Site of Alexander Institute

The school kept going long after it left Kilgore. In Jacksonville it was first the Alexander Collegiate Institute. It became Lon Morris College in 1924, named for R. A. Lon Morris, who left it his entire estate, according to the Stephen F. Austin State University Heritage Center. Lost Colleges dates its junior college status to 1909 and state accreditation to 1915 and 1916. Enrollment grew after World War II, and so did the debt. The college declared bankruptcy in 2012 and closed in 2013, ending a line that began in Danville.

What the plaque says

Site of Alexander Institute Before the establishment of public schools, education was provided by small private academies such as the Alexander Institute. a successor to the New Danville Masonic Female Academy, founded in nearby Danville in 1854. The institute was named for pioneer educator Isaac Alexander (1832-1919). A native of Virginia, Dr. Alexander was president of the academy when it moved to Kilgore in 1873, soon after the city was founded. In 1875 operation of the school was transferred to the East Texas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. Offering courses from primary through college level, the institute was highly regarded as a finishing school for girls and a preparatory school for boys. Students from all parts of east Texas received instruction here. The boys boarded in private homes and the girls with Mrs. Alexander, daughter of a well-known Methodist minister, the Rev. James Hall. Dr. Alexander served as president until 1894, when the school moved to Jacksonville in Rusk County and became Lon Morris College, one of the oldest junior colleges in Texas. The Kilgore public schools occupied the old Alexander Institute classroom building at this site until 1913. The structure was then dismantled and the lumber used to build a private residence. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 0.7 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 11 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 23 mi
  A free county park north of Tyler on the site of the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi, with a kiosk, an interpretive trail and a historical society museum downtown.
• Tyler State Park — 25 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.

More markers nearby

• World's Richest Acre — steps away
• The Kilgore I&GN-Missouri Pacific Railroad Station — steps away
• The New Deal Era in Kilgore — 0.2 mi
• Lou Della Crim Home — 0.3 mi