Warner Institute

Yardley Warner was a Quaker educator, lawyer and minister born in Pennsylvania, and Jonesborough was one stop in a larger project. After the Civil War he helped found schools for Black students, and in Greensboro, North Carolina, he created the neighborhood now called Warnersville, selling lots to African Americans. In 1876 he established the institute here. A 1957 biography calls him the freedman's friend. The building he bought had been a Baptist female institute and a boys' school before it became a place to train Black teachers.

What the plaque says

Warner Institute Built by the Holston Association of Baptist Churches in 1854, this building housed the Holston Baptist Female Institute, Tadlock's School for Boys (ca. 1866-67), and Holston Male Institute (1867-76) operated by Confederate Colonel Robert Dungan. In 1876, Yardley Warner of the Society of Friends purchased the building and established Warner Institute, to educate "colored persons and train colored teachers." Julia B. Nelson and others from the American Missionary Association operated the school for the Friends. The school remained open until 1910, when the public school system began.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jonesborough Historic District — steps away
  Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779, where Elihu Embree printed The Emancipator in 1820 and a hay wagon by the courthouse started the National Storytelling Festival in 1973.
• Unicoi County Heritage Museum and the Erwin Rail Yard — 10 mi
  A museum in the old fish hatchery superintendent's house in Erwin, a Clinchfield railroad town where the elephant Mary was hanged in 1916 and Black residents were driven out in 1918.
• Rocky Mount Museum — 11 mi
  William Cobb's log house at Piney Flats, where Governor William Blount ran the Southwest Territory from 1790 to 1792, now a living-history museum set in 1791 with a reconstructed cabin for the enslaved.
• Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park — 13 mi
  A shoal on the Watauga River where the Transylvania Company bought about 20 million acres from the Cherokee in March 1775, Dragging Canoe refused, and the Overmountain Men mustered in 1780.

More markers nearby

• DeVault Tavern — steps away
• Thomas Emmerson — steps away
• Chester Inn — 0.3 mi
• Christopher Taylor House — 0.3 mi