David Coward speaks about his ancestor who founded Kings Mountain Military Academy in 1855.
David Coward, president of the Columbia Torch Club, gave a talk at the March meeting of the club on his famous ancestor Asbury Coward, who was born in Charleston in 1835 to a Low Country rice planter.
Coward graduated from The Citadel in 1854 and went to Yorkville ( now York) in 1854 to study law. He and Micah Jenkins established the Kings Mountain Military Academy in 1855 as a prep school for The Citadel.
When South Carolina seceded, the Academy closed, and Asbury joined the Confederate army as a captain in the adjutant general’s department. By 1862, he was a colonel commanding the SC 5th Regiment in the battles of Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain, and Knoxville. He was wounded in Virginia in 1864 and was with Lee at Farmville and Appomattox at the end of the war.
Coward returned to Yorkville to be with his wife and 17 children. He reopened the academy, but, due to Reconstruction hardships, closed the school in 1886. Coward served as state superintendent of instruction until 1890 when he became superintendent of The Citadel.
USC awarded Coward the honorary degree of doctor of laws in 1896, and President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Coward to the West Point Board of Visitors. Coward retired from the The Citadel in 1908 and was awarded a Carnegie Pension which allowed him a “retirement in dignity.”
Coward died in 1925 at age 89 and is buried at Rosehill Cemetery in York County alongside his wife, Elise. His gravestone reads:
Asbury Coward
Sept. 19, 1835
April 28, 1925
Soldier of God
Well Done
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