Now, the Washington College Academy School for Arts & Crafts offers a variety of classes in metalsmithing, glass, clay, fiber, and mixed media.

Depicting a hand painted quilt square designed by artist Sharon Stone, "A Light in the Wilderness" is based on the original vision of Samuel Doak.

Occupying Union and Confederate armies left its campus in ruins after the Civil War, but the college reorganized and gradually expanded during the 1870s and 1880s.

[3] Samuel Doak, described by historian J. G. M. Ramsey as the "apostle of learning and religion in the west,"[3] arrived in the upper Tennessee Valley in 1777 as a Presbyterian circuit rider, and moved to what is now rural western Washington County shortly afterward.

In 1780, he established the Salem Church congregation and an associated school, both of which met in a log building located on a lot roughy adjacent to what is now Harris Hall.

The school experienced a period of prosperity in the 1840s, when the iconic red brick Harris Hall was completed,[3] but financial struggles eventually forced Archibald Doak's resignation in 1856.

[3] During the Civil War, the school was forced to close, and its campus was occupied at times by both Confederate and Union troops.

In 1868, the school was reorganized as Washington Female Academy with William B. Rankin as president, but it was unable to obtain a charter.

Washington's trustees sued to block the merger, and the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in their favor, but the school's post-secondary department never fully recovered, and its collegiate curriculum was discontinued in 1923.

[3] Washington College was forced to close during World War I, and afterward began seeking public funding.

It started offering agricultural education in 1919 in order to obtain federal Smith-Hughes Act funds, and shortly afterward began teaching public school students as part of an agreement with Washington County.