Asbury Coward (September 19, 1835 - April 28, 1925) was a school leader, Confederate Army officer, South Carolina Superintendent of Education. He served as Superintendent of The Citadel.
He was born on the Quenby Plantation outside Charleston, South Carolina,[1] and graduated from South Carolina Military Academy (now The Citadel) in 1854. He and classmate Micah Jenkins established the King's Mountain Military School in Yorkville in 1855.[2] It closed at the start of the American Civil War. It reopened after the war but the boarding school struggled with the challenging times and closed.[2]
During the Civil War, Coward was commissioned as a colonel and served under General James Longstreet in Tennessee and Georgia.[2]
He served as president of the Kings Mountain, North Carolina, centennial committee.[citation needed]
In 1890, Coward was named Superintendent of The Citadel. He remained in that office until 1908 and died in 1925.[2] He is buried at Rosehill Cemetery in York County.[3]
The Daughters of the American Revolution erected a monument honoring him at Kings Mountain National Military Park in Blacksburg.[4] The Citadel has a collection of his letters.[5] Winthrop University has a small collection of his letters.[6] His memoir was published in 1968.[7]
- ^ "Asbury Coward".
- ^ a b c d Kara, Klein. "Colonel Asbury Coward, CSA (1890-1908) - The Citadel - Charleston, SC". www.citadel.edu.
- ^ "A Coward was a soldier of God | Columbia Star". www.thecolumbiastar.com. 5 April 2013.
- ^ "Kings Mountain Colonel Asbury Coward Marker | NCpedia". www.ncpedia.org.
- ^ "Coward, Asbury Collection · The Citadel Archives Digital Collections". citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net.
- ^ Coward, Asbury (January 1, 2015). "Col. Asbury Coward Papers - Accession 600 - M259 (308)". Manuscript Collection.
- ^ Coward, Asbury (June 18, 1968). "The South Carolinians: Colonel Asbury Coward's memoirs". Vantage Press – via Google Books.