Years before 1859, Mr. and Mrs. Good donated two acres of land for a school, where a two-story wooden structure was built. Among its first teachers were John Alexander, W. J. Peters, R. M. Humphries, and R. H. Pratt, and under Pratt’s leadership the academy made great progress. Its 1882 curriculum included English, French, Latin, Greek, mathematics, bookkeeping, penmanship, elocution, rhetoric, music, natural science, and theology, and by 1886 the academy had trained scores of ministerial students.