GMS History The History of Greenbrier Military School | Page 2
built. Imagine an empty fair ground, or a wheat field in 1862, on the hill
where the GMS tennis courts once stood (the present location of the Sharp
Alumni Center). From this vantage point on the eastern hill bordering the
settlement of Lewisburg, on the morning of May 23, 1862, Confederate
Gen. Henry Heth attacked northern forces across the valley. Union troops
under Col. George Crook were camped on the hill behind the eventual site
of Greenbrier College. Col. Crook’s Ohio Brigade advanced and ultimately
Gen. Heth’s troops retreated all the way down the mountain and across the
Greenbrier River at Caldwell. In an hour’s battle, some 180 Confederate
soldiers were dead and wounded, with 157 taken prisoner. Union casualties
of dead, wounded and missing amounted to 73 (Battle of Lewisburg). A
year after the Battle of Lewisburg, Greenbrier County, Virginia, became
Greenbrier County, West Virginia, on June 20, 1863. Seventy-five years
later, a grove of oak trees sheltered a dairy barn and encroached on a typical
West Virginia sinkhole. In the springtime lilacs bloomed on a small hillside
next to the GMS Activities Building and garage.
THE EARLY YEARS 1875-1921
In 1875, when the succeeding Lewisburg Academy trustees put all the
original assets of Dr. McElhenney’s “Old Brick Academy” into the
Lewisburg Female Institute, the boys were set adrift. It is probable that Dr.
Mathew Lyle Lacy, Dr. McElhenney’s successor who became president of
the Female Institute in 1882, reestablished the boys’ charter, but still there
is no record of a boys’ school until the Gilmore Academy fifteen years later.
Perhaps, as Dr. John F. Montgomery (1991) suggests, the fashion of the day
pushed for separate education for girls and boys. Perhaps, after the
widespread slaughter of young men during the Civil War (Chambers), the
trustees saw the wisdom of educating girls. For whatever reasons, the boys
suffered a break in the strong educational tradition of the Presbyterian
Church and Greenbrier County. Their schooling proceeded in some
combination of private teachers and public school, such as the Lewisburg
Graded School, until Thomas H. Gilmore of Washington and Lee
University started the Greenbrier Male Academy in 1890.
A Succession of Male Schools Leading to GMS
The years from 1875 until the Greenbrier Military School came to
fruition saw various male schools, many on the site of GMS. Often the
schools changed names, whether official or not, to reflect the leadership and
purpose of the school.
Greenbrier Male Academy or Gilmore Academy 1890-92. In 1890 Thomas
Gilmore purchased property (by promissory note) of slightly more
than three acres from Sarah Spotts at 412 East Washington St., at the corner
of what is now Dwyer Lane, The first year of attendance at Mr. Gilmore’s