Professor David B. Sturges is a classical scholar, educated in Michigan University, in which State he was born in 1839. In 1862, he went to Montana and there spent fourteen years, a portion of the time in teaching.
He came to California in 1876, and has been engaged in educational work in the southern part of the state ever since. The courses of study in his academy and business college are being enlarged and improved each successive year, and a higher and broader standard of excellence in scholastic results is attained. Associated with him as instructors is an able corps of teachers, one of the most efficient assistants being his cultured and accomplished wife, who is also a native of Michigan, and a
graduate from Albion College. She has charge of the department of English composition, which, through her zealous labors, has been developed to a very complete system.
This institution, which ranks among the first of its class in Southern California, was founded and opened by Professor David B. Sturges, its present proprietor and principal, in February, 1883. Appreciating the demands for a higher grade of education than the public schools of this city then afforded, he established his school for the double purpose of giving advanced pupils the advantage of a thorough practical business education or an academic course which would prepare them to enter the
freshman-class in a university. With this end in view, Mr. Sturges has aimed at and maintained a high standard of scholarship by the thoroughness and scope of his methods of instruction.
So complete is the academic course in the San Bernardino Academy that the graduates there from are admitted to the University of California without examination, which is the case with only one other private school in the State. The present building and equipment accommodate seventy-five pupils, and Professor Sturges has made provision for enlarging to double that capacity. Connected with the school is a partial gymnasium, which is to be fitted up with complete apparatus in the near future.
When Professor Sturges established this school his capital was so limited that he was obliged to go in debt for a large part of the purchase price of the lot. The success of his enterprise has been such that without any outside financial aid he has accumulated a property, in lot and building, on Fourth Street near D Street, worth from $10,000 to $12,000.