Giles Academy
Ben Franklin, Delta County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Early settlers, who came to this area from Giles County, Tenn., founded an academy at this site in 1859. Hired fellow-Tennessean Thomas Hart Benton Hockaday (1835 - 1918) as the first teacher, and named the new school in memory of their southern Tennessee homeland. Hockaday taught at Giles until his enlistment in the Confederate Army in 1862, and after the Civil War for several years before moving to Fannin County in 1870s. He presented a curriculum emphasizing arithmetic, reading the classics, and uses of the English language. (His daughter, Ela Hockaday, 1876 - 1956) founded the well-known Hockaday School for Girls in Dallas in 1913.) School expenses, including teachers' salaries, were paid by parents of the students. A small community center, with a blacksmith shop, general merchandise store, and church, grew up around the large log schoolhouse. After the organization of common school districts in Texas in 1883, the Academy became Giles School, District No. 4. The old log house was replaced with a frame structure in 1886. A more modern building, erected on this site in 1924, was badly damaged by a tornado in 1936. The Giles School never reopened, and its students were distributed between the Ben Franklin and Pecan Gap schools. (1973)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settlers from Giles County, Tennessee founded this academy in 1859 and named it for the homeland they had left, hiring fellow Tennessean Thomas Hart Benton Hockaday as its first teacher. Parents paid the bills, and a small community with a store, blacksmith, and church grew up around the log schoolhouse. Hockaday's daughter Ela, born here, would go on to found the celebrated Hockaday School for Girls in Dallas in 1913.
Why it matters
The school illustrates how frontier communities built their own education from scratch and traces a direct line to one of Texas's most influential girls' schools.
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Related people
- · Thomas Hart Benton Hockaday
- · Ela Hockaday
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Hockaday Homestead
Pecan Gap, TX
Virginia-born educator Thomas Hart Benton Hockaday bought hundreds of acres in Fannin County in 1870, farming the land and running a cotton gin whose timbers later became the surviving barn. His youngest daughter Ela grew up in his footsteps and in 1913 founded the Hockaday School in Dallas, which won national standing as a college-preparatory school for girls. From this rural homestead ran a thread connecting frontier farming to one of Texas's most respected educational institutions.
Carlton College
Bonham, TX
Chartered in 1881, Carlton College grew from a school the English-born Disciples of Christ minister Charles Carlton had led in Bonham since 1867. Carlton, his wife Sallie, and several of their children taught the classes, opening the doors to all young people who showed a sincere desire to learn, though the school became all-female in 1887. By Carlton's death in 1902 some 3,600 pupils had passed through his Bonham schools; the college later merged away and its graduates were eventually adopted into the alumni of Texas Christian University.
Site of Dial Schools
Dial, TX
From 1840 a log cabin here served as school, church, and community hall, while the Dial family's cotton gin and grist mill drew settlers. By 1880 the community had a post office and an academy that won renown under Confederate veteran and educator Robert W. Lane. Among the later teachers, in 1903–05, was a young Sam Rayburn, who went on to serve nearly half a century in Congress and set a record as Speaker of the House.
East Texas Normal College, Original Site of
Cooper, TX
In 1889, Kentucky-educated teacher W.L. Mayo founded East Texas Normal College on this site, drawing a strong faculty behind the high board fence that enclosed its single T-shaped, two-story building. The lively little teacher-training school ran here until fire razed the structure in 1894. Aided in rebuilding at Commerce, the institution endured and grew into what became East Texas State University.