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  • Description is exactly "A collection of regional newspaper articles on the North Alabama Baptist Academy (NABA), founded in 1896 in Courtland, Lawrence Co., Alabama by the Muscle Shoals Baptist Association, a Missionary Baptist association comprised of sixty-six churches in a half-dozen NW AL counties. Sixty students were enrolled for the school's first term.

    The first classes were held in the Colored Baptist Church at Courtland "until they can get their buildings ready, which they hope to do before another session." By September of 1898 OE Freeman of Barton's Station, Colbert Co., had the contract to build the academy building. By 1900 the Academy consisted of 20 acres and a "large commdious building" a 1/2 mile from Courtland on Lamb's Ferry Road. The acreage had decreased to 12 acres (valued at $10,000) by 1914 but the campus included 2 buildings used for dormitories and recitations and 228 students.

    The NABA was an industrial academy which offered courses in academics, music, agriculture, sewing and other domestic sciences, as well as classes on the Bible. Besides its principal and assistant-principal there were five teachers overseen by a 15-man board of directors. Rev. CO Boothe was the school's first principal. The NABA was supported largely through donations from member congregations of the Muscle Shoals Baptist Association.

    For "some years" beginning in 1910 the board of trustees considered relocating the NABA to Decatur (the Decatur Land Co offered to donate a plot of land) or Sheffield, however the school apparently never relocated. References suggest there may have been an extension of the NABA at Tuscumbia.

    The NABA building burned to the ground in December of 1928, killing one faculty-member and one student. The academy continued through at least 1957.

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