Brigham Young Academy (Provo, UT)
Institution founded for the purpose of providing religion-centered education to young Latter-day Saints and to offer an alternative to what Brigham Young saw in Social Darwinism as the “false political economy which contends against co-operation and the United Order” (Dean C. Jessee, Letters of Brigham Young to His Sons [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1974]: 199). The Academy was created by Brigham Young in an 1875 deed of trust and turned to local funding after Young’s death in 1877. Housed in a Provo, Utah mercantile building, classes began in 1876 and continued until a fire burned down the original location in 1884. The school was shifted to a ZCMI warehouse until a new building was completed in 1892. The Academy was renamed Brigham Young University in 1903.