Site of Galveston Seminary

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight. Somewhere right here, under what is now the county jail, stood one of pioneer Texas's most ambitious classrooms. The Galveston Seminary.

Built by Reverend John McCullough in 1849, patterned after the private Presbyterian schools of historic Chester County, Pennsylvania. A man who knew what a proper education looked like, and decided Texas deserved one too. The school compound occupied this very half-block.

Eminently suited for the purpose, the marker says, which in 1849 Texas was no small thing to claim. For five years, the seminary operated. Successfully, by all accounts.

And then Galveston met yellow fever. Not once, but in waves. Epidemics that prostrated the city.

Death and destitution, the marker says, and those words don't soften easy. The fever didn't care about ambitions or lesson plans. It forced the seminary to close.

Now the county jail stands where scholars once sat. Reverend McCullough built something meant to last, and for five years it did. The fever had other ideas.

What the marker says

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.