Pioneer history of Ingham County, compiled and arranged by Mrs. Franc L. Adams, secretary of the Ingham County pioneer and historical society.

VEVAY TOWNSHIP AND ITS HISTORY

747

THE FULLER ACADEMY.
By OTIS FULLER, Mason. Read at Eden April 26, 1922.
In 1856 James Fuller settled with his family of nine children
in Vevay Township, two miles southeast of Mason, in what is
known as the Hawley school district.
The oldest daughter, Emma Jane Fuller, had been favored with
the advantages of a seminary and collegiate education in New
York, and in 1857 she taught a select school in Mason. Her
health becoming impaired, she quit teaching for several years,
except a few l)rivate pupils.
In 1865 she established an academic school upon the Fuller
farm, which continued for ten years. In addition to the branches
usually taught in the smaller high schools were French and German, and the courses in botany, chemistry, rhetoric, literature
and the higher mathematics, were much more extended and thorough than in any of the high schools of that day.
The primary object of the school was to afford better educational advantages for the five younger children of the family than
the district or Mason schools afforded. Residents of Mason and
Vevay were quick to solicit the advantages of the school and between fifty and sixty pupils were enrolled at different times from
the immediate vicinity, while several came from outside counties
and states.
During the closing years of the school it specialized as a teachers
finishing school, and many third and second grade teachers came
to study for second and first grade certificates. I was told by the
superintendent of the county that during one year more than half
of the first grade certificates issued in Ingham county went to
students of the Fuller Academy.
I have no complete list of the students of this seminary, but
we know that about twenty-five of them have passed to the
Great Beyond.
Among those living are the following:
Miss Jennie Adams, Lakeview, Mich.
Orlando F. Barnes, Lansing.