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Marengo Academy

Location: Meridian Road, near Old Main Street, Marengo. (Crawford County, Indiana)

Installed: 2005 Indiana Historical Bureau, Crawford County Historical and Genealogical Society, and Community Foundation of Crawford County

ID# : 13.2006.1

Text

Side one:

John M. Johnson opened a private school in Marengo 1869 with 60 students. He designed a course of study to provide an opportunity for students to move beyond common school (elementary) education. In 1874, Johnson renamed it Marengo Academy in a new building located here. School open to all students, male and female, regardless of ability to pay.

Side two:

Courses included algebra, geometry, surveying, German, Latin, Greek. Johnson retired from teaching 1902. By 1910, Marengo Academy building had been torn down. Johnson died 1918. Academy was one of many private institutions that provided expanded educational opportunities for Indiana students before public secondary education was widely available.

Keywords

Education

Annotated Text

John M. Johnson opened a private school in Marengo 1869 with 60 students.(1) He designed a course of study to provide an opportunity for students to move beyond common school (elementary) education.(2) In 1874, Johnson renamed it Marengo Academy in a new building located here.(3) School open to all students, male and female, regardless of ability to pay.(4)

Courses included algebra, geometry, surveying, German, Latin, Greek. (5) Johnson retired from teaching 1902.(6) By 1910, Marengo Academy building had been torn down.(7) Johnson died 1918.(8) Academy was one of many private institutions that provided expanded educational opportunities for Indiana students before public secondary education was widely available.(9)

Notes:

1. English News, September 3, 1909. John H. Weathers, A History of Crawford County (n.p., [1889], reprinted 1936, 1970), p. 26. The information in Weathers was told "in his own simple words, " 25.

2.Weathers, 26.

3.Ibid.

4.Ibid.

5.John Hardin Thomas, "The Academies of Indiana, " Indiana Magazine of History, 10(December 1914), 349. Information on Marengo Academy in this publication is credited to "Letter and data by Rev. J. M. Johnson, Marengo, Ind.; also letter and data by Supt. C. R. Maxam, Marengo, Ind."

6.English News, September 3, 1909.

7.Crawford County Democrat, October 13, 1910.

8.Crawford County Democrat, March 7, 1918.

9.Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 1850-1880 (Indianapolis, 1965), 485-88.