First Louisiana Seminary

Two cannons give the seminary an afterlife. Sherman, its first superintendent, later donated a pair of guns that now stand at LSU in Baton Rouge, and a popular legend ties them to the opening shots at Fort Sumter. They were made in Massachusetts in 1861, which makes that story unlikely. The school itself never filled. The legislature allowed up to 150 cadets on boarding scholarships, but enrollment reached only 73, and the war emptied the barracks further when many students and faculty left in April 1861 to join the Confederate army.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum — 2.1 mi
  A National Guard museum in a replica WWII barracks at Camp Beauregard, built around the huge 1940-41 war games in Central Louisiana. Free.
• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 2.5 mi
  Two Confederate earthen forts on the Red River at Pineville, built with enslaved labor and never attacked, beside the remains of Bailey's Dam.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 3.4 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• Kent Plantation House — 4.6 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.

More markers nearby

• State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy — steps away
• Superintendent William T. Sherman — steps away
• Jefferson Highway — 1.5 mi
• Tioga Sawmill Commissary — 1.8 mi