Monday, July 17, 2006

Yadkin College: Who knew?

The Winston-Salem Journal has an excellent piece (along with a slide show) about the now-defunct Yadkin College, a Methodist-sponsored college in the picturesque western part of the state that saw its heydey in the late-19th Century.

"On a hilltop in Davidson County, in a loop of the Yadkin River, sit the remains of Yadkin College," says the article. "The school was the dream of Henry Walser, a legislator and church leader with a drive to promote higher education in Western North Carolina. Sponsored by the Methodist Protestant Church, Walser bought a 500-acre lot and set his own slaves to making bricks for a two-story classroom building, with a low-pitch metal roof and chimneys at both ends. The school opened its doors to a handful of students in 1856, and the enrollment had reached 80 by the start of the Civil War, according to Country College on the Yadkin, a book by Virginia Fick. ...

"But its picturesque setting in a remote bend of the Yadkin River contributed to its undoing. It was too far off the beaten path to attract new students, and the Methodists transferred their patronage to a new college in bustling High Point - now High Point University. Yadkin College struggled into the 20th century as a prep school, then closed its doors in 1924 as a private high school."

Read more about Yadkin College here.

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