Elmira Free Academy - Torch / Sagoyawatha Yearbook (Elmira, NY)

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J History of Elmira Free Academy CHAPTER I. THE OLD ELMIRA ACADEMY. As the golden anniversary of the Elmira Free Academy, nineteen hundred nine is a very fitting time to recall the origin and history of that deservedly famous institution. May 24, 1859 was the date of its establishment as a free school, but the Elmira Academy as a private school had a previous history of nearly a quarter of a century. The First Presbyterian Church, on the corner of Church and Baldwin Streets, was the pioneer church in the Chemung Valley. In 1836, to make way for a larger edifice, the building then in use was removed to the opposite side of Baldwin Street, on the site of the Partridge brick blocks, just south of the present First M. E. Church. Here it became the shelter of the Elmira Academy, a private school. It was a white wooden building, from which the steeple had been removed when it was transformed from a religious to an educational institution. The cut of it that accompanies this history is made from a drawing kindly lent to us by Mrs. George Archibald Palmer. She had it made from a painting of the building, the work of a young girl student of the old Academy. The late Ausburn Towner, himself once a student of the Baldwin Street Academy, pronounced it a very faithful picture of the building, but not of the trees. These appear to have been placed in accordance with the girl's own idea of land- scape gardening, a decidedly original one. , Readers of the Vindex will be interested to know that in 1839-'40 the Academy pub- lished a school paper of several two-columned sheets, called The Pierian Spring. From the title it is not surprising to find that some of its contributors cultivated the lyric muse. On March 31, 1840, the Elmira Academy was incorporated by the Regents. After that, it had a varied history for nineteen years before it became a free institution. Some men of note received their secondary education there, among whom may be mentioned the Hon. Chas. B. Farwell, U. S. Senator from Illinois at one time, Rear-Admiral Francis Roe, Maj.-Gen. Wm. W. Averell, I-Iull Fanton, Esq., Maj. R. M. McDowell, George M. Diven, Francis Colling- wood, Dr. N. R. Seeley, Harry Covell, Chas. E. Rapelyea, T. W. Elmore, Richard Guion, and Ausburn Towner, Among the teachers, older Elmirans still remember Moses S. Converse, H. M. Aller, S. R. Schofield, Elijah N. Barbour and Miss Adaline Tubbs, who later became his wife and the mother of Mrs. George Spring of this city. It was largely due to the efforts of Dr. Erastus L. Hart that the system of free schools became a possibility in Elmira. The rate-bill school system proving unsatisfactory, an amend- ment to the Village Charter, providing for the free system, became a law, April 4th, 1859, through the aid of Senator A. S. Diven. A Board of Education was organized April 19, 1859, with Dr. Erastus Hart as President, an office he retained until 1867. District schools were opened under the free system, April 26, 1859, and the Academy was re-established and made free May 24, 1859. This closed the old private Academy on Baldwin Street, but the Free Academy did not convene until the following September. The' last principal of the Elmira Academy, Mr. S. R. Schofield, became the first Superintendent of Schools. Tradition says that the old Baldwin Street Academy building was later removed farther up the street, where its purchaser, Mr. S. H. Laney, used it as a paper-rag factory, until it perished by fire, possibly burning with shame at such indignity to a building of its history.