Early Ingleside Schools

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the early schools of Ingleside, San Patricio County. Now settle in, because this story starts the way a lot of good Texas stories do: with somebody showing up in the middle of nowhere and deciding to build something. In the 1850s, settlers John P. and Susan Hatch Borden established Bay Seminary right here in Ingleside.

The year was 1854, and folks, that is early. The ink on Texas statehood was barely dry, and the Bordens were already standing up a school. Now, Bay Seminary didn't last forever.

By 1860, the Bordens' school was closed. But here's where the story gets interesting. A man named Henry Nold had bought land from the Bordens, and back in 1857, while Bay Seminary was still operating, Nold opened something of his own: Ingleside College.

He didn't just open a school, he expanded the curriculum, built more frame structures, and took in at least thirty boarding students. Thirty. Out here.

In a place where the nearest town might have been a long ride on a horse that wasn't happy about it. That is ambition with a capital A. But then came the Civil War, and the college buildings were torn down.

Just like that. One of those quiet, brutal sentences that history hands you sometimes. All those frame structures Nold had built, gone.

The grounds that had held thirty boarding students, gone. Now, Ingleside didn't give up on education entirely. A school in the nearby community of Allendale rose up about 1872, and it kept going, kept teaching, kept its doors open all the way until 1910.

That's nearly four decades of quiet, steady work that history doesn't always get around to applauding. And finally, around 1900, the Ingleside public school system began. From Bay Seminary in 1854 to a public school system at the turn of the century, this stretch of South Texas had been building and losing and rebuilding the idea of education for the better part of fifty years.

That's not just a history of schools. That's a story about people who kept starting over.

What the marker says

Early education in Ingleside began in the 1850s when settlers John P. and Susan Hatch Borden established Bay Seminary in 1854. The Bordens' school was closed by 1860. Henry Nold bought land from the Bordens and opened Ingleside College in 1857. Nold expanded the curriculum and built more frame structures for at least 30 boarding students. During the Civil War the college buildings were torn down. A school in nearby Allendale was built about 1872 and was active until 1910. The Ingleside public school system began about 1900. (1997)