By William “Skip” Deegans
For many years college-bound students from the Greenbrier Valley attended Dunsmore Business College in Staunton, Virginia.
The college was founded in 1872 in Sinks Grove, Monroe County, by James Gaston Dunsmore. Dunsmore grew up on a farm, attended Monroe County’s Rocky Point Academy, and in 1871 he received a Masters Accounts degree from the Eastman National Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York. He returned to Monroe County where he became headmaster of Rocky Point Academy and started Dunsmore Business College that operated in Sinks Grove for eight years.
In 1880 Dunsmore, his wife Sarah Ellen Nickell Dunsmore, and family moved to Staunton where he taught at Hoover’s Select High School for boys, Augusta Female Seminary (later Mary Baldwin College) and Virginia Female Institute (later Stuart Hall). In 1882 he opened Dunsmore Commercial and Business College (later shortened to Dunsmore Business College). The college admitted only men until 1813 when Dunsmore encouraged women to enroll (more than 150 years before the University of Virginia admitted women outside of the nursing program). By 1900 there were nearly 200 students enrolled, and in 1901 the college moved into the newly-built brick building shown in the postcard photo. Graduates of the college were promised jobs in West Virginia’s coal mining and chemical industries as well as banks and other commercial enterprises.
At the 60th anniversary of the college, W. H. Haynes, Dunsmore graduate, attorney, and mayor of Fayetteville, West Virginia, addressed the students and told them, “I firmly believe it was a desire to further the interests of young men and women, rather than a motive prompted by monetary inclinations, that caused Dunsmore to launch his enterprise in Sink’s Grove, 60 years ago today.” Following Dunsmore’s death in 1922, the college had several owners, enrollment dwindled, and the college closed in 1977. Of the estimated 40,000 students who attended Dunsmore, one notable alumnus is former Virginia governor and West Virginia native, James Hubert Price.
Sources: University of Virginia Library, The Daily News Leader (Staunton).
