By the fall of 1868, the freedman of Jefferson County's Morristown district established a small grammar school, attracting students from the community and other areas of the state and the South. Little is known about the early years of this school, though the building it housed was a modest church provided by the Presbyterians of Orange, New Jersey. Led by Mrs. Hanford, an Ithaca, New York native, the school was used to teach freedmen and free persons of color to spell, read, and learn arithmetic along with the obligatory learning of Christian values. A few blocks away was the Reagan High School for Boys, where a college preparatory course was taught by Rev. Wilson. Built as a meeting house in 1830 by a Baptist congregation, it had served as a slave mart, held secession discussions, and housed a hospital for Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War.