The Curry School of Education, founded with two professorships in 1905, was endowed by gifts of $100,000 from John D. Rockefeller and $50,000 from the State General Education Fund. The School was named for Dr. Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, a native Georgian whose widely varied accomplishments made him a man of great renown throughout the antebellum and reconstruction South. In addition to being an ordained minister, a Harvard law graduate, a member of Congress, a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States, a lieutenant-colonel in the Confederate Army, and as U.S. Ambassador to Spain, Dr. Curry was a historian, an author, a college professor, a promoter of education, and a strong advocate of universal education.