|
Permanent among the educational institutions of Baker County is the Baker City
Normal and Business College which has just finished its sixth year of
usefulness.
This school of education for business pursuits and the
preparation of persons for the teaching profession, was organized January 10,
1887, by Mr. C. H. Whitney, a graduate of the National Business College. At
first the branches taught included single and double entry bookkeeping, business
penmanship, commercial arithmetic, business correspondence, etc. together with
an actual business department in which the student received practical
instruction in the branches passed over in theory.
During the autumn of 1890, Prof. A. A. Danford, of
Forman, North Dakota, associated himself with the institution and established a
department of normal instruction for the preparation of teachers for their
profession.
The school has since that time continued as a normal
and business college and has steadily advanced in popularity and success. During
the last two years the school has been under the management of Sturgill &
Sturgill, both well known business men of Baker City, who together with Prof.
Sterling, of Portland, Oregon, are doing much to make the college a prosperous
and permanent institution of the county.
In 1869, A. H. Brown, L W. Nelson, Wm. F. McCarty and
R. A. Pierce organized an academy with Prof. F. Grubbs, principal. The school
was conducted successfully by Mr. and Mrs. Grubbs for two and a half years and
afterwards by Professor Barrett and others for several years, when the building
and grounds were donated to School District No. 5. The house was sold to B. W.
Levens and moved by him to Levens addition to Baker City, and the present school
building was erected on the ground which it had occupied.
The Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary started
a school in 1872, in a house on Court Street, east of Resort Street, with four
pupils in attendance. In 1874 the Notre Dame academy
building was erected near the Catholic Church at a cost of $3000, where school
was taught by the same sisters until 1887. In that year the Sisters of St.
Francis took charge of the academy.
In 1892 the residence of J. W. Virtue was purchased and
fitted up for school purposes. The institution was named the St. Francis Academy
- a school for young ladies, in which all the usual branches of an English
education are taught, also fine needle work, music and drawing.
Laura C. Walters, corner Second Street and Valley
Avenue gives lessons in vocal music and on the piano, organ, guitar or violin,
and teaches type writing and Pitman's system of shorthand.
Grace E. McCrary, a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, teaches a
class in elocution, physical culture and dramatic action.
Miss McCrary is a native of Baker City, where she
attended the public school and Notre Dame academy. After taking a course of
studies at the Conservatory of Music in Boston she was engaged as a teacher in
that institution for a year and then returned to Baker City.
Previous | Next
Return to Baker County
Thirty-one Years
in Baker County, Isaac Hiatt |
|
