The Columbia College Joint Stock Company formed in 1853 to build the Male and Female School, which was conveyed to trustees appointed by Transylvania Presbytery and opened in 1855. During the Civil War the building served as a Union camp, and classes resumed after the war. In 1908 a public grade and high school replaced the Male and Female School on the same site. A surviving horse-mounting block recalls a time when many stood along the road and in the field beyond, where horses grazed while students attended this subscription school, which provided both boys and girls a quality high school education.