Woodland College for Boys

Duane's take

The official marker tells this story, and I'm passing it along to you the way Duane does best. Now settle in, because this one starts in a time when the whole country was tearing itself apart, and somehow, right here in Freestone County, somebody decided to build a school. Woodland College for Boys.

Established in 1863. You heard that right. Eighteen sixty-three, right in the middle of the Civil War, and somebody looked around and said, we're going to educate young men.

That right there takes a particular kind of nerve. Colonel L. R.

Wortham donated ten acres of land, land set aside not just for a campus, but for a church and a cemetery too. All three together. They were thinking about the whole of life, not just the lesson plan.

The charter trustees read like a roll call of men who meant business: Colonel Wortham himself, Thomas Lamb, Dr. Rueben Anderson, Oliver Carter, John I. Winn, D.

L. Carter, Noland Womack, T. L.

Sessions, and G. A. Sessions.

Nine names, one purpose. The college pulled in more than three hundred students at its height. Three hundred.

Now that is not a small operation for any era, let alone one conducted in wartime. Running the whole enterprise was Professor Hellery Moseley, who holds a distinction that is either an honor or a burden dependin' on how you look at it. He was the college's only president.

One school, one president, start to finish. Teaching alongside him were Mattie Dixon, Mary Dixon, and Thomas Dixon. Three Dixons in the classroom, and a whole county worth of boys to reach.

Then the war ended. And like so many things built in the shadow of that conflict, Woodland College couldn't quite hold its shape on the other side of it. It became a grade school when the Civil War closed.

Smaller now, quieter, but still standing. It held on for decades before finally being discontinued in 1905, and then the whole institution picked up and moved to Kirvin. Some stories end with a collapse.

This one ends with a move. And that, friend, might be the most Texas thing about it.

What the marker says

Established in 1863. Enrollment more than 300 students. Colonel L. R. Wortham donated ten acres of land for use as a campus, church and cemetery. Charter trustees: Col. L. R. Wortham, Thomas Lamb, Dr. Rueben Anderson, Oliver Carter, John I. Winn, D. L. Carter, Noland Womack, T. L. Sessions, G. A. Sessions. Prof. Hellery Moseley was its only president. Mattie, Mary and Thomas Dixon were its teachers. The college became a grade school at the close of the Civil War. Discontinued in 1905 and moved to Kirvin.