Carlton College

Charles Carlton worked as a yard hand in Nova Scotia and a farmer in New York before, the Handbook of Texas says, Baptist ministers urged him to attend college, and at Bethany College in West Virginia, Alexander Campbell paid his way. Carlton finished a three-year course in two years. In Bonham the faculty was his family, and the Carlton house served as the dormitory, with ten students living there in 1870. When he died on February 13, 1902, a college built on one household's labor did not last long.

What the plaque says

Carlton College Formally chartered in 1881, Carlton College began under the direction of Charles Carlton (1821-1902) as the Bonham Female Institute. Carlton, a native of England and a Disciples of Christ minister, had come to Bonham in 1867 to take charge of the institute, which soon became a coeducational school known as Bonham Seminary. Carlton, several of his children, and his second wife, Sallie, taught many of the classes at his Bonham schools. In 1882, the first of several Carlton College buildings was constructed in this block of East Tenth St. Carlton College admitted all young men and women who demonstrated a sincere desire for education. As the Carltons grew older, they decided to limit enrollment, and the college became an all-female school in 1887. By the time of Carlton's death in 1902, approximately 3600 pupils had attended his schools in Bonham. Carlton College declined with the death of its founder and in 1914 was merged with a school in Sherman to form Carr-Burdette College. When that institution closed in 1916, the graduates of Carlton were adopted into the alumni fellowship of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 2.4 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 24 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 29 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.

More markers nearby

• Risser Hospital — steps away
• First Baptist Church — steps away
• On Route of Early Texas Streetcars — steps away
• First Christian Church of Bonham — 0.3 mi