Site of Galveston Seminary

The seminary opened on the first Monday of September 1849 and enrolled about ninety students the next year. Boys and girls recited together, but their studies and recreation were kept apart. Board and laundry cost twelve dollars a month, and Latin, Greek, French, Spanish and mathematics were the costly subjects at twenty dollars a session. The main building was three stories with thirty-two rooms, most of them dormitories, and kitchen, laundry and servant quarters stood behind it. After the fever of August 1854 closed the school, the buildings became a hotel and burned in the fire of 1885.

What the plaque says

Site of Galveston Seminary Built by Reverend John McCullough in 1849. Patterned after private Presbyterian schools in historic Chester County, Pennsylvania, the institution was a landmark in pioneer Texas education. Eminently suited for the purpose, the school compound occupied this half-block, upon which the county jail now stands. After five years of successful operation, death and destitution from yellow fever epidemics which prostrated Galveston forced the seminary to close. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Strand — 0.4 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 0.4 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• 1892 Bishop's Palace — 0.4 mi
  Nicholas Clayton's stone house on Broadway for the railroad lawyer Walter Gresham, later home to Galveston's Catholic bishops and one of the most admired Victorian houses in the country.
• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 0.5 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.

More markers nearby

• Texas Bar Association — steps away
• George Campbell Childress — steps away
• Norris Wright Cuney — steps away
• The Rt. Rev. Monsignor James Martin Kirwin — steps away