Site of Alexander Institute
Kilgore, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Before the establishment of public schools, education was provided by small private academies such as the Alexander Institute. a successor to the New Danville Masonic Female Academy, founded in nearby Danville in 1854. The institute was named for pioneer educator Isaac Alexander (1832-1919). A native of Virginia, Dr. Alexander was president of the academy when it moved to Kilgore in 1873, soon after the city was founded. In 1875 operation of the school was transferred to the East Texas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. Offering courses from primary through college level, the institute was highly regarded as a finishing school for girls and a preparatory school for boys. Students from all parts of east Texas received instruction here. The boys boarded in private homes and the girls with Mrs. Alexander, daughter of a well-known Methodist minister, the Rev. James Hall. Dr. Alexander served as president until 1894, when the school moved to Jacksonville in Rusk County and became Lon Morris College, one of the oldest junior colleges in Texas. The Kilgore public schools occupied the old Alexander Institute classroom building at this site until 1913. The structure was then dismantled and the lumber used to build a private residence.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Before Texas had public schools, private academies filled the gap, and the Alexander Institute — successor to an 1854 Masonic female academy — was among the most respected in East Texas. Named for educator Isaac Alexander, it moved to newly founded Kilgore in 1873 and soon came under the Methodist Episcopal Church, offering studies from primary grades through college and drawing students from across the region. When the school relocated in 1894 it became Lon Morris College, one of the oldest junior colleges in Texas.
Why it matters
The institute traces the roots of Texas education from frontier church-and-academy schooling to a college that still bore its lineage, a common path by which higher education took hold in the South.
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Related people
- · Isaac Alexander
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
St. Luke's United Methodist Church
Kilgore, TX
The Kilgore Methodist Society formed in 1873 as families moved to the new railroad town, and its early life was bound up with the Rev. Isaac Alexander, who moved his female academy here and renamed it Alexander Institute — the forerunner of Lon Morris College. After a frame sanctuary was lost to arson during the wild Kilgore oil boom of 1931, the congregation raised the Tudor Gothic fieldstone church that stands today in 1932.
Kilgore Public Library
Kilgore, TX
Kilgore's first public library opened in 1933, launched by two local women's clubs. Federal Depression-era programs made the permanent building possible — funded by the Public Works Administration and built with Works Progress Administration labor, it was completed in 1939 in a style modeled on the cottages of Normandy. It still serves the community it was built for.
Kilgore High School
Kilgore, TX
Public schooling in Kilgore began with classes in private homes and institutions, most notably the Alexander Institute, which moved to town in 1873 before later relocating and eventually becoming Lon Morris College. The Kilgore Independent School District formed in 1906 and built a two-story red brick school on this Longview Street site in 1913. After oil transformed the town around 1930, the swelling student population outgrew that building, which was replaced in 1933 by a new combined high school, junior high, and auditorium.
Kilgore College Administration Building
Kilgore, TX
In 1935, with the East Texas oil field booming even as the Great Depression gripped the nation, Kilgore residents voted to found a junior college. Classes met in the high school until this building was finished in 1936 with help from the federal Public Works Administration. Designed by the San Antonio firm of Phelps and Dewees, the administration building is a fine example of the streamlined Art Moderne style of its day.