A history of education in Boone County, Kentucky including early private schools, turn-of-the-century public schools and education after consolidation in 1954.
When the pioneer Kentucky lawmakers were framing the first Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky little thought was given to the design and planning for education. The laws and constitution of Virginia were used as a pattern and they adhered to the English tradition that education was a private responsibility and not to be met at the state expense.
Early Kentucky was all backwoods and it was only in the truly large villages and county seats where academies and elegant seminaries were springing up for the wealthy who could afford to pay tuition fees. In the smaller hamlets and rural communities the less wealthy and country folk had to acquire an education with their own initiative or do without. The elders in such neighborhoods decided sooner or later that something should be done about their "youngun's" ignorance and looked about for the basic ingredients of a school system -- a schoolhouse and a schoolmaster.
The Boone County high school system dates back to the year 1800 when the State Legislature of Kentucky set aside grants of land for the seminaries in various counties of the state. Boone Seminary was to receive 4500 acres of this land which was described as mountainous and located in what is now considered the Cumberland Lake region of Kentucky.
The justices of Boone County received the patents on this acreage in 1813. Three years later additional land was deeded to the Trustees of the Boone Academy. This latter parcel was in the form of two lots compromising two and one-quarter acres of land on the north side of Burlington. The deed stipulated that the ground was for the express purpose and no other nor upon any other condition than as a permanent seat for the Boone Academy. It further reads "that should the trustees of the Academy not comply on their part and the land ever revert back, it was to be in proportion to the original owners."
One of the first instructors at the institution is believed to have been Thomas Campbell, father of Alexander Campbell who founded the Disciples of Christ Church. Thomas, with his daughter, June, were in Burlington in 1819 where they had been hired to operate a school. However, they left shortly after because he disagreed with some of the laws in the state.
