When Paris Was a College Town

By E. P. Blanton

24 March 1916 

Yes, Paris had her colleges, too, in fact there were two of them, The Paris Academy and The Paris Female Seminary. That was before public schools abounded in the country. Almost three hundred students, coming from five states, attended these institutions before the Civil War and over half of the enrollment was from outside this town and county.

 It was in 1855 that J. C. McBride opened the Paris Boy’s Academy, using the Ashcraft building over on the Fair Grounds Hill. Then, it was a four room structure and the best in this vicinity. Only a few months later J. C. Carter started the Female Seminary in a building on the lot where Les Dry’s home on Locust street is now located. The buildings and lots of these two institutions were valued at about $10,000, a large amount for those days.

 S. S. Bassett finished his course in Bethany College, in Virginia about 1856 and a year later took over the control of the boy’s school.  Just before the war he headed a faculty of four instructors and had for students some of the best-known teachers, ministers, and business men of today.  Among them were:

beside many others in this vicinity whose name we were unable to get. Quite a few of these prominent people have passed away but their names are still fresh in our minds. William Drake, a son of General Drake, who founded Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, was also a student, his father brining him all the way to Paris, having heard of the Academy’s reputation as a school of learning.

 The same year Mr. Bassett returned from Bethany, James Campbell, a schoolmate at the same college, was added to the faculty of the Female Seminary. Students in the two schools ranged from little tots learning their alphabet, to mature men and women who were in search of higher branches of learning, intending to teach school elsewhere.

These two schools divided the Public School Fund allowed this district from the state. The buildings and furnishings were paid for by public subscription. The Seminary was the larger of the two, having at one time, about 175 students while the Academy boasted of only 135.

 Coming from all over the Union, the breaking out of war was sure to affect the relations among the students. Mr. Bassett recalls a pitched battle among his boys one day that almost broke up the school. After this affair many withdrew and as the war progressed the enrollment dwindled down until the Academy was hardly on a paying basis. It was then that Mr. Bassett resigned, but the school was kept running until 1869 when Paris had her first public school. The Seminary suffered the same fate and was forced to close its study halls.

 But just the same, Paris has been a College town, with all the spirit and enthusiasm that goes to make up the present day college life. And anyone who once attended either the Academy or Seminary can still look back with pride and think, “I once attended the best school in all the land.”