Education Farm

Sometime before 1832 the Presbyterian Education Society of Kentucky began operating a farm near Centre that would allow students preparing for the ministry to help pay for their education by working in exchange for tuition. The 1832 catalog of Centre includes a section labeled Education Farm. "There is a farm, in the immediate vicinity of College, on which, by laboring two hours per day, any young man having the gospel ministry in view, can live, covering every expense, except for books and clothing, by $60 per annum. The Board have it in contemplation to afford to any other students, besides those included for the ministry, the opportunfity of aiding themselves and benefitting their health by a system of manual labor."

John M. McCalla wrote to the Board of Trustees in 1833 about sending his nephew James Clark to Centre and asked "We wish him to labor, as far as it may be really beneficial to him, and perhaps he might find boarding at a little distance from town at some respectable house where he could have sufficient opportunity for doing so, even if he could not be accomodated at the education farm."

By the next extant catalog, published in 1838, there is no longer any mention of the education farm. The January 1, 1841, minutes of the Board of Trustees indicate that the farm had by that date been sold.