Liberty Hall Academy

WELCOME TO LIBERTY HALL ACADEMY

Where you will find a broad, liberal arts education

 

Student Life at Liberty Hall Academy:

Grammar School and Four Upper Classes

*Advancement through levels depends on completion of examinations*

Grammar School-

    • Students begin studies by learning to read and write in Latin and Greek
    • Advancing qualification: successful performance on exams on Virgil and Greek Testament

Subsequent Semesters-

    • Demonstrate comprehension of Horace and Cicero’s Orations in connection with the Pantheon and Roman Antiquities
    • Read Lucian, Xenophon, and Homer
    • Study Grecian Antiquities
      • If Greek is not the individual’s chosen language, French Antiquities instead
    • Successful completion of language studies leads to math class
      • Arithmetic
      • First six books of Euclid’s Elements, trigonometry, surveying, navigation, algebra, and conic sections
    • Study philosophy, including natural philosophy, electricity, lectures on chemistry, astronomy, and geography
    • Focus on English grammar, literature, logic, and “the Law of Nature and of Nations”
    • Students read parts of Locke, Reid, and Dugald Stewart on the human mind in logic class

 

Tuition: 4 pounds & 6 pounds for boarding

~subject to change to 15 pounds for boarding due to financial circumstances~

 

Students come from 26 Virginia counties to attend the school. 78% are from the four western counties of Rockbridge, Botetourt, Bedford, and Augusta. Majority live on campus.

 

School day promptly commences at 8am in the summer months / 9am in the winter months

No student permitted to leave the Academy until classes finish

Students provided three meals in the steward’s house *attendance mandatory*

    • Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate
    • Bread with butter served at all meals
    • Dinner consists of one course of meat with vegetables

Class instruction includes philosophy and ethics, language, and an emphasis on science and mathematics.

 

Guidelines at Liberty Hall Academy strictly regulated by Rector and Board of Trustees:

    • Students forbidden to call classmates by nicknames, play cards, dice or unlawful games, and engage in gambling
    • Individuals are not to be found in any tavern at unreasonable hours
    • Not permitted to be intoxicated or go to dancing school
    • Forbidden from going to frolics, dances, and ball entertainments
    • Profanity is prohibited

 

Students are responsible to the Rector for any infraction of rules.

One student serves as a monitor each week to report any violations to the Rector. 

 

Testimonial from student Allen Taylor on these expectations: the Academy “may in a short while become respectable and likewise as morality is greatly encouraged and vice severely censured” (Liberty Hall Academy.)

 

Only 11 misconducts have merited attention from the Board from 1782-1803, reflecting the upstanding nature of the students at Liberty Hall Academy.

 

 

Liberty Hall Academy. Washington and Lee University, 1999.

“Liberty Hall Academy Ruins.” Clio, www.theclio.com/entry/94092.

 

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