Noyes Academy

In the background of the Noyes Academy's foundation is the unsuccessful attempt, in 1831, to found a college for African Americans in New Haven, Connecticut. The citizens of that city "vociferously condemned the Black College proposal. The intensity of passion that exploded over the college meant the idea was stillborn." (See Simeon Jocelyn and New Haven Excitement). A direct result was the formation of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. "A more modest, and some thought wiser, course of action" was working to get black students admitted to existing academies and colleges. "The idea gradually evolved that, in the short run, what was needed was an integrated preparatory school" to prepare blacks for college or seminary. ==Founding==

Noyes Academy was begun by New England men sympathetic to the abolitionist movement, including Samuel Noyes (1754–1845), uncle of John Humphrey Noyes who founded the Oneida Community, attorney George Kimball of Canaan, and Samuel Edmund Sewall of Boston. Demand was growing for educational facilities open to African Americans at a time when public education was expanding, as many schools were segregated. Kimball noted: It is unhappily true, that the colored portion of our fellow citizens, even in the free States, while their toil and blood have contributed to establish, and their taxes equally with those of whites to maintain our free system of Education, have practically been excluded from the benefits of it. This institution proposes to restore, so far as it can, to this neglected and injured class, the privileres of literary, moral and religious instruction. We propose to uncover a fountain of pure and healthful learning, holding towards all the language of the Book of Life [Isaiah 55.1]: " Ho! EVERY ONE that thirsteth, let him come and drink." Another teacher, Mary Harris, was hired for the "female department",{{cite book ==Opening of the school==

The school, in a "neat and handsome edifice", opened in March 1835, with 28 white and 17 African-American students. and Alexander Crummell attended the school during the several months that it was open. Williams, who would later marry Garnet, had been a student at Prudence Crandall's Canterbury Female Boarding School for "young Ladies and little Misses of color", which was also destroyed by a mob in 1834 after being open only a short time. Garnet and some other students boarded with Kimball. ==Destruction==

Many local residents objected to allowing blacks into the town to attend the academy, which they called a "nuisance" in a town meeting. There was an "oportune visit of some slavers from the South". According to them, "[t]he village was to be overrun with negroes from the South — the slaves were to be brought on to line the streets with huts and to inundate the industrious town with paupers and vagabonds — and other tales too indecent and too ridiculous to be repeated". The building was "shattered, mutilated, inwardly beyond reparation almost." Canaan Union Academy, restricted to whites, was built in 1839 and operated on the Noyes site until about 1859, and again from 1888 until 1892. The building currently houses the Canaan Historical Society and Museum. ==Historical marker==

A state historical marker at the school's site reads: ==See also==