GROVE ACADEMY IN 1787.
* * * Our Grove Academy (as it is styled by the Legislature) is not in a more flourishing condition than when I wrote you last (altho' yet short of our expectations or of what you wish it to be), the house is now finished, the school was removed into it last week, there are yet but twenty-five students under a master who teaches only the Latin and English Grammar and the Latin and Greek languages. We have no other fund for the support of it but the fees of the students and the benevolence of public spirited gentlemen, which have as yet appeared to be very low. I wish I could with propriety give you a description of it more to your satisfaction. The Genius of the people of this part of the country is not adapted to the study of learning and science. The most desirable object that people here have in view are interest and pleasure, but I flatter myself that that period will soon arrive when an emulation will take place amongst the youth (who are of most discernment) to aspire to the attainment of that which in the end will be most permanent and profitable, and that this infant institution (altho' far inferior to that erected at Strabane, or indeed almost any other), through the exertions of some who are concerned in it, may yet become profitable and rise to repute. * * *
November 30, 1787. Wm. Dickson.
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From Cart's Dickson Letters, pp. 34 and 35.
(Source: North Carolina Schools and Academies, 1790-1840, By Charles L. Coon 1914) 