Information Sheet

 

 

R         Salem Academy (Salem, Mo.).

500                  Booklet, 1930.

                                    One folder.

 

 

 

This is a booklet of letters by alumni of the Salem Academy at Salem in Dent County, Mis­souri. Compiled by John Massey, the booklet includes biographical news of former students, and remi­niscences of the years 1874-1884, when the school was under the direction of Professor Wil­liam H. Lynch.

 

The Salem Academy was a subscription school founded in 1872.  It was an outgrowth of ear­lier subscription schools of the 1850s and 1860s.  The Academy and public education in Sa­lem made a substantial gain in 1873 when Professor William H. Lynch, a native of Texas County, came to Dent County to superintend the school.  Lynch stayed for eleven years and over­saw the begin­nings of the public school system in Salem.  He left Salem in 1884 to take over the West Plains Academy.

 

In 1930, John Massey contacted all the known alumni of the Salem Academy from the pe­riod 1874-1884.  He asked that each former student write something concerning the earlier days at the Academy as well as a brief biographical update.  The letters were then mimeo­graphed and bound into a small booklet for distribution.  Massey’s work was apparently his second such effort, but there are no copies of the first booklet known to be extant.

 

The letters appear in the booklet in the order in which they were received by Massey.  An in­dex to the correspondents is available.  The 1930 booklet was in the papers of Salem news­pa­per­woman Margaret Vickery.

 

 

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