284 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



promise of a harvest yet to come. As early as the j" twenties," itine- 

 rant Baptist and Methodist preachers were]riding on their^perilous cir- 

 cuits, and it may be that their influence and the coming of people from 

 older states had something to do with the acceleration of a demand 

 for some educational privileges earlier than we have been accustomed 

 to believe in regard to this section of Missouri. Certain it is that, 

 while the first settlers in the interior did not carry with them the Bible 

 and the school, as did the Pilgrims and the Paritans to some of our 

 older states, schools of good standing were established at a compara- 

 tively early period in the more thickly settled regions. In files of the 

 lirst newspapers, published as far back as the early " forties," as well 

 as from conversation with a few remaining representatives of the 

 pioneers, we learn many things calculated to revise our former opinion 

 in regard to the development of the people who immediately preceded 

 us in Southern Missouri. 



Is it not remarkable that, within li years after the settlement of 

 Springfield, one of the earliest towns to be commenced in the Ozark 

 Tegion, a private school was founded by Mr. James Stephens, who 

 advertised to teach Latin — including Virgil, Cicero and Sallust ; Greek 

 through the grammar, Testament and Homer, and higher mathematics? 

 Mr. Stephens was a graduate of Cumberland college, Kentucky, and 

 seems to have been quite a scholarly man. Two years later, a Mrs. Peck 

 established in Springfield a young women's seminary, which was con- 

 tinued for a Dumber of years. Later, the "Springfield Female College" 

 was founded by the Eev. Charles Carleton, in 1855. This was a very 

 successful institution, and flourished until the breaking out of the late 

 Oivil war, which closed all such enterprises in this part of the State, 

 and set back all progress in the whole region of the Southwest. In 

 1844, the " Spring River Academy " was started in Lawrence county, 

 about 50 miles west of Springfield, by the Rev. James B. Logan, and was 

 under the care of the Cumbeiland Presbyterian church. This school, 

 like the Springfield academy, did good work in laying foundations for 

 the spread of Christian education in this region. 



South of Springfield, at Ozark, in Christian county, was started the 

 ^'Ozark Academy," a classical school of high rank, from which some of 

 the prominent men from Southwest Missouri graduated. In the early 

 fifties the "Newton Academy" was founded by Col. Ritchie,[in Newton 

 county. These are a few of the old preparatory schools, which must 

 have had great influence in the region to which they belonged. And 

 these schools, it must be borne in mind, were all situated more than two 

 hundred miles from a railroad, and over [250 from St. Louis, then the 

 €enter of all the growing civilization of the West. 



