Historical Marker Society of America

On the rise of the ground just west of here, on the 2nd floor of the old Effingham Union Academy Building (1819), was the First Normal School in New Hampshire. It was in this Academy in 1830 that James W. Bradbury, later United States Senator from Maine, took the school only on condition that it should be for the "instruction and training of teachers." The idea was his own and at that time entirely novel.