HALE INSTITUTE. Hale Institute was just north of Rusk in Cherokee County, on a prominence originally known as Guinn Hill. Joseph L. Hogg^qv donated the land, and Moses W. McKnight, working under an arrangement with Hogg and using his own money, built five two-room buildings on the site. Hogg and McKnight envisioned the development of a college; locals referred to McKnight's school as the College Hill school. When anticipated financial support did not materialize, the plan to make the school into a college was abandoned. Poor health forced McKnight to give up teaching several months before his death, on January 1, 1858. No school record for 1858 has been found. In 1859 Milton P. Tucker was operating Hale Institute in the rooms built by McKnight, and the Rusk newspaper expressed hope that "a college edifice" would soon be built. No more structures were erected, however, and the school closed when Tucker enlisted for Confederate service. During the war one of the buildings was used for another private school taught by a Mrs. Thompson. Among the students who attended Hale Institute were Thomas E. Hogg and John B. Long.q^qv

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Hattie Joplin Roach, A History of Cherokee County (Dallas: Southwest, 1934).

Mary M. Standifer