Maysville Academy
. The Maysville Academy, Maysville, Ky., was also known as the Maysville Seminary. In 1829 a local contractor, Thomas D. Richardson, built the school’s red brick building at 109 West Fourth St. in downtown Maysville. Two noted scholars, Jacob W. Rand and William W. Richeson, opened the school in 1830; they also served as instructors. In the beginning, Maysville Academy was an all-boys’ school, but later it became coeducational. One of the school’s teachers was John Flavel Fisk, who became a Kentucky state senator, representing Campbell and Kenton counties. Some well-known people educated at the Maysville Academy include U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877); Walter N. Haldeman, founder and president of Louisville’s Courier-Journal newspaper; William H. Wadsworth, ambassador to Chile; John J. Crittenden, U.S. attorney general; Thomas H. Nelson, ambassador to Chile and Mexico; Gen. William “Bull” Nelson; Henry Thomas Stanton, Kentucky’s poet laureate; and historian Richard H. Collins, son of Lewis Collins, who authored the classic work History of Kentucky. The school’s most illustrious student, Ulysses S. Grant, lived with his family in Georgetown, Ohio, as a young child but at age 14 was sent to live with his uncle, Peter Grant, in his uncle’s home on Front St. in Maysville. Grant attended Maysville Academy during the school year 1836–1837.
William Richeson bought Jacob Rand’s interest in the school in 1860 and continued to operate the Maysville Academy until 1868, when he took a position as principal of the Maysville High School, which had just opened. At that time he closed the Maysville Academy and sold the school’s building.
Over the years, the structure that had housed the school was used as a single-family and later as a two-family residence. Having deteriorated, the building was condemned in 1983. The City of Maysville took possession of it in early 1997. Several interested parties attempted to secure funding for the restoration of the building, but none of these efforts were successful. Later in 1997 part of the front wall collapsed, and authorities decided to raze the structure. During demolition, a secret passageway containing a stash of alcohol was found under the building. Because the bottles had screw-on caps, it was determined that the alcohol was of recent vintage, not from the structure’s early history. Some have speculated that the passageway may also have been used as part of the Underground Railroad.
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“Schoolhouse Mystery,” KP December 24, 1997, A6