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Biddle Institute/Johnson C. Smith University
With the close of the Civil War in 1865, African Americans were finally
free to form schools and churches. In 1867, several white northern
Presbyterian ministers got a charter for a school to educate southern
black ministers and teachers, funded by $10,000 from the Freemen's Bureau
and $1,900 from Philadelphian Mary Biddle, whose Union soldier husband had
been killed at Gettysburg. Organizers who met in a small church at Fourth
and Davidson Streets bought lumber salvaged from the Charlotte Confederate
Navy Yard to build the school. William R. Myers gave eight acres on a
hilltop west of town at 100 Beatties Ford Road for the school which was
named
Henry J. Biddle Memorial Institute.
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