Albany Manual Labor Academy (1847-1862)

Albany Manual Labor University was established in 1847 and operated until 1862. The school was succeeded by Albany Enterprise Academy, an organization that taught Black educators until 1886. After the conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865, progressive-minded Radical Republicans challenged decades of racial prejudice and slavery with various educational, economic, and political reforms in an era known as Reconstruction (1863-1877). Consequently, many African American institutions of higher learning date back to this era. Some of the most famous institutions include the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Hampton, Virginia, founded 1868, but whose roots go back to the Virginian Peninsula Campaign in 1861. Others include Howard University founded in 1867 in Washington DC; and the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) founded at Tuskegee, Alabama in 1881. However, while all these institutions are prominent in African American history, a lesser known succession of institutions in Albany, Ohio, not only predated these other institutions, but produced their own exceptional alumni, and provided important precedents for African American education.

Although a free territory from 1787, African American education in Ohio was fiercely contested between the Virginians and New Englanders who settled in the state. Starting in 1804, Ohio joined other states by enacting the Black Codes, limiting, at least on paper, the liberties of the Black population within the state. However, it was not until 1829 that the state passed legislation explicitly barring African Americans from attending publicly funded schools. This legislation was not overturned until 1849 when the state permitted publicly funded colored schools. Despite this inhibition, historian Carter Woodson counted twenty-five privately funded Black schools in Ohio by 1835. Black education was such a contested issue that white populations often resorted to violence towards each other, including threatening or harming female teachers as occurred with Clarissa Wright in Portage County in 1839. It was within this context that the Lewis family, Connecticut immigrants who temporarily settled in Oberlin (1835-1843) came to Albany in the 1840s.

Soon after arriving in Albany, Oberlin College alumnus, William Lewis, opened the Lewis Academy in 1847. Unlike many other schools in the state, Lewis Academy had the explicit intent of admitting anyone regardless of race or sex. The academy grew and became a community endeavor when members of the community bought stocks in the institution. Then in the midst of, and likely in response to, the Fugitive Slave Act crisis in 1850 the school became publicly traded and attempted to expand under its new name, the Albany Manual Labor Academy. A precursor to the modern practice of work study programs, the manual labor model had a twofold purpose: to employ students in farming and industry to help them pay their way through school and to counteract the spirit of aristocracy by making labor respectable. This model was specifically beneficial for marginalized groups who could not normally afford an education. The model originated in the 1820s with schools on the East Coast and was even utilized by Marietta College and Ohio University in their earliest days, but after the Panic of 1837, most mainstream schools abandoned the model. The Albany Manual Labor Academy continued to grow and in 1853, the academy successfully applied for a state charter and became the Albany Manual Labor University.

Although many within the Albany community supported the Albany Manual Labor institution, there was an insignificant backlash to the school. In response to the nondiscriminatory practices of Albany Manual Labor Academy, some residents formed the white-only Citizens Academy in 1849. However, unlike the Albany Manual Labor institution, it received less support and only lasted a few years, the property was sold in 1855. In contrast, the Albany Manual Labor University continued to grow, experiencing its highest enrollment in 1858 with 302 students. 

The Albany Manual Labor institutions garnered significant support from throughout the state and helped transform the Village of Albany into a beacon of freedom. It was the shareholders’ belief that by investing in the proper education of the rising generation, the inequalities created by slavery could finally be squashed. The first article of the school’s constitution explicitly stated the goal of breaking down differences based on caste or color, while Article IV prohibited any slaveholders or supporters of slavery from taking an any role in the institution. Throughout the 1850s, the school received patronage and support from Ohio’s Republican Governor Salmon Chase who served on the board of trustees and as vice president, famed abolitionist and US Congressman Joshua Giddings, as well as US Supreme Court Justice John McLean who was one of two dissenting justices on Dred Scott v Sanford. When the school first opened it received support from over 200 people in twenty-two counties. Free Presbyterian Reverend Jonathan Cable became principal of the school in 1850 and in 1853 the Free Presbyterian, an abolitionist newspaper, moved its place of publication to Albany. Seeing the institution as being a great contributor to the advancement of their race, the African American convention at Gallipolis voiced their support for the school in 1851. During the 1850s scores of African Americans flocked to Albany increasing their population so much that by 1860 nearly one third of the village was of African descent. Census records indicate that between 1850 and 1860 the village’s Black population increased from 4 to 174. The institution was also advertised nationally in Washington DC. One Kentucky resident, who reportedly hoped to see Kentucky become a free state, sent his own slaves to the school since it was illegal for them to receive formal instruction in Kentucky. Meanwhile, other slaves escaped to Albany on the Underground Railroad where, in addition to kind-hearted New England settlers, there was a large African American population to assist them as they fled northward. The African American population grew so large and the abolitionist mindset so strong that in 1862 the proslavery newspaper the McArthur Democrat, accused the colored population of Albany of moving into the eastern part of Vinton County and assailed Athens County as being abolitionist as well as claiming slaves were being smuggled through Albany. Slavery was so hotly contested between Vinton and Athens counties, that one Republican in Vinton County was allegedly prevented from voting there and forced to walk twelve miles to Albany so he could vote.

Despite various efforts to further the school, when the Civil War broke out, the Albany Manual Labor University was unable to pay its mortgage and closed. The property was sold at four sheriff sales between April 5, 1861 and November 11, 1862. The property quickly changed hands going first to the Campbellite/Christian Church, where it became Franklin College. This school fundamentally altered the practices of its predecessor by excluding African American admission and discontinuing the manual labor model. In 1866, the Christian Church sold the property to the Freewill Baptists who founded the Atwood Institute. This school operated until 1888 with a peak attendance of 275 in 1867, twenty-seven less than the peak attendance of the Albany Manual Labor University a decade earlier.

Although the property was sold, the spirit of the Albany Manual Labor institution continued in the Albany Enterprise Academy. It was not long after the Albany Manual Labor institution closed that local alumni, including Thomas Ferguson, took on the task of opening another school that encouraged African American education. While this institution maintained the spirit of its predecessor, it was also markedly different by being a school wholly owned and operated by African Americans. Less than two years after the Albany Manual Labor University closed, African Americans had another school in Albany. On November 20, 1863 twenty acres were purchased for a new school. By June, 1863, a two-story brick building was nearing completion. In 1863, Rev. Jonathan Cable signed over the vestiges of the former institution’s endowment fund. By September 1864, the Albany Enterprise Academy had resources totaling over $6,000. That fall a chapel was built, and in 1870 a girls’ dormitory was erected.

The Albany Enterprise Academy was enabled to grow quickly because of African American determinism and interracial support from both the local community and the nation. Locally, ministers Charles Merwin of Amesville and Thomas Wickes of Marietta encouraged patronage. Rev. Cable not only ensured that the endowment was turned over to the Academy, but solicited support from the East. Marietta College’s president, Israel Andrews, looked on the endeavor with approbation and encouraged the work. Isaac Carleton of Syracuse in Meigs County contributed over $2,500 worth of land in Illinois. Two area members of Congress, Rufus Dawes of Marietta and Eliakim Moore of Athens, also donated to the cause. Furthermore, in 1880, Charles Townsend, Ohio politician from Athens, tried to include the Academy with Wilberforce University in a bill for federal appropriations towards African American Education. National figures who supported the effort included Morrison Waite, later U.S. Supreme Court Justice as well as General Oliver Otis Howard and the Freedmen’s Bureau who contributed $2,000 in 1871. Even the Academy’s oversight was more than a local effort with its officers including Peter H Clark of Cincinnati, John H Williams of Chillicothe, Rev. G.W. Bryant of Xenia, D.E. Asbury of Harmar, Rev. Richard De Baptiste of Chicago, Illinois and W.P. Brooks of St. Louis, Missouri. 

As Reconstruction came to an end so did the prosperity of the African American educational enterprise in Albany. Following the Civil War, the nation was wrecked by a sequence of economic crises. One of the worst crises, and a contributor to the downfall of Reconstruction was the Panic of 1873, which created an economic depression that lasted half a decade. It was during this period that enrollment, which sometimes eclipsed 100 students (about the same as Ohio University), declined. By 1885 the school was in disrepair and in 1886 a fire burned down the ladies’ dormitory. In that same year, ailing principal Thomas Ferguson resigned and the school permanently closed. While some have speculated that the dormitory’s fire was an act of racial hatred towards the school, there is no evidence to suggest that as the cause. Even if this was the case, the school’s ultimate demise likely came from financial strains brought on by a crippling economy coupled with the end of political assistance in Reconstruction. After all, education reforms were making public schools more available and the Atwood Institute closed its doors only two years later in 1888. 

The legacy of Albany’s African American educational enterprise did not, however, end with the school in 1886, it lived on through its students, faculty, and officers. Starting with the Albany Manual Labor institution there were notable African Americans who made their mark on history. Thomas Jefferson Ferguson attended the Albany Manual Labor University in 1859 along with Milton Holland and James Monroe Trotter. Ferguson not only became principal of the Albany Enterprise Academy, but foreshadowed Booker T Washington in his publication of Negro Education: The Hope of the Race (1866). He also broke the local color line by becoming the first Black man to be elected as an Albany councilman in 1872. Holland was one of twelve African Americans awarded the Medal of Honor during the Civil War and Trotter became a commissioned officer in the Union Army. Trotter also took the federal position of Recorder of Deeds under President Grover Cleveland. Another Albany Enterprise Academy principal, William Sanders Scarborough, later became President of Wilberforce University. Rev. John Bowles, who also assumed the role of principal, served in the Civil War as chaplain for the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers, the sister regiment to the first all-Black 54th Massachusetts Volunteers featured in the film Glory. Notable local alumni of the Albany Enterprise Academy include Edward Berry who ran the Berry Hotel in Athens, Andrew Jackson Davidson who practiced law in Athens, and his sister Olivia Davidson. 

While many of these individuals were locally or nationally known, it was Olivia Davidson who did the most to perpetuate the legacy of African American education. She not only attended the Albany Enterprise Academy and then the Hampton Institute, but she went on to become a teacher and leader in African American education. Less than two decades after the publication of Ferguson’s Negro Education, Davidson was helping a new educator establish a school in Tuskegee, Alabama—Booker T Washington. From its first year of operation, Davidson helped Washington raise money for Tuskegee, taught at Tuskegee, and advised Washington on how the school should operate. Their relationship grew so close that Davidson married Washington in Athens on August 11, 1886. While it is difficult to discern just how much the Albany Enterprise Academy influenced the decisions made at Tuskegee, it is apparent from Washington’s Up from Slavery that he not only admired Davidson, but that she was influential in the nascent stages of Tuskegee. There were also some similar patterns between the schools, adopting the manual labor model, starting with agriculture then pursuing brickmaking and more skilled trades. Tuskegee even built a kitchen and dining room into the basement of the ladies’ dormitory just like it was at Albany. However, Davidson’s service at Tuskegee came to an abrupt end in 1889 when she perished from Tuberculosis. Their marriage only lasted three years before Olivia passed away, but her vision for African American education lives on in places like Hampton University, Howard University, and Tuskegee University. 

“A Just Measure Proposed.” The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio), February 5, 1880. Newspaper Archive.

“A Very praiseworthy enterprise is the Albany Enterprise Academy.” The Daily Ohio State Journal (Columbus, Ohio), March 7, 1871. Ohio Memory. 

A Standard History of The Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio. Edited by Eugene Willard et al. The Lewis Publishing Company, 1916.

“Albany Enterprise Academy.” The Daily Ohio State Journal (Columbus, Ohio), February 2, 1871. Ohio Memory.

“Albany Home Once Academy Linked With Slave Days.” The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio), September 22, 1949. Newspaper Archive.

Annual Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the Albany Manual Labor University 1855-56 (Athens, 1856). Southeast Ohio History Center Archive, Athens, Ohio.

Annual Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the Albany Manual Labor University 1857-8 and 1858-9 (Athens, 1859). Southeast Ohio History Center Archive, Athens, Ohio.

Blight, David. Race and Reunion The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001.

Brown, John. History of Hocking Valley, Ohio. Chicago: Inter-State Publishing Co., 1883.

Catalogue of Albany Enterprise Academy For The Year 1870-71 (Athens, 1871). Southeast Ohio History Center Archive, Athens, Ohio.

Constitution of the Albany Enterprise Academy (Cincinnati, 1864). Southeast Ohio History Center Archive, Athens, Ohio.

Cox, Anna-Lisa. The Bone and Sinew of the Land America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers & the Struggle for Equality. New York: PublicAffairs Hachette Book Company, 2018.

Martzoff, Clement. A Brief History of Athens County Ohio. Athens: Clement Martzoff, 1916.

Randolph, Adah Ward. “Building upon Cultural Capital: Thomas Jefferson Ferguson and the Albany Enterprise Academy in Southeast Ohio, 1863-1886.” The Journal of African American History, vol. 87, Cultural Capital and African American Education (Spring, 2002): 182-195.

“State News.” The Morning Journal (Columbus, Ohio), April 20, 1868. Ohio Memory.

The Constitution of the Albany Manual Labor Academy (Cincinnati, 1850). Southeast Ohio History Center Archive, Athens, Ohio.

“The McArthur Democrat And The King’s English.” Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio), February 20, 1862. Newspaper Archive.

“The Weekly News, an Anti-Slavery paper published in Kentucky, says.” The National Era (Washington D.C.), May 7, 1857. Library of Congress.

Tribe, Ivan. “Rise and Decline of Private Academies in Albany, Ohio.” Ohio History, vol. 78, (no. 3, 1969): 188-201.

Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1901.