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Republic of Texas charters Independence Academy
On this day in 1837, the Congress of the Republic of Texas granted a
charter to the citizens of Independence, Washington County, for the
establishment of a nonsectarian, nonpolitical "seminary." The charter
was a response to a petition presented a month before by John P. Coles,
a large landowner and Old Three Hundred settler who had founded Coles'
Settlement, later Independence. In order to carry out the charter, the
young Henry F. Gillette bought an existing girls' school from Frances
Thompson. Hugh Wilson, a Presbyterian minister, taught at the new
academy. In 1839 the institution, known as Independence Female Academy,
enrolled more than fifty students taught by a Miss McGuffin. In 1841
Edward Fontaine, a Methodist minister who later became an Episcopalian
minister of considerable importance in Austin, taught at the school.
Independence Academy closed in 1845. Its property was purchased and
donated to the newly chartered Baylor University. Not until the
Constitution of 1845 were the requirements for a system of public
education legally and thoroughly specified.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- INDEPENDENCE ACADEMY
- COLES, JOHN P.
- GILLETTE, HENRY FLAVEL
- THOMPSON, FRANCES JUDITH SOMES TRASK
- WILSON, HUGH
- FONTAINE, EDWARD
- EDUCATION
- CONSTITUTION OF 1845
- OLD THREE HUNDRED
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Memucan Hunt, Texas diplomat and politician, dies (1856)
- "Bandit Queen" marries for the last time (1880)
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