BRYAN BAPTIST ACADEMY. Bryan Baptist Academy, originally called Texas Woman's College, was proposed by Dr. George B. Butler, pastor, and T. R. Batte, layman, and sponsored by the First Baptist Church of Bryan. A charter for the college was filed in the Texas secretary of state's office on July 13, 1905, naming Butler, Rev. E. Ammons, and Rev. Matthew T. Andrews as incorporators. The college, on the corner of East 26th Street and Washington Avenue, opened in September 1905 in a two-story, brick structure that served as an administration building and girls' dormitory. The school was to furnish a Christian education for women and girls in music, art, and languages. A. W. Buchanan served as president of the board of directors. Butler took care of administration for the first two or three years, and R. J. H. Simmons, a layman, assumed Butler's duties and became president of the school in 1907 or 1908.
By 1909 the name of the college had been changed to Bryan Baptist Academy for Girls. At that time the institution had five faculty members and a student body of about sixty-five. The school applied on December 6, 1909, for membership in the association of Baptist schools under the Education Board of the Baptist General Convention of Texas and was accepted. The following year boys were admitted to the school. At that time the citizens of Bryan raised $5,600 to pay off one of the academy's notes, and again in the summer of the same year they raised money for a boys' dormitory that housed about thirty students. Professor Richard McDonald was president of the school during this addition. Enrollment was 118 in 1911. A new charter was filed with the secretary of state on February 2, 1912. In 1914 M. E. Weaver, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Bryan, was elected president of the academy. The school had two buildings, 154 pupils, and six teachers in 1915, but enrollment fell to sixty-seven in 1917. More efficient transportation to the nearby Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University) brought an end to Bryan Baptist Academy in 1918, and the property was sold to Eugene Edge.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Annual of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (1886-). Milton R. Maloney, comp., History: First Baptist Church, Bryan, Texas (1941?). A Better Day is Dawning: History of the First One Hundred Years of the First Baptist Church of Bryan, Texas (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1966). Lois Alyne Wilcox, The Early History of Bryan (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1952).
