The Madison Era: 1888-1912
In 1888 a group of families in the Cullowhee Valley undertook a community effort to create a school for their children. In its second year a young teacher from Virginia, Robert Lee Madison, was hired to teach some 100 students between the ages of six and twenty. His mission, what he called the “Cullowhee Idea,” was to provide competent teachers for rural classrooms. His forceful personality succeeded in 1893 in obtaining an annual state appropriation of $1,500 to support a normal, or teacher training, department for the new Cullowhee Academy. This accomplishment set a precedent to provide state support for other normal schools in North Carolina.
The Cullowhee High School, as it was now called, offered four departments — classical, commercial, fine arts, and normal. By 1897 its enrollment was 234, and its state appropriations were increased to include capital funds for construction. Students enjoyed a thriving educational experience, including membership in one or the other of two literary societies, the Columbian and the Erosophian. Before the first dormitory was built, students lived at home, boarded with families or set up households on their own.
By 1910 the campus had expanded from its first two-room building to include a classroom building (Old Madison) and a dormitory (Davies Home). But its enrollment had stopped growing. The response of the board of trustees was to release Madison as head of the school and replace him with Alonzo C. Reynolds, superintendent of Buncombe County schools.
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