Wheelock Academy, Historic boarding school complex in McCurtain County, Oklahoma.
Wheelock Academy is a historic school complex in McCurtain County with seven preserved buildings, including LeFlore Hall, which now serves as the main museum space. The grounds show the layout and design of a 19th-century educational institution, with structures for classrooms, dormitories, and administrative functions.
The academy was founded in 1832 by Presbyterian missionary Alfred Wright as an educational center for Choctaw girls and operated for more than a century. It closed in 1955 after providing generations with learning opportunities and playing a key role in Choctaw educational history.
Girls aged ten to sixteen were given English names and forbidden to speak Choctaw at the school; instruction was in English. The curriculum covered sewing, clothing-making and household chores alongside reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, music and geography, with algebra, geometry, chemistry, botany, astronomy and Latin grammar at some academies.
The site lies 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Millerton in McCurtain County, Oklahoma, and is administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Only seven buildings remain, most deteriorated, and the grounds are kept up by local people. LeFlore Hall, the one building turned into a museum, is the place to start; the Choctaw Nation has reroofed and painted the surviving structures.
Wheelock was named after Eleazar Wheelock, founder of Moor's Indian School, later Dartmouth College. In 1999 the Choctaw Nation reroofed and repainted all remaining buildings for $70,000, and treasurer Delton Cox led a restoration plan estimated at $3 million that aimed to open Oklahoma's first tribal-owned college here.
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