FOWLER INSTITUTE. The Fowler Institute, planned by the Methodists of the Henderson area in 1849, was a school during the early 1850s in Rusk County. It was housed in a brick structure on a site in the northwest part of present Henderson. The Eastern Texas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, chartered the school and named it for Littleton Fowlerqv on January 26, 1850. Presidents of the school included W. P. Bewley, J. M. Price, and Napoleon W. Burks. The school and the building were later used by Henderson Male and Female College. The building was torn down in 1900.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Henderson Times, November 21, 1893, July 4, 1976. Benjamin Wiley Martin, Some Early Educational Institutions of East Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1924). Dorman H. Winfrey, A History of Rusk County (Waco: Texian, 1961).
Megan Biesele
