In 1881, Rev. William Bowen purchased the old Spring Villa Female Seminary building (built on land purchased from the Bonapartes in 1837) and reopened it as the Bordentown Military Institute. In 1886, African-American Rev. Walter A. Rice established a private school for African-American children, the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth, in a two-story house at 60 West Street, which later moved to Walnut Street on the banks of the Delaware, and became a public school in 1894 under Jim Crow laws. The school, which was known as the Bordentown School, came to have a , 30-building campus with two farms, a vocational/ technical orientation, and a college preparatory program.Institutional History, New Jersey State Archives. Accessed November 21, 2013. The Bordentown School operated from 1894 to 1955.
In 1881, Rev. William Bowen purchased the old Spring Villa Female Seminary building (built on land purchased from the Bonapartes in 1837) and reopened it as the Bordentown Military Institute. In 1886, African-American Rev. Walter A. Rice established a private school for African-American children, the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth, in a two-story house at 60 West Street, which later moved to Walnut Street on the banks of the Delaware, and became a public school in 1894 under Jim Crow laws. The school which was known as the Bordentown School, came to have a , 30-building campus with two farms, a vocational/ technical orientation, and a college preparatory program.Institutional History, New Jersey State Archives. Accessed November 21, 2013. The Bordentown School operated from 1894 to 1955