Placing the name of Albert Lea in front of the words college and school will result in several interesting connections.

The very best association at the present time to emphasize this connection is Albert Lea High School.

Albert Miller Lea eventually became aware of a town and lake in Minnesota having his name. In fact, he even visited this town as a special guest in June 1879.

However, I’m not too sure if he knew his name would also be used for a new college which started seven years before his death in Corsicana, Texas, on Jan. 15, 1891.

Albert Lea Presbyterian College for Women, also known as Albert Lea College, was started in 1884 and lasted until 1916. Lakeview School now occupies this college’s former campus area.

The Albert Lea Normal School was actually a part of the high school. It provided special training for seniors, mostly girls, who wanted to be rural school teachers. This school existed from 1897 to 1905 and from 1909 to 1927.

Albert Lea Junior College was established in 1938 in the Oakwood School building, near the Hatch Bridge. It ceased operations with the 1943-44 school year, a true casualty of World War II conditions.

Perhaps the best known fairly recent use of

Lea’s name was for the college west of the city which started in 1967. Lea College ceased operations in 1973.

One sometimes overlooked use of Lea’s name was for a vocational school which started in 1969. This school has been known as Albert Lea Area Vocational Technical Institute and several somewhat similar names. At the present time this school is the Albert Lea Campus of Riverland Community College.

Still another use of this man’s name is the rather generic title of Albert Lea Area Schools.

During his lifetime Lea was actually involved with just three institutions of higher learning. One was the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., which he entered in 1827 and graduated from in 1831. From 1844 to 1851 he was a professor of mathematics at East Tennessee University in Knoxville. And the third is a school he helped to organize and locate. This is the present University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn.

Lea was a member of the Episcopal Church and one of a group of seven lay leaders who organized the University of

the South in 1857. The original site for this new school was to be Lookout Mountain, located just north of the Georgia state line and on the south side of Chattanooga.

However, this particular site is still a rather rugged place to access. (It’s also the site of a famous Civil War battle which took place a few years later.) Thus, Lea and a West Point friend, Bishop Leonidas Polk, and another layman decided to move the site of the new school to Sewanee, about 50 miles northwest of Chattanooga.

The University of the South lists its starting date as 1858, is still affiliated with the Episcopal Church, and has about 1,200 students.

Now, let’s shift the focus of this column to Albert Lea and his activities with the starting of a new church in Texas.

As indicated earlier in this column, Lea was an Episcopalian. His connection with this particular church came about when he was a cadet at West Point, according to a 1957 Tribune article by Jane Harper.

After the Civil War, Lea lived for a few years in Galveston, Texas. Then, about 1870, he moved to Corsicana, Texas, where he lived for the rest of his life.

On July 16, 1875, he was the secretary of the vestry when St. John’s Episcopal Church of Corsicana was organized.

He also served this congregation as senior warden.

In 1908, 17 years after Lea’s death, the present St. John’s Episcopal Church was built. It has six stained glass windows, and one of these special windows is dedicated to the memory of Albert Miller Lea and his second wife, Catherine Sarah Lea.

A photo of this window, courtesy of the Corsicana Daily Sun, was published as part of one of my articles in the July 29, 1986, edition of the Tribune.

I have confirmed that this particular window is still a part of the church down in Texas.

(Feature writer Ed Shannon’s column appears each Friday.)