In response to several inquiries and questions about the Centenary Institute in Summerfield (Valley Creek), here's a few more details: In 1829, the 20th Congress passed a bill authorizing the establishment of a school in Valley Creek; 10 years later, in 1839 (in the centennial year iof Methodism) , the people of Valley Creek voted $9,000 for the project, and Valley Creek was officially selected as the site of the new school, Centenary Institute. It was chartered on January 2, 1841. An older academy, the Valley Creek Academy, was closed, but became the germ of the new Institute. (Original value of the property was $60,000, not including value of the library, etc.) In 1845, the name of the community was changed from Valley Creek to Summerfield, honoring John Summerfield, a well-known English-born clergyman, and to correct the false idea that the location was in a valley on a sluggish creek. In 1843, Dr Archelaus H Mitchell became president of the school; he served in this capacity until 1851, and was known in the community as the "king of Summerfield." In 1843, 60-70 boys and girls were enrolled with three or four "commodious" buildings ready for use. The buildings had Greek Revival and Colonial styling. From 1844-1865, as many as 500 students were enrolled each year -- "the most noted institution in all Central Alabama." A library was established, as well as buildings for two literary societies, the Pierian and the Castalian, both for female students, each of which had their own buildings. (The Pierian building was still standing in 1934, "marred considerably by neglect and the passage of the years."). There were two male literary societies, the Franklin and the Literary Male independent. Summerfield was a center of culture, and the home of wealthy planters who lived in a section of town known as "Athens." The finest home was that of L C Harrison, a trustee of the Institute -- a brick home of fourteen rooms, with a colonaded gallery which surrounded the house on four sides, offering a "mile-long constitutional" if paced seven times around." The Alabama Conference of the Methodist Church appointed to the Institute some of its best trained clergy as teachers and administrators, including Dr R H Rivers as president in 1861. . The head of the male department, Dr C B Connerly, left the Institute in 1862 to join the Confederate Army; he was followed by Dr John S Moore. The number of pupils declined during the War, and by 1865 buildings were badly in need of repair. The problems of Reconstruction also exacted a toll -- in 1867 there were only three graduates. (All fees had to be paid in gold.) The financial panic of 1873 caused the enrollment to drop (in 1874-1875) to 26 girls and 24 boys. By 1880, the Methodist Alabama Conference could no longer afford to keep the school open -- it was reported in 1885 the "the buildings are in a lamentable state of dilapidation, and it is a question of only a short time when it will be utterly uninhabitable and must be turned over to the bats and owls." By 1885 it existed only as a local school, for a time used as an Orphanage and finally sold to the Selma-Summerfield College. Today the site of the Institute can be found near College Street, and not far from the Methodist Church. Remaining is a set of steps near the home of Miss Eugenie Middlebrooks. An interesting "sidelight": a resident of Summerfield (from 1854-1858), near the Institute's campus, was Bishop James Osgood Andrew (a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, beginning in 1832), born in 1794 in Wilkes Co, Goergia. He married a wife in 1844 who owned two slaves. Due to this marriage, Northern members of the Church (who supported the Abolitionist cause) requested that he resign his office; when Andrew left the Church, Methodists in the South followed him, and their title became the "Methodist Episcopal Church, South." Andrew was a member of the board of the Institute in 1861 when R H Rivers was named president. Good sources of information on the Centenary Institute: "A History of Centenary Institute, Selma, Alabama," by Lynda F Worley (the Wesleyan Quarterly Review, February 1965.) Reminiscences, by John Massey (Nashville, 1861). A History of Methodism in Alabama and West Florida, by Marion Elias Lazenby, edited by Franklin S Mosely (Montgomery, 1960). Bob Parrott.