Site of Thomas Arnold High School

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, picture Salado, Texas, Bell County, where a set of stone buildings had already lived one educational life, and were about to live another. Dr.

Samuel J. Jones, born in 1857, had been teaching at Salado College. He knew those buildings.

He knew what they could hold. And in 1890, he and his wife, Charlotte Hallaran Jones, decided to put them to a new purpose. They established Thomas Arnold High School right there on that site.

Technically, it was a private academy, but don't let that fool you into thinking small. They named the place for Thomas Arnold, the noted headmaster of Rugby School in England, a man who lived from 1795 to 1842 and left a name worth honoring. That choice of name tells you something about what Dr.

Jones and Charlotte were reaching for. Quality. Rigor.

Education worth the effort, at a time when public high schools were few and far between in this part of Texas. The academy filled a real gap, and it filled those old stone buildings with something they were built for. Then, in 1913, Thomas Arnold High School closed.

But here's the thing about good stone buildings in a place that values learning: they don't stay empty long. The facilities came back to life as Salado College again, running until 1918. That same year, 1918, was the year Dr.

Jones died. The college ran through its course, and after that the buildings were used as a public school. Charlotte had passed in 1904, so she didn't see the long tail of the story.

And the long tail, well, it ended in 1924. That's when the buildings burned. All that stone, all those years of students and lessons and names worth honoring, gone.

What's left is the site, a marker, and the memory of two people who looked at a set of vacated buildings and decided they weren't done yet.

What the marker says

Dr. Samuel J. Jones (1857-1918) and his wife, Charlotte Hallaran Jones (d. 1904), established Thomas Arnold High School on this site in 1890. The school, which was actually a private academy, occupied the stone buildings vacated by Salado College, where Dr. Jones taught. Named for Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), noted headmaster of Rugby School in England, the academy provided quality education during a time when there were few public high schools. After it closed in 1913, the facilities were again operated as Salado College until 1918, and as a public school until 1924, when the buildings burned. (1975)