History
Wayland Academy was chartered as Beaver Dam Academy by the legislature of Wisconsin Territory in 1847, by a group which included Parker Warren (soon to be elected to the legislature of the newly admitted State of Wisconsin) and other local dignitaries. The charter provided that no religious test could be required of any officer or trustee of the corporation, or of any student.
It was founded as a Baptist university, though it is now a non-denominational high school. The cornerstone of Wayland Hall was laid in 1855, marking the beginning of a new institution aimed at increasing the number of Midwestern students at Baptist seminaries.
Wayland was closed twice, once during the Civil War, and once during the Great Depression. During the 1960s, it became known as Wayland Junior College. After including a middle school in the 1980s, Wayland became the college preparatory high school that it is today. It celebrated its sesquicentennial in 2005.
Camp Beaver Dam, a WWII POW camp, was constructed in the summer of 1944 on the grounds of what is now the Wayland Academy field house. The POW camp held 300 German prisoners of war in a tent city encampment.
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“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
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—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)