Cedar Valley Seminary

Cedar Valley Seminary
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location	N. 6th and Mechanic Sts., Osage, Iowa
Coordinates
Area	less than one acre
Built	1869 (1869)
Architectural style	Italianate
NRHP Reference #	77000541
Added to NRHP	November 17, 1977

Cedar Valley Seminary (Mitchell County Historical Museum) is a historic seminary building at N. 6th and Mechanic Streets in Osage, Iowa.

It was built in 1869 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.

The school was founded at Osage, as a Baptist academy, in 1862, by the joint efforts of Rev. Alva Bush, the citizens of Osage, and the Cedar Valley Baptist Association. On Monday morning, January 12, 1863 Prof. Bush opened the first term of the school, with seventeen boys and fourteen girls.

In his memoir "A Son of the Middle Border", Hamlin Garland recalled that in the late 1870s "The school was in truth a very primitive institution, hardly more than a high school, but it served its purpose. It gave farmers' boys like myself the opportunity of meeting those who were older, finer, more learned than they, and every day was to me like turning a fresh and delightful page in a story book, not merely because it brought new friends, new experiences, but because it symbolized freedom from the hay fork and the hoe."

Before going to the University of Chicago, the orientalist John Merlin Powis Smith taught Greek at Cedar Valley Seminary.

The school was closed in 1910 because, according to one historian, "Waldorf College was established in Forest City by the Norwegian Lutheran people and took away many students and much financial support that would naturally have come to the seminary; the grade of work in the public schools improved with time, and the Cedar Valley Seminary was a near neighbor. These reasons made it seem unwise to longer continue to maintain the seminary".

The building is expected to be moved to the corner of Chase Street and North Seventh Street on June 24, 2016. It will then be sold to the city, which plans to use it to house the collection of Osage native Senator Mike Johanns.

Notable alumni

Notable alumni of Cedar Valley Seminary include:

• Hamlin Garland (1881), American novelist