Both of these schools are roughly 100 years old and are two of the oldest schools in the City. Yet, while each is comfortably situated in the suburban neighborhoods, they have their roots in the downtown and mid-town areas. By the turn of the 19th century, Houston's population had grown dramatically. Cotton, oil, railroads and lumber had brought prosperity which inspired the settlement of neighborhoods to the south down Main Street and then, later, to the west along Buffalo Bayou.

St. Thomas College, as it was originally called, was founded in 1900 by the Basilian Fathers. The school occupied an old 2-story frame structure at Franklin Ave and Caroline St which had been erected in 1861 by Franciscan Fathers. The South End, the neighborhood south of downtown which we now call Midtown, became more heavily populated in the early 1900's so the Basilian Fathers moved St. Thomas High School from downtown to the South End in 1903. A block was purchased between Austin and LaBranch, Hadley and McIlhenny Ave. for St Thomas High School. St. Thomas High School occupied a building at that location from 1906 to 1940.

In 1929, a half dozen years after Will Hogg began to develop River Oaks on the south side of the bayou, a 32 acre tract of land for the future expansion of St Thomas High School was purchased on the wooded north bank of Buffalo Bayou above the Shepherd's Dam Bridge and near  Brunner Ave.

Maurice Sullivan, partner of Birdsall Briscoe, designed the new St. Thomas High School. The building was constructed, in 1940, of reinforced steel and concrete faced with Cordova shell stone. The front walls of St Thomas High School slant obliquely from the ends to form an apex at the rounded entrance pavillion where 4 massive columns rise to support a semicircular parapet.

St. Thomas High School relocated to its present 16 acre campus on Memorial Drive at Shepherd Dr. in 1940. It has distinguished itself over the past 100 years as a college preparatory school for boys where 95% of its graduates attend college.

Margaret Hunter, born in 1874, was the granddaughter of Johnson Calhoun Hunter, one of Austin's Old 300 and daughter of a Confederate veteran. She married William J. Kinkaid in 1899. She was a teacher in the Houston public schools at Hawthorne Elementary School, but after her marriage, she found that married women were not allowed to teach in the Houston public school system.

So, in 1904, Margaret Kinkaid opened a school in her home on San Jacinto at Elgin. Her first class had seven children. Mrs. Kinkaid's school closed for the birth of her second son, but she  reopened again in 1906. That date is considered to be the official beginning of the Kinkaid School.

By the early 1920's Kinkaid School had eight faculty members. The school had outgrown the house, and Mrs. Kinkaid moved the school to a building at 1301 Richmond at Graustark Ave. in the fall of 1924.  A high school building was added in 1947 and, in 1949, a gymnasium was built  at 4315 Yupon St.

Mrs. Kinkaid retired at the age of 77 in the spring of 1951, and John H. Cooper became headmaster of the school. Tragically, Mrs. Kinkaid was killed in an automobile accident on December 20, 1951.

Under Cooper's direction, the Kinkaid School looked to the future and it acquired forty wooded acres on Buffalo Bayou in the Memorial suburb of Piney Point Village. The new buildings for the Kinkaid School were dedicated in December, 1957.

The Kinkaid School is the oldest independent nonparochial school in Houston, and it is the largest such institution in Texas. In 1992, enrollment in grades pre-K to 12 was 1,250 students.

The Kinkaid School is just upstream from the canoe access to Buffalo Bayou at Briar Bend Park. Or, if coming downstream, it is in the section below the access at Wilcrest Rd. St. Thomas High School is at the access point near Shepherd Drive.