San Antonio Academy - The Bondurant Years

The Bondurant Years

In 1904, Professor W. W. Bondurant, known thereafter to several generations of alumni as "Prof B." purchased the Academy. A native of Virginia, he was a devout Presbyterian layperson and a former member of the faculty at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. For the next seventy-five years, the San Antonio Academy would have a close, unofficial relationship with both the Presbyterian Church and Austin College.

The Academy grew rapidly under Bondurant’s leadership. It became the first private school in Texas to be certified by the University of Texas as an approved pre-collegiate institution. Until the 1920s, the Academy offered high school co-education to boys and girls. In 1926, however, the structure of the school changed when the Bondurant family purchased the West Texas Military Academy from the Episcopal Diocese of San Antonio. The Academy’s high school department merged with the military academy under the new name Texas Military Institute, which began accepting only boys at the high school level. At this same time, the San Antonio Academy also became a male only school up to the eighth grade, a structure that it has continued to the present day. Female students were encouraged to attend Saint Mary's Hall, then a girls-only private school operated by the Episcopal Church in San Antonio. Texas Military Institute and the San Antonio Academy remained jointly under the control of the Bondurant family until 1954, when Texas Military Institute was sold back to the Episcopal Diocese of San Antonio.