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 WASHINGTON COLLEGE - Limestone, TN Posted by:  vhasler
N 36° 13.214 W 082° 34.319
17S E 358710 N 4009521
Founded by Samuel Doak, a frontier preacher, this college was high education for the "western" lands.
Waymark Code: WM9X03
Location: Tennessee, United States
Date Posted: 10/08/2010
Views: 2
WASHINGTON COLLEGE was chartered in 1795 as successor to Martin Academy, chartered in 1788, Samuel Doak, frontier preacher, founded both schools. He brought the first books into the State, and these on his only horse; he walked. Doak, a Pennsylvania Presbyterian, was a graduate of Princeton University; a contemporary historian described him as "a rigid opposer of innovation in religious tenets, very old school in all his notions and actions; uncompromising in his love of the truth and his hostility to error or heresy; ... in ... character, fearless, firm, nearly dogmatical and intolerant. . . ." There was some antagonism to the curricula of some of the early schools in the State, particularly to that of Washington College; in 1823 one contributor submitted a poem to the Knoxville Intelligencer which he concluded with the following stanza:
When boys have learn*d that they are made
To heave the earth with plough and spade;
And girls, that they must toil for man,
Make clothes, wash pots, and frying pan;
They're then prepared for learning.
But Doak, always firm In his conviction of right, when he was praying with the small tend of mountaineers that left Sycamore Shoals to battle on King's Mountain, said: "Oh God, have regard for the souls of the English, for they will be with Thee tonight."
The building is now used as a county high school.
----- TENNESSEE - A Guide to the State (third printing 1949)
The campus is now defunct Washington College Academy whose website was last updated in 2007.
"For many years, the college remained the only institution of classical learning in the 'West". Students came from pioneer families to be educated for the professions. The Academy has graduated 22 college presidents, 28 members of Congress, 3 governors, 16 missionaries, 168 ministers, a chaplain of Congress, the only individual to be an Admiral of the Navy and General of the Army, and countless teachers, judges, lawyers, and legislators." (Per Johnson City Economic Development Boards link )
Book: Tennessee
Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 295
Year Originally Published: 1939
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