#143--William D. Hannah Goes to School

Schools are starting up all over the United States so how appropriate that the blog topic for the week is school.  I knew that my grandfather, William D. Hannah, went to Wentworth Military.  So I decided that I would find more about that school and his time there.  Archive.org has all the catalogs for Wentworth on line.  So I was able to find a great deal about the school in the late 1880's.

Wentworth Male Academy was founded in 1880 by Stephen Wentworth in Lexington, Missouri.  He employed Benjamin Hobson to run the school, who turn hired  Sandford Sellers.  Sellers graduated from Virginaia Military Institutue, as the head of the school and incorporated many of their traditions into Wentworth.  In 1882 Wentworth was renamed Wentworth Military Academy.

William was born in 1870 in Butler. Missouri.  I assume he attended the schools there, either public high school or Butler Academy.   However, in 1889 William is on the register of Wentworth, but not for the previous year or the next year.  So I think that he attended for what might be his senior year as he would have been 17 years old.  The school offered three courses of study:  classical, elective and business.  Since he attended Dickson College in Pennsylvania, and the catalog is states that the classical course for for college preparation, I think he did that one.  That curriculum covered English, Mathematics, Latin, Greek, History and Science. Tuition for highest grade was $50 Room and Board $250.

The daily routine looked like this:

Each cadet was required to have two uniforms.

William in his Uniform

I have a number of questions for my grandfather about his time at Wentworth.  Why did he go and for what year?  Did he graduate?  Did it prepare him well for Dickinson College?