Fairfield Academy

Fairfield Academy was an academy that existed for nearly one hundred years in the Town of Fairfield, Herkimer County, New York.

It was organized as an academy for men in 1802, when the community was an active local manufacturing center. The New York State Board of Regents granted the academy a charter in 1803. In 1804 Eunice Dennie Burr bought nine shares of the academy for $5 on the condition that young women would be allowed to attend classes.

In 1812, the trustees of Fairfield Academy, acting on the suggestion of the Rev. Amos G. Baldwin, petitioned Trinity Episcopal Church in Fairfield for a grant of funds to establish a college of liberal culture under Episcopal auspices. This petition was not granted, but in the following year, acting upon another petition suggested by the Rev. Baldwin, the corporation of Trinity church founded a theological school in connection with Fairfield Academy. By 1818, Bishop John Henry Hobart of the Episcopal Diocese of New York saw a need to establish a school of liberal culture, as well as a theological school, in the western portion of the diocese. Hobart formed a plan to transfer the Theological School from Fairfield to Geneva, New York in connection with a “college and printing press” to be established there. In 1821 the transfer was made, and the Rev. Daniel McDonald, D.D., the principal of the Theological School in Fairfield, relocated to Geneva. The relocated theological school formed the nucleus of what later became Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

The academy was reorganized as the co-educational Fairfield Seminary in 1839, incorporating a "Classical Academy and Female Collegiate Institute," with a teacher training and college preparation curriculum. Its enrollment in 1861 was 551. As new major transportation routes developed in the 19th Century, bypassing the Town of Fairfield, the academy lost its prominence. It operated as a military academy beginning in 1891. Fairfield Academy closed in 1901, largely due to competition from the growing number of high schools in the area. Its records are now archived at Syracuse University.

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