CHEROKEE ACADEMY. Cherokee Academy, at Rusk in Cherokee County, was chartered on March 18, 1848. The charter provided that the academy was to be on a site designated for school purposes, that the school should be nondenominational, and that it should continue only so long as it devoted itself to the advancement of science and the promotion of useful knowledge. There is some question as to whether the academy was ever in operation, though meager sources in the form of deed records refer to it in 1851, and there is some evidence that in 1848 J. B. Mitchell was conducting a school that was transferred to Cherokee Academy. The school may have merged with the Stephens and Carter Academy established in 1851. The Commissioners Court of Cherokee County sold the site in 1869.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Cherokee County History (Jacksonville, Texas: Cherokee County Historical Commission, 1986). Hattie Joplin Roach, A History of Cherokee County (Dallas: Southwest, 1934).