Cedar Valley Seminary

Cedar Valley Seminary is a historic seminary building currently at N. 7th and Chase Streets in Osage, Iowa. Prior to June 2016, it had been located at N. 6th and Mechanic Streets. 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."