DMA Moves to Pennsylvania

The Commencement exercises in June of 1862 concluded the short but eventful life of the Delaware Military Academy. It became clear that after the “arms struggle” with Delaware’s U.S. Senator James A. Bayard, a leading southern sympathizer, and the start of the Civil War that Theodore Hyatt, a staunch Unionist, needed to move the Delaware Military Academy.

Anthony Bolmar, the principal and well-known French teacher of the West Chester Academy, had earlier proposed to Colonel Hyatt that he move the Delaware Military Academy to the building Bolmar owned. Hyatt did not accept this proposal. Bolmar died shortly afterward and the trustees of the property

renewed the proposition. The advantages of accepting this proposal were clear to Hyatt. A fourth of the students at DMA were from Pennsylvania, West Chester was close enough to Wilmington to retain and attract current and new students. Additionally, Governor Andrew G. Curtain was a Unionist. Hyatt accepted the terms immediately and prepared to move his school to West Chester.

Hyatt, with the support of several influential Pennsylvanians, petitioned and received a charter in June, 1862 from the State to open an Academy that could offer primary and collegiate studies and degrees. The name of the Academy was to be Chester County Military Academy. The charter also required the Academy to offer “a course of military instruction, theoretical and practical, also civil and military engineering, and the practical sciences generally, together with instruction in the Latin, Greek, French and German languages ….” Prior to the opening of the school in September, the name was changed to Pennsylvania Military Academy by the legislature.

The promising future of PMA in West Chester was cut short in 1865 when the Bolmar property was sold by the executors of the Bolmar estate. Hyatt declined to purchase the property, convinced that a new location which offered better facilities could be found. He approached John Crozer, the philanthropic builder and owner, for a lease and received it. The Crozer Normal School in Chester offered Hyatt many advantages. In his report to the trustees, Hyatt wrote that the property was in a “superior location,” the building was much larger, “handsomer and more delightfully situated than that from which the Corps was removed.” Other advantages included private rooms for study “and grounds better adapted to the various drills and outdoor sports of the cadets.” The move to the Crozer property occurred without incident during the Christmas recess in 1866.

With the death of Crozer in 1866, Hyatt was again faced with the prospect of finding a new location. A group of Hyatt’s personal friends and citizens in Philadelphia and Chester organized a company, known as the Military Academy Stock Company in 1867. This group spearheaded the purchase and building of a new home for PMA in Chester. The first meeting of the group was in June, 1867, and it was agreed to purchase twenty acres owned by Spencer McIlvain located between what is now Morton Avenue and Sixteenth Street, and Chestnut Street and Melrose Avenue. The group also authorized a committee to obtain plans and bids for the new building. John Crump, a well-respected architect in Philadelphia, designed the building. John Shedwick & Son was selected to construct the building. Work began in July, 1867 and Old Main was completed and dedicated at Commencement in June, 1868.