GMS History The History of Greenbrier Military School | Page 3

Greenbrier Male Academy was full to capacity with 45 boarding and 45 day
students. When second-year applications again were above expectations
(with a capacity of 50 boys, 68 applied), a large four-story building was
begun. The building was nearly finished on March 15, 1892, when a fire
started in the basement, where there were four large furnaces. Students were
evacuated with most of their possessions, but the entire structure burned to
the ground.
The Greenbrier Male Academy had started with high hopes. Its motto
was, in fact, “Hope” on an anchor motif. A flyer (GHS Archives) for the
1890-91 academic year calls it a “Classical, Professional, Stenographic and
Business School for Young Men and Boys.” The school aimed to lead boys
“to habits of systematic study, to a high sense of honor, and to a deep
interest in the moral purity of the School.” For this instruction, the boys paid
$130 for boarding for a nine-month session, while day scholars paid $30 –
40 depending on their course of study. Boarding pupils were “required to
furnish soap, towels, one pair pillow-slips, one pair sheets, and one blanket.
Room, fire and light furnished free of charge.” Courses included primary
English, higher English and mathematics, classics, modern languages,
higher mathematics, engineering, Latin and Greek, Roman history and
mythology, Greek history and literature, French, and German. “All
students will be daily exercised in spelling, penmanship and reading.” The
Business department taught arithmetic, penmanship, business letter
writing, bookkeeping, stenography, typewriting, and commercial law, with
attention to double entry bookkeeping. Principals of the school were the
Rev. J. H. Gilmore and Thomas Gilmore. Chaplains were the Rev. J. O.
Knott, the Rev. R. L. Telford, and the Rev. J. H. Gilmore. “Our
government,” the Gilmores said, “will be mild, but firm. All irregularities
will receive the prompt, personal attention of the Principals.” Chapel
services were to be held twice a day, at 8:45 a.m. and at 6:45 p.m.
Unfortunately, Thomas Gilmore had insured the school building for
$11,000 and the cost of the fire came to $15,000. His creditors (primarily
the St. Lawrence Boom and Manufacturing Co.) got the money in a court
settlement (GHS Archives). The Gilmore Academy, as it was also known,
did not survive, yet its short-lived success proved the local interest in an
academy for males that offered practical and classical education. Perhaps it
also offered a “military form of government . . . for the sake of better
discipline,” as Professor Henry B. Graybill states in A Brief History of
Greenbrier College (p. 12), calling the Gilmore Academy the first military
school in Lewisburg. The school hardly lasted long enough to instill any
military training in its pupils, if that was one of its purposes at all. What the
academy had done successfully was to assemble a teaching staff of more
than twenty professionals from Greenbrier, Pocahontas, Monroe,
Summers, Raleigh, and Kanawha counties (GHS Archives). Those teachers