Masonic Female Institute

Masonic Female Institute. "Sadly abused". , Masonic Lodge No. 134 and the town of Cleveland established the Masonic Female Institute in 1848 and opened the school in 1856. At the beginning of the war, student and diarist Myra Inman wrote of a disruption in the school's leadership: "Mr. Blunt [the school's principal] was not coming back." Principal Ainsworth E. Blunt fled the county with other young men in fear of being forced into Confederate service., The school operated until the fall of 1863 when the Union army arrived. During the Battle of Missionary Ridge on November 27, Ohio cavalrymen raided the rear of Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg's army, destroying 12 miles of railroad and burning the copper-rolling mill in Cleveland. In anticipation of a counterattack the troopers camped in and around Cleveland. The 1st Ohio Cavalry guarded the north end of town at the schoolyard. The next morning, the Confederates attacked from nearby Charleston and forced the Federals' retreat to Chattanooga. The Confederate defeat at Missionary Ridge enabled the Union army to take possession of Cleveland, where it used the school building during 1864., The school reopened in the fall of 1864 with the return of the school's former principal, then Capt. Blunt, after his service in the Union 1st East Tennessee Cavalry. He found that the army's occupation had reduced the building to a "sadly abused condition.” The school operated until the 1890s when the building was donated to St. Luke's Episcopal Church. The church later sold it, and the building was converted to apartments in 1915.