The Courtship of George and Susan
by Louise Eady
This story of the love affair between George Stone and Susan Capers was adapted from Polly Stone Buck’s manuscript
“Florrie and the Blessed Town.”
“Florrie and the Blessed Town.”
George Washington Whitfield Stone was a shy young man. He was a man who worked and led quietly from “behind the scenes.” He came to Oxford from the little country town of Monroe in Walton County to attend the new Emory College. He received his degree in the college’s second graduating class in 1842 and with such an outstanding record, that he was immediately asked to become a member of the faculty. From that time forward, his was a life-time love affair with both the college and the town. At the time he joined the faculty, a third love affair was going on as well -- one with young Susan Capers. Susan was a beautiful and talented young lady from the sophisticated town of Charleston.
The name Capers, prominent in South Carolina antebellum ecclesiastical history, became an Oxford name too when the Oxford Church elders, seeking the most important man in Methodism in the South to dedicate their newly constructed church, asked Bishop William Capers of Charleston to be that man. He accepted the invitation and came to Oxford for the great occasion.
He had heard of the new college, of course, but when he arrived for the dedication ceremony, and saw the leafy, tree-embowered place, the circle of college buildings where “the glorious business of education” was already humming along, and the spanking new town never to be smirched by sin, he was so delighted by it all that he selected it as the choicest place for his own home and moved his family over from South Carolina.
Among his various children, were three pretty teen-age daughters, who spent their evenings tinkling on the square piano in the bishop’s parlor, and singing so sweetly that every young man in the college immediately fell in love with all three of them.
The young mathematics professor, George Stone, was too modest to aspire to three young ladies; he would settle for one -- and he knew which one. But he was much too in awe of the famous father and the constant presence of the other sisters to present himself in the parlor, where the undergraduates, with no such diffidence, were always hanging over the piano, turning the leaves of the music books, and sighing prodigiously as they batted languishing eyes at the singers. Evening after evening, the shy young mathematics wizard sat in the dark on a tree stump in front of the house, listening entranced to the angelic strains of music, and trying to get up courage to twist the doorbell.
At last, sufficiently emboldened, he braved the family inside, found them not half as frightening as he had expected, and shortly afterwards he found the courage to ask the bishop if he could become his son-in-law. He then carried off beautiful twenty-year-old Susan to his newly acquired home at the top of the town, where they would spend the rest of the century. They and their descendants have helped found and nurture Oxford to this day. Their great-great-great grandchildren still live in that same house on the hill.
The name Capers, prominent in South Carolina antebellum ecclesiastical history, became an Oxford name too when the Oxford Church elders, seeking the most important man in Methodism in the South to dedicate their newly constructed church, asked Bishop William Capers of Charleston to be that man. He accepted the invitation and came to Oxford for the great occasion.
He had heard of the new college, of course, but when he arrived for the dedication ceremony, and saw the leafy, tree-embowered place, the circle of college buildings where “the glorious business of education” was already humming along, and the spanking new town never to be smirched by sin, he was so delighted by it all that he selected it as the choicest place for his own home and moved his family over from South Carolina.
Among his various children, were three pretty teen-age daughters, who spent their evenings tinkling on the square piano in the bishop’s parlor, and singing so sweetly that every young man in the college immediately fell in love with all three of them.
The young mathematics professor, George Stone, was too modest to aspire to three young ladies; he would settle for one -- and he knew which one. But he was much too in awe of the famous father and the constant presence of the other sisters to present himself in the parlor, where the undergraduates, with no such diffidence, were always hanging over the piano, turning the leaves of the music books, and sighing prodigiously as they batted languishing eyes at the singers. Evening after evening, the shy young mathematics wizard sat in the dark on a tree stump in front of the house, listening entranced to the angelic strains of music, and trying to get up courage to twist the doorbell.
At last, sufficiently emboldened, he braved the family inside, found them not half as frightening as he had expected, and shortly afterwards he found the courage to ask the bishop if he could become his son-in-law. He then carried off beautiful twenty-year-old Susan to his newly acquired home at the top of the town, where they would spend the rest of the century. They and their descendants have helped found and nurture Oxford to this day. Their great-great-great grandchildren still live in that same house on the hill.