By by Lydia Grimes
Downing Shofner Institute, or Downing Industrial School, has been on my mind lately because of some interesting things that have happened.
If you remember, I told you of a letter one of the students received while attending the school. One of her descendants was wanting to know what the DIS written on the envelope meant. I responded by telling her it should have been DSI for Downing Shofner Institute. I was reminded that at one time or another both names were used, but for the most part, Downing Industrial School was used for a longer period of time.
Anyway, the school was a big part of the community for many years in the first part of the 1900s.
No story of the school would be complete without some knowledge about the man who had the vision to build a school which would train and teach young women of the early 1900s, when education for them was deemed to be not needed.
James Martin Shofner was born June 3, 1868 in Rehoboth, Ala., which is southwest of Selma. His parents were Martin Shofner and Willie Jane Glover. He had one brother, William Albert and two sisters, Annie Jane and Ella Kate. His mother died when he was only five years old and the family moved to Georgiana. His father was a mechanic, and a good one according to his son, but times were very hard on the family. Even though Shofner entered school at the age of seven, he was soon pulled out to help on the family farm.
The family moved to Pineville in Monroe County and then to the country about 20 miles north of Evergreen. It was here that he grew to young manhood. When he was 17 years old he was ‘converted to a religious life' and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church South. At the age of 18 he went out on his own and bought a farm, but soon, he felt the call to preach. He wanted to go to school and borrowed the money to do so.
This was the beginning of a long association with education. Although there were many times that he had to borrow and put himself in debt, he continued to get his schooling and in 1887, applied for admission to the Alabama Conference and was appointed. He started his first preaching circuit as he had his schooling-he walked from Evergreen down to Castleberry. His territory covered four churches in Alabama and six in Florida.
In 1888, he married to Eliza Jane Mixon of Commerce. Over the next three years, he was transferred to several places, and it was in Tallassee that he conceived the idea of a school for girls. He could see the need for education for both boys and girls, but he saw girls as the most disadvantaged. He believed that if a girl was educated, she would later see that her own children were also educated.
Thus came into being the idea of a school for girls of limited means. His idea was to have a school where the girls were educated, but also where they worked to defray the expense of their education. He even thought of the idea of a truck farm, a dairy and a cannery which would supply the school with the necessary food items.
In 1904, he was transferred to Brewton and put his ideas into practice.
His first donation came from Martha Vincent of
Rehoboth and the next by Grace Dodge of New York. Soon other donations allowed him to purchase the site of Old Fort Crawford, one mile east of Brewton.
In 1906, the school was organized and incorporated under the name of Downing Educational Society, but the institution was called the Downing Industrial School, in honor of Mrs. Esther Downing, wife of Elisha Downing, who had been most liberal with her donations. The first building was erected in 1906 and named Esther Home after Mrs. Esther Downing whose contribution of $1,000 made the building possible. The school opened Sept. 24, 1906, with nine students, three teachers and a matron.
I will stop for this week. I hope you enjoy and if you happen to have a photograph of any of the Institute, please let me hear from you. I can be reached at 867-4876 or by email at lydia.grimes@brewtonstandard.com.
Until next week, happy hunting.