Wayne Township
Armstrong County Pennsylvania
Glade Run Academy

Previous to 1850 the standard of learning in the schools was very low. A very superficial knowledge of the "Western Calculator" and "Kirkham's Grammar" were the only requirements of the average teacher, who often was only two or three lessons ahead of the scholars.

The country was rapidly filling up and a higher standard was demanded. Realizing this, the members of the Glade Run Church met on May 27, 1851, and after discussing the expediency of establishing a school of a higher grade, the session unanimously resolved "that measures be adopted or opening a parochial school as soon as possible."

The school opened Oct. 27 1851, with Rev. John M. Jones as principal, the members of the session having assumed the payment of his first year's salary.

The faculty in 1857, according to an old program supplied by W.C Marshall, editor of the Dayton News, was: Rev. G. W. Mechlin and J. H. Marshall, A. B., principals; J.K. Ritchey and Mrs. Lizzie M. K. Townsend, assistants; Mrs. N. J. Torrence, principal female department.

Among the many students who availed themselves of the excellent facilities of Glade Run none was more affectionately remembered or sincerely mourned after his untimely death than Benjamin Immubly Coles, a Christian Indian of the Caddo tribe, who came from his distant home in Louisiana in the early days of the institution's history and after an attendance of a few years died aged thirty-two, in 1860. At his death his schoolmates sold pictures of him to defray the expense of a tombstone, upon which they engraved the line:

"Everybody loved him."

After 1880 the attendance gradually declined, owing to State subsidized normal schools, and in 1895 the old school closed.

Source: History of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania.

If you have any additional information on this church, please send an e-mail to Amanda Foringer.

Contributed by Amanda Foringer for use by the Armstrong County Genealogy Project (http://www.pa-roots.com/armstrong/)

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