Historical Marker
Fisk Female Academy
Hilham, Overton County · Tennessee
Moses Fisk, a Dartmouth graduate licensed to practice law, thought Hilham stood at the geographical center of the globe. He laid out four roads radiating from it in the four directions of the compass, convinced that all roads would lead to his settlement. The school he founded there was one of the first girls' academies in the South, in a county with barely any roads. Despite the shared name, no known connection links Fisk to Fisk University in Nashville; his Overton County school and his four roads were his own project.
What the plaque says
Fisk Female Academy In 1806, the first school for females in the South opened near this site. Its charter was granted by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1805. Educator Moses Fisk and Sampson Williams each donated 1,000 acres for its use. The building burned in 1817, was rebuilt and used as a school for males. Fisk operated the academy until shortly before his death in 1843.
Where it stands
36.40917, -85.43333 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Standing Stone State Park — 4.4 miA New Deal park on Mill Creek named for a vanished stone that Native peoples revered and railroad builders blasted, with a lake, 1930s cabins and a marbles championship.
- Cummins Falls State Park — 13 miA 75-foot waterfall and swimming hole on the Blackburn Fork, saved from a housing development in 2011 and opened as Tennessee's 54th state park.
- Cookeville Depot Museum — 17 miThe 1909 Tennessee Central Railroad depot in Cookeville's west side, now a museum with a model of the town in 1955 and a steam engine in the yard.
- Cordell Hull Birthplace and Museum State Park — 18 miA replica of the log cabin where the secretary of state and Nobel laureate was born in 1871, with a museum of his belongings, in Pickett County's hills.