New Bern Academy
From School to Hospital
In 1861, Confederate authorities converted the New Bern Academy from a school to a hospital. The U.S. Army commandeered the structure to care for the wounded almost immediately after defeating Confederate forces in the Battle of New Bern on March 14, 1862. Casualties were first moved here from temporary quarters on March 19. Ten days later, a newspaper reported that “ the General Hospital at Academy Green is full of severely wounded men, and those who have undergone amputation. Two houses opposite [across the street] are filled with wounded rebel prisoners under charge of their own surgeons.” Academy Green Hospital also treated victims of spinal meningitis, smallpox, and yellow fever. It served as a general hospital in conjunction with the Masonic Lodge and other nearby structures. By the end of the war, the buildings constituted a part of New Bern’s larger Foster General Hospital.
The yellow sidebar at the lower right reads: New Bern Academy was the first school established by law in North Carolina (1766). Fire destroyed the original building in 1795, and this Federal-style structure was erected by 1810. At first, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel subsidized the teachers, who had to be Anglican Church members. Before it became a graded public school, the Academy adhered to the Lancasterian system developed by an Englishman, Joseph Lancaster. Students were grouped by level of achievement rather than by age, and a pupil who had been promoted to a higher level led each class. The Academy’s role as a school ended in 1972.
Marker is on New Street near Hancock Street.
Courtesy hmdb.org
