 courtroom drama

Photo by Neil Brake

Mary Furman left Vanderbilt $100,000 in her will in 1900 to construct a building to be named after her late husband, Francis Furman. Her nieces and nephews unsuccessfully attempted to have the will dismissed in court.

by Bill Carey

The story of how Furman Hall came about is one of the lesser-known tales of Vanderbilt history, and many aspects of it are unique to the story of the school. During its early years, Nashville residents made few large financial contributions to the University, except in the case of Mary Furman. Vanderbilt has historically remained clear of lawsuits that involved family squabbles, but found itself drawn into the one that involved the Furman family. And most buildings built on campus have been brick -- except for Furman Hall, which is made of stone.

Furman Hall is named for Francis Furman, who immigrated from Ireland in the 1850s and made most of his money during the quarter century following the Civil War. From about 1870 until his retirement around 1890, Furman & Co. Wholesale Dry Goods and Notions was located on Nashville's Public Square, the area surrounding what is now the Davidson County Courthouse. He and his wife Mary lived in a fashionable house on Spruce Street (now Eighth Avenue). As did everyone else in Nashville at the time, Furman knew about Vanderbilt University, which had been formed in the mid-1870s. But he had no connection whatsoever to it. Neither he nor any of his family members attended the school or apparently knew any professors there.

Photo by Neil Brake

A statue of Francis Furman is housed inside the building that bears his name.

Francis Furman died of a stroke at the age of 81 on Dec. 23, 1899, something hardly noted in the newspapers at the time. About a week later, his death took on a new level of sadness when his 43-year-old son Willie committed suicide.

The death of her husband and her only remaining son obviously had a crushing impact on Francis Furman's widow Mary. About three months after her son's death, Mary Furman died of Bright's disease. After her death, it was revealed that in her will, rewritten nine days before her death, she had left $100,000 for Vanderbilt University to build a building named for her husband and $26,000 for the construction of a large monument to the family at Mt. Olivet Cemetery. In the will, Mrs. Furman also wrote that "I am not unmindful of the fact that I have some distant relatives and I do not desire that any of the property herein disposed shall go to them."

Mrs. Furman's closest relatives -- nieces and nephews -- were shocked by the will. They sued the executors and administrators of Mrs. Furman's estate, asking that the will be dismissed under the grounds that Mrs. Furman was insane when she rewrote it.

The case of the Furman will went to trial Nov. 4, 1901, and was closely followed by Nashville's daily newspapers. Attorneys for the family members, led by a man named J.J. Vertrees, presented several witnesses who claimed that after the deaths of her husband and son, Mrs. Furman grew depressed and absentminded. Several witnesses said that Mrs. Furman had never mentioned the remote possibility that she would give money to Vanderbilt. Attorneys for the family tried to prove that the exorbitant amount of money designated for the Mt. Olivet monument -- more money than had ever been spent on a privately-funded memorial in Tennessee -- was in itself proof that Mrs. Furman had lost touch with reality during the declining months of her life. They also produced a physician who knew Mrs. Furman and who said that during the last weeks of her life, she lost her short-term memory and was prone to suddenly break into spells of weeping. "She was insane," the doctor concluded.

Lawyers who defended the will included J.C. Bradford, uncle of the man who later founded the brokerage house J.C. Bradford & Co., and Walter Stokes, great-uncle of Stokes Bartholomew Evans & Petree founder Odgen Stokes. They produced several witnesses who said that they had spoken with Mrs. Furman during the final weeks of her life and who described her as acting mentally sound at that time. Among them were two monument salesmen who had each met with her at some length -- proof that her decision to build the large monument at Mt. Olivet was not done on impulse.

Bradford and Stoke's star witness was John W. Thomas, a lifelong friend of the Furman family, an executive with the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway and one of the chief organizers of Nashville's Centennial Exposition of 1897. Thomas said that a few months before her death, Mrs. Furman told Thomas that in addition to the large graveyard monument, she wanted to erect a "living" memorial in honor of her husband. Thomas (for reasons that are not known) suggested that she give money to Vanderbilt. Mrs. Furman asked Thomas to contact Vanderbilt Chancellor James Kirkland and ask about the needs of the University.

Thomas did so. And in a letter to Thomas dated March 5, 1900, Kirkland said that the University's most immediate need was $50,000 to establish an endowment for a new chemistry professorship. "This is a subject of so great importance that it will always remain one of the chief studies for every class of students at the University," Kirkland wrote. If he could secure funds beyond the $50,000, Kirkland said he would use it to build a chemical laboratory.

Thomas' testimony helped convince the jury that Mrs. Furman knew exactly what she was doing when she rewrote her will. On Dec. 2, 1901, the jury sustained the will of Mary Furman.

Because of legal appeals and the amount of time it took to settle the estate, it took several years for Furman Hall to become reality. In the end, Vanderbilt negotiated an out-of-court settlement with the Furman heirs and received $80,000 in cash and $60,000 from the sale of real estate previously owned by the Furmans.

The New York architectural firm Snelling & Carter designed Furman Hall as a collegiate Gothic structure, like many other buildings on campus, but constructed of stone. When it opened in 1907, it was regarded as the most modern chemistry and pharmacy building in the country, and contained everything from large offices to chemistry labs to a lecture hall. There was even a special system of fans through the building, meant to eliminate odors emanating from the laboratory. The University also placed a statue of Francis Furman in the structure named for him. That statue, and a plaque listing the executors of Mary Furman's estate, are about the only things that remained in Furman Hall when it was renovated in 1967 and turned into a building that housed the humanities.

As for Mrs. Furman's desire that a monument to her husband be built at Mt. Olivet Cemetery, it too became reality. To this day, the largest monument at Mt. Olivet is the 18-foot-high memorial to the Furman family.

Bill Carey is a Vanderbilt alumnus, a local journalist and the author of Fortunes, Fiddles and Fried Chicken: A Nashville Business History.

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