Site of University Training School - Central Texas College
Blooming Grove, Navarro County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1899, the Corsicana District of the Northwest Texas Methodist Conference established a college preparatory school. The following year, the University Training School opened at this site under the direction of the Rev. J. W. Adkisson, a respected Christian educator. In 1909, a junior college curriculum was added and the institution was renamed Central Texas College. The 15-acre campus included an ornate three-story Victorian main building. Although the school closed in 1912, it had a lasting impact on the development of educational systems in Blooming Grove.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1899 the Methodist Church's Corsicana District opened a college preparatory school on this site, and the following year the University Training School began teaching under the Rev. J. W. Adkisson. A junior-college curriculum was added in 1909, and the renamed Central Texas College served students from an ornate three-story Victorian building until it closed in 1912. Though short-lived, the school helped lay the groundwork for public education in Blooming Grove.
Why it matters
Church-founded academies like this one were often the first real schools in rural Texas, seeding the local systems that public education later built upon.
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Related people
- · J. W. Adkisson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Blooming Grove School
Blooming Grove, TX
When pioneer Richard Gowan donated land near Gradyville in 1869, the little frontier community pooled its labor to raise a single white building that served at once as church, meeting hall, and schoolhouse. As the town grew and then relocated north to meet the Cotton Belt Railroad in 1888, its schools followed—frame giving way to two-story frame, then red brick, each outgrown or condemned in turn until the modern campuses of the 1980s. The Texas Legislature chartered the independent district in 1917, and accreditation followed under superintendent S. W. Henderson.
Blooming Grove United Methodist Church
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In 1869 Richard and Susan Gowan gave land on Rush Creek for a Methodist church and cemetery, and neighbors raised a white frame chapel used for both worship and school. The congregation moved to Blooming Grove in 1887 and built successive sanctuaries as the town grew, its work bolstered by the Methodist-run Central Texas College from 1899 to 1913. Pastors Clovis Chappell and E. B. Hawk, who later won national renown, led construction of the present church in 1913.
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