McNamara's Blog
Edward A. Scott was born in Ireland and came to America at age fourteen. He was the first student to enroll at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts (in those days the lines between high school and college were blurred.) Father Fitton, a Jesuit at the school, was a friend of his family. The history of Spring Hill College states that he was the first student to enroll at Holy Cross, and the first to win an academic prize there.
There was an interesting mix of students at the school during those years. There were the three Healy brothers: James, Patrick, and Sherwood, sons of a Georgia planter and his common-law wife (who was also technically his slave). The three boys would go on to become prominent clergymen: a bishop, a university president, and a highly respected pastor. There was Henry Brownson, whose father Orestes was perhaps the leading Catholic intellectual in nineteenth century America, who would serve in the Union Army during the Civil War. And then there was Frank Crawford Armstrong, a future Confederate general.
At the time, however, the Massachusetts legislature denied Holy Cross the power to grant degrees, so he enrolled at Mount St. Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland. For a while he studied there for the priesthood, but he would find his calling elsewhere. Making his way down to Alabama, he worked as a teacher. Later when the war broke out he joined the Confederate Army and served for four years.
After the war, he came to teach at Spring Hill College, Alabama. In 1830, the Bishop of Mobile (whose diocese covered the whole states) started a Catholic college staffed by his own priests. By the 1840’s, however, it had gotten to be too much for them, and the Jesuits took over the school (which they have maintained ever since.)
Three years later he moved to Columbia, South Carolina, to take care of the uncle who had paid for his schooling. He also looked after his nieces and nephews and “devoted himself to their Catholic upbringing.” When he died, he left his library, along with a thousand dollars, to Spring Hill. During the Golden Jubilee celebration for Holy Cross in 1893, he wrote:
The three things in my life that I am most thankful for and proudest of, are:
1. That I am a Catholic.
2. That I am an Irishman.
3. That I am a Confederate soldier.
There are three things that I would rather have been:
1. A better Catholic.
2. A better Irishman.
3. A better Confederate soldier.
NOTE
As of yet, I have been unable to determine the unit in which Professor Scott served. One would assume, of course, that it was in an Alabama regiment.
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