Bloomfield citizens organized the Bloomfield Educational Society in 1853 to establish a first-class literary institution, purchased land in 1854, gained recognition from the Missouri General Assembly in 1855, and after raising funds and seeking teachers, opened Bloomfield Academy on August 6, 1860, with more than one hundred students and three instructors: Principal Caleb Crumb, his wife Sarah Jane, and Martha Owen Walker. By May 1861, Crumb recorded a good orderly school year despite troubling news from Charleston, South Carolina, and St. Louis, Missouri, but before the next term could begin, the Civil War reached Bloomfield and General Jeff Thompson's Missouri State Guard took over the Academy for a campaign against Fredericktown, ordering the building prepared for sick and wounded soldiers, while Caleb Crumb moved classes to the Baptist Church and continued school on his own account. By spring 1862 the school was occupied again, this time by Union soldiers under Captain Henry Eggleston of the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry, who lamented the trampling of its grounds and flower gardens. Several male students from the first school joined the Confederate army, including Bartlett, Carter, Cryts, Harty, Kitchen, McClain, McDoniel, Miller, Poplin, and Welch; Martha Owen Walker and her cousin and student Laura V. Robinson were accused of spying for the Confederates but later married Union officers; and the Crumbs sent their two teenage sons back to New York for the war's duration. During four chaotic years, the Academy and its grounds were abused and neglected as Bloomfield changed hands more than twenty times, and by 1865 the building stood alone amid the ruins and ashes of the town. The property was sold on April 7, 1890, for $100.00, and the hope of a first-class literary institution had been swept away by war.