Mary Allen Seminary

Rev. Samuel Fisher Tenney opened a Sabbath school for Black children in Crockett's Presbyterian church in 1871, and by 1875 a separate church with an educational wing housed a parochial day school, Moffatt Academy. When he answered a Presbyterian notice seeking a school in Texas, Richard H. Allen of the Freedmen board came, and Crockett offered ten hilltop acres north of town. Allen's wife, Mary Esther, promoted the school and died suddenly, so the board gave it her name. The school opened January 15, 1886, and Mary Allen Hall, four stories, was finished October 1, 1887, for $20,000.

What the plaque says

Mary Allen Seminary In 1886 the Board of Missions for Freedmen of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, under the leadership of the group's secretary the Rev. Richard Allen, began planning for the establishment of a black girls' school in Texas. After a statewide survey, they chose Crockett as the school site because of the area's large black population and because of a local black parochial school operated by the Rev. Samuel Fisher Tenny, pastor of the city's First Presbyterian Church. The Rev. Allen's wife Mary, for whom the school was named, was instrumental in raising the organizational funds for the new seminary. Dr. Byrd R. Smith became the school's first black president in 1924 and initiated a period of growth which included the adoption of new programs and the admission of male students. Transferred to the Missionary General Baptist Convention of Texas in 1944, Mary Allen College became a 4-year liberal arts institution. In 1972, plagued by a series of legal and financial setbacks, the school closed. Once the site of a 12-building campus and the home of a noted academic program of quality education and religion, this site serves as a reminder of the proud heritage of Texas' black population. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 26 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.

More markers nearby

• Col. Steward Alexander Miller — 0.4 mi
• Frank Mulder Gossett — 0.4 mi
• William Monroe Patton — 0.4 mi
• Armistead Albert Aldrich — 0.4 mi