Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/461

 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI 401 was not necessarily provided by the state for the masses of the people but that provision should be made by private munificence for the erection and maintenance of academies where were educated the children of the well-to-do. This idea was of course a development of the English notion concerning education. The academies that sprung up over the South and in the North also were feeble copies of the great English public schools which were of course not public schools at all, but schools in which the children of the rich and of the noble were educated. This had developed in the South side by side with the idea of public education. We find the public schools spoken of somewhat contemptuously at times as the free schools. "When serious attention began to be given to education in Missouri the earli- est attempts were to foiuid academies. These academies were secondary schools according to the plans on which they were organized, but they all had attached to them a department for elementary instruction. It is estimated that within the whole state there were char- tered at least 110 academies before the year 1875. The first academy chartered in southeast Missouri was that at Ste. Genevieve. In 1808 the governor and other territorial officers granted to certain citizens of Ste. Genevieve a charter for the establishment of an academy. Certain restrictions were placed upon the trustees. They were to make no religious test in the employment of teachers, they were not to have theology taught, and they were to provide free instrviction to children of the very poor and of Indians. A stone building for the use of the school was begun at this time but not completed until later. No school was conducted under the charter until Bishop DuBourg opened a school in 1818. In 18.54 the old building which had been Vol. 1—2 6 begun and only partly completed for the academy was finished by General Firmin A. Rozier, the school was conducted imder his direction and was in a flourishing condition until it was suspended on accoimt of the war ; it was not reopened after the war. This building was remodeled and occupied by General Rozier as a residence. In 1837 the Loretto Sisters established a school for girls called the school of Our Lady of Mount Car- mel, this school was conducted in the building known as the Detehemendy house. In 1858 the Sisters of St. Joseph opened a school known as the St. Francois de Sales Academy ; it was conducted in a frame building until 1872 when a large four-story brick structure was erected. In 1817 the territorial assembly chartered an academy at Potosi and another at Jack- son. The trustees of the school at Potosi were authorized to conduct a public lottery for its support. From this time until 1875 academies flourished. Some account of the more im- portant and famous ones is given here. The first school house in Jackson was a small log building erected upon the site of the present school lot, soon after the estab- lishment of the town. The commissioners conveyed this lot in accordance with the special act of the territorial assembly of January 30, 1817, to Joseph McFerron, Zenas Priest, Thomas Neale, Joseph Seawell and Thomas Stewart as trustees. In 1820 a char- ter of incorporation was granted to the Jack- son Academy with David Armour, Joseph Frizzell, Thomas Neale, V. B. DeLashmutt and William Surrell as trustees; nothing was done, however, concerning this school further than the simple act of incorporation. There were a number of private schools conducted ; the first grammar school was taught by Henry