Pea Ridge Masonic College

The Pea Ridge Masonic College was a private school located in Pea Ridge, Arkansas that offered a structured education in primary, secondary and collegiate levels. It served primarily as a normal college or teaching school, where students were taught to work as primary and secondary education teachers. It operated from 1874–1916, before being absorbed into the town’s public primary and secondary schools.

History

The beginning of the Pea Ridge Masonic College, also known as Mount Vernon Normal College, Pea Ridge Academy, Pea Ridge College and Pea Ridge Normal College, dates to 1860, when Rev. Elijah Buttram, a circuit-riding Methodist preacher, founded Buttram’s Chapel east of Pea Ridge, the present site of Buttram’s Chapel Cemetery. Between 1860 and 1874, educational services at the site were sporadic and led by volunteers and local clergy.

In 1874, Reverend Elijah Buttram brought in Professor John Rains Roberts as the principal of the newly formalized Pea Ridge Academy. A recent graduate, having received his education at Ozark, Missouri and at Abingdon College in Knox County, Illinois, he saw an opportunity to establish an institution of higher education in the area. After five years, the school, sponsored by the Masonic lodge, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and local patrons, moved into Pea Ridge proper where, in 1880, a two-story brick schoolhouse was erected. The school was granted a charter as an academy in 1884 and was also accredited by the University of Arkansas. In 1887–88, the building was enlarged to accommodate 250 pupils.^[1]

Pea Ridge had become the educational center not only for the area, but also for aspiring scholars from across county and state lines. In 1884, the Pea Ridge School District #109 was approved as a tax-supported school. The county court had been approached with a petition requesting approval, with Professor Roberts making the presentation of the petition to the court. A board of directors was in charge of the public school grades, while trustees handled affairs for the college, both of which coexisted in the same building.

Professor Roberts left the college in 1894 and returned to the Springfield, Missouri, vicinity. In 1914 he returned to visit the school he had founded and to take part in the observance of the 40th anniversary of the college. Nannie Roberts, his sister, devoted her long career to teaching younger pupils at Pea Ridge Academy and later in the public school. By 1914, the academy was known as the Pea Ridge Masonic College. It operated until 1916, offering elementary, high school, and college-level instruction. In 1916 the college was closed and the property deeded to the Pea Ridge Public School. In 1929, the school district dismantled the college building.^[1]

Today

Only a few physical reminders remain of the former Pea Ridge Masonic College. A house, now used for storage, which had served as Professor Roberts home on the campus, and a memorial, built out of bricks of the college’s buildings, houses the college’s bell on the former school grounds at the northeast corner of the intersection of Curtis and Pickens streets in Pea Ridge’s historic downtown.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Nichols, Joe Jerry. Pea Ridge (Benton County), The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture