Dwight Mission

The school outlived its founders by a century. Several buildings burned during the Civil War, the last service was held in November 1862, and by 1884 only two original buildings stood. In 1886 the Cherokee National Council re-established Dwight, with Presbyterian women's money, as a boarding school for Cherokee girls; it reopened to boys and girls in 1900. A 1944 report counted nine buildings and seventy-one students, mostly Cherokee and Choctaw. The school closed in 1948, and the Presbyterian church has kept the grounds near Marble City as a retreat and conference center.

What the plaque says

Dwight Mission First established in 1821, among western Cherokees in Pope Co., Ark. Ter., by Rev. C. Washburn, American Bd. of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Moved to this new land of the Cherokees, in Ind. Ter., 1829. Site at Nicksville, post office named for Gen. John Nicks whose widow, Sarah Perkins Nicks, was first woman appointed to U.S. government position in Oklahoma, 1832. Oklahoma Historical Society 79-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sequoyah's Cabin Museum — 13 mi
  The log cabin near Akins where Sequoyah, who gave the Cherokee language its syllabary, settled in 1829, kept since 2016 by the Cherokee Nation inside a stone shelter of 1936.
• Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center — 20 mi
  A Mississippian ceremonial center on the Arkansas River, about 850 to 1450, whose burial mound was mined in the 1930s, now run in consultation with the Caddo Nation and the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes.
• Fort Gibson Historic Site — 32 mi
  The army's first post in what became Oklahoma, built at Three Forks in 1824, where removed nations arrived; deeded to the Cherokee in 1857, it later housed the Dawes Commission.

More markers nearby

• Cephas Washburn, Founding Missionary, Dwight Mission — 6.4 mi
• Tahlonteeskee — 12 mi
• Webbers Falls — 15 mi
• Tamaha Jail and Ferry Landing — 17 mi