Furman, Mercer remembered by donors

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Two universities with Baptist roots, Furman and Mercer, have received multimillion-dollar gifts.

Furman, in Greenville, S.C., will receive 45 percent of the estimated $400 million holdings of John D. Hollingsworth, 83, who attended the university for just one year. The gesture by Hollingsworth, who died Dec. 30, made the pages of The New York Times, which described the donor as an eccentric, reclusive  textile magnate.

Mercer, in Macon, Ga., with a second campus in Atlanta and overall enrollment of 7,400 students, will split an estate with an estimated value of $123 million with Georgia’s LaGrange College. The donors are Remer H. and Emily Fisher Crum who live in the Atlanta area.