In 1855, Mr. Lee took the lead in building a log school house on the John Nicholas place. His two older children attended. Soon afterwards a move started for an independent academy in Dallas. Lee was one of the members of the first board of trustees, and served as treasurer. Land and money were donated, and the town site was moved from the north side of La Creole Creek to the south side.
In 1856-57 were built the new courthouse and jail. The La Creole Academic Institute had two rooms ready for school opening, February 15, 1857. Professor Horace Lyman and Miss Lizzie Boise were the teachers. The Lee children, as they grew large enough, walked three miles to school. To give the children advantage of winter school, Mr. Lee built a house in Dallas, which they occupied at times until the fall of 1862, when Mr. Lee started a small store in Dallas and they moved to town.
The Academy served as a school for all age groups until the 1880’s. The first public grade school building was erected about 1882.
In 1900, La Fayette Seminary, organized by a board of trustees of the Educational Association of the Evangelical church, was incorporated with La Creole Academic Institute in Dallas. It was known as Dallas College and La Creole Academy. The combined schools were endowed by the church. A dormitory was erected in 1900, costing $3000. The Woolen Mill property was purchased for $1,500, and—for the expenditure of about $1,000 in repairs and remodeling—the second floor was converted into a good gymnasium.
The schools closed in 1914 for lack of funds to meet the requirements of Oregon standardization laws.
The David Stump House in Monmouth
David Campbell
David Stump, of Pennsylvania Dutch stock, was born in Ohio on October 20 (or 29) 1819. As guard, outriding scout and hunter, he came to Oregon with the immigrant train of 1845. An experienced surveyor, his services were in demand for surveying the virgin territory of what is now Benton, Polk, and Yamhill counties. In 1851, he was married to Catherine Elizabeth Chamberlin, who had come, a child of nine, with her family in the wagon train of 1844.
David and Catherine Stump took up a donation claim on the Luckiamute River, six miles south of what later became the village of Monmouth, being among the very first settlers in that part of the Willamette valley. Here they prospered. They became devoted and loyal members of the Christian Church, which soon established a church-supported college in Monmouth. There were two sons and two daughters. When these were ready for higher education, David Stump acquired from the Lindsay family a home in Monmouth adjacent to the college. It stood at the intersection of Jackson and Monmouth streets on the southwest corner of a half-acre tract of land, facing to the west the Victorian Wolverton place, with the Orville Butler home to the north. This became—and continued for many years as—the Stump family home. Here, after a long illness, David Stump died on February 21, 1886.
In the mid-nineties the house was completely renovated and, to a great extent, rebuilt. The roof was raised to give space for a large attic. Rooms and porches were added. The position of the entrances and chimneys was altered. In all, there were now seventeen rooms. Miss Ellen Chamberlain, Mrs. Alice Applegate Peil, Miss Antoinette Bruce, Miss Rose Bassett, Miss Lane, and other members of the Normal faculty lived there around the turn of the century. It became quite a center of college activities. Miss Cassie B. Stump had inherited the property from her father.