Newport Academy
In 1797 the Kentucky legislature passed a law offering an endowment of 6000 acres to any county desiring an academy. On February 12, 1798, James Taylor convinced the Campbell County Court to apply for the grant to finance a school at Newport. The legislature charted the Newport Academy in 1799 and created a twelve-man board of trustees to manage its affairs.
For more details you can read the original minutes at Newport Academy Minute Book.
Three of the first board members lived in Newport, James Taylor, Daniel Mayo, and Richard Southgate, as did the clerk Edmund Taylor, brother of James, as did two trustees, Washington Berry, Taylor's brother-in-law and Thomas Kennedy. Berry was chosen as the first president. Southgate resigned after the first meeting and Jacob Fowler took his place.
The Academy, often called the Seminary, was a public school, as opposed to being tutored privately at home, but charged tuition. Taylor intended for it to resemble Virginia's Rappahannock Academy, which he had attended. It contained an English school, in which no foreign languages were taught, and a Latin school which would prepare students for a college through courses in Latin and Greek, plus Hebrew. Tuition per years would be $8 per English scholar and four pounds per Latin scholar.
The trustees recruited students with this advertisement in the Kentucky Gazette of April 10, 1800.
"NEWPORT ACADEMY-The Academy of Newport will commence on the first of April, in which will be taught reading, writing and arithmetic, at eight dollars per annum; also the English grammar, the dead Languages, the following branches of mathematics, viz. geometry, astronomy, mensuration of superfices and solids; also logic, rhetoric, book keeping & at four pounds per annum. Board can be had at Newport and its vicinity on reasonable terms, and the greater part received in produce. The following gentlemen are trustees to the above mentioned Academy, viz. Washington Berry, Charles Morgan, John Grant, Thomas Kennedy, Thomas Sanford, Thomas Carneal, Richard Southgate, Daniel Mayo, Robert Stubbs, James Taylor, Bernard Stuart."
The Act incorporating the Academy obliged the town to donate six lots comprising a public square for the academy's location. Taylor donated four lots on "Belle Vue Square" and the town gave over the two adjoining lots. These lots now four the site of Fourth Street Elementary School. On September 21, 1800, the trustees initiated a subscription drive to fund construction of a one-story, stone house, measuring 32 by 20 feet.
Rev Robert Stubbs received the Academy's invitation to be its first president. Stubbs was an Englishman who was an ordained Episcopal minister. He was required to give all instructions in both curriculums until the student body increased enough to hire other faculty. He would earn 75 pounds {$3300 in modern currency}, and have the free use of a house and 17 acres of cleared land, which might be rented to a tenant. If he attracted so many scholars that their tuition exceeded his salary, he could keep the extra money.
Stubbs had already tutored children of prominent Central Kentucky families, including Richard M Johnson, future vice-president, and John McLean, future associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was widely known as a highly sophisticated scholar and later produced the first almanac based on calculations made beyond the Appalachians. He became a minor celebrity when he arrived in Newport in April 1800. He customarily rehearsed his lessons by reciting Latin or Greek while strolling among the tress around his house. It was the closest thing to theatre the settlers had seen in years, and they found themselves making excuses to pass by his home and overhear him.
The Academy's trustees and Stubbs had a falling out, because Stubbs resigned in December 1801. After Stubbs left, the Newport Academy seems to have come upon confused times. Edmund Taylor kept abysmal records and none have survived from 1804 to 1817. It may have been suspended during these times. However it was a landmark endeavor, one of the earliest schools chartered in the Ohio Valley west of Pittsburgh. It was so far in advance of its time when founded in 1799, it antedated the use of any public funds for education in Cincinnati by sixteen years.
Newport Academy, also known as the Newport Seminary, operated until 1850 when a new school was built and named Newport High School. It became part of the Newport School system in 1860. The building was used until 1873 when it was torn down.