Wyoming Seminary, founded in 1844, is a Methodist college preparatory school located in the Wyoming Valley of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The "Lower School," which consists of preschool - 8th-grade students, is located in Forty Fort. The "Upper School," comprising 9th-grade to postgraduate students, is located in Kingston. It is near the Susquehanna River and the city of Wilkes-Barre. Locally and in some publications, it is sometimes referred to as "Sem." As a boarding school, only Upper School students may board on campus. Slightly more than one-third of the Upper School student body resides on campus.
History
Founding and early years (1844–1892) Methodist Church leaders founded Wyoming Seminary in 1844 at the instigation of Rev. George Peck. The school's first president was Rueben Nelson, and in its first year, 138 students enrolled — 69 boys and 69 girls from Pennsylvania and New York. At the time, Kingston was a rural village, and the school raised livestock, grew its own produce, and built a smokehouse to preserve meat for the winter. As the town industrialized, the school grew, adding a dedicated business school and establishing a college preparatory program. While the school remains affiliated with the United Methodist Church, it welcomes students from all religious backgrounds.
The Sprague era and continued growth (1892–1967)
Much of Wyoming Seminary's rise from a rural academy to a prominent college preparatory school took place during the tenure of Levi Sprague. A graduate, Sprague was its president for five decades from the 1880s to the 1930s and was associated with the school for most of his life, dying in office. The Upper School campus is on Sprague Avenue; the central building that hosts most classes and administrative offices there is named Sprague Hall, which features a bust of Sprague; and since 1993, a yearly scholarship for seniors that offers free boarding for eight selected student-leaders is called the Levi Sprague Fellowship.
In 1892, the Wyoming Seminary football team participated in the world's first nighttime football game, playing against Mansfield University (then Mansfield State Normal School). The game ended at halftime due to insufficient lighting, with neither team scoring. The school grew in the early 20th century. From 1917 to 1919, the school used parts of the campus to train American soldiers during World War I. By the early 1950s, Sem expanded to include what is today considered the "lower school", composed of nursery through eighth-grade students. In 1951, Sem merged with the Wilkes-Barre Day School to become the region's only independent school to offer a complete program ranging from nursery through secondary school. In 1998, Sem's Lower School, located three miles from Kingston in nearby Forty Fort, expanded its program by adding a prekindergarten-3 program and renaming its nursery school grade as prekindergarten-4.
In the 1960s, the school dissolved its business and music schools. It left the college preparatory program as the secondary school's focus when Dr. Wallace F. Stettler became its ninth president in 1967. In June 1972, flooding from Hurricane Agnes severely damaged parts of the Upper School campus. Stettler accepted significant federal aid from the Nixon administration, hand-delivered in the form of a check from graduate and Nixon Wilkes-Barre area flood response director Frank Carlucci, to help revive its campus.
This federal aid, combined with charitable contributions, funded the construction of the Bell Tower, the Buckingham Performing Arts Center, the Pettebone-Dickson Student Center, renovations in Sprague Hall, and the Learning Resources Center, which includes a library, several classrooms, admissions offices, and a large conference room. This center is today named the Stettler Learning Resources Center. The Upper School completed those changes in a short four-year period between 1974 and 1978. The school's endowment grew significantly, tripling by the early 1990s. At the same time, the school's vibrancy and community spirit were enhanced just years after the flood by the enormous success of the football team under coach Marvin Antinnes. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Antinnes oversaw over thirty consecutive wins for the team for several seasons. When Stettler died in October 2010, the Times Leader recalled in his obituary that "Stettler not only rebuilt what had been damaged in the flood, he expanded the campus." In the same article, Sem's vice president of advancement, John H. Shafer, recounted that Stettler "made it possible for Wyoming Seminary to emerge from the flood an even stronger institution."