Folmar Pavilion Plaques

The Folmar Pavilion was dedicated on September 10, 1976, along with Draper Academic Building and the renovated Old Main and Burleson Hall. The pavilion was made possible by a gift by Mr. and Mrs. Jack G. Folmar. Jack Folmar was a Baylor trustee at the time. The plaques in Folmar Pavilion, which were commissioned by Baylor and installed between 1983 and 1989, honor Benajah Harvey Carroll, William Carey Crane, Henry Arthur McArdle and Dorothy Scarborough.

Carroll studied at Baylor in Independence, Texas, but left college to fight for the Confederacy, serving in the 8th Texas Cavalry Regiment and in the 17th Texas Infantry. He was wounded in 1864 in Mansfield, Louisiana. He went on to become a prominent Baptist leader and educator. He taught Bible and theology at Baylor from 1872 to 1905 and began a 15-year term as chairman of the Baylor University Board of Trustees in 1886. In 1905, he organized Baylor Theological Seminary, which eventuated in the founding of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1908. Carroll taught at the new school, which moved to Fort Worth in 1910, and served as its president until his death in 1914.

A native of Virginia, Crane served as president of Baylor University from 1864 to 1885, guiding the institution through the financial challenges of the years following the American Civil War. An alumnus of some of the best schools in Virginia, Maryland, and New York, William Carey Crane was the best educated person to hold the reigns of Baylor during its entire existence at Independence. In 1850, when he was living in Yazoo, Mississippi, and serving as a Baptist minister, he owned two enslaved women. While serving as Baylor’s president, Crane asserted “the true doctrine” of slavery as being a trust “divinely committed to the people of the Confederate States” that they had “no right to abandon or to surrender.” He died in 1885 in Independence, Texas.

McArdle studied at the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of Mechanic Arts, and in 1860 he won the Peabody Prize. During the Civil War, he was a draftsman for the Confederate navy and made topographical maps for Gen. Robert E. Lee. After the war, McArdle settled in Independence, Texas, where he taught art at Baylor Female College for many years. In addition to portraits of Sam Houston and historical canvasses concerning the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto, he painted portraits of Jefferson Davis for the Texas Capitol and the historical canvas Lee at the Wilderness. He died in 1908 in San Antonio.

Scarborough earned a B.A. and an M.A. from Baylor in 1896 and 1899, respectively, and earned a doctorate in literature from Columbia University, where she went on to teach writing for many years while pursuing a career as a novelist and author of nonfiction works. She died in 1935 in New York City.