Biography

Ignatius Alphonso Few was born on April 11, 1789 the son of Captain Ignatius Few and Mary Candler in Columbia County Georgia. A historical oddity exists in the life of Emory University

Emory University

Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...

 in that Emory's founder (I. A. Few), was Asa Candler's cousin (who later became Emory’s greatest benefactor).

Few spent large portions of his early life in New Jersey and Few studied for a time at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 and in New York City before returning to Georgia to study the Law in Augusta. In 1811 he married Salina Carr and became an unsuccessful farmer. He returned to law in 1823 before becoming seriously ill with a form of ‘lung fever’ which was perhaps tuberculosis. At this juncture of his life he experienced a spiritual conversion and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church

Methodist Episcopal Church

The Methodist Episcopal Church, sometimes referred to as the M.E. Church, was a development of the first expression of Methodism in the United States. It officially began at the Baltimore Christmas Conference in 1784, with Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke as the first bishops. Through a series of...

. In 1828, Few felt the call to ministry, was admitted to the MEC as a minister. He was a charter member of the Georgia Conference of the MEC in 1831. However, because of his poor health, he left the active ministry shortly before 1835. In 1838, Few received the degree Doctor of Law from Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

 in Middletown, Connecticut

Middletown, Connecticut

Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, 16 miles south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated as a town under its original Indian name, Mattabeseck. It received its present name in 1653. In 1784, the central...

.

In 1834, the Georgia Conference of the MEC founded a school for manual labor 30 miles outside of what would become Atlanta, just north of the town of Covington. Few was selected to lead. As this was a manual labor school, the students were expected to work 3 hours a day in the field and doing farming chores. The classwork consisted of reading, writing and arithmetic and was meant to prepare the students for more higher education.

However well-meaning this concept was, it was rather idealistic for the time. The founders did not have enough experience to take on this project with any success – remember Few’s own failed attempt at farming – and before long the school was overrun with debt. Yet Few persisted and saw a different future for these teenaged students: a regular college which would focus on academics. The Georgia Conference, after considerable debate, asked the Georgia legislature for a charter to establish a college. In 1840, the Manual Labor School closed for good and was replaced by a program for “sub-freshmen” at Emory College.
Before the end of the first year at Emory, Few realized that his health, poor to begin with, was failing. He remained at Emory until July 1841. In 1844, he was responsible for writing a report describing the spilt of the MEC in to the Methodist Episcopal Church

Methodist Episcopal Church

The Methodist Episcopal Church, sometimes referred to as the M.E. Church, was a development of the first expression of Methodism in the United States. It officially began at the Baltimore Christmas Conference in 1784, with Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke as the first bishops. Through a series of...

 and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South

Methodist Episcopal Church, South

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, or Methodist Episcopal Church South, was the so-called "Southern Methodist Church" resulting from the split over the issue of slavery in the Methodist Episcopal Church which had been brewing over several years until it came out into the open at a conference...

. He died, probably as a result of his tuberculosis on November 21, 1845 in Athens, Georgia and was buried in the Oxford City Cemetery in Oxford, Georgia. He is commemorated as both the founder of Emory College and the first citizen of Oxford, Georgia.