Culver Military Academy 1894

Appeared in The Indianapolis News Tue, Aug 07, 1894 ·Page 5; and was a 5 column article except for 2 ads at the bottom of column 5 and adds in columns 6 & 7.

Culver Academy

The Military School By the Lake at Maxinkuekee.

A Place Where Wealth, Enthusiasin and High Qualifications Founded a Military Sehool.

The Details of a Great Institute — A Glimpse at the Life Adoat and Ashore - The Work, Study and Play of the Cadets - The Influence of Discipline.

---*--- An important addition to the educational facilities of the State of Indiana is the Culver Military Academy, which has been recently located on the banks of Lake Maxinkuckee, in Mashall county.

It is not a school that is to be it is a school that already exists. It has the advantage of surroundings not enjoyed by any school in the State and it is the only educational institution in the of Indiana where the system of education is adopted.

The only town that is at all close to the school is Marmont, a little village on the Vandalia railway, thirty-three miles north of Logansport, eighty-three miles east of Chicago and _ miles north of Indianapolis.

The school 1s espectaily accessible to Indianpolis, It is less than a five-hours ride from this city The big four railway makes connection at Colfax with the Vandaila train whihc runs to the lake side in less than three hours.

The Academy

The Rev. J. J. McKenzie, principla of the Culver academy, in speaking of the organization, said: "I was with the Ohio Military Institute for four years. The school there was a great success, but we were sadly cramped for room. We were also hampered by a lack of water. Indeed, It was often very hard to get enough water to supply the ordinary needs of the school. Knowing this, the Indianapolis patrons of the school recommended me to consider Maxinkuckee, assuring me that it was a desirable location for a permanent school. "Mr, Harry Adams, who had a cottage at the lake, and who has spent his summer's here for several years, wrote to me about coming here. He also, I understand, wrote to Mr. Culver. He knew that Mr. Culver wanted to start a school if he could find some one to take hold of it, and he knew that I was looking for a place of this kind. Mr. Culver and myself were soon able to come to an agreement, and the establishmentof the school was the result. I suppose it might called my school and Mr. Culver's property. Mr. Culver has turned it all over to my charge. There is no board of trustees or anything of that sort. Mr. Culver and myself are the regents of the school."

Mr. Culver tells the story of the starting ofithe school as follows: "I married in the country, south of this lake, thirtv years ago. Ever since that time I have visited the lake every summer, to fish, and to visit my wife's folks. 1 am president of the Wrought Iron Range Compsny of St. Louis, with a capital stock of $1,000,000, but I retired from active busimess about eleven years ago. I have some trouble with my heart, and I had a stroke of paralysis that warned me of to close application to business.

I traveled for a couple of years, visiting California, Cuba and Mexico. I did not recover my healtb, and 1 came back to the lake to visit my wife's folks. That was in 1883. I spent the whole summer by the side of the lake. I fished nearly all the day and I lived in a tent.

When fall came I was a different man, it had such a glorious effect on my health that I determined to acquire some property here. I bought ninety-eight acres on the northeast corner of the lake. They cost me $8,000. The following year 1 bought 208 acres at the north end of the lake for $9.000.

A good deal of this land was low and damp. I employed a number of men ditching. Before I was done I had put eighteen miles of drain pipe in the 300 acres. It reclalmed the land. Then I started to have the land farmed. I raised hay and corn on it, and turned part of it into meadow.

In 1887 1 built a tabernacle, In hotel and some cottages, and arranged for a big series of meetings. I got. Dr. Talmage and Sam Jones to preach, amd I got big crowds down here. I had revival meetings and so on for the whole of one year. Since that time there has been no public meeting of any consequence.

"In all these thirty years since I first began to make money and knew the lake, a hobby of mine had been to start a school." It had been one of my 'castles in the air.' The hobby first took detinite shape in 1888. I began to prepare part of ground for a school. 1 saw in my mind's eye where the school would have to be.

Unluckily there was a wagon road between the lake and my property. I wanted ground of my school (when I built it) to go clear down to the lake side without a break. After some little trouble, I got the wagon road removed aud was ready: for the school.

For a number of years I was in correspondence with teachers everywhere, trying to get a suitable person to take charge of the echool. I contid find no one who saw promise in my plan. Then I went to Califoraia. When I returned I found a letter from Harry Adams, of Indianapolls; waiting for me. This asked was in March of this year. Mr. Adams asked me in his letter to allow a summer school to be __ated on my ground. I found that Dr. McKensle, of the Ohio Military School, was the man contemplated for head of the school. In April I leased the forty acres of the north side of the lake for school purposes and put up the bulldings.

The success of the summer school I have consider assured, and I propose now to have the scademy permanent Insitution. The buildings that I have put up to are of a temporary character. I propose to have buildings of brick and stone that will be as fine as the buildings belonging to any educational tastitution in the State."

The Lake.

Lake Maxinluckee is a beautiful sbeet of water about twelve miles la circumterence, It is oval in shape and is surrounded by magnificent groves of forest trees and high, sloping farming lands. Grass grows to the very water's edge. and the shelving bottom is of the finest sand. All around the lake are cottage% hotels and club-houses, which are filled in the summer time with people from Indianapolis, Cincinnati and other towns in Ohio and Indiana. A few people from Chicago have also discovered the natural beauties of the place, and come down every summer. It is one of the garden spots of the State.

The waters of the lake are as clear as crystal, and objects at a great depth can be plainly seen.

A great variety water craft abound on the lake. Many of the wealthier people who visit the lake regularly own small yachts, naphtha launches and skiffss and on any day when there is a breeze blowing the lake is dotted with white-sailed craft.

Most of the cottages of the reguiar restidents are pretty buildings, with well kept grounds.

Inside the houses make 1n pretensions to elegance. People from town, who own cottages at Lake Maxinkuckee, find a good place for the old furniture, Knick-nacks and the store of paper-back novels that accumulate around a house. All of the cottages have water front and a landing stage is its ____d_ary to the lake cottages as ayard entrance is to s town house

At one of the choicest locations on the north side of the lake the Culver Miltary Academy is situated amonf the hugh forest treez. The buildings standing on forty acres of high ground bounded on one side by lake and three sides by a dense growth of trees.

At present che academy has three buildings and the hotel besides which there is the Loyal Legion cottage at the water's edge

The Structures

The main building is a hugh frame structure three stories high, surrounded cwith porches . The ground floor is taken up with the dining-hall for the cadets and the various claa and lecture rooms the quartermasters's and the military departments, the bath-rooms and barbershop. On the upper floor McKenzie, with reception rooms for the parents of the pupils. The resy of the holds seventy-two rooms for the cadets.

In the present building there has been little or no attempt at elegance, and the rooms of the cadets seem simple and bare. Dr. McKenzies says that even when the permanent buildings are finished the rooms for the cadets will still be severely simple

Each room is designed for two pupils. The furniture consists of two single beds, a book shelf, a study table. a dresser and a wardrobe. The floor of the room is uncarpeted. To mitigate the severity of this furniture. the cadet is allowed to provide himself with a rug three feet by six, to be placed by the side of his bed.

At present the building is lighted with oll lamps in each room; In the permanent bullngs electric lights will be used.

As one enters the door on the lower floor he sees a range of large lockers with glass doors. They are numbered. Fach cadet has one of these lock for his use. It is his mail box. Cadets are not allowed to ask for anything they may want from the stores or the principal. Their wants must be made krown in writing and their requests are answered in the same way.

The building is taken care of by the officers in charge and the officer of the day. The officer in charge is a mumber of the faculty, the officer of the day is one of the cadets. The honor falls to each cadet in turn. In everything connerted with the cadet's life at ine Culver Academy, military usuage obtain.

The cedets fall into line and march to the dining-hall, te chapel ant to their ciass rcoms. In good weather they drill on the large parade ground in front of the academy. In bad weather the big perches are used to drill on. The diniing-hall is a large room with sides ito the light and an abundance of windows. Instead of one big table there are a number of smaller cnes, at each of which a dozen cadets can dine. On Sunday, July 29, this was the bill of fare for dinner: Tomato soup
celery
olives
Spring chicken Spinach on toast
Salad
Ice cream
Cake Cheese and crackers
Coffee

The bill of fare is made out earh morning by Dr. MoKenzie. who keeps a watchful eye on all parts of the academy.

The gymnasium of the academy is the old tabernacle. It a pretty building. It has floor space 100x125, and is 30 feet high inside. It will be fitted up with all kinds of gymnasium apparatus, and course in calisthenics will be considered part of the studies of the cadets.

The chapel is a small building. but large enough for the purpose. Attendance at chapel is compulsory, and pulpit of the academy chapel is filled by some of the best ministers from all over the country. who, coming to visit the academy, stay over Sunday to preach to the cadets. On Sunday, July 29, the pulpit was filed by Bishop Knickerbacker. who often runs down to Maxinkuckee from his favorite resort at Bishop Thorpe, on the Twin Lakes.

The grounds of the academy are very beautiful. The whole forty acres are laid out fine style. Artificial lagoons have been made, and there are two or three artificial lakes. At various places on the grounds are found flowing wells. Within one minute's walk from the front door of the academy are three flowing wells. One of them is no heavily charged with irons that the ground over which the water Hows is red. There is also a sulphur well, and a little further up a well of lime water, The academy has it own landing stage, and most of the cadets own their lown skiffs, beside which there is the Crescent, the college yacht. The Loyal Legion cottage. which lies close to the bank of the lake is the quarters of the secert society of the academy. A high standard of scholarship and deportiment are the necessary qualifications for membership. and it is one of the main efforts of the new cadets to be admitted to the Loyal Legion. When the permanent buildings for the academy are put up next spring it will be the aim of Dr. McKenzie to have small cottages built for the married members of the faculty.

The Management.

The rules and regulations of the acady omy are baged upon those of the United States Military Academy at West Point, with such modificatiors as circumsiances require. One of the strictest requirementa of the academy is thorough and perfect obedience. One of the first rules is that courtesy among cadeis is to discipline and respect

Prefect attendance to duty is required and cconscientious employment of time during study hours. Cadets are forhidarn to have firearms, to use tobacco. on to cards or dice. The use of intoxiwing liquors is strictly forbidden. The military system has been adopted because it has been found to bring about the best result in the development of boys. Each day forty-five minutes is given to drill or gymnastics, when a cadet enters the academy he is subjected to a careful medical examination, upon which a course of training 1s based that will meet individual requirements. The physical training of the cadets is one of the hobbies of the principal, who believes that unless a boy is strong and healthy he is not in a condition to obtain the best results from study.

The athletic oval of the academy includes football and base-ball grounds, a half-mile running track and tennis courts. Besides other studies, rowing, salling and swimming are taught and practiced uider the supervision of competent men.

Above everything else cadets at the Culver Academy must be gentlemen.

Special rules are made with a view to keeping the cadets neat in person, dress ard equipments. The quarters of the cadets are subject to inspection at any tiime. Cadets on leave of absence or on permits to go beyond cadet limits, during the academic vear, are held responsible for their conduct, and any act that impilcates them in ungentlemanly conduct is dealt with as if committed inside the academy.

Another strict rule of the academy is that all articles sent to cadets arè liable to inspection and anyting that is deemed ojectionable by the principal is returned. The cadets are allowed to bring no eatables from home and nothing except fresh fruit le sent to them. Leave of absence is granted only in cases of emergency. such as serlous sickness or death in the family of the cadet.

Dr. Mckenzie holds the parents of cadets responrible in a way for the result that is to come from the training of the cadet. He holds that parents, must co-operate with him in enforcing a strict observance of the rules of the academy.

The cadets are all required to wear uniform. it is very like that worn by the West Point cadets. There is a dress and undress uniform, a helmet and a fatigue oap. The clothes for the boys to wear at the Academy are all made by one clothier to insure uniformity.

The following list of things each cadet is required to have on entering the Academy:

six white linen collars.
two pairs of boots or high shoes, with cork or thick soles,
The cadet officers have to have swords, and each cadet is giden a Springefield rifle upon entering the Academy. The ammunition is furnished by the States Government, and the boy's have a rifle range, at which weekly practice is held.

Candidates for admission must show themselves to be qualified to enter upon the prescribed course of study. Satisfactory references and! testimonials of good character are required in all cases, and applicants from other educational institutions must show cettificates of honorable dismission. Each cadet is required to matiriculate, and the act is considered an agreement to obey honorably all of the regulations of the Academy. Details

The experse of the education of a cadet at the academy is, reughly speaking, about $360 a year. This Ineludes tultion, board, room, heat, light, washtr.g, mending. use, of arms and equipments. The uniform costs about, $18 for the dress suit. $15 for the fatigue suit, cap $3 and overcoat $16. Cadets who rise to the rank of officers are obliged to furnish their own inisignia and equipments.

The charges for books and stationery are extra, and a charge of $20 a term made for French and German and $35 a term for music. Students in physics and chemistry pay a laboratory fee of $5.

The order of the day is as follows:

Duty	Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday	Monday	Sunday
Reveille - First Call	6:40 a.m.	6:55 a.m.	6:00 a.m.
...........Second Call	6:05 a.m.	7:00 a.m.	6:05 a.m.
Police inspection	6.25 a.m.	7:35 a.m.	6:35 a.m.
Breakfast - First Call	6:40 a.m.	7:40 a.m.	6:40 a.m.
............Second Call	6.45 a.m.	7:45 a.m.	6:45 a.m.

Surgeons Call	7:15 a.m.	8:15 a.m.	7:15 a.m.
Morning Prayer	7:40 a.m.	11:00 a.m.	7:15 a.m.
Recitation or Study	8:00 a.m. to 12		8:00 to 9:30 a.m.
Weekly Inspection			10:30 a.m.
Luncehon - First Call	12:45 p.m.	12:55 p.m.	12:06 p.m.
...........Second Call	12:50 p.m.	1:00 p.m.	12:10 p.m.

recitation or Study	1:00 to 2:00 pm.
Call to Quarters		3:00 p.m.
Drill or Gymnastics .........First Call	3:00 p.m.
.........Second Call	3:10 p.m.
Recreation and athletics	4:00 p.m.
Vespers		4:30 p.m.
Dress parade - First Call	5:30 p.m.	5:30 p.m.
...............Second Call	5:40 p.m.	5:40 p.m.
Dinner	6:00 p.m.	6:00 p.m.	6:00 p.m.

Study	7:30 to 8:30 p.m.		7:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Tattoo	9:00 p.m.	9:00 p.m	9:00 p.m.
Taps	9:15 p.m.	9:15 p.m.	9:15 p.m.

The course of study at the academy comprise Latin, German, French, Kreek, plain gromrtry, history, chemistry, astronomy, solid geometry, review mathatics, trigonomoetry, physiology, higher algebra, geology, surveying, botany, scienece. There is also a commercial course consoisiting of commerical arithmetic, English, civil governement, comercial geography, bookkeeping, shorthand, type-writing, commerical law, and German and French. The graduation fee is $10.

The full course of instruction covers six years and is designed to prepare students for admision to the freshman or sophmore class of the best colleges or scieintific scholls. There are two course of study, and students are required to pursue one of them regularly. Reiviews and examinations, oral and written, are held each term. A daily record is made of each pypil's recitations. In making up the final grade in any study the recitations count two-thrids and the examinations one-third. Students who complete any of the prescribe courses of study recience the diploma of the school. A certificate is given to the students who complete the commercial course.

The calender for the comming season is: 1894
Setptember 24, Monday - Examination for admission
September 25, Tuesday - First term begins
Dec 19, Wedensday - Christmas Vacation bigins.
1895
January 7, Monday - Christmas vacation ends
February 5,Tuesday - First term ends
February 6, Wednesday - second term begins
May 18, Saturday - FIeld day
June 2, Sunday - Baccalaureate sermon
June 5, Wednesday - Commncement.

Summer Life.

Besides the regular courses of study there is a summer school department. It has been in operation all this summer with success. The cadets live for great the most part in tents, and they are required to wear their uniforms not the time. Indeed, they are clad in all nodescript costumes, the chief the most Item of which appears to be :sweaters" and with their long hair matted over their eyes they look as much like farm hands as they do like students. The summer school is for the benefit of those summer who are backward in their students school work and who have delinquences to make up; for those who are preparing for promotion to advanced class and for those who are preparing for college.

It also provides for those students whose parents wish to keep them employed during the long vacation. Classes are formed to meet the requirements of the students, and where it is necessary private lessons, are given. The summer school is under the immediate charge of is W. W. Hammond, A.M. (Harvard). Many at the summer school of the students come up to the lake with their parents the who have cottages on the banks of the lake. It furnishes a good excuse business men from Indianapolis and Cincinnati to run up to the lake for a couple of days. On Friday and Saturday afternoons the trains to Colfax (from and another train must be taken to Maxinkuckee) are filled with men who, if asked where they are going, will say: "Oh, I'm going up to see my boy. He's in the military academy at Maxinkuckeez". One will generally find thta the fond parent has a little cottage on the lake and that he comes to the lake to get away from buisness and spend SUnday trying to entrap the wary bass.

The head master of the academy is W The W. Hammond, A. M., of Harvard, who three years the head of the facwas faculty at Collere Hill--the Ohio Military Institute. He has returned this summer from a year's advanced study at Harvard, and is said to be a man of exceptional scholarship.aaa

Another member of the faculty is Dr. W. Jaeger, a graduate of Llepsic Univeristy, He was the e instructer of modern languages at Harvard for some years also the head of a branch of the Berlin Scholl of Languages. Both these gentlemen teach in the summer of school.

A feature of the military academy is the cadet band under the leadership of H. G. Neeley, a graduate of the Ohio Military Institute. He was for six years the first cornetist of the Sixth Regiment, Ohio, and was for four years band master at College Hill. He has written some music notably the Calver Park march, which is the favorite piece with the cadet band.

Besidas these thore are the cadet number of competent instructors in a the various branches of study.

The prospects of the permanent school are very encouraging. Many of the cadets who were with Dr. Mckenzie's Military Academy at College Hill, O. have their names entered for the first term on the shores of Maxinkuckee.

Dr. McKenzie and Mr. Culver have taken great pains to have the fact known that the school is established, and the replies to the cirevlars sent out have been many and encouraging.

Dr. MoKenzie realizes that something better than frame bulldings will be needed, but he is almost sure that when the need arises the buildings will be built. The Doctor thinks that the acaademy can be placed on its feet if $100,000 is spent in stone and brick buiklings. and about the same amount given to the academy as an endowment. Mr. Culver is exceedingly proud of the school, and hts family (whom he consulted on the subject) are in perfect accord with his wishes. He has promised Dr. McKenzie that the school shall have all it needs and beople who know him say that if H. H. Culver takes hold of anything he is bound to pull it through. The millionaire has a beautiful cottage not far from the college. where he frequently gives dances for the cadets, and makes them as welcome as the members of his own family.

It must not be imagined that it 1s "all work and no play" at the Culver Academy. There is a large proportion of fun, especially in the summer. The "summer-girl" abounds on the shores of Lake Maxinkuckee, and one of the duties of the cadets is to provide amusement for her. There are at least four dances a week. Mr. Culver has one of the handsomest cottages on the lake and he gives a weekly dance, but most notable perhaps, is the "Cadets' Hop" which is held in the large dining-room of the academy. It is a sight to make one himself young again. There are mp formal invitations to the hop. Everyone knows everyone else at the lake, and in some mysterious way the word is spread around that there is to be a "'hop" at the academy.

At the appointed hour the boats begin to arrive. The college boys have their, "sweaters" on over their white shirts, for if a breeze should freshen up the spray would unfit their immaculate collars for the dance. All kind of boats tie up at the academy pier. Yachts come salling in through the moonwith a load of girls and cadets, vhaperoned by the mother of some summer-school cadet. zzSome of the braver youth row across with their best girl." The steamers bring their loads, and perhaps a few couple come overland. At any rate the crowd gets to the "hop." Any one who only knew the chdets and their friends during the daytime as sailors and fishermen, dressed in old clothes and with matted hair would not recognize the dandies that throng the dance. They are dressed in he whitest of white duck -- which is the uniform of the summer school. There is gleam of gold lace here and there, and the cadet is the hero of the hour. The costumes of the ladies are also elegant these informal affairs, and one might imagine that the impromptu "hop" an invitational affair at the Indianapolis Propylaeum. The nusic is furnished sometimes by the band, but more often some good-natured quest is called upon, and the dancing ta done to a piano accompaniment.

And then the going home at 11 and 12 a'clock. A light breeze blowing in exactly the contrary direction from the one to be taken, and thus there is an opportrinity for the cadet to tack around the lake, and show what a fine sailor he is, and how he can handle a boat. The night wind blows cool on the lake, and the breeze freshens so that the lithe yachts skin through the water with gentle, undulating mation that suits the hour and the place. The boat rums swiftly across the lake, and then the head sheets are let go, and one gets ready to come about. "Look but for your heads," and everybody in the boat stoops down as the boom of the mainsail swings around and the head of the boat falls off ahd she takes the other tack. Now she around, and everybody changes seats from the lee to the weather side, and as she careens along the girls sing love songs to the accompaniment of a gultar, deftly played by a cadet. It is amid such pleasures as these that one feels the force of James Newton Matthews's lines:

To one wno has seen the pupils Culver Academy, there can be no doubt as to the effect the semi-outdoor life has upon them. No boy can be there long without learning to swim, to handle a boat and to fish. The boys are sunburnt, manly fellows, with no touch of affectation. There is a sturdy independence about them born of the power have acquired over the water, which challenges the admiration of every ene who knows them. It is small wonder that parents visit the lake often to "see how the boys are getting along There is nothing to be compared with the happy pride of the business man who trusts to his son's seamanship, and is taken arourd the lake in a sail-boat with his boy at the helm. There is not a man who has sent his boy to the school by the lake that is not an enthuslast on the advantages of the academy. It is a garden spot unsurpassed for natural beauty by any similar spot in any State. It is not a fashionable resort, nor a fashionable school. It is a common-sense school where boys can be trained into manly men.

Lake Maxinkuckee Its Intrigue History & Genealogy Culver, Marshall, Indiana

Culver Military Academy 1894