Republic of Texas charters Independence Academy On this day in
1837, the Congress of the Republic of Texas granted a charter to
the citizens of Independence, Washington County, for the
establishment of a nonsectarian, nonpolitical "seminary." The
charter was a response to a petition presented a month before by
John P. Coles, a large landowner and Old Three Hundred settler
who had founded Coles' Settlement, later Independence. In order
to carry out the charter, the young Henry F. Gillette bought an
existing girls' school from Frances Thompson. Hugh Wilson, a
Presbyterian minister, taught at the new academy. In 1839 the
institution, known as Independence Female Academy, enrolled more
than fifty students taught by a Miss McGuffin. In 1841 Edward
Fontaine, a Methodist minister who later became an Episcopalian
minister of considerable importance in Austin, taught at the
school. Independence Academy closed in 1845. Its property was
purchased and donated to the newly chartered Baylor University.
Not until the Consti