July 27, 2017 / Joanne Yeck

Buckingham Schools: Axtell Academy Closes

Following its opening in 1892, Meta Logan’s Axtell Academy was a great success. Eventually, however, Buckingham County school officials were approached to take over the appointment of teachers and the payment of salaries. According to Buckingham County historian Lulie Patteson, the county’s support was “half-hearted” and, as a result, the school closed.

Axtell Academy had set an extremely high standard and, doubtless, was too expensive for the county or for the Logan family to support indefinitely. Not only was the school excellent but according to Patteson in an article for The Daily Progress (1960), “superior housing and equipment and trained teachers gave the Academy’s pupils an advantage over schoolchildren and the rest of the county.”

Professor and Mrs. Sale went on to teach elsewhere. Later, one of the professor’s pupils offered a short list of her classmates when she attended the Academy. They included Bertha and Elsie Camden; Lula Jones; Holly, Daisy and Luther Stinton; Millard, Dabney and John Patteson; McGuire and Angus Hartsook and Walter Gilmer.

For Lulie Patteson’s description of the school, click here: Buckingham Schools: Axtell Academy

For much more about life at Algoma, try searching Logan, Axtell Academy, and Algoma at Slate River Ramblings.

Many thanks to Phil James, author of Secrets of the Blue Ridge, for discovering more about Axtell Academy.