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| | Jacksonville Female Academy |
 | | Jacksonville Female Academy grew out of the Home Missionary spirit which, some fifty years ago, began its beneficent enterprises in Illinois and other western fields. |
 | | John M. Ellis, the first pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Jacksonville, came to this State in the year 1828, and his mind was full of the idea of planting, not only churches, but institutions of learning. |
 | | During his pastorate here, of three or four years, his excellent wife [Frances Ellis] opened, in their own house, a school for young ladies, which may be regarded as the germ of this institution, the first organized one of the kind west of Ohio. |
| history.alliancelibrarysystem.com /IllinoisAlive/files/ic/htm1/ic000000.cfm (529 words) |
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