ABSTRACT
"Twould give me great satisfaction to see a little flourishing academy in this place.” So wrote the Reverend James Reed in 1766. As a result of Reed's efforts, the Colonial Assembly introduced a bill to incorporate an academy in New Bern, North Carolina. In the English-speaking colonies, New Bern became the second community to receive a charter following the incorporation of Philadelphia's Franklin Academy in 1753. Decades earlier, the Ursulines founded the first academy for women in Frenchspeaking New Orleans in 1727. 1 The presence of academies in the United States spans roughly three centuries. Such institutions generally served students between the ages of eight and twenty-five, providing a relatively advanced form of schooling that was legally incorporated to ensure financial support beyond that available through tuition alone. 2 Originating in the colonial era, academies spread across the country by mid-nineteenth century. During this period, various individuals, groups, and agencies founded a variety of academies to serve diverse constituencies with widely differing educational goals. According Henry Barnard, by 1850 there existed more than 6, 100 incorporated academies in the United States, with enrollments nine times greater than those of the colleges. 3
