Click image to enlarge. Private academies were among the earliest institutions of learning in Alabama. By the mid-nineteenth century, they could be found in large and small communities across the state. Pickens County alone boasted eleven private academies by 1855, including the Carrollton Male and Female Academy. Today it stands as one of only fifteen known antebellum school buildings left in the state.
According to an early publication, Jeremiah Marston founded the old Carrollton Academy around 1850. An 1876 advertisement from the West Alabamian listed courses offered at the school, including Latin and Greek classes taught by a Professor Bell. The academy also served as a boarding house for students and teachers. When the school closed in the early 1900s, its building became a private home. Many mid-nineteenth-century features are intact, including an old chalkboard discovered behind a wall built years later. The building survives today as a visual reminder of the many private academies once common in Alabama.
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