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Mary Allen Seminary
photo from internet while college was activeLast year I visited some old abandoned historic buildings including the Mary Allen Seminary that operated from 1886-1972 in Crockett, Texas. This school was founded in 1886 by Reverend Richard Allen and his wife Mary Allen as the only school in Texas open to freed Afro-American women. The school was administered and taught by white women from a local Presbyterian Church. Unfortunately Mary Allen passed away in 1887; but they named the school after her.
In 1924 The Texas school board appointed the first Afro-American administrator, Reverend Burt Smith, who made many important changes to the Mary Allen Seminary including: changing to an all Afro-American faculty, admitting Afro-American men, and changing the curriculum to include the sciences and providing needed vocational training like dressmaking, cooking, and other needed skills for the students to make it in Texas. In 1932 the school became an accredited junior college named Mary Allen Junior College.
This large four story building is very visible not far from the Town Square in Crockett, Texas. While I feel that the building is still impressive, it is starting to collapse downward on itself. There is a sign there trying to get the funds to renovate and restore
this historic building, but that did not happen. Restoration may have been possible when the school closed in 1972, but now restoration looks not to be possible.
When I visited the school their barrier tape around the school was in pieces on the ground and the building was very unsafe to enter. I enjoyed my visit and learned some of our Texas history.
Later on the TV news I saw that they wanted to save the history Of Mary Allen Seminary by selling bricks from the collapsing building.
Then I visited the Houston County Courthouse in Crockett and saw the Davy Crockett Historic Marker. Davy Crockett stayed at the Sterne House in Nacogdoches, then made camp in current day Crockett, Texas on his way to the Alamo where his luck ran out.
Just a few miles North of Crockett on US Hwy 287, is the now defunked town of Grapeland, where I had to stop to shoot the Texas General Store.
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