Fairfield Academy was organized in 1802 when the community was an active local manufacturing center, and the Board of Regents granted it a charter in 1803. A separate medical department became the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of New York, better known as Fairfield Medical College; it was chartered in 1812, was the second medical college in New York, and the sixth founded in the nation. Among its distinguished alumni were Asa Gray, an internationally famous botanist, and Marcus Whitman, an explorer, colonizer, and physician-missionary in Oregon. Teachers and graduates from Fairfield helped establish medical colleges elsewhere. Unable to compete with these new colleges, Fairfield held its last medical classes in 1840. Before the Civil War, Fairfield Academy flourished as a classical academy and female collegiate institute, training teachers and preparing students for college. Its hillside campus included laboratories, classrooms, dormitories, and the old chapel. By the end of the 19th century, new transportation routes and more and better local schools had cost the academy its former prominence, and it finally closed in 1902.