The 1906 Perry Act established college-prep boarding schools for rural youth in each of Georgia's12 congressional districts. Morgan, Putnam, and Wilkes counties submitted proposals for the 8th District Agricultural & Mechanical School campus, eventually sited on roughly 262 acres on the edge of Madison.
UGA Professor Joseph A. Stewart planned the impressive campus and Haralson Bleckley was the architect. The Madison A&M opened in 1908 in a Neoclassical style Administrative Building. When a newly-created State Board of Regents dissolved the system and the Class of 1933 graduated, the property was sold to the local Board of Education for $1.
Utilized by the National Youth Administration (1935-45), GA Dept. of Ed. for Veteran's Farm Training (1946-48), and Morgan County High School (1948), its architectural legacy was lost to neglect, abandonment, and modernization (1963-76). Brick pillars are the last vestige of the original campus.
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