Whitt Seminary

Whitt's other school was Methodist, and it rivaled the seminary. The Handbook of Texas says Parker Institute opened at Whitt in 1881 under Mr. and Mrs. Bales, and in 1884 the Northwest Texas Methodist Conference chose it as its North Texas flagship. Amos Bennett, a DePauw graduate, directed it for nine years as its only full-time faculty member, teaching Greek and Latin. It graduated three or four students, among them Jefferson Davis Sandefer, later president of Hardin-Simmons University, and Charles Shirley Potts, later dean of the SMU law school. It surrendered its charter in 1893.

What the plaque says

Whitt Seminary In January 1880 the elders of the Christian Church at Whitt purchased five acres of land at this site to build a community school. The Whitt Seminary opened in 1881 in a two-story rock building. By 1885 Whitt was a thriving community of about 400 inhabitants with a number of businesses and a sincere interest in quality education. Seminary enrollment was between 175 and 200 students who came from local and surrounding communities and from as far away as the Oklahoma Territory. The Seminary educated elementary through high school students and included an academic department, a music department, and a commercial school. Music courses offered included piano, organ, guitar, violin, and voice. Other courses included bookkeeping, commercial law, writing, spelling, typing, trigonometry, history, English literature, astronomy, chemistry, and Latin. The Whitt Seminary served the community from 1881 until about 1900. The facility continued to be used as a Christian church until 1937, and then served as a site for community functions, family reunions, and annual Whitt homecomings. The original five acres, Whitt Seminary building and tabernacle were deeded to the Whitt Cemetery Association in 1976. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 10 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Chandor Gardens — 19 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.
• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 20 mi
  The northernmost post of the Texas frontier line, outside Jacksboro, where a stone hospital and six other buildings stand from 1867 and a later Guard unit became the Lost Battalion.
• Wise County Courthouse — 31 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's granite Romanesque courthouse of 1895-96 in Decatur, built after fire destroyed the Second Empire courthouse and set off a fight over the county seat.

More markers nearby

• Whitt Cemetery — steps away
• Site of the Home of Oliver Loving in 1855 — 3.4 mi
• Authon Cemetery — 7.7 mi
• Black Springs — 8.2 mi