Early Ingleside Schools
Ingleside, San Patricio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Early education in Ingleside began in the 1850s when settlers John P. and Susan Hatch Borden established Bay Seminary in 1854. The Bordens' school was closed by 1860. Henry Nold bought land from the Bordens and opened Ingleside College in 1857. Nold expanded the curriculum and built more frame structures for at least 30 boarding students. During the Civil War the college buildings were torn down. A school in nearby Allendale was built about 1872 and was active until 1910. The Ingleside public school system began about 1900. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Ingleside's schoolhouses trace the arc of frontier Texas education. In 1854 John P. and Susan Hatch Borden opened the short-lived Bay Seminary, and in 1857 Henry Nold launched Ingleside College, boarding at least thirty students in a cluster of frame buildings before the Civil War swept the college away. After the war a school rose in nearby Allendale, and by about 1900 a permanent public school system finally took root.
Why it matters
The marker captures how private seminaries and colleges carried education on the antebellum Texas coast until war and time gave way to the public schools that anchor American towns today.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John P. Borden
- · Susan Hatch Borden
- · Henry Nold
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Late Pleistocene Ingleside Fauna
Ingleside, TX
When highway engineers dug for caliche near what is now Swan Lake in 1939, they uncovered one of the richest fossil deposits ever found at a single Texas site. Over the next two years, excavators recovered the remains of 42 species of Ice Age vertebrates—mammoth, saber-toothed cat, ground sloth, camel, bison, tapir, and more. The find opened a remarkable window onto the Late Pleistocene world that flourished along the Gulf Coast long before human settlement.
Great Land Lottery of Aransas Pass
Aransas Pass, TX
In 1909 developers E.O. Burton and A.H. Danforth hatched an audacious scheme to sell off Aransas Pass, hiring a journalist to promote the town by mail and a promoter to disguise the sale as an auction rather than an illegal lottery. Six thousand tickets sold for $100 each, one per lot, and buyers gathered that December to 'bid' — until postal inspectors deliberately overbid, muddling the sale and spawning lawsuits. The town still grew substantially, and the overbid money went into a trust that funded public and school libraries, including the one on this spot.
Site of Bay View College
Portland, TX
Opened in 1894 by Thomas M. and Alice Yantis Clark, of the family that founded Texas Christian University, Bay View College brought schooling to the ranch children scattered across South Texas. Housed in a former hotel, it taught everything from primary grades through junior college, drawing students from 70 Texas counties, a dozen states, and Mexico, with riding and bay sails woven into campus life. A 1916 hurricane wrecked most of the buildings, and the college closed the following year.
Chat Work Club
Portland, TX
On Valentine's Day 1921, thirty-three women formed the Chat Work Club, named for their habit of sewing while they talked. Turning their gatherings toward civic good, they began raising money for a public library in Portland in 1925 and saw a building completed by 1933, opening with 291 books. The club's original library building was later moved to this site, and its members have stayed active in community affairs.