Fairfield Academy

Fairfield Academy. . , Fairfield Academy was organized in 1802 when the community was an active local manufacturing center. The Board of Regents granted the academy a charter in 1803. A separate medical department became the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of New York (better known as Fairfield Medical College). It was chartered in 1812 and was the second medical college in New York, and the sixth to be founded in the nation. Among its distinguished alumni were Asa Gray (1810 - 1888), internationally famous botanist, and Marcus Whitman (1802 - 1847), explorer, colonizer and physician-missionary in Oregon. Teachers and graduates from Fairfield helped establish medical colleges elsewhere. Fairfield could not compete with these new colleges, and, in spite of its influence, held its last classes in 1840,, Fairfield Academy flourished before the Civil War as a "classical academy and female collegiate institute." It trained teachers and prepared students for college. On the serene hillside campus were laboratories, classrooms, dormitories and the old chapel. By the end of the 19th century, as a result of new transportation routes and of more and better local schools, the academy lost its former position of prominence. it finally closed in 1902.