After a good deal of difficulty an academy was organized under the title of Blount College, and was opened as soon as a sufficient number of pupils could be gotten together; there were already two other colleges in the Territory, Greeneville and Washington, the latter being the academy founded by Doak.

Like almost all other institutions of learning of the day these three were under clerical control; but Blount College was chartered as a non-denomination institution, the first of its kind in the United States.

[Footnote: See Edward T.Sanford's "Blount College and the University of Tennessee," p.

13.] The clergyman and the lawyer, with the school-master, were still the typical men of letters in all the frontier communities.

The doctor was not yet a prominent feature of life in the backwoods, though there is in the _Gazette_ an advertisement of one who announces that he intends to come to practise "with a large stock of genuine medicines." [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, June 19, 1794.] Books of the Backwoods.
The ordinary books were still school books, books of law, and sermons or theological writings.