The Davis School in Lenoir County , a boarding school for boys
and young men, was established in LaGrange in 1880 by Adam Clark
Davis Jr., reportedly the great-great-grandson of James Davis ,
the first printer in North Carolina. Adam C. Davis Sr., was
doctor-in-residence at the school, which stressed the classics,
penmanship, military science, mathematics, history, and English
literature and offered commercial courses and training in
telegraphy. The school's annual enrollment averaged 200, but at
its peak there were 300 students-many from other states and
several foreign countries. The Washington and Jefferson
Literary Societies published the school's monthly literary and
educational newspaper, the Davis Cadet. In 1889 an outbreak of
meningitis forced the academy to close, whereupon a number of
residents of the flourishing town of Winston  gave the school
land and pledged $20,000 to enable it to move there. In 1909,
however, the Davis School's buildings and grounds were acquired
by the Methodist Children's H