History of Derby Academy: 1784–1984 by Marcus Miller

HISTORY OF DERBY ACADEMY

SARA H DERBY

HISTORY OF DERBY ACADEMY 1784 - 1984

by Theodore Swan Roscoe

Published by The Trustees of Derby Academy Hingham , Massachusetts

1984

ÂŠ 1984 The Trustees of Derb y Academy

Manufactured by Halli day Lithograph Hanover, Massachusetts 198 4

DEDICATED To Sarah Derby, Ezekiel Hersey, Ebenezer Gay, and Daniel Shute; to all Trustees and Patrons; co all Preceptors, Preceptresses, Principals, and Headmasters; to all faculty, staff members, parents, and all students who, over the past 200 years, have shar ed the Derby experience.

CONTENTS Foreword ..... . .... . .. .. ... ..... ......... . .. .. .... .. .... .. .. .. .. .... xi Pref ace ..... ......... .. .... ... ... ..... . ....... ..... ... ... ..... .. .. . xiii Chapter I First Schoo ls 1 II Schools Spread Southward .... ......... ... 7 III Hingham Schools: A Problem Perceived 11 IV Founding of The Derby School . .. ...... 15 V T he First Fifty Years ............. ...... ..... 24 VI The 19th Century "De rby Family" ... .. 36 VII High Tide at Old Derb y ... ... ...... .. .... .45 VIII In Search of an Identity ... .. ..... . ........ 54 IX Identity Found: 1947- 1984 .. ..... ..... .63 Notes ..... ..... . .......... ... ... ..... ...... ... ........ .... ........ .. 72 Appendix A .. .... .. ........... .... ....... ........ ... ... . ... . ..... 77 Appe ndix B ....... ... ....... .. ... ...... ............. ..... ...... . .. 80 Appendix C .... .. ... ....... ... .......... ........ ... .. ... ..... ..... 89 Glossary .. ... .. ........... ... ...... ... ... .. ...... . .. .. ... ......... .. 90 Bibliography Acknowledgments Index

FOREWORD This book is intended to be a modified definitive history of Derby Academy; it is not anecdotal. Because it was commissioned to be written by the school's Bicentennial Committee, emphasis has been placed upon the early history of Derby rather than upon what has taken place in our own time. It would be well worthwhile for someone to detail the 20th century at Derby in both a definitive and anecdotal manner, for there is much to tell which is not told here. In chis book, the Derby of our time is only touched upon to finalize the beginning . The story of Derby 's beginning and early histo ry has never before been explored in depth. Nearly everything known about the school's earliest days has come from the invaluable writing of Francis H. Lincoln in his section, "Education," in the History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, Vol. I, Part II, which was published by the town in 1893. Were it not for his statistical framework, further research would have been impossible and Derby's early history would have been lost forever. Lincoln was a true historian and never intended to isolate Derby as something exceptional. It was only in later years that my th s grew up around Derby as they do at most old schools and colleges . In our case the first and greatest of these myths is that it was Madam Derby alone, in her wisdom, who established Derby Academy as the first coeducational school in America. The second is that she gave money to establish the first medical school in America and that this was the beginn ing of the Harvard Medical School. These myths, however, are only myths. The Derby School was not founded by one person, nor was it created in a vacuum. Derby was part of th e ongoi ng difficult struggle for schooling in early America. As

a result , we must tell something of those ct>lonial beginnings in this book, for Derby was founded to fill a specific need at a particular time in the history of Massachusetts. The gratifying thing is that it has survived and is thriving. T.S.R.

Oquossoc, Maine June 30, 1984

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PREFACE In the London social season of 1616, by far the most dazzling salon celebrity was twenty-year-old Lady Rebecca Rolfe of Virginia. The English upper class in attendance that year found her especially fascinating. Not only did she have unusual beauty and modesty but, until her marriage to John Rolfe, an English colonist, she had been known as Pocahontas, the Indian Princess fabled throughout England as "the savior of Jamestown." Rolfe had brought Pocahontas to London with an entourage of Indians carerully selected by her father, Chief Powhatan, on what we would call today a public relations trip to attract money and colonists to Virginia. That Rolfe was at least partially successful was due in large measure to the charm and charisma of his wife. England's ruling monarch,Jaines I, disdained Indians in general, but he believed strongly in the Divine Right of Kings and in its attendant protocol. Pocahontas was a true princess, daughter of a sovereign king, and James received her accordingly . Furthermore, he was delighted that this Indian native had been converted to Christianity and could speak English, for both the king and his bishops had consid ered education and conversion of the Indians as major goals of colonization. This attitude coincided with the thinking of Pocahontas, which was to educate and Christianize the children of her native people. Princess Pocahontas had two recorded meetings with King James during her seven months in England. She was presented at court and was on the dais at Whitehall with the royal family at the Twelfth Night extravaganza inJanuary of 161 7. Her husband was not received by the king because, accordi g to King James, Rolfe had married into a royal family without official permission of the Crown. Pocahontas

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mixed well with the ruling class and met with the particular favor of the Bishop of London, whose jurisdiction included her own adopted church in Jamestown. Two months after Twelfth Night the remaining members of the Virginia party set out for home . Many of the Indians had already died in England, having little immunity to European infections. Pocahontas herself was seriously ill. She died in the town of Gravesend at the mouth of the Thames with the journey scarcely begun. Because she was of royal birth her remains were accorded the prerogatives of royalty , which included burial within a church building. On March 21, 1617, her body was placed in a private crypt under the floor of the chancel in St. George's church in Gravesend. Later that same year King James ordered his bishops to take up a collection in every parish of England for the purpose of building schools and churches in Virginia to educate and Christianize the children of Indians. It seems likely that this first positive act toward educat ing children in our country was in tribute to Pocahontas, a nat ive American woman. 1 The bishops ' collection was a success; Henrico College for the Indians in Virginia was begun. For a variety of reasons, however , the school was never finished and the money was put to other uses . In 1634 a second school in British North America was proposed, this time by Benjamin Syms, an unlettered Virginia planter who endowed a free school for little ch ildren in his neighborhood. This school was to go through many convolutions over the years, but it is accepted that today's Hampton public school system in Virginia is the legatee of this first successful attempt at education in the country. Meanwhile in French Quebec the Marquis de Gamaches had donated money to the ] esuits to teach the catechism and the ABC's to French children there. This school flourished and later became the University of Quebec, which enjoyed a high reputation until its doors were closed in 1768 after the English takeover. 2 XlV

Nothing directly survives from these first efforts to begin schooling in the Eastern colonies . The Virginia Company never completed its first building, the Syms school disappeared into the Hampton school system, and the Quebec school died on the Plains of Abraham. We must go to Boston to find the oldest school in North America.

CHAPTER I THE FIRST SCHOOLS In 1630 the ship Arbella dropped anchor in Salem Harbor. This event was to have monumenta l impact on American education down to ou r present time for she carried with her the leading edge of the Puritan migration glitter ing with its Cambridge and Oxford me n who were to hold power in the Massachusetts Bay Colony out of all proportion to their numbers. One of the basic Pur itan tenets was learning , as can be seen in these words from New Eng/ands First Fruit s, written in 1643. After God had carried us safe to New England , and wee had buil ded our houses , provided necessaries for our liveli-hood , rear'd convenient places for Gods worship and settled the Civill Government: One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches , when our present Ministers shall lie i n the Dust . 1 In Boston on February 13, 1635, "Art a general meeting upon publique notice ... it was generally agreed upon that our brot her Philemon Pormort shall be ent reated to become scholemaster for the teaching and nou rturing of children with us. " It is probable that Boston townsmen were voting for a free common school which would let Pormort reach reading and writing to young boys , and maybe to girls , between the ages of five and twelve , but there is no evidence that such a schoo l ever did open. 1

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A year later, however , in a completely separate action , a few of the more prosperous men of Boston subscribed a sum of about 40 pounds sterling which was to pay the salary of a good Master who would be instructed to establish a school of an entirely different nature. This was to be a grammar school. 2 The term "grammar school" as we know it today meant something quite different to 17th century Englishmen. At that time it meant a college preparatory school for boys with a six or seven year course consisting entirely of Latin (Terence, Tully, Caesar's commentaries, Titus Livius, Ovid, Virgil, Horace) and Greek (lsocrates, Demosthenes, Hesiode or Homer). At Oxford and Cambridge, the only two universities in England at that time, no other courses were taught but Latin and Greek. A thorough preparation in those languages was absolutely essential for university admittance. 3 In Boston the subscribers to the grammar school found, and hired as Master, fifty-year-old Daniel Maude, who held both B.A. and M.A . degrees from Cambridge. On August 12, 1636, Maude opened the door of his house as the Free Grammar School in Boston. Known today as the Boston Latin School, it is the oldest educational institution in North America. Many boys who later became famous attended Boston Latin. Among them were five signers of the Declaration of Independence , including John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. Other Boston Latin men to achieve fame were architect Charles Bulfinch, philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and George Santayana, clergyman Phillips Brooks, and bothJohn F. Fitzgerald andJoseph P. Kennedy. Today, as part of the public school system , Boston Latin offers entrance to all, both boys and girls, who are residents of Boston. However there is a major difference

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between Boston Latin and other high schools in the system for Boston Latin candidates rake their SSAT's as at independent schools. Admittance to Boston Latin is extremely competitive. At the time the Latin school opened Boston was the largest town on the seaboard, with a population of around six thousand . Other towns near Boston were soon to open their own schools. Charlestown (which had begun six months before Boston Latin), Salem (163 7), and Dorchester (1639), were all common schools as well as college preparatory; Cambridge (1642), the priva te school in Roxbury (1646), and Ipswich (1651), were purely preparatory. Watertown, which also opened in 1651, was both a common school and college preparatory. All of these schools were called "free," but only Bosron and Charlestown were tuition-free ro all. The town records of Dorchester and Waterrown were the first to mention girl pupils . At Dorchester it was left "ro the discretion of the elders and the seven men whether maids shall be taught with the boys or not." At Watertown, " ... if any of the said towns, have any maidens, that have a des ire tO learne to write that the said Richard, should attend them for the Learning of them ... "4 Two famous schoolmasters were tO emerge from these earliest schools . Elijah Corlet remained Master at the Cambridge school for forty-five years; while Ezekiel Cheever, Master at Bosron Latin, taught there for thirty-eight years until he died at ninety-two, never having missed a day of school. Their fame was so great that boys were sent ro these two schools from other parts of the seaboard and even from Bermuda. Except for Bosron Larin, only one other of these earliest Bay Colony schools survives today . Roxbury Latin, instead of being town controlled, was supported by private Donors and governed by "Feoffees," or what we would know

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today as Trustees. As such, Roxbury Latin was our first independent school in the sense that it was (and still is) free of outside control, either by town or church. When Boston Latin became coeducational not long ago , the title of "oldest boys' school in the country" passed to Roxbury Latin. Although these town schools were in existence, few boys attended them. In the 1600's even the largest, Boston Latin, never had as many as a hundred pupils enrolled in any one year. A few other children, both boys and girls, were learning their ABC's at dame schools, which were nothing more than small private nursery schools kept in the homes of women who had learned to read and write. Most of the children of those days, however, were he lping their parents eke out an existence on this small frontier in the New World and had no formal schooling at all. By 1642 the Bay Colony leaders recognized this and ordered all town officials to see to it that every child in the Bay Colony could at least read and write. The order carried no penalties, and as a result it was almost totally ignored. Five years later, however , the leade r s of the Bay Colony took stronger action. In 164 7 their General Court passed a law making the support of schools mandatory. By this unheard-of-measure, every town containing fifty householders or more was required to appoint a teacher "to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read." Furthermore, every town which had one hundred families or more was required to set up a tax-supported college preparatory school for boys. This meant hiring a university-trained Master capable of teaching Latin and Greek. Such a law had no precedent in world history . While some view its passage as the beginning of the American public school system, others consider it an instance of the ruling caste perpetuating itself at the taxpayers' expense, for in most towns the only boys capable of handling the long classical course were children of university-trained leaders and ministers.

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The reason why this law was met without open resistance was that the communities were accustomed to accept the authority of their ministers, elders, artd leading citizens . The majo rity of the families in the Bay were Puritans who had voluntarily followed their ministers from England to America. At this early stage the Puritan oligarchy, with its Cambridge and Oxford ministers in every pulpit, was still looked up to for leadership. Those who dissented went-or were sent-elsewhe re, or they kept quiet. Shortly after the Massachusetts Bay Colony law came into being , similar enactments were mad e in the Puritan colonies at New Haven and Hartford. Education in North America was finally on its way, but it had taken a ste rn law, promulgated from the top by str ong -minded , university-trained English Puritan P-ien to do it. Perhaps, on a new frontier, that was the only way it could have been done . It was characte ristic of these Puritan leaders tha t they should also have begun a college. In his book, The Founding of Harvard College, Samuel Eliot Morison has best described the determination of the Bay Colony leaders that learning be sought , and available. In the opening paragraph of Chapter XI he writes as follows : Harvard College was established at a place which had been a wilderness eight years before , in a colony whose history was less than ten years old, and by a community of less than ten thousand people. T he impulse and support came from no church, government, or individual in the Old World, but from an isolated peopl e hemmed in between the necessities of existence . No similar achievement can be found in the history of modern colonization ; and in the eight centuries that have elapsed since Abelard lectured by the Seine , there have been few nobler examples of courage in maintaining inte llec-

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tual standards amid adverse circumstances than the founding and early history of the puritans' college by the Charles. Although Harvard was to go through some lean times in the sixty-four years between its founding in 1636 and the year 1700, the college survived. Eighty-four years after the latter date, its effect upon Derby Academy would be allimportant. The idea for the Derby school, the founders themselves, and for a short time the fate of Derby were to be closely associated with Harvard College.

CHAPTER II SCHOOLS SPREAD SOUTHWARD During the whole of the 1600's a college preparatory education in this country outside the Boston area was virtually impossible to obtain other than by private tutor . Only two other schools along the seaboard taught college requirement Latin at all, Hopkins Grammar in New Haven and, for a short while, the Dutch Reformed Church school in New Amsterdam. When the British took ove r New Amsterdam in 166 4, the church school (known today as the Collegiate School) closed its Latin department leaving college preparation in America exclusively to Boston and New Haven. Today's image of New England as the center of college preparatory schools was thus well founded in the middle 1600's. A comment made when the Dutch school was attempting t0 get its own Latin program going was that, " ... some of the inhabitants would like to send their children to a school, the Principal of which understands Latin , but are not able to do so without sending them to New England." 1 Two hundred years later while writing a history of Germantown Academy in Pennsylvania, author William Travis wrote rather ruefully of that school's founders that, "They were evidently moved by the same noble spirit of enterprise that many good people seem to think was monopolized by the New England colonists." 2 Even a common school program, that of teaching basic reading and writing to younger children, was difficult to find outside New England. In Virginia the pattern of remote farms and large plantations precluded all but a few town schools , such as Syms, in that colony. The mixture of English, Dutch, and Germans in the Middle Atlantic col-

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onies created a language barrier which made single-room schooling always difficult and sometimes chaotic. Other than dame schools for the very young, and private tutors for the very rich, the only schooling available for the Southern and Middle Atlantic colonies lay in church schools , three of which survive: Penn Charter, Friends Select, and Abington Friends . These were Quaker schools started in the last decade of the 1600's. The William Penn Charter School, in its petition for incorporation in 1697, proposed that, " . .. all children and servants male and female , be admitted, taught , and instructed; the rich at reasonable rates, and the poor to be maintained and schooled for nothing." By the mid-l 700's the Overseers of Penn Charter were operating four kinds of school: one for young children, teaching the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic; a more advanced English school, teaching English, French, and some mathematics; a mathematical school, offering tra ining for business , surveying, and building; and a Latin school, preparing boys for college or a profession. 3 Through the l 700's this was the most outstanding educational program in the coloniesindeed in the entire British orbit-for at that time Philadelphia had eclipsed Boston to become not only the largest and most prestigious city in North America, but second in size only to Londo n in the English -speaking world. At the same time, the promising growth of widespread schooling in England which had been permitted by Queen Elizabeth I, and had flourished under Cromwell, was brought to a halt by the Restoration in 1660. Unfortunately for England, schooling there was to retreat into a medieval pattern of education for the rich and well-connected only, and remain in that mode for another two hundred years. But in the colonies, Penn Charter was unfettered. It was to show the way for dozens of schools and academies that followed its system of full curriculum with schooling for all, girls as well as boys. Two of

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these full curriculum schools have survived-Newark Academy in New Jersey and Derby Academy. In the 1700's, as the balance of power was moving from New England to the Middle and Southern colonies, schools and academies there were proliferating at a fast pace. Unlike the tax-supported system of New Engla nd, these new schools were all on a tuition basis (but free to the poor). Among them were church schools, private schools, full curriculum academies, college preparatory schools, common schools, boys schools, girls schools, schools teaching both boys and girls, and entrepreneurial specialty schools for individual skills. Most of these schools failed. Eleven of them still exist . Of these, Moravian, Linden Hall, and Salem Academy were Moravian schools; Trinity and Columbia Grammar were Anglican; West Nottingham Academy was Presbyterian; Wilmington Friends was Quaker ; and the other four-Germantown Academy, Norfolk Academy, Rutgers Preparatory and Newark Academy-were technically nonsectarian. In addition, three colleges exist today which began as 18th century preparatory schools: Washington and Lee, Dickinson, and the University of Pennsylvania.* Meanwhile, back in New England, the tax-supported college preparatory schools were coming upon difficult times. Hard-pressed townsmen who were by now three or four generations away from their forefathers' Puritan zeal were finding taxation for the education of a privileged few boys becoming an irr itant . Things were getting to the point that, before the end of the century, a new Education Act was passed rescinding the law requiring towns with one hundred or more families to maintain a college preparatory school. In the years just before this time, three new schools were founded in New England. The Dummer School (1763), the Phillips School (1778), and Phillips Exeter "See Appendix A for a listing of surviving schools and colleges founded prior to October 21 , 1784.

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( 1781) were all funded by private endowment. The common denominator of these three schools was their offering of a higher moral atmosphere than could be found in town schools. In fact, Samuel Phillips, Jr., founder of the Phillips School at Andover, considered morals the only reason for his school, deploring Latin and Greek as dead languages. It was only through the persuasion of his friend and first Preceptor, Eliphalet Pearson, that a full college preparatory course at the Phillips School was offered. Dummer, Phillips, and Phillips Exete r were isolated cases. Their existence had little bearing upon the plight of the tax-supported town college preparatory schools. Immediately after the Revolutionary War, however, a new idea swept throughout New England. It was to become a wave of privately-supported town academies, of which Derby was one, wh ich would take the place of the old tax-supported preparatory schools that were closing down-until the coming to fruition, in the mid-1800's, of the public high school concept .

CHAPTER III HINGHAM SCHOOLS: A PROBLEM PERCEIVED In 178 4 the little town of Hingham (pop. 2,000) was crawling out of th e worst depression ever to hit the former provinc e of Massachusetts Bay. Unlike Boston and Salem with their great metchant shipowners whose accumulated capital could weather any financial storm , Hingham was made up of mackerel fishermen and coastal mariners, artisans and tradesmen, the kind of people to suffer most during hard times. Hingham would seem a most unlikely place to open a new tuition school at all, let alone one with an ambitious curriculum . Yet that is what was about to happen. Several years earlier, Sarah Hersey, a well-to-do Hingham widow, had married widower Richard Derby, the very richest of those Salem merchant shipowners, and had gone to Salem to live with him. After he died in 1783, Sarah immediately returned to Hingham and began to put her estate in order. She had no immediate family to advise her, no brothers or siste rs, no children. Nor had Hingham any lawyer , banker, or sophisticated man of affairs who might have given her counsel. But there was one man, a towering man, a father figure: the Reverend Ebenezer Gay, whose services in Bingham's only church (now known as The Old Ship Church) Sarah had attended for fifty-three years until she moved to Salem. Mr. Gay had graduated at Harvard College in 1714, the year Sarah was born. He was by no means physicall y attractive, but he had that other virtue which often comes with nature's backhand . He had believability, and behind that he had a first class mind which he was not afraid to use. Ebenezer Gay was not a follower of the Calvinist doctrine of 11

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hell-fire and damnation, for he had spent his four years at Harvard during the presidency of John Leverett, of whom Morison has written:

It is largely owing to Erattle as tutor and to Leverett both as tutor and President that Harvard was saved from becoming a sectarian institution, at a time when the tendency of most pious New Englanders was to tighten up and insist upon hundred-per-cent puritanism in the face of infiltrating ideas that heralded the Century of Enlightenment ... . . . In an era of political and sectarian strife, he was steadfast in preserving the College from the devastating control of a provincial orthodoxy. He kept it a house of learning under the spirit of religion, not, as the Mathers and their kind would have it , the divinity school of a particular sect. Leverett, in a word, founded the liberal tradition of Harvard University. 1 It was Ebenezer Gay, educated under Leverett, to whom Sarah Derby turned for advice in settling her estate. Sarah's first husband had been Ezekiel Hersey, who was a native of Hingham. During their thirty-two years of married life, Hersey had become the town's principal physician. Although this paid modestly, his investments in land and various town enterprises had made him a relatively wealthy man. It was his money, not that of Richard Derby, which made up Sarah's estate, for she had refused all but a small annuity from the vast Derby holdings. At his death in December of 1770, Mr. Hersey had left his entire estate to Sarah with the stipulation that she turn over 1,000 pounds to the Corporation of Harvard College, the interest on which sum would pay the salary of a professor of Anatomy and Physic. Hersey, a Harvard gradu-

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ate with a strong interest in education, was quite aware that just such a faculty chair had been established at the College of Philadelphia five years before . It wasn't until 1783, scarcely a year before Sarah and the Rev. Mr. Gay began their discussions about her estate, that the "Medical Institution of Harvard University" finally opened .2 It was not far from Sarah's mind to pledge the balance of Ezekiel Hersey's money to this fledgling medical school. How much of a commitment she would make would depend upon there being some alternate greater need. And there was, right in Sarah's own town of Hingham. Hingham had opened its town college preparatory school when it had reached the hundred -family mark in 1670. Over the years it had produced a representative number of boys going on to Harvard, reaching its peak with Gay's own Class of 1714 when five of the eleven Harvard graduates were from Hingham. (Gay, himself, had entered Harvard from Dedham.) After that came a slow decline consistent with what was taking place throughout New England. In 1779 the Hingham town college preparatory school closed down completely-to the great relief of the majority of Hingham taxpayers who were , however, concerned that the common schools should remain open, which they did. Like their fellow townsmen everywhere in New England, the only education for which the Hingham people were willing to be taxed was that which would give their children enough reading, writing, and arithmetic to lead normal lives as mariners, artisans, and tradesmen. Still, there were men in every town who were concerned over the demise of college preparatory schools. In the forefront were the town ministers-who were, in Massachusetts, almost all Harvard graduates. They, and the handful of Harvard men in local business, together with those in law and government, were as alarmed then at the

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closing of the college preparatory schools as we would be today if our high schools throughout the Commonweal th were to close down with no foreseeable chance of reopening. In Hingham no one was more concerned than the Rev. Daniel Shute, minister of Bingham's Second Parish Church, colleague and friend of the Rev . Mr . Gay . For a number of years during the decline of the town preparato ry school, Mr. Shute had supplemented his pastoral salary by tutoring boys from Hingham and surroundi ng towns for entrance to Harvard. It was logical that, when the question of "great er need" came up in consideration of Sarah's estate , Mr. Gay would bring in Daniel Shute to impress upon Sarah the plight of advanced education in Hingham . It seemed that if there were any opportunity to establish a sound college preparatory school in the town, independent of taxation or the vote of the townsmen, it should be taken . The only way this could happen would be through gifts by private benefac tors. At that tim e the ~ame idea, that of p rivately sponsored "town academies," w.as spr inging up all over New England, mostly supported by Congregational ministers such as Shu te and Gay . At some time early in the year 1784, afte r considerable discussion, Sarah Derb y agreed with Ebenezer Gay and Daniel Shute that she would contribute the bulk of her estate toward the establishment of a private town academy in Hi ngh am.

CHAPTER IV

FOUNDING OF THE DERBY SCHOOL In the sum mer of 1784 Daniel Shute , sixty-two and in his prime, undertook to translate thoug ht into action. As an ed ucator , Shute perforce was aware of Penn Charter, which was by then a national phenomenon, operating all of its departments with a total enrollment of over four hundred boys and girls, by far the largest student body of any school or college in the country . It was the most successful educational achievement of the times. Closer to home, he was familia r with Dummer , Phillips, and Phillips Exeter. Following their example, one of his firs t orders of business was the selection of Trustees suitable to his benefactor. Naturally , he and Gay were the first to be appointed. A third man living in Hingham who was conc erned about education was John Thaxter, one of Mr . Gay's par ishioners, who had been two classes ahead of Shute at Harvard. Although he called himsel f a "farmer ," John Thax ter was substantially well off and had served the town in every elected capacity. He was appointed as the third Trustee of the proposed school. The four th was John Thaxte r' s first cous in and Bingham's Revo lutiona ry War hero, General Benjamin Lincoln. In the Phillips Academy constitution there was a clause which provided tha t no more than four Trustees at a given time could be local men . One of the reasons for this was to allow the very best men to be selected, regardless of place of resid ence , particularly those who could br ing in new ideas from a variety of outside sourc es. 1 Daniel Shute copied this clause from Phillips and now had his four local men. Six remaining Trustees were to be chosen from outside the town . 15

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Daniel Shute's wife and Benjamin Lincoln 's wife were sisters, the former Cushing girls of Pem br oke . William Cushing, of Scituate, who was Chief Justice of th e Ma ssachusetts Supreme] udicial Court, was their first cousin. He accepted appointment as a Trustee of the proposed school as did Nathan Cushing, another cousin who also lived in Scituate and was also a judge of the same Supreme Judic ial Court. Both men were Harvard graduates, Willi am Cushing goi ng on to teach at the Roxbury Latin School his first yea r after graduat ion. Two appointees came somewhat circu itously through John Thaxter. John's wife, Anna, was fir st cousin to Abigail Adams, who was well-known for outspoken advocac y of women 's education. (Many of Abigail's letters survive in which she stated quite warmly that women could handle advanced education just as well as men. She stopped short of equal rights , but her opinions were widely known .) Abigail's favorite brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, was appointed a Trustee , as was he r favorite uncle and family docto r, Cotton Tufts. Cranch was from Braint ree , Tufts from Weymouth. Just how much influence Abigail 's viewpoints had on the format of the new school is not known , but it could have been considerable, for she was without doubt New England's foremost champion of women's edu cation. The final two appoi ntees were in the immediate fami ly.John Thaxter , Jr. and Benjamin Lincoln ,Jr . were both in their twenties , both Harvard graduates, both lawyers. Young Lincoln was prac ticing law in Boston , while Thaxt er had just returned from Europe where he had been personal secretar y to his kinsman , J ohn Adams , at the tim e Adams had been working on the Treaty of Paris. * With ten T rustees appointed, work could begin on the form the proposed school would take. Daniel Shute was its principal architect, with plenty of legal talent available for *See Appendix B for biographical notes of the original Trustees .

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the fine pr int. Although the task required hard work and diplomacy, it was done by the middle of October, 1784. On October 20, 1784 , a simple Deed of Bargain and Sale conveyed a small piece of land, together with its buildings , from Sarah Derby to the ten Trustees. These buildings had been one of Ezekiel Hersey's investment propertie s with rents coming to him from the tenants. The next day a Deed of Lease and Release was signed by these same participants, disclosing for the first time the careful planning of the preceding few months. A new school to be known as the Derby School was to be opened in Hingham, but not until after Sarah Derby's death , by the Trustees who were formally ident ified for the first time . Two protective clauses were inserted. One would allow Sarah to change her mind and have the Trustees open the school during her lifetime if she wished. The other provided that, should th e Trustees run into difficulties or find the project unfeasible, the program could be abandoned. The Trustees were given one year in which to incorporate the school. Detailed rules and regulations were not a part of this indenture. They would be determined by the Trustees at the time Derby School would be activated. It was spelled out, however, that school would be kept in the largest building on what was then the proper ty of the Trustees, boys occupying the best ground floor room and girls the best upper room . Although tuition rates were not mentioned it was specified that each student would supply his or her share of firewood. This was common practice in nearly all New England schools , both town and private. The heart of this Deed lay in i s explicit directions concerning the form the school would take; like Penn Char ter it would offer several options .

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First, any Hingham boy of either North or South Parish who was expressly preparing for Harvard College would be able to enter the Derby school at any age to begin his preliminary studies of Latin and Greek. In a day when boys often entered Harvard at thirteen or fourteen, this meant that Hingham boys could begin at Derby at age seven or eight, but only to learn Latin, Greek, and a smattering of mathematics, which were then the sole entrance requirements at Harvard. Secondly, North Parish boys not going on to college could not enter Derby until age twelve, but they were given an unusually strong curriculum of English, French, mathematics, and geography as well as the basics of Latin and Greek. Among all schools at that time only Phillips Exeter offered such a well-rounded course of instruction to boys. This was a unique middle ground between the classic college preparatory course and what was to become known as an "English" school. To us it seems like a normal public high school course during the first half of the 20th century, but in 1784 it was innovative. Thirdly, South Parish boys not going on to college could not be admitted until age twelve, their course of instruction being limited to surveying, navigation, and the mathematics involving these subjects. No reason has been discovered as to why these South Hingham boys were restricted to vocational school training while their North Parish cousins (and in many cases that is what they were) could have the -benefits of a richer program. Perhaps the reason was that the weak but reopened town college preparatory school standing just fifty feet from the newly proposed Derby School in the north part of town could be moved to South Parish to serve that community when Derby opened. That is what did happen. Finally, North Parish girls were to be admitted to the Derby School at the age of nine and would be instructed in

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writing, English, French, arithmetic, and needlework . This course was identical to that at Penn Charter. Needlework was an inevitable part of education wherever girls were taught-in town schools, church schools, private schools, and even with little girls in the many dame schools throughout the country. The school was to be limited to thirty girls and forty boys meeting the above qualifications. "Others" were to be admi tted only if enough Hingham children hadn't applied to fill the quota. Even then, preference would be given to "poor orphans" from Hingham rather than to paying students from other towns. The essence of the Derby plan was that there would be offered at one school and under one roof: 1) a pure college preparatory school for boys specifically addressed to Harvard College 2) a good general course for boys not planni ng to continue their education 3) a vocational course for still other boys 4) an advanced form of education for girls. Nothing like it had ever before been attempted in New England. While borrowing the four-school concept from pacesetting Penn Charter , the Derby founders made no mention of a primary school which had been an important part of the original Penn Charter system. In Hingham as in all New England, tax supported common schools (primary schools) were in robust health whereas in Philadelphia at the time Penn Charter was formed, that school itself was the town school. Derby's differences from the Penn Charter program were, therefore, distinctly New England and distinctly its own. In still another area, Derby's Deed differed from the constitutions of both Phillips Academy and Phillips Exeter. It is clear that Derby was specifically designed to serve the needs of pupils from just one town, Hingham. Phillips, followed by Phillips Exeter, was mandated to be "ever equally open to youth ... from every quarter." 2

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Further clauses in the Deed provided that at Sarah's death the Trustees were to select a Preceptor to teach all academic subjects to all children and a Mistress to teach needlework to girls. It was also stated that the Preceptor was to be included as a Trustee . Another stipulation, and one which is still carried out today, was that an annual Derby Lecture was to be given to the students. The Deed finished with a lengthy and very legal reminder that unless the school were incorporated within one year , Sarah Derby could call the whole thing off and get her land back , too. In an age when opening a new school was a precarious venture at best, this was another of Sarah's protective clauses for the safeguarding of Ezekiel Hersey 's legacy . The Trustees lost little time , however. An Act by the Senate and House of Representatives assembled in General Court at the Old State House in Boston established the Derby School ; the Trustees were incorporated into a body politic as the Trustees of Derby School; the date was November 11, 1784, just three weeks after the Deed was signed. Shortly after the incorporation proceedings, the Trustees met to elect officers . William Cushing was chosen President, Benjamin Lincoln , Jr., Secre tary, andJohn Thaxter , Treasurer . Thereafter , until Sarah died nearly six years later, they had little school business to han dle. In the meant ime , two of the Trustees, Ebenezer G ay and young Benjamin Lincoln, died, the former at ninety-one after sixty-nine years as minister of The Old Ship Chur ch. No replacements were appointed, for under a further term of the Deed ~ no new Trustees could be elected during Sarah's lifetime. This additional financial safeguard was that if all ten Trus tees were to die before Sarah did , the corporation would automatically be liquidated.

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InJ une of 1789 Sarah Derby had lier will drawn, parts of which related to the Derby School. In it she bequeathed to the school 2 ,500 pounds, the interest from which was to pay the salary of the Preceptor, and 700 pounds, the interest from which would pay the Mistress. She also gave instructions that her picture and her new clock were to be placed in the Derby School. After making certain personal bequests, she directed that the remainder of her estate be turned over to the Trustees with interest to be used for the care of her woman servant, for repair of the school building if needed, and for supplying books and clothing to whatever poor children of the town should be admitted to the school. Finally, she specified that Abner Lincoln was to be appointed Preceptor of the school when it opened. Lincoln, then just twentythree years old, had graduated at Harvard the year before and was serving, at a low salary, as Master of the Hingham town preparatory school. The following year the remaining Trustees, having seen two of their number die and with a third, young John Thaxter , seriously ill, were able to prevail upon Sarah Derby to add a codicil to her will, charging the Trustees to make application to the Legislature, within one year after her death , "for authority to fill such vacancies as may from time to time take place in their body from any part of the State, without limit or restriction." Sarah agreed, but not without a quid pro quo. In her final safeguard of Dr . Hersey's estate she added the following: But if they should neglect to comply with this condition; or if the rents and incomes of said funds or estate shall ever for the space of two years together, cease to be appropriated to the purposes for which they were intended, then it is my will that said funds

HI STOR Y O F D ERB Y A C ADEMY

or estate go to the President and Fellows of Harvard College , in trust , however , that they forever appropriate the interest thereof to the support of the Professor of Anatomy and Physic. 3 It is possible that this bargaining point was suggested

to Sarah by amiable Derby T rustee Richard Cranch, for a quit e similar provision had been written into the Act of Incorporation of the Dummer School eight years earlier, having the same two-year time constra int and the same potential beneficiary, the Corporation of Harvard College . The penman cop ying that document into the Dummer School records was Cranch 's favorite nephew , young John Quincy Adams .4 By whatever means the id ea had come to her , Sarah had given the Trustees fair warning that if they couldn't make a go of their new school, Ezekiel Hersey's money , all of it, would be turned over to his, and her, favorite cause, a medical professorship at Harvard. Having made her point, Sarah added one final and gracious provision : "It is my will that, from the income of the aforesaid funds , proper entertainme nt be made for the Trustees at their several meetings. " Sarah Derby died thirteen days late r on Ju ne 17, 1790 . Within nin ety days her legacies, amounting to nearly 7,000 pounds, were pai d out to Treasurer John Thaxter, and the business side of the school could begi n : that of putting the mon ey out on loan as quickl y and profitably as possible . In those days Derby operated as a lending institution , handling small personal loans as well as indiv idual mortgage loans. Fifty years later, even after a bank and a lending institution had opened in H ingham , more than half of De rby's income was from interest on loans ; at one time even the Town of Hingham was a borrower from the fund. With the death of Sarah , two new Trustees were finally elected to fill the vacancies of the Rev. Gay and you ng

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Lincoln. The Rev. Jacob Norton was one , and the Rev. Henry Ware, who had succeeded Gay as minister of The Old Ship Church, was the other . Norton, twenty-six, came into his trusteeship well connected, being related to both Thaxters and Lincolns. His later marriage to Trustee Richard Cranch's daughter brought him into the Adams family . Norton , Ware, and John Quincy Adams had all been at Harvard toge ther. Henry Ware, like the late Ebenezer Gay, was the only Trustee nor related , even remotely, to any other Trustee. He was to remain a Trustee until after he left Hingham in 1805 to become Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard. 5 On December 20, 1790, the Trustees of the Derby School met for the purpose of getting their school under way. Sarah Derby's choice of Abner Lincoln as Preceptor was approved together with his salary of 100 pounds per year. Opening day was sec for the first Monday in April of the following year. The Rev. Daniel Shute, who had done most to see Derby School come into being, was unaminously invited to give the first Derby Lecture. On April 5, 1791, Shute preached his sermon, and the Derby School was officially opened. 6

CHAPTER V THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS Although there are no records showing us the Derby School student body pro file on opening day , it can be reasonably supposed that enrollment exceeded expectations and was made up of both boys and girls. Preceptress Lucy Lane beg an her job that spring of 1791, and shortly afterward Pe te r Whitney was hired as an assistant master. In his diary two years later , the Rev.Jacob Norton noted that there were between eighty and ninety boys and girls in the parade to his Derby Lecture at Old Ship Church. This was more than the quota as originally written into the school's deed of gift. It wasn't until forty years later that the Trustees voted to buy enrollment books so that the Preceptor and Preceptress could keep the names, ages, dates of entering and leaving, and home towns of their students. This lack of records was commonplace in most town schools and academies where entrance and departure were on a revolving-door basis . Pupils could enter any day in the year and leave as soon or stay as long as their parents wished. The re were no terms or semesters, no class groupings , no graduations. It was a cluster of boys , ages seven to twenty, in the Boys School, and girls , ages seven to seventeen, in the Girls School. Only Andover, Exeter , and Dummer made any attempt to keep their schools on a structured basis as did Harvard College. As a result very little is known of the early happenings at Derby School itself except that which pertained to the Trustees and their actions . In 1793 both Thaxters, father and son, resigned. They were replaced by two of the most eminent men in the Commonwealth: Christopher Gore and "The Old Judge," 24

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John Lowell. 1 Judge Lowell, at the time, was a Trustee of both Phillips Academy at Andover and lloxbury Latin, and was a member of the Harvard Corporation . It was in that same year that, the school having met Sarah Derby's "twoyears-in-business-or-else-the-money-goes-to-Harvard" stipulation, Benjamin Lincoln and Christopher Gore, acting as Trustees, pet itioned the Town of Hingham to recognize her estate funds as educational and therefore not subject to taxation. Probably in a related action, the follow ing year a committee was appoin ted by the town to examine the privileges the town and parish are en titled to in the Derby School, and whether they are deprived of any p rivilege which by Mrs . Derby's will, lease , or charter, they are en titled to in said school; and they are to consider what furthe r steps are necessar y to be taken respecting the matter . Going to the hea rt of it, the committee said that it was apparent that only those whom the Trustees conside re d in abject poverty would be admitted in addition to "only those in affluence ... to the exclusion of those in moderate circumstances." This rather contemporary statement, made just two years after the Derb y School had opened, was handled in 18th century style: the complaint was dismissed by the Tr u stees. Later that year the Trustees voted, That the Preceptor be authorized to dispense with the attendance at the schoo l, two hours in each week, of such children, whose parents or guardians may desi re it in writing, that they may learn the art of dancing, provided, that such absence from the Derby School does not interrupt their improvement there , and so long as this indulgence shall not interfere with the general welfare of the school.

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The Calvinists in Hingham were aghast. Orthodox New England considered dancing an invention of the Devil. Local attitudes polarized at once, and Derby was branded "liberal"-even libertine;-in contrast to Calvinist Andover and all the other orthodox, conservative, "safe" schools in the region. Derby's later position as the Unitarian school in the country and, in the first half of the 20th century, a "progressive" school, had early beginnings . In Tidewater Virginia, on the other hand, dancing was considered a necessary and delightful social grace. George Washington , its most famous son, was considered an elegant dancer. The fact that a school allowed dancing would have met with his approval. President Washington, though childless , had always shown great interest in his nieces and nephews and in their children, their morals, and their education. Being a wartime friend of Samuel Phillips , Washington had visited Andover and had enrolled a nephew there in 1785. Ten years later, in 1795, another nephew, Col. William Washington, had two sons ready for a college preparatory education. It would have been natural for the President to direct these boys to Andover, without any alternative suggestions , but by then the President's circle of friends included several Derby Trustees. General Benjamin Lincoln had been Washington's favorite general. The two had remained in r egular correspondence after the war. Lincoln, Gore, and Lowell had all received appointments from the President. As Washington was taking the oath of office for his second term, the man who stood before him , Bible in hand , was acting Chief Justice William Cushing, Washington 's own appointee, who at that very moment was President of the Trustees of the Derby School. In addition, the President's family frequently exchanged dinner parties with Vice President Adams's famil y,

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where conversation often turned towards their favorite topic, their farms back home. With Derby Trustees Cranch and Tufts overseeing Vic e President John Adams's farm in Braintree, it is logical-and evident-that the President would have heard about them and perhaps their association with the new school. In 1795 President Washington wrote the following letter to his nephew, Col. Washington, regarding the impending placement of the Colonel's boys at a colleg e preparatory school. We quote it in full. There are two private academies in the state of Massachusetts which are highly spoke n of-one at Andover, and the other at Hingham, about 20 miles east of Boston, but a different direction . That at Ando ver I have been at myself. It is in high, dry and pleasant country, and is more a township than a town, inhabited by respectable and well-disposed people. Schooling, board , lodging and wash ing will not by mu ch, if any, I am told, exceed $2 a week for each boy . By the constitution of the academy not more than 60 or 65 , I am not sure which, can be there at a time. I have not been able to obtain quite so accurate information of things at the other academy at Hingham, bu t understand genera lly that they are placed on nearly the same ground as at Andov er . At the former the president or principal director of the school takes in boarders himself, but whether he is fat or not I have not been able to lear n . The latte r seems to have the preference as a school, and may be on a par in the article of board for aught I know to the contrar y. There is a college at Carlisle in this state , of which much is said , but it is in much such a tow n as

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Fredericksburg and liable , I presume, to the objection you have made to the academies in Virginia; that objection does not apply co the northern schools. Order, regularity and a proper regard to morals in and out of schools is there very much attended to, and besides , Harvard College, near Boston, is at hand for the completion of education, if you should prefer it, and is, I am told, in high repute .2 Later that year Col. and Mrs. Washington set out for Boston with their two sons, Augustine, age fifteen, and Bushrod, age ten, to enter th em at Phillips Academy. The Colonel carried with him a letter of personal introduction from the President to (Derby Trustee ) General Lincol n asking "for his good offices in helping to place the boys at Andover." Not only was this done, but shortly afterwards two other of Washington 's grandnephews , Cassius and Francis Lightfoot Lee, arrived at the school. In all, one nephew and eight grandnephews of George Washington were educated at Phillips Academy, three of them going on to Harvard where one , George Corbin Washington, graduated with a brilliant record. 3 By now the move toward private town academies had begun in earnest. Leicester Academy in Worcester County had been founded in 1784, Derby 's year, through private endowment. Bristol Academy in Taunton and Westford Academy were both formed in 1792. Westfield Academ y and Groton Academy (today's Lawrence Academy) were founded in the following year, New Salem Academy in 1795,-altoge the r fifteen academies had been incorporated in Massachusetts by the beginning of the year 1797 .4 In January of that year it was ordered by the General Court that certain land grants would be given to the first academies in each of several counties to be specified in a committee report to follow. The Report was read on February 27, and the

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Derby School was specifically mentioned as meeting all requirements to become an academy and would be eligible to receive half a township of six miles square, of the unappropriated lands in the district of Maine, to be granted to each academy having secured to it the private funds of towns and individual donors. It must be remembered that these were the schoo s which, through a variety of funding other than town taxation, were filling the void where town college preparatory schools were being allowed to close. It was a different General Court than that which, eight years previous, had bowed to the demands of taxpayers. Realizing the implications of the earlier Court's action, this Court was attempting to make some amends by helping to subsidize the new schools in some way which would not touch taxpayers' pockets. Wilderness land was their answer. Two months later the Trustees of Derby School voted

that General Lincoln be appointed a committee to apply to the General Court in behalf of the Trustees, that the style of the Derby School may be changed to that of the Derby Academy, and that it may be entitled to all the privileges which are granted to academies. On June 17, 1797, the Senate and House of Representatives, sitting as the General Court, officially made it so. The land which was later granted to Derby Academy and ultimately sold by the Trustees at a good profit lies a few miles north of present-day Calais, Maine , between Route 1 and the New Brunswick border, in the township of Codyville.

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Any educational institution could conside r itself fortunate to have its first head stay with that job for the crucial beginning years. Derby 's first Preceptor, Abner Lincoln , stayed fourteen years. Lucy Lane, first Preceptress, stayed five years, leaving only to be married; she was succeeded by Elizabeth Dawes who stayed eight years . Even young Peter Whitney , who had come to Derby directly out of Harvard , remained as assistant master for three years. These were the young people who gave Derby its academic foundation. Toward the end of the decade , original T rustees Nathan Cushing and Richard Cranch resigned. It had been Cranch, along with Cotton Tufts, who had be en asked to design the school seal as ordered by the General Court. Cranch and Tufts used a plain English motto unlike the more opulent seals written in Latin or Greek which were adopted by most other schools and colleges at the time. (see cover and title page ) At the turn of the century, in 1800 , Derby 's personal property was valued at a little more than $23,000. Ten yea rs later, after the acquis ition and sale of the Maine lands, it was over $36 ,000 , which was more than the personal property value of most colleges and was exceeded among schools on ly by Andover and Exe ter. The first five years of the 19th century saw Trustee changes as William Cushing resigned, while both Dani el Shute and Judge Lowell died . They were replac ed by liber al Unitarian ministers and jurist Thomas Boylston Adams, son of President John and Abigail Adams. "Tommy " was the first of three generations of Adamses to serv e Derby as Trustees. He was brought in by his great-uncle , Cotton Tufts, who was Trustee President. In 1805 a schism took place at The Old Ship Church with results which are still with us today . No fewer than eleven Derby Tr ustees or future Trustees were involved ;

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bitter feelings in North Pari sh were to remain for well over one hundred years . It happened when Henry Ware resigned as minister of The Old Ship Church to accept the Hollis Chair of Divinity at Harvard. The lead ing candidate as his successor had a controversial personal background which half of the church members chose to ignore. The other half, led by General Lincoln and members of th e "Derby family" refused to ignore the allegations brought against the candidate, Joseph Richardson, and withdrew to hold temporary church services of their own in Derby Hall. Richardson thereupon referred to them as "petty gentry" who were meeting in "that dancing hall," which gives us a glimpse of Derby's reputation in some quarters. 5 When it became clear that the pro-Richardson faction had won , the losing group proceeded to build a church of their own, which is now known as New North Church. The D erby Lecture was shifted to Derby Hall in 1806 and then to the newly built church in 1807, where the Derby Lecture is still being held. In 1808 Daniel Kimball, with bo th Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Harvard, was appointed Preceptor , a post he was to hold for the next seventeen and one half years. Two years later , in 1810, General Lincoln died. The Rev . Gay had seen the need and found the money to endow the school. The Rev. Shute had laid its foundations. General Lincoln had helped steer its course to success. Among the pall bearers at Lincoln's funeral in the Hingham Cemetery were former President John Adams, Cotton Tufts, and Richard Cranch. Flags on all ships and in all forts in Boston Harbor were flown at half-staff while the bells were tolled from all Boston churches for one hour. Ge neral Lincoln lies buried just forty feet from the graves of Ebenezer Gay and Sarah Derby. The school with which they had all been associated was flourishing. In 181 7 it was

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Voted, That a new Academy be built the next season. Voted, That the committee be instructed to build the new Academy near the place of the present, and nearly on the plan which has been exhibited to the Trustees; that they study economy, and make such variations and improvements as they, after due deliberation, and consulting disinterested gentlemen, may think proper. May 20, 1818, Voted , That all the buildings now owned by the Trustees of the Derby Academy be taken down and the materials disposed of to the best advantage of said Trustees . Voted, That the committee for the erection of the new Academy be empowered to make a passage on the south front of the Academy, for entrance into the school, or any other arrangement which they shall think proper. Voted, That the projection of the new Academy be so constructed that a bell may be placed in it, and that said Academy be painted once and the trimming twice . This is the building we know today as "Old Derby" and is the property of the Hingham Historical Society. In 1818 the actual cost of the building came to $3,930.10. It is estimated that its replacement cost today would be nearly $350,000. The new structure was designed to keep the Male School separate from the Female School as was still customary throughout the country in schools teaching both sexes. Each School or Department had its own room with no con -

DERBY ACADEMY HALL BUILT IN 1818

INSIDE DERBY ACADEMY HALL CIRCA 1860 (Courtesy Kenelm Winslow)

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necting door between. Entry to each School was through its own door to the outside at the rear of the building. Conditions in each School were equal, but they were totally separate. Because the new Derby Hall was now the largest non-church building in the town of Hingham, its rooms were in great demand for lectures, meetings, and social gatherings when classes were not in session. These rooms were rented out by the Trustees at from three to five dollars per occasion and provided a small but countable portion of the school's mcome. In 1820 Martin Lincoln, son of the late General, was "empowered to procure a bell weighing about one hundred and fifty pounds and cause the same to be hung on the Academy." This bell now hangs in the belfry of the Lower School on the new campus. A year later, in 1821, a committee of the town once again chose to register complaints against Derby. Records in this dispute are scanty, the situation becoming so acrimonious that 19th century historians chose to brush the whole thing under the carpet. It is known tha t a complaint was brought upon the location of the Derby Lecture and a further complaint made against the Preceptor. Kimball, while serving as Preceptor at Derby, had been ordained an Evangelist at New North Church. At this time (1817) there was a noticeable resurgence in orthodox thinking in the town and quite possibly it was feared that Derby, the town academy, with a clergyman Preceptor and five Unitarian ministers among the Trustees, was leani ng in the dangerous direction of becoming a parochial school for Unitarian New North Church. The issue was allowed to smolder but it is perhaps significant that when Kimball re signed as Preceptor Âˇfive years later, the remaining Trustees voted that any Preceptor to follow could no longer be a Trustee as well. The Preceptor

HI ST OR Y O F DERB Y A CA D E M Y

who succeeded Kimball in 1826 was Increase Sumner Smith, an educator and not a clergyman , who was to remain at Derby for eighteen years as Preceptor and later to serve as a Trustee for an additional seventeen years. In the next two decades the private town academies of New England came to full flower. Yet in 183 7 the Massachusetts legislature passed an Education Act which would be the death knell for these academies. This Act was to mark the beginning of the American public school system. Publi c schools weren't going to come easily, howeve r . Had it not been for the prodigious efforts of one man , no one can tell how much longer the advent of free universal education might have been delayed. But Horace Mann, who was then President of the Massachusetts Senate and almost cert ain to become the next Governor of the Commonwealth , stepped away from these political heights to become Secreta ry to the first State Board of Educati on. Virtuall y alone he carved out a system for Massachusetts which was lat er followed by other states and which eventually spread over the entire country .6 Concurrent with this new idea of free higher educa tion for all, ther e was a groundswell of patriotism throughout America as politicians were discovering the magic of eulogiz ing the events of fifty years before when ordinary American citizens had "humbled the English aristocracy." Everything democratic was being romanticized in books, newspapers, and on lecture platforms. In this atmosphere , the new public schools were glorified as being one of democracy 's greatest achievements while, almost overnight, loca l town academies found them selves victims of rev erse snobbery. Th e elitist label, and all other similar epithets aimed at succeeding generations of private school students had its beginnings in the 1830's and 1840's. A case in point is that of Daniel Webster, the ultimate politician. In 1836, at a rally to set up a State Normal School

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in Plymouth County, Webster delivered his educationallyfamous oration saying that, "If I had as many sons as old Priam, I would send them all to the public schools." Webster, the poli tician, was careful not to mention that he had been elected a Trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy that year, that he -had entered a son at Exeter two years before, and that he, himself, had attended Exeter before going on to Dartmouth . By 1841 , fifty years after Derby had opened its doors , there were over three hundred private and quasi-publ ic academies in Massachusetts alone. Jonathan Messerli, in his well-balanced book , Horace Mann, which was written in 1972, has this to say about academies : Dedicated to a form of excellence not found elsewhere, rendering a public service through the achievements of their graduates, and in some instances even demonstrating an entrepreneurship which could make money, the academies were seen by many to be as American as blueberry pie and the free enterprise system. 7 What type of children attended these thriving academies, particularly Derby? Were they and their parents elitist or were they "as American as blueberry pie?"

CHAPTER VI THE 19TH CENTURY "DERBY FAMILY" The following letter was addressed to Miss Elizabe th Norton, Preceptress of Derby Academy: At a Meeting of the Trustees of the Derby Academy, Novr 9, 1831 Voted-that the Treasurer procure two Blank Books , one for the use of the Preceptor, & one for the Preceptress, in which shall be recorded all the names of the Scholars of the Academy, their ages, place of abode, time of admission, & time of departure, & also the name of the Trustee, in whose right any Scholar from abroad may be admitted. A true copy

N.B. Whitney, Seery

Miss Norton placed this letter in the front of the enrollment book for her Girls Department where it remains today. It would be two or three years after entries were begun before both Preceptor and Preceptress settled into the habit of keeping these records regularly, but in 1836 we have a reasonably complete roster of student names together with their entering and departure dates. During that calendar year boys entered or left the school on forty separate days covering every month of the year . While it is difficult for us, today, to attempt to come up with a student body profile, how infinitely more complex it must have been to teach this constantly moving audiencelet alone keep track of those in it. For our picture of this

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earliest recorded Derby student body we had to freeze a day in time and count pupils . On January 18, 1836, there were thirty boys in the Male Department and twenty-one girls in the Female Department. Despite the fluctuating nature of attendance, the average length of stay for those boys in school that day would eventually be two and two-thirds years and for girls it would be a little more than four years. The average age of the boys on that day was thirteen and one-half years and a trifle more than twelve years of age for the girls. There were that day four Derby boys boarding in the town, one each from Boston and Barnstable and two from Truro. The remainder of the boys all lived in North Parish, none more than a twenty minute walk from school. Three of the girls lived in Hingham Center with, perhaps, a half-hour walk, but the others all lived closer. Although there had been girl boarders before this date, and many more would come later, there were none at Derby on this particular day. There were two pairs of brothers in the Male Department and two pairs of sisters in the Female Department. In the academy as a whole there were two brother and sister pairs. With a total of fifty-one pupils, Derby was about average in enrollment among academies in Massachusetts. To teach this number there was one Preceptor , Increase Smith; a Preceptress, Elizabeth Norton; and her Assistant, Sophia Marshall. Smith taught the boys exclusively. Differing from the original terms in Sarah Derby's Deed, the Preceptress taught academics to the girls while her assistant taught needlework . Once a week, on Saturday mornings, Smith would visit the Female Department to quiz them on their work. School was in session five and one-half days each week , twelve months of the year , with a vary ing number of vacation breaks of two weeks each. There was no vacation at Christmastime. The Puritans had looked upon the celebration of Christmas as idolatrous. But by 1836 the day, itself, was observed.

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Who were the pupils actually? What kinds of families were they from? To put them in perspective we must look back at the Town of Hingham as it was in the year 1836. It takes us something like one and one-half minutes today to drive along the relativ ely neat Hingham waterfront crescent and its summertime harbor filled with private boats. One hundred and fifty years ago, however, this small area was crammed with warehouses, sail lofts , mar ine offices , cooperages, flaking racks for drying cod, boatyards, wharves, and all of the appurtenances of a busy seaport. In fact , in 1836, the Hingham waterfront had more feet of wharfage that that of all other Plymouth County towns combined. More than half of the town's work force of 1,500 men and boys were directly or indirectly involved with these maritime activities. The Hingham mackerel fleet alone , in 1836, had fifty boats employing four hu ndred and fifty Hingham men and boys. The new steamboat General Linco ln was running between Hingham and Boston , cap tained and manned by Hingham men. The most glamorous but treacherous side of this life was the "coaster," a word which applied equally to a type of ship, to its trade in particular , and to the men engaged in that trade. The "coaste r" worked up and down the Eastern seaboard and as far south as South America. It also maintaine d a steady trade with Cuba and other islands in the West Indies. These vessels were Hingham owned, H ingham skippere d, and Hingham crewed, with venture capital for thei r cargoes being furnished by Hingham "traders" who were men of some substance in the town . Unlike those in Salem and Boston, Hingham Masters and "traders" were not involved in the Baltic, European, Pacific or China markets, nor with the Northwest fur trade, all of which were going on at that time . During this period another industry was actuall y bringing fame of sorts to Hingham , although the business

THE

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itself was by no means as large as the fishery and coastal trade. Something like eighty men throughout the town were engaged in coopering, making wooden barrels and buckets. While the mackerel fishery employed its own "captive" coopers at the harbor, the others worked in small companies or individually as "set work coopers" making firkins, boxes, barrels , butter churns, and buckets . One design became so popular that even today the term, "Hingham bucket," refers to a specific type bucket. During the 19th century Hingham became known along the seaboard as "bucket-town." 1 There were other small enterprises in Hingham: a rope walk, salt works, sail lofts, spar making, all for the maritime interests; upholstery braiding, some carriage making, the making of nails, tacks, hats, and book binding. Of course there was farming, and as in every town there were carpenters, masons, painters, contractors, innkeepers, shopowners and clerks, draymen, stableme n, blacksmiths, and all the other trades which commonly supported a town. 2 By now the town had a mutual fire insurance company , a savings institution, and a bank . The Hingham Bank opened in 18 3 3 with its first office in a ground floor room at Derby Hal l. Its first President was lawyer Ebenezer Gay II who had just resigned as a Derby Trustee. Overall the townÂˇ of Hingham in 1836 was a bustling New England seaport town, not rich like Salem, nor poor like so many small fishing villages, for Hingham had a diversity which kept it alive. This diversity was reflected in the backgrounds of the Derby scholars of that year. The occupations of their parents matched that of the town itself. We have been able to recon struct the identities of nearly three-quarters of the students in school on January 18 of that year. As with che town as a whole, exactly 50% of the Derby fathers had maritime interests including the largest single category of paternal

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occupations, that of "Master mariner." In Hingham this meant Captain of a coaster of which there were nine. Four other fathers were listed as "traders" in the coastal trade, three had financial interests in the mackerel fisheries, (two of these owned sail lofts as well), while one was a lumber merchant shipping his cargoes to Hingham from Bangor, Maine. Three fathers were coopers, including one who also owned a small inn. Three were owners of small manufactories, one of whom had been a sea captain; three others were masons, two were carpenters, two blacksmiths, two were farmers, one a painter and glazier , one a tanner, one a local lumber dealer, and one owned the principal inn . Not one of these Derby fathers had ever gone to college. It appears that the composition of that day's "Derby family" was as democratic and "as American as blueberry pie." To get a picture of the typical Derby student, a name was picked at random. Although the early life of this boy, Joshua Humphrey , was typical enough, later events which surrounded him seem more likely to be found in a novel than in a school history. On January 18, 1836. Joshua Humphrey was just three days away from his fourteenth birthday. In school with him that day was his younger brother , Eben, and his older cousin Edward, in the Male Department, while Edward's sister , Joanna, was in the Female Department. During the next twenty years nineteen more sisters and cousins would go to Derby, a pattern of academy service to the families of the town, almost as a town school, which could hardly be more clearly indicated. Joshua was to stay at Derby only seven months; his brother, Eben, four months; his cousin, Edward, three full years; and Joanna four full years. Joshua and Eben's father was a Master mariner while Edward and Joanna's father was a cooper. Their grandfather Humphrey and great-grandfather Humphrey had been

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mariners, two of their uncles were Master mariners, and two other uncles, both Hingham Master mariners, had been lost at sea long before the children were of Derby school age. Three years after Joshua left Derby, his father died at sea on a voyage back from the West Indies, where he had contracted yellow fever. At the age of eighteen, young Eben, the four-month Derby boy, was lost at sea in the schooner Nelson . One of Joshua's first cousins was drowned at sea, and anothe r , Captain George Humphrey, died of tropical feve r in the cabin of his barque in Havana Harbor. Finally, in 1867, Joshua's Derby cousin , Edward , who had spent three full years at school and was by then Captain Edward Humphrey, was drowned off his ship in Cardenas Harbor. Fate was not finished with Joshua, who had electe d to become a "shoemaker" and remain at his family homestead in Hingham. His younger brother, Wallace , was killed at Cold Harbor in the Civil War and his cousin Captain Edwin Humphrey, an 1847 Derby boy, was killed at Gettysburg . A mo re typical boy in the classroom that day was thirteen-year-old George Lincoln. His grandfather had been a Hingham Master mariner; his father, George, was a sailmake r at the harbor with financial interests in both th e mackerel fisheries and the coastal trade . His father was an original supporter and lay minister of the first Methodist church in Hingham, a Di rector of The Hingham Bank, and a Trustee of the Hingham Institution for Savings . Young George, who had spent a year at Derby , became a successful "trader ," living on Ship Street where he had grown up. It was he who compi led and wrote the two genealogical volumes of the History of Hingham . His remarkable work, together with various sections in Volume I, Part II , written by Francis H. Lincoln, has proven indispensable in the writing of this History of Derby Academy. Only one boy who was at Derby that day went on to college. He was Nathan Lincoln, son of Captain Barnabas

H I STOR y OF DERB Y AC A DEM Y

Lincoln of Lincoln Street . Nathan graduated at Harvard College in 1842 . Captain Lincoln had been captured by pirates off Cuba while on a trading voyage in his schooner, Exertion, from Hingham to Trinidad. He Âˇ and his Hingham crew of seven were put ashore on a barren cay a few miles off Cuba and would certainly have died of exposure and thirst had not some of the pirate crew returned to save them. Back in Hingham, Captain Lincoln later invested in a small manufactory. It is not known what became of Nathan after his graduation from Harvard except that he remain ed in Cambridge . Of the other boys in school that day, three were later in the Civil War. One, Captain Elijah Hobart, was killed by snipers on the Virginia shore while sailing up the Potomac River on a picnic. Another , Leavitt Lincoln, died in camp of illness. Two boys became Master mariners while two others, including Eben Humphrey, were listed as "mariners." One boy, Beza Lincoln , who had spent five full years at Derby, moved to Concord, New Hampshire, where he became a "coach builder." This was the famous Concord Coach, bu ilt by the thousands, which became the legendary stagecoach of the West. Another boy, Hosea Lincoln, who had spent six years at Derby, both winter and summer, did not go to college but became a teacher in the Hingham schools and later Master of the Lyman School in Boston. As a well-respected educator, Hosea later became a Trustee of Derby Academy . Of the boys who remained in Hingham, one became a small-scale boot and shoe manufacturer, another made pianofortes, as pianos were then called, another became a harness maker , one a grocer, Joshua Humphrey a shoemaker, and John Gill, who married Joanna Humphrey of the Female Department, became editor and publisher of the Hingham Patriot.

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If these Derby children and their parents were a cross -section of our town and their time, what of the Trustees in 1836? Four of them were Unitarian ministers, three were physicians, one a lawyer, one, Martin Lincoln, was a farmer, and one , James Savage, was a former Derby boy himself and a man of many achievements. Savage was to serve in the legislature , on the Executive Council and, as a long-time member of the Boston School Committee, was the first to propose the law to make elementary education mandatory in Massachusetts. Savage was one of the founders of the Provident Institution for Savings in Boston, as well as a founder of the Athenaeum and was an Overseer of Harvard. Eight of the ten were Harvard graduates, one had graduated at Brown, and Lincoln remained the only noncollege Trustee. It may not seem to "square" that these Derby Trustees were so educati o nally sophisticated while pa re nts and pupils appeared to be unimpressed with higher education as a goal. Yet the original T rustees had been charged with an obligation to make the school work; when one died or resigned, it was the duty of those remaining to replace him with one of their own stature. That they were successful in this became evident during the remainder of the 19th century, when men such as Charles Francis Adams, his sonJohn Quincy Adams, and Governors Andrew and Long all took their places as members of the Derby Board of Trustees. It may also seem puzzling that just one Derby boy in 1836 went on to college . Yet this was about normal for most town academies which had no formal semesters, terms , class groupings, or graduations. Roxbury Latin sent only two boys to college during one fou r-year span in the early 1830's. 3 Andover and Exeter , with larger male enrollments, sent more boys on to college, perhaps a dozen a year from each school, but these two academies were expressly designed as college preparatory schools for their entire student bodies, not for just a few, as at Derby. 4

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In 1849 the first move was made toward uniting the Male and Female departments at Derbv: June 4, 1849. Voted. That the present vacation be extended to Monday, the 11th instant, in order that a doorway uniting the two schools may be opened in the partition wall dividing them. This was followed three years later by a most significant vote: May 19, 1852. Voted. That the schools be closed for one quarter , in order that the following repairs and alterations in the building be made, viz.: Throwing the two school-rooms into one and enlarged by inclu ding the back entries ther ein ; enlarging the lower entries so as to give more room for the garments of the scholars to be hung, and for other needful improvements; and placing a furnace in the cellar for warming the school-rooms ; and any other incidental improvements ~hat may suggest them selves to the standing commit tee. So there it was. Almost sixty-eight years after the terms for Derby 's formation had been announced , and sixtyone years after the Male and Female schools had opened , boys and girls found themselves in the same classroom. Whether the girls were grouped around Preceptr ess Mary Kendall at one end of the big room and the boys group ed around Preceptor Ezra Gale at the othe r end is not known. Of one supposition we can be virtually certain, that both boys and girls sat silently watching as Preceptor Gale gave the morning Bible reading and praye r in front of Derb y's boys and girls together.

CHAPTER VII HIGH TIDE AT OLD DERBY The word "coeducation" was unknown in the 18SO's. Neither of tha t decade's leading dictionaries , Webster or Worcester, makes mention of it. Even today there is no satisfactory agreement upon the meaning of the word; Webster 1 treats coeducation as "the education of students of both sexes in the same classes:particularly in collegiate or university education." The current American Heritage Dictionary defines coeducation as "the education of both sexes at the same institution." (italics ours) Disregarding the "collegiate or university" contingency, according to Webster, Derby became coeducational in 1852 (whereas, acco rding to American Heritage, Derby was founded as a coeducational school). But if we accept the American Heritage definition we must also accept the fact tha t there were dozens, perhaps more than a hundred, coeducational schools in the colonies prior to Derby. Nearly every New England town school in the 1600's and l 700's, all of the early Quaker schools, and almost all church-related schools in the Middle Atlantic colonies taught both boys and girls "at the same institution," the earliest such being the Dutch Reformed Church school in 1638 in New Amsterdam, which is now New York's Collegiate School. Probably the firs t true independent coeducational schools in the country as we would think of them, with boys and girls of high school age sitting in the same classroom and doing the same school work, were Timothy Dwight' s Greenfield Hills School in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Marblehead Academy in Massachusetts, a town academy. Dwight's school was opened in 1782 with boys and girls 45

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Dwight's school was opened in 1782 with boys and girls reciting their algebra , Virgil, and Greek together in the same classroom. Marblehead, which began in 1793, followed the same procedure. Monson Academy, a town academy in Massachusetts, was forced to adopt similar measures from 1804 until 1818 because they had trouble finding a Preceptress. In fact Monson had the dubious reputation of having had sixtyone Preceptresses in its first fifty years. 2 Although by any definition Derby Academy was not one of our early coeducational schools, it did become the first such to be incorp orated in New England and the third of its kind to have been incorporated in the country. Surviving without a break from its opening in 1791 until today, under the American Heritage definition, Derby Academy is the oldest incorporated independent coeducational school in New England. 3 At the time, in 1852, when De rby first began to teach all of its children in the same classroom, the town of Hingham had reached the population level where it was supposed to have established a public high school. By then some twenty-five high schools were in operation in the Commonwealth. Most of them were teaching boys and girls together although some, such as in Roxbury, were divided into a Boys High School and a Girls High School. In 185 -5 a committee of the town was authorized to confer with the Trustees of Derby Academy with a view to ascertain "whether that institution can be made in any way to answer the purpose of a High School for the town." The Trustees appeared to be sincerely interested in seeing if an accommodation could be made. Among them were Ebenezer Gay III, former Preceptor Increase Smith, and-beyond doubt one of America's true patricians - Charles Francis Adams. 4 The town committee reported , referring to the Trustees:

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They did not feel authorized, however , to make such a change in the character and management of the institution as that proposed, without firs t obtaining the opinion of counsel, learned in the law, representing their legal powers and duties under the deed of trust and will of Mrs. Derby and the act by which they were incorporated. Ultimately the Hon. John Williams of Boston was reta ined and, after a lengthy study, he determined that In view of the foregoing facts, principles, and authorities, I have arrived at the conclusion that the Trustees of Derby Academy cannot, either by their own authority, or by any judicial or legislative interference, lawfully depart from the specified directions of the trust, so far as to accommodate the Academy to the requisitions of the existing laws for the establishment and regulation of a High school, in the town in which it is situated. Boston, February 6, 1856 JOHN

M . WILLIAMS

It was during the early 1850's that Derby gradually eased away from its unstructured format, setting up a school year of four specified terms, although there were still no class groupings or graduations. There were now two formal exercises each year, examinations in November as well as the traditional Annual Exhibition in May. The Annual Exhibition, a fixture at every New England academ y in the 19th century, began in 1756 at Harvard College as interest in oratory there grew in proportion to the number of boys determining to en ter law and politics upon graduation. Declamations were mostly given in English by boys in the top two classes.

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At Derby, Exhibitions could have begun at the completion of the first school year although our records begin with the Exhibition of 1827. They were held in Derby Hall with only the boys taking part. Girls had to be satisfied with exhibits of their needlework on display in the Lower Room. Subjects of the declamations were of a classical natu re such as "Decay of Taste and Genius in the Xth Century" by Gibbon. This was given by thirteen-year-old Sydney Howard Gay who was later to become joint author with William Cullen Bryant of their "History of the United States." Io 1856 girls participated in the declamations for the first time, although in a minor way, but in 1860 an interesting event happened which proved that all students, both boys and girls alike, were taking all subjects together. In that year's Exhibition sixteen-year-old James Hunt gave the Salutatory for the first time in Latin instead of in English. The delightful thing is that James Hunt's speech was written, Âˇn Latin, by his sixteen-year-old classmate , Caroline Cushing , and she was given credit in the program for doing so. Equality of girls and boys was finally achieved at Derby just six weeks before the Battle of Gettysburg when , at the Exhibition of 1863, eighteen-year-old Sarah Dyer became the first girl ever to deliver the Salutatory, which she did in Latin. On that same day a Valedictory address was introduced into the Exhibition exercises for the first time. It, too, was given by a girl, seventeen-year-old Anna Lane. In 1868 the Exhibition was moved across the street to the newly constructed Loring Hall, 5 although needlewo rk projects were still kept on view at Old Derby. In the Catalogue and Circular of Derby Academy th e following year it was written out that the Academy had a four year Course of Study and that "Scholars who complete the Course of Study prescribed by the Trustees, will receive a Diploma up on leaving the school." The Circular stated further:

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It is intended in the future that pupils who have completed the four years' Course of Study may remain in the school an additional year, assisting the teachers in the instruction of some of the younger classes, thus securing some of the advantages so highly prized in our Normal Schools. Derby, that year, had th1rty-eightgirls and thirty boys in school. Courses of instruction during the four years included Latin or French with Greek available, algebra, geometry, single and double entry bookkeeping, physiology, botany, chemistry, and American history, with exercises all four years in reading, spelling, penmanship, declamations, and compositions. Girls were required to "give attention to needlework" for a part of each school year. No mention was made of athletics for, although baseball had begun at Harvard, Andover, and Exeter during the 1860 's, it was not an official function of either school or college. There were four school terms in 1869-70, one for each season of the year, ending with examinations and a short vacation of one or two weeks, but with a seven-week break in the summer, from Lecture Day in mid-July until opening of the Fall Term the first week in September. Hingham residents paid one dollar and fifty cents each term per pupil, while those not from Hingham paid an additional five dollars per term per pupil, not counting room and board in private housing in the town. Entrance to the Academy was by examination, for a candidate had to be proficient in several areas before he or she could be admitted. In the Exhibition program of 1871 it was first mentioned that there would be a "Presentation of Diplomas" with a listing of the graduating class the following year . Finally, in 1873 the printed program was entitled "Annual Exhibition and Graduating Exercises."

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Such was the remarkable change in Derby Academy since the wall had been torn down between the boys and the girls schools just twenty-one years before. The girls had come a long way with Caroline Cushing , Sarah Dyer, and Anna Lane unknowingly, perhaps, becoming figureheads in the long move toward true coeducation. With the opening of the Hingham public high school in 1872 there were some who thought that Derby's eighty years of service to the town would come to an end, as it had for so many other town academies in Massachusetts after their town high schools had opened. However , in 1882, the Trustees voted "That the Treasurer be authorized to fit up the upper room to make it comfortable for a recitation room." The next year a committee of the Trustees declared it feasible to open a preparatory department to receive pupils at a younger age than could be admitted to the Academy itself. In the 1870's and 1880's the four year Course of Study was roughly similar to grades nine through twelve toda y, whereas the new preparatory department might have been considered grades five through eight. In 1885 still younger pupils were received into what was a primary school connected with the Academy (approximately grades one through four). Although these moves by the Trustees changed the nature of the school forever , they proved to be sound judgments; for the Hingham High School did take away most of the students in the upper classes. By 1899 only one pupil graduated from Derby by diploma, down from an average of ten a year just a decade earlier. Yet total enrollment remained the same, about sixty pupils, as it had been during the latter half of the century. The Board of Trustees of the 1880's had proven themselves brilliantly adaptable. How had their predecessors kept Derby alive and well during the early one hundred years of change in a country which had been almost completely agrarian at the

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time of the sch oo l's founding and which had become strongly industri al, particularly in New England? Most of the independen t schools such as Dummer, Andover, Exe ter, and Derby had been founded by single initial deeds of gift. Harvard was more fortunate because, in addition to John Harvard's small legacy of books and money, the Colony had appropriated 400 pounds to help start the colle ge . From the very beginning, however , solicitations were made both in Old England and in this country on behalf of the college, as was done by John Eliot for Roxbury Latin. Andover and Exeter were in very favorable positions because the Phillips families made addi tional gifts from time to time, the sum of which ultimately dwarfed their original endowments . However, in the Derby Academy ledger kept during the 19th century , not one single personal gift was recorded. Unlike the others, Derby had but one trust fund, Ezekiel Hersey's original estate. The Derby Trustees did remarkably well with what they had. Unlike Roxbury Latin, Dummer , and particularly Harvard , which lived on the edge of financial disaster for its first two hundred years, Derby skimmed through the 19th century without a trace of financial crisis . In 1899, operating expenses at Derby were only one-third of revenue, with the s~rplus being turned into investments; Derby never had a debt of any kind in its first one hundred years . In its beginnings as a lending institution , Derby's money that was out for personal and mortgage loa ns was turned around as soon as the loans were paid off, with hardly a day of interest being lost. When rental income on its real estate began to look less attractive, the property was sold and the proceeds reinvested in bank shares. These proved to be satisfactory investment s during the whole of the 19th century, particularly during and after the Civil War, with one case of a 100% dividend being declared. Derby supported

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the Union, and Government bonds bought during the war yielded handsomely. The only poor investment during th is period seems to have been the ownership of Commercial Wharf in H ingham, which cost the Trustees more to maintain than it earned by incoming rents. Finally this, too, was sold. With the coming of railroads, Derby 's Trustees invested in local lines starting in the late 1840's. They entered this market cautiously at first, with a few shares in the Boston & Providence , the Fitchburg RR, and the Rutland RR, where they bought a single bond. Eventually they owned both shares and bonds in the Old Colony, the Boston & Maine , and when the Western railroads opened up, bought into the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy on a continuing basis. In 1899, at the very end of the century , Derby 's income from railroad securities was 44 % of revenue , while interest from bank stocks was 40 % . Tuition brought in 13% while the remaining 3 % came from a small investment in the Nashua Manufacturing Company, interest from a savings account, and $28 interest from one last remaining personal loan. 6 The Derby Trustees, over its first one-hundred-plus years , had kept pace with the times and had done well in the ir stewardship of Madam Derby's trust. But the question has been asked, with all of its Trustee talent from the very beginning, why did Derby remain a small school while its counterparts such as Andover and Exeter grew into world class schools? The simple answer to this question is that, for one hundred years, the Trustees of the school acted within the spirit as well as the letter of the original Deed as drawn up by the Rev. Daniel Shute, approved by the original Trustee s, and signed by Sarah Derby. If a later gen eration of Trustees needed a reminder of their duties, the Hon. John Williams noted , in his 1856

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judgment of Derby Academy's possible role as the town's high school, that . .. the Academy is established and endowed for the benefit of the North Parish in Hingham, to the exclusion, except to a very limited extent, of all the other inhabitants in the town. The italics in this case are those of Williams, and he wasn't even mentioning the exclusivity of the school concerning those from other towns, other parts of the country, or from the world at large. This is in direct contrast to the "youth from every quarter" invitation which was written into the constitutions of, first , Andover, and then Exeter. The fin de siecle saw Derby as a financiall y healthy New England town academy but one with the bulk of its students in the lower grades . Although these lower grades had been woven into the fabric of the school to maintain academic continuity, this policy became, unknowingly, the saving of Derby Academy in the first years of the 20th century.

CHAPTER VIII IN SEARCH OF AN IDENTITY During the first decade of the 20th century only one or sometimes two Derby scholars each year completed the full academic course leading to a high school equivalent diploma. Rosalie Bouve received the last of these in 1911. In essence the original Derby school died thatJune . It was one of the last town academies to fall victim to the rise of the public high schools. A bare spark of life remained, however . For the following three years, Derby was teaching thirty pupils each year, their average age being only seven and eight years. Former Governor John D. Long of Boston was Presi dent of the Board of Trustees during this crucial period. One of his good friends was former Harvard U mversity President, Charles W. Eliot, who was then deeply concerned with the whole educational process in America. It was a period of sharp division between educational fundamentalists on the one hand and educational reformers on the other . Eliot was certain that reform was necessary, but he was not a total extremist. As Long and Eliot discussed the Derby problem, they were helped by a fortunate circumstance. The year 1914 was the 200th anniversary of Sarah Derby's birth. Through the efforts of the students, and of John Long and his Trustees, a major effort was made, for the first time in Derby's history , to hold a celebration and a reunion, and bring back former students from all parts of the country. The affair was highly successful, with more than three hundred people returning for the Annual Exhibition. Interest in the school soared, not only among returning alumni/ae, but among Hingham resi54

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dents and parents of potential Derby students. A new awakening had begun for Derby Academy. When school opened for the fall season in 1914, enrollment had jumped to seventy-two pupils, more than twice the number which had closed out the spring term. That September, for the first time in the school's history, Mrs. Marita Burdett, the new Pri ncipal, placed stud ents in specific grades running from kindergarten through seventh. Two years later she had added an eighth grade and by 1920 a ninth, or what was called then, a high school class. In that year there were one hundred students at Derby, an all-time high. But with this enrollment figure , the old academy building on Main Street was becoming over-crowded. In addition , as automobiles were growing more popular , the street in front of the school became clogged with traffic, for it was part of the most scenic route from Boston to Cape Cod. In 1922 the former summer campground of Boston 's socially elite First Corps of Cadets became available for purchase. It was sited on flat ground at the top of a small rise just a ten-minute walk from Old Derby Hall and out of the way of traffic. This plot of approximately thirty acres, with a mess hall and a few other buildings on it, was to be a timely answe r to Derby's need for expansion. To help buy this property, it was now, for the first time since Sarah Derby's original gift, that fu nds from other individuals were subscribed to Derby Academy. While negotiations for the property were being carried on, a Milton Academy Master, John R.P. French , was appointed to become the first Headmaster of the new Derby Academy, which was to take effect with the transfer of the property.John French, M.A., a member of the Class of 1904 at Harvard, and protege of Dr. Eliot, was a strong advocate of progressive education. He was also a member of the recently formed Progressive Education Associatio n of which Eliot was honorary President.

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French's official advisors at the new Derby Academy were President Eliot; William Field, Headmaster of Milton Academy; Henry Holmes, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education; and Eugene R. Smith, Headmaster of the newly opened progressive Beaver Country Day School. Smith was nationally known in the world of progressive education, where he chose to experiment with the new. However, like Eliot, he was conscious of the need to keep the best of the old. Stanwood Cobb, one of the founders of the Progre ssive Education Association , had this to say of its goals: "Our aim from the very beginning had in it little of modesty. We aimed at nothing short of reforming the entire school system of America ." Because most of the members we r e not educators and many were social-Marxists, the cause of the Association became highly controversial. Yet the footprints of progressive education are with us today in every school which has a manual training program, field and nature trips, and indeed almost any other activities beyond reading, writing, arithmetic, and the classics. John French spent his first year as Headmaster at the Old Derby building, but by the beginning of the 1923 fall season, the upper grades had moved to the new campus while the lower grades remained at Old Derby. That year Derby became known, officially, as "a modern country day school." A folder which was issued at the end of that first year describes the new school this way: Derby Academy Reorganized Through the generosity of friends and patrons this ancient school, for more than a centu ry an educational landmark of the South Shore, has been completely reorganized to meet present-day needs. The new school site is the former campground of the First Corps of Cadets-a thirty-acre tract bordering

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Broad Cove and including ten acres of graded play ing fields. On this site buildings have been erected which accommodate the Upper School. The Lower School remains in the old Academy Building. A Complete School Derby as now organized comprises a Kindergar te n, a complete Elementary School , and for the academic year 1924-25, two High School classes. In succeeding years additional classes will be established until complete college preparation is offered. The Kindergarten and Primary classes have a short school day. All older pupils remain for a full after noon session, with regular supervised outdoor play. For those who live at a distance a substantial noon day meal is served . Boys and girls work and play on equal terms in all departments of the school. A Progressive School Methods of instru ction and discipline at Derby, will be such as are advocated by the recognized leaders of modern educat ional thought . Witho ut sacrifice of that which has value in the old, the school is committed to the policy of utiliz ing that which proves serviceable in the rapid ly developing new education. In the shaping of this progressive policy the headmaster is assisted by an Advisory Board including the headmasters of two prominent nearby schools and the Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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Learning by Living Believing that experience is in all things the most effective teacher, and that the best preparation for life consists in living, Derby endeavors to provide for its pupils a school life so vitally interesting and so purposefu l that they th ink of school as the congenial center of their active life , rather than as something artificial and far removed from life. Abundant experience indicates that by this means the soundest results in scholarship, as well as in character building and the development of personality, are to be achieved . Derby was now, in every respect, a new school. Its method of instruction was largely based upon the Da lton Plan, which favored an "Individual System" of schooling. This plan had been brought into the Dalton, Massachuset ts high school by Helen Parkhurst, who later took it to England. By the time it returned to America it was mistakenly but commonly thought of as an English system. The Dalton Plan had, in turn, been based upon the Winnetka Technique, which had been used by Carleton Washburne in the Winnetka, Illinois schools. It had all been started, however , as early as 1912 by President Frederic Burke of San Francisco State Normal School where the system had been developed in that institution 's own model elementary school. John French, at Derby, used his own version of the "Individual System," but basically the concept eliminated lectures, recitations, and daily assignments. Each student was given a copy of the course of instruction for each subject, but was free to proceed in any given subject at his or her own speed. A test for advancement in any given subject could be asked for by each individual pupil when he or she felt ready.

IN SEAR C H OF AN IDENTITY

If the pupil failed the third grade arithmetic test, for example, the work would be repeated until he or she was ready for another try. Meanwhile, the same child might already have passed the reading test and might be doing fourth grade work in that subject at the same time. The work, itself, was divided into "common essentials" such as reading, writing, arithmetic, the sciences, and social studie s, and ele ctives which could include dramatics, art , student government , or in some cases, the classics. 1 In retrospect, it is easy to see the dangers involved in such a system. Some pupils coul d handle this freedom well, while others could not. One who did was John Shimer . He had entered Derby in the sixth grade in 1924, graduating in Derby's now fun ctioning twel fth grade in 19 31, with college board honors in English and physics. Entering Ha rvard in the fall of 193 1, he was given advance d credits in both English and German toward his degree. Ano ther pupil in that same class, Louise Taylor, had ent ered Derby in 1923. She passed her boards and was accepted at Va ssar . But the experiences of many students were similar to those of one boy who entered Derby from public school in the eighth grade and found himself totally lost. "I didn't know what was going on all year," was his comment. Fortunately for this boy, he was transferred to Browne & Nichols for his four remaining years of school, and went on to graduate with his proper class at Harvard. John French resigned as Headmaster at the end of the 1929-30 school year, moving on to found the progressive Cambridge School. Although his educational ideas were received with mixed feelings in Hingham, French was well liked as an individual. He was brilliant, cheerful, energetic, and a great outdoorsman. French was succeeded by George Frederic Cherry , Class of 1913 at Harvard, with his Master's degree from

HISTORY

OF DERBY

ACADEMY

Middlebury College. Cherry's background included teaching and coaching at Choate, Hotchkiss, Loomis, and at Avon Old Farms where he had been Dean. It was Fred Cherry 's misfortune to become head of a private (independent) school at the start of the Depression. It was also his task to turn the educational program at Derby around from its progressive format to that of a traditional school. In both cases Cherry was facing an uphill battle . In his book, I ndependent Schoolmaster,the late Claude Fuess , Headmaster at Phillips Academy during this period, had the following to say about those unsettled times: The period of the 1930's was as difficult in education as it was in economics. New types of tests were being experimented with by the College Entrance Examination Board. The advocates of progressive education were zealous in spreading their ideas, some of which were indeed major reforms. Nobody could be quite sure what direction trends would take. The problem was to keep Phillips Academy true to the best of its traditions and yet not allow it to be cramped by theories rapidly becoming obsolete. Our policy had almost necessarily to be that laid down by Alexander Pope: 'Be not the first by whom the new are Tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.' Cherry's problem was that his school had already been, in an educational sense , far left of center. Although his own inclinations may have been progressive (he was a member of the Progressive Education Association), he was to bring Derby back into a struc tured format while many other schools were drifting left. And then, of course, there was the Depression. Derby Academy was one of hundreds of independent schools to

JOHN R.P . FRENCH (Courtesy Mrs . Roger Lee Branham )

GEORGE FREDERIC CHERRY

HARRISON M. DA VIS, JR.

UPPER SCHOOL CAMPUS WITH TEMPORARY BUILDINGS 1920's - 1950's

IN SEARCH

OF AN IDENTITY

fall upon difficult financial times during the '30's . Much of this was due to obligations incurred during the optimistic 1920's when 5% bonds had been sold to buy the new campus and to make improvements on buildings and grounds. This was compounded by dro pping enrollments, little or no yield on investments, and heightened demand by vendors and suppliers for prompt payment of bills. To keep students in school at all, parents were allowed to pay whatever tuition they felt they could afford. Faculty salaries, low enough in the '20's, were cut by 20% during the Depression years. Jerome Preston , who was Treas rer of the Board during those years, said recently, "I don't know how we kept the school out of bankruptcy, but we did." Through the leadership of Arthur Whittemore as President, Preston as Treasurer, and Hollis Gleason as Secretary, and through the generous cooperation of Trust ees, bondholders, parents, and patrons, Derby did make it. One group which took hold immediately was the Parents' Association. Through an array of clothing sales, thrift sales, bake sales, book sales, sponsore d lectures, and teas, the Derby mothers continually came up with "ju st enough money" to meet a critical need. Even the children joined in, for the school could only afford one maintenance man; students and teachers cleaned their rooms and in winter did the snow shoveling . In spite of its financial problems, on October 21, 1934 , Derby celebrated the 150th Anniv ersar y of the signing of its original Deed. A modest but impres sive program was held at The Old Ship Church with addresses being given by a notable group of men and women such as Derby patron, the Rev . Cornish, the n president of the American Unitarian Association; Derby advisor William Field, Headmaster of Milton Academy; Ellen Pendleton, President of Wellesley College; and James Bryant Conant, President of Harvard Universit y. Although Derby was not as financially sound as

HISTOR y OF DERB Y AC ADE MY

could be desired , the Academy was apparently considered an outstand ing educational achievement in the minds of many . Fred Cherry, who had been Headmaste r during these difficult times , died in July of 1938. He was succeeded by Harrison M . Davis, Jr., Headmaster of the Evans School in Tucson, Arizona. Davis, a native of Salem, Massachusett s, had graduated at Loomis, and Bowdoin College , and had received his Master 's degree at Harvard. By the time Davis took over as Headmaster, the worst of Derby 's financial problems were over. Enrollmen ts increased, reaching nearly two hundred stu dents in all . grades, kindergarten through twelve , during World War II. Scholarships were being offered to wort hy Hingham children as well as to a number of English refugee children who were living with Hingham families. In its edu cational pr ogram, its sports program, and through a wide variety of extra -curricular activities, De rby had come alive. In June of 1946 a dozen young discharged war veterans were graduated from Derb y's twelfth grade. At the conclusion of the spring term of 1947, Harr ison Davis , who had been Headmaster dur ing the strong resurgence of the school, resig ned. With the fall term which started the following September , Derby entered the era which we know today.

CHAPTER IX IDENTITY FOUND: 1947-1984 In the spring of 1947 Trustees Arthur Whittemore and Jerome Preston went looking for a new Headmaster. Their search led them to the Meadowbrook School just north of Philadelphia where Edward McEachron had been Headmaster since 1941. McEachron, who was then fortyfive years old, had graduated with a Ph.B at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He had started his teaching career at the HunJunior School in Princeton, New Jersey in 1932 and had been appointed Principal there four years later, a position he held until taking over as Headmaster at Meadowbrook. Preliminary investigations and discussions had convinced the Derby Board of Trustees that Edward McEachron was the man they wanted . But when Whittemore and Preston were driven up to the Meadowbrook School and to the Headmaster's house, they considered their chances of getting McEachron to accept the position at Derby a forlorn hope. The school building and the Headmaster's house were quite lavish in comparison with what Derby had to offer. Unbeknown to the gentlemen from Hingham, the fact that Derby was not lavish was one of the strongest points in their favor. Both Mr. and Mrs. McEachron had their own priorities, one of which was to bring up their boys with traditional New England values if they could. Another was that Mr. McEachron believed in coeducation. Derby held both advantages. Any doubts which Mr. McEachron might have had about Derby were dispelled by the sterling character of the two men calling on him. Mutual respect led to the beginning of Mr. McEachron's twent y-o ne year term as 63

H I STOR Y OF D ERBY A c AD E M Y

Headmaster at Derby Academy, the longest of any Precep tor or Headmaster in the school's history at the time of th is writing. Headmaster McEachron lost little tim e in taking over the reins with a firm hand, which was to be characteristic of his entire regime. During that summer before his first school season opened , and with the app roval of the Board of Trus tees, Mr. McEachron eliminated all grades above ninth. At one stroke he established the identity of the school nearly as it exists today, thirty-seven years later : 1 Such a major change brought with it a major com municatio ns effort. For the preced ing seventeen years Derby had been considered by parents as well as the academic community to be a full college preparatory school. Althoug h during that time the majority of Derby's students had left after the eighth or ninth grades to enter public high schoo ls or other preparatory schools, the fact that Derby had changed its identity had to be made known . A part of Mr . McEachron' s respons ibilities lay in developing and maintain ing the good will of headmasters and admissions peopl e among college preparatory schools, particularly in New England. To get his students admitted to leading secondar y schools, Headmas ter McEachron went to the root of th e matter-academic excellence. In the 1940's, before the importance of reading was "discovered," Mr . McEachron stressed reading as Derby's basic discipline , closely followed by mathematics. To this he added the discipline of homework, with slight introducto ry homework beginning in the third grade and homework every school night beginn ing in the fourth grade. This practice, which is still in effect at Derby, is in contrast to that of many school systems which , today, officially do not give homework assignments in the lower gra des. 2

EDWARD C. McEACHRON

THE NEW CAMPUS, 1960-198 4

IDENTIT

Y FOUND:

1947-1984

There was still another major challenge for Mr . McEachron to face . His schoo l buildings were lite rally falling down around him. In the post-war years when towns everywhere were building handsome new public school buildings, Derby was operating in the same "temp orary " Hodgson prefabricated bu ildings which had been built in the 1920's, designed only to serve a dozen year s at most. Moreover, Derby had no library and no gymnasium . How could new students be attracted to Derby? In 1948 construction was begun on a new gymnasium, the Hersey Memorial Gymnasium, with funds partially provided from the estate of Mrs. Mary L. Hersey of Hingham as a memorial to her late father- in-law, Alfred Cushing Hersey. This was followed four years later by the Amy Dinzey Sylvester Library, given by Albert Sylvester of Cohasset in memory of his mother. In 19 5 7 the Sarah Derby Hall complex, with its auditorium and school offices was built from plans and architectural details fir st drawn by Mr. McEachron. Derby's most interesting building event took place during the summer of 1960 . On Commencement Day that June, within minutes after the parade of students, faculty, and parents had left the Upper School campus in the traditiona l march to New North Church, bulldozers began razing all of the old Hodgson buildings. On scheduled opening day in September , students returned to new classroom bu ildings and a new dining hall-study hall complex. It was a remarkable construction achievement and one which had been funded by a long list of Trustees, Patrons, and parents rather than by large individual donations. Less than six years later a new Preprimary School and Lower School unit had been built . The campus had been completely transformed . It had taken a strong Headmaster together with a committed Board of Trustees , a dedicated faculty, and the u nselfish giving by Patrons and parents to see it all happen.

H IST OR y OF DERB Y A C AD E M Y

By 1968, when Mr. McEachron retired, Derby Academy had become established in most ways as the school we know today. Its educational excellence was assured , its urgently needed rebuilding had been achieved, and eve n a small endowment base was in place. It would take a strong man to follow Edwa r d McEachron. In the 1960's, Thomas]. Waters was serving as Headmaster of the Lawrence Country D ay School on Long Island. Tom Waters and Ed McEachron had known each other casually through meetings at educational conferences and it was at one such meeting in 1967 that Tom Waters learned of McEach ron's impending retirement from Derby . Although Waters was not unhappy at Lawre nce, both Mr . and Mrs. Waters wanted a New Englan d set ting in which to raise their two young sons. This met with sympathetic response from Headmaster McEachron. Not long afterwa rd Tom arranged with McEachron for an informal visit to Derby . Tom Waters has a clear recollection of that first visit: the drive down stately Main Street, the attractiveness and warmth of the Derby campus , and the obvious pr osperity of the Academy. It seemed just the kind of plac e tha t both he and Mrs. Wat ers were seeking. At that time the Truste es' Search Comm ittee was headed by Derby alumnus and parent Alan Carr . Other members of the Committee were Board President Rudolf Talbot, Treasurer John Brewer , and John Bleak ie. After a series of interviews and visits, the Committee offered the posit ion as Headmaster to Tom Waters. He accepted immediately and in June , 1968 , th e Waters family moved into the Headmaster's house on Academy Lane. Tom Waters had been born and raised in the industrial mill town of Anson ia, Con necticut . Unt il he entered Yale in the fall of 1942 he knew little about private (independent ) schools. As Waters said recently, "Only when I found

IDEN TITY FO UN D:

1947-1984

myself competing with better-prepared Andover and Exeter types did I become aware of what such schools could offer ." After only a year at Yale , Waters was drafted and served with the army in Europe, returning to Yale in the fall of 1946 where he graduated with a major in English in 1948. As with millions of returned veterans, Waters found himself with no clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life. More as a holding action than as a career commitment, he accepted a teaching-coaching-dormitory supervisor's job at the Fay School in Southbo ro , Massachusetts. Without his realizing it, the die had been cast. Tom's entire career since then has been spent in teaching, coaching, and administration at independent schools. After two years at Fay, Waters accepted a teaching position at the Allen-Stevenson School in New York City , later becoming Assistant Headmaster. In 1960 he accepted the position of Assistant Headmaster and Head of the Lower School at The Latin School of Chicago. While there he met Rosalind Sturges (A.B. Mt. Holyoke, M .A.T. Harvard), who was teaching art at The Latin School. They were married in the summer of 1962 and in the fall Tom took over as Hea<lmaster of The Antilles School in St. Thomas , Virgin Islands. While this proved to be a unique and interesting experience, life in the tropics was not suited to them. In 1963 , Tom accepted the headmastership of the Lawrence School on Long Island, where he remained for the next five years. At Derby, in 1968, Tom Waters inherited a school which was a "going enterprise ." As a physical plant, nothing more in the way of expansion was needed until 197 3 when the study hall was transfo rme d into the George S. Terry Memorial Library through a gift from Mr s. George S. Terry in memory of her husband, a former Trustee and quiet but loyal benefactor of the school. In 1975 Gordon Berg became President of the Board of Trustees. In his business as an investment banker he had

HISTORY

OF DERBY

ACADEMY

achieved an international reputation for the successful financing of ho~pitals . His method of operation can best be seen in this paragraph from Gordon Berg's final Report to the Headmaster and Trustees of Derby Academy on June 6, 1983 , when Berg stepped down from his Presidency of the Board: At the time my term began I had certain views about the way in which Derby's paid professionals and volunteer trustees should interact . These opinions came largely from my ten years of experience as a commercial bank lending officer and from the many hospitals I financed as an investment banker . I believed then, and do now, that the major responsibility for running a school or hospital belongs to the paid, full time professionals. Trustees should be policy-makers, advisors and should perform an "oversight" role. In addition, my years as a banker taught me that no institution can survive without profits. In this same report, Berg went on to say: During my first year as president I caused the dayto-day financial affairs of the school to be transferred from the trustee -treasurer to the headmaster ... I can tell you unequivocally that Tom Waters eagerly accepted new responsibilities and he fulfilled them in a superior manner . This change in Derby Academy's traditional TrusteeHeadmaster relationship was an outstanding success. Finally, after many years, revenues exceeded expenditures. And on June 6, 1983, when President Berg relinquished office, his goal of a $1 million endowment fund had been reached. Tom Waters and Gordon Berg worked exceptionally well together. During this time a successful capital fund

THOMAS].

WATERS

NEW NO RTH CHURCH THE DERBY LECTURE AND GRADUATION JUNE 7, 1984 (Courtesy Susan Kilmartin )

lDENT

T Y FOUND:

194 7-1 984

drive enabled the school to renovate the gym nasium, modernize science facilities, improve administrative offices, renovate the c~retaker's house, make substantia l improvements to the grounds , -and to build a new Arts Building. Meanwhile, in a program to get the very best teachers possible, faculty salaries which had been below the independent school median were raised above it . By 1983 there were 242 pupils in school, a record high and close to capacity. In 1982 Derby completed a ten year Independent Schools Association of Massachusetts accreditation review. One of the comments noted was that, "Derby Academy is a fine school with a clearly and effectively maintained philosophy. A caring atmosphere is a hallmark of the Derby exper ience for students." In 1984 , when asked about pride in achievement , Waters spoke about the overall health of the schoo l, of its strengthened curriculum, of an academic program more rigorous than ever before , and of the esprit de corps th ere. Tom, himself , has been a major part of that spirit , not a figurehead . He has always been most comfortable dealing with the internal life of the school and being in the middle of it. As MarianneJacobbi wrote in her 1983 book, Bey ond the Catalog: A Guide to Boston 's Pri vate Schools, The headmaster's presence at Derby is visib le in a number of ways: he leads morning chapel, a nondenominational program at the start of the day for those in the Upper School .. . Students receive written comment from the headmaster with their grades. He teaches ninth grade English. And he works with students in second ary school place ment. As Tom Waters said in the summer of 1984 after comp leting his sixteenth year as Headmaster, "My years at

HIS TORY

OF DERB Y ACADEM

Derby have been without doubt the best of my professiona l life. I love the school and am proud to be a part of its distinguished history." That same summe r, former Headmaster Edward McEachron, said almost the identical thing. Derby is unusuall y fortunate to have had two strong and competent headmasters serve the school for a combin ed total of thirty-seven years. Between them they have established and solidified an identity which is taken for granted by a full generation of students. In whatever directions Derby goes during the next two hundred years, it will be led off by Headmaster Thomas Waters, and will be based upon the solid foundation laid down by Edw ard McEachron and Thomas Waters, two strong educators who love their school and have served it well.

NOTES Preface 1. Although everything here is factual, it has not, perhaps , been pr esented in this context before. Mr. W. Gordon McCabe has alluded to this, see Founding of Harvard College, by Samuel Eliot Moriso n, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1935, in a footnote on page 411. Other material from text of this book in Appendix C, pages 41 1-14 , and from Pocahontas, by Frances Mossiker, Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 2. Founding of Harvard College, Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvar d University Press, Cambridge , 1935, pages 41 6-18. Chapter I 1. Ibid, page 432. 2. Ibid, page 157 . 3. The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England, Samuel Eliot Morison , Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N .Y. , 1960 , page 87. 4. Ibid, pgs. 99-101. The Watertown school , in 1651, was the first in New England to specify girls rat her than "children" as students. Master Richard Norcross was ordered to teach both boys and girls arithmetic as well as writing. The Town of Watertown built his schoo l building, but Norcross 's salary came from tuitions exclusively. Many other New England town schools were teaching girls as well as boys in the 1600's. The first independent school in New England to teach both boys and girls seems to have been the Elliot School , in Jamaica Plain , which was founded in 1676, and which remained open for well over 150 years afterward . In 1692 Peter Burr took over a private school in Bosto n whe re he taught college preparatory Latin as well as English to girls as weil as to boys . 5. [bid, Chapter IV. Chapter II 1. A History of the CollegiateSchool,Jean Park er Waterbury , Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., Publisher, New York, 1965, page 31. 2. History of the Germantown Academy, Rev. William Travis, Ferguson Bros. & Co., Philadelphia, 1882, page 9. 3. Friendly Beginnings, Grace R. Wheeler, The Overseers of the Public School Founded by Charter in the Town and Count y of Philadelphia, 1982, page 19. Chapter III 1. Three Centuries of Harvard, Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard U niversity Press, Cambridge, 1936, pages 46, 74-75. 72

2. Ibid, pages 168-70 . The "Medical Institution of Harvard University" was the third Medical School to be es tablished in the colonies, after those at the Universit y of Pennsylvania in 1765, and at Columbia, in 1767. The money from Mr. Hersey's bequest thirteen years earlier was recognized but was not the founding impetus. John Warren , Samuel Adams, Jr ., and William Eustis had formed an "Anatomical Society " before the war, all three going on to become military surgeons. With Warren as leader , these and other wartime surgeons formed the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1780 , providing lectures and demonstrations at the military hospital in Boston . Two years later, the Harvard Corporation took this group "under its wing" and began elaborate plans for a medi cal school " .. . as soon as funds could be obtained . .. ." In 1782 John Warren was chosen Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, with Benjamin Waterhouse appoint ed to the chair of Theory and Pra ctice of Physic. Their salaries were expected to be paid through ~cudent fees, for the most part. Chapter IV 1. An Old N ew England School, Claude M . Fuess, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston , 19 17, page 65 . 2. Ibid, page 66. 3. It is curious to note that this phrase was similar to tha t used earlier in the 177 0 will of Ezekiel Hersey, and that attention had nae been drawn to the fact that , two years previous, the Anatomy chair and the Physic chair had been split into two separate professorships. 4. Governor Dumm er A cademy Histo ry, John W. Ragle, G overnor Dummer Academy , South Byfield, 1963, page 25 , (less references to Derby Trus tee Richard Cranch). 5. An Old New England School, Clau de M . Fuess, Houghton Mifflin Compan y, Boston , 191 7, pages 145-52. Henry Ware 's arrival at Harvard as th e firs t declared Unit ar ian to fill the mos t prestigious theological chair in New England resulted in the conservative Congregationalist split with Harvard and the establishment of thei r own Theological Seminary at Andover where it remained for 100 yearsmoving then to the Boston area where it is now known as the Andover Newton Theological School. When Phillips Academy took over the vaca ted seminary buildings, the Phillips boys found themselves instant legatees of the finest secondary school physical plant in the country. 6. Copies of Sarah Derby's Deed of Bargain and Sale and of her Deed of Lease and Release exist in pamphlet form in the Derby Academy archives , in microfilm form in the Hingham Town Library, and are 73

printed in the Education section of Hi story of the T own of H ingham, Vol. I, Part II , published by the town in 1893 , and written by Francis H . Lincoln . References to fu rther Trustee actions are taken from this book. Chapter V 1. Christopher Gore, Class of 177 6 at Harvard . Studied law und er Judge John Lowell . D erby Trustee , 1791-96 while in Boston specializing in mercantile law. On commission to ratif y the Federal Constitution in 1788. Appointed by President Washington in 1789 as first District Attorney for the Commonwealth. From 1796 to 180 4 served in London working on wart ime reparations section of the J ay Treaty. Governor of Massachusetts, 1809-10 , Unit ed States Senator from Massachusett s, 1812-16 . Lived at Gore Plac e, Wal tham, which is a Fed eral period house listed in the National Register of H istor ic Places . Ebenezer Ga y II , Class of 1789 at H arvar d, and who woul d become a Derb y Trustee , studie d law under Gore . Judge J ohn Lowell, Class of 1760 at Harvard. Specialist in admiralt y law. Derby Truste e, 1794 until his death in 1802 . Delegate to the General Court , to the State Constitutional Convention, and to the Continental Congress. Admiralty CourtJudge. Appointed by President Washington as Judge of the Federal District Court . One of original Directors of the Massachusetts Bank (now Bank of Boston ) which was incorporated in 1784. Member of the Harvard Corporation, Trustee of Phillips Academy and of the Roxbury Latin School. Reputed to have commissioned Paul Revere to cut the seal of Phillips Academy, where one of the Judge 's sons was preparing for Har vard. 2. From letter owned by th e lat e Dr. A.S .W. Rosenbach, as reprinted in The Boston Herald, October 4 , 1925 . 3. An Old New England School, Claude M. Fuess , Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston , 191 7, pages 135 -37. 4. Ibid, pages 81-82. 5. A Narrati ve, Etc. Thomas Thaxter. Hand written fly-leaf date of 1836 . Joseph Richardson , the controversial ministerial candidate in question was reputed to have had a breach of contract suit pending against him, brought by a Westford girl named Betsy Robinson . He was also alleged to have struck a Navy Commodore in a public place in Charlestown, and to have been caned by his erstwhile best friend . H e was also overheard , outside the church in Concord , to have condemned the ministry in general and to have rued the day he had entered that field. Nevertheless, Richardson won the pulpit at The Old Ship Church

where he remained as active minister for forty-nine years, and as minister emeritus for another sixteen . During this period he also served severa l terms in the state legislature and one term in Congress. He was officially rebuked by Derby Academy, however, never being asked to become a Trustee although his associate pastor, Calvin Lincoln, was elected a Trustee . It is reported that one hundred years later , in the first decade of the 20th centu ry, members of each church, Old Ship and N ew North, would only call upon physicians in their own respective congregations to take care of them when they were sick. 6. HoraceMann,Jonathan Messerli, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972, New York. Chapter VI 1. In his book, Two Years Before the Mast , Richard He nry Dana,Jr. refers to a crew member from Hingham as being from "bucket-tow n." 2. History of the Town of Hingham, Francis H. Lincoln, various sections. 3. History of the Roxbury Latin School, Richard Walden Hale, J r., The Trustees 6f the Grammar School in the Easterly Part of the Town of Ro xbury, 1946, page 105. 4. An Old New England School, Claude M. Fuess, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1917, pages 133-34 . 1,031 boys had entered Phillips Academy, Andover, in the 30-year period, 1780-1810. Of this number, 3 71 went on to college, or 3 5.9 % of the total, averaging abo ut 11. 5 boys per year. Andover did not keep records of the number graduating from college. Phillips Exeter Academy, A History , Laurence M. Crosbie, Printed for the Academy, 1923. 1,991 boys had entered Phillips Exeter Academy in the SO-year period from 1788 through 1838. 4 74 of these boys graduated from college, or 23 .8% of those who had entered Exeter, averaging 9.8 boys per year. Exeter did not keep records of the total number of its boys who entered college. Chapter VII 1. Webster's Deluxe Unabridged Dictionary , Second Edition, under the general supervision of Jean McKechnie, Dorset and Baber , 1979. 2. Old New England Academies, Harriet Webster Marr, Comet Press Books, New York, 1959 . 3. There are some who might feel that the Moses Brown Schoo l is the oldest coeducational school in New England among those which have survived. It began as the Yearly Meeting School on November 8, 1784 , just three days before Derby was incorporated, and being a Quaker school , it was coeducational. The school was then located in an upper room of the Friends Meeting House in Portsmouth, R .l.,

but it closed down within a year. The school was resumed in January of 1819, this time in Pro vidence, through the benefactions of Moses Brown , one of Rhode Island's wealthiest men . The school remained coeducational until 1926 when it became a boys ' school, which form it kept for fifty years, until 1976, when it once again became coeducational. 4. Charles Francis Adams , Boston Latin School and Class of 1825 at Harvard, was a Derby Trustee from 1850 until 1861 when he left to become the United States Minister to the Court of St. James's in England during the American Civil War. He was the son of President John Quincy Adams and the grandson of President John Adam s. Charles Francis was succeeded on the Derby Board of Trustees by his son, John Quincy Adams II. 5. Loring Hall was donated by Col. Benjamin Loring to the Trustees of Loring Hall for the use of the townspeople for religious, or political meetings, and for social entertainments. In his will, however, he specified that if the Trustees of Loring Ha ll felt that they could not maintain the building properly, it was to be bequeathed to Derby Academy, which eventually did happen . 6. Derby Academ y Ledger , 1820-1900. Chapter VIII 1. The Transformation of the School, Lawrence A. Cremin, Alfred A . Knopf, New Yark, 1961. The entire book should be read by thos e who wish to know the story of progressive education in America . Cremin's sub-title is Progressivism in American Education, 18 7 6-19 5 7. Chapter IX 1. Possibly the only difference in the school's structure in 194 7 was th e existence of a Nursery School (ages 2 1/2-3) at that time. This had been started during the final year of Harrison Davis 's regime by Miss Isabella Curtis, who had suggested it and who had sole responsibili ty for it . The Nursery School was continued for a few years under Headmaster McEachron. Miss Curtis, now Mrs . John Tolman, is on e of two faculty member s still at Derby who began during the Davis period, the other being Assistant Headmaster Frank Ranieri. 2 . Key to academic excellence was and is a good faculty . Edward McEachron's first move in this direction was to re -hire Frank Ranieri on a permanent basis rather than as a temporary teacher . Marius E. Johnston, Jr. , who had begun teachin g under Davis , was to remain until his retirement in 1978. Among other outstanding teachers during this period were Mrs. Delan o, Mrs. May, Bill Russell, Mr . and Mrs. Stewart , Mary Talbot, Madam Van Brunt, Mrs . Warren , and Pauline Wayne. 76

APPENDIX

A Listing of Existing Educational InstLutions of the Eastern Seaboard Colonies Which Preceded Derby Academy in The ir Founding Dates

--..J

Harvard Univ .

Co lleg iat e Schoo l

Roxbur y Latin Schoo l

H opkins Gra mmar Da y Prosp ec t Hi ll Schoo l Hopkin s Hi gh Schoo l

1636

1638

1645

1660

1749

1746 1746 1748

1742 1744

1701 1709 1728 1740

1697

1693

1689

Frie nds Select Schoo l Th e Will iam Pe nn Chart er Schoo l Co lleg e o f William and Mary Abin gto n Frie nds School Yale U nive rsity Trinit y Schoo l N orfo lk Academy Uni v. o f Pe nns ylvania Moravian Academy West N ott ingham Academ y Linden H all Prin ceton Univ ersity Wi lmin g ton Frie nds Schoo l W ashing to n & Lee Univ e rsit y

Boston Latin Schoo l

1636

1667

Current Name of Schoo l or Co llege

Founding Year

Lititz, PA Prin ceto n, NJ Wilm ington, DE Lexington, VA

Phil adelphia , PA Phil adelphia , PA Williamsbur g, VA J e nkin to wn, PA N ew H aven, CT N ew Y ork , NY N o rfolk , VA Phil ade lphi a, PA Bethl e hem, PA Co lor a, MD

Had le y, MA

W . Roxbury , MA N ew Haven, CT

N ew Y ork , NY

Cambri dge, MA

Boston, MA

Locat ion

Frie nds

Moravian

Mora vian Presbyt e rian

Anglican Town of N o rfolk Private ly fun ded

Frie nds

Frie nd s

Private ly fund ed , Town of H ad ley Frie nd s

Private ly fun ded, T own of Bosto n Massachu sett s Bay Colon y Dut ch W es t India Com pan y Priv ately fu nded N o n-sec tarian N ew H ave n Co lony

Affi liation at Founding

Mo ravian Pr esbyterian Frie nds

Mora vian Pres byterian

Co ngregational An glican Anglican Anglican

Friends

Anglican

Friends

Congregational

Refor med Pro testant Dut ch Ch urc h Co ngr egational

Congregatio nal

Co ng reg atio nal

Denominationa l Overtones (if any) at Founding

X X

Boys On ly

Both

at Foundi ng

Girls On ly

St udents Admitted

-.._J

Governor Dummer Academ y Brown University

Rutgers Preparatory School Rutgers University

Dartmouth College Salem Academy

Newark Academy

1763

1766

1769 1772

1774

Plymouth Meeting Friends School Phillips Exeter Academy Dickinson College Washington College

Friends School Moses Brown School

Harrisburg Academy

Derby Academy

1780

1783 1783

1784 1784

1784

Carlisle, PA Charlestown, MD Baltimore , MD Providence, RI Harrisburg, PA Hingham, MA

Plymouth Meeting, PA Exeter, NH

New Brunswick , NJ Hanover, NH Winston-Salem, NC Livingston, NJ Andover, MA

Non-sectarian

Privucely funded Non-sectarian Privately funded Non-sectarian

Liberal Congregational/ Unitarian

Friends Friends

Congregationa l

Friends

Congregationa l

Presbyterian

Congregationa l Moravian

Baptist Durch Reformed Church

Congregational

Anglican

Anglican Non-sectarian

Friends Friends

Privately funded Non-sectarian

Privately funded Non-sectarian Privately funded Non-sectarian Friends

Moravian

Privately funded Non-sectarian Privately funded Non-sectarian

Privately funded Non-sectarian Kings College (now Columbia Univ.) Privately funded Non-sectarian

X X

Two other schools surv ive in the United States , which were founded during the early years, but they were not in the Eastern Seaboard Colonies: 1) the Convene of the Ursulin es, founded in New Orleans in 172 7. 2) Washington College Academy, founded in Tennessee in l 780.

1781

Phillips Academy

1778

1766

Providence, RI Somerset, NJ

Byfield, MA

Columbia Grammar School

1763

1764

New York, NY Germantown, PA New York, NY

Columbia University Germantown Academy

1754 1759

APPENDIX

Biographical Notes of the Original Trustees of The Derby School

EBENEZER GAY Ebenezer Gay was the third minister of Hingham's First Parish and was destined to serve there for sixty-nine years in that capacity, longer than any man before or since. He was born in Dedham in 1696, graduated at Harvard College in 1714, and was ordained in Hingham in 1718. He died on Sunday morning, March 8, 1787 while preparing for that day's church services; he was ninety-one years old. Gay was a liberal Congregationalist in theology but conservative in politics. It is an unlikely paradox that, during the 1700's, he kept the love and membership of his congregation while moving them from an inherited Calvinism into what became Unitarian rationalism. At the same time, he remained a wartime Loyalist while his congregation, for the most part, became wartime revolutionists . It is a measure of Gay's dignity, softened by compassion , that these seemingly incompatible circumstances were met and lived with without stridency or controversy. Dr. Gay's grandson, Ebenezer II, and great-grandson, Ebenezer III, later became Trustees of Derby Academy , as did his great-granddaughter's husband, Dr . Robert T.P. Fiske . Dr. Gay 's homestead on North Street in Hingham is occupied, today, by a descendent, Ebenezer Gay, who was Class of 1944 at Derby. His son, Eben , was Class of 1972.

DANIEL SHUTE Daniel Shute became the first minister of Hingham's Third (now Second) Parish. He was born in Malden in 1722, graduated at Harvard in 174 3, and was ordained in Hingham in 1746. His ministry at Second Parish was to last fifty-six years. Like the Rev. Gay, Shute was a liberal Congregationalist in theology, but unlike Gay, he followed the revolutionary cause in politics . In 1780, Shute was a delegate to the convention to frame a Constitution for the new State of Massachusetts, and 81

in 1788 was a representative at the Massachusetts convention to ratify the Constitution of the United States. On this occasion, Shute actively debated against the proposed "religious test" clause for those holding office in the Federal government. Shute's son, Daniel, who had served in the war as a surgeon in the Continental army, later became a Derby Trustee, as did his grandson, Daniel. The Shute homestead , which is no longer in the family , is on the southeast corner of Main Street and South Pleasant, in Hingham.

JOHN THAXTER,

Senior

John Thaxter was born in Hingham in 1721 , graduated at Harvard in 1741, and died in 1802. Although he styled himself"farmer, " he had served the town as constable , selectman, town treasurer , and representative to the Gener al Court. He had been Colonel in a King's Service regimen t before the war in which his first cousin, Benjamin Lincoln , had been his Lieut-Colonel. Thaxter's own opinions abou t the split with England are not known , but he did not take any part in the war. His son,John,Jr. , became an original Trustee and his niece, Lucy Lane, became the school's first Preceptress. The spacious Thaxter homestead is now the Hingham Community Center, at the corner of South and Centra l streets.

BENJAMIN

LINCOLN,

Senior

At the time Benjamin Lincoln was asked to become a Derby Trustee he was living at his family home in Hingham and operating a flour and grain mill doing business under the name of Benjamin Lincoln & Son. But Benjamin Lincoln was not an ordinary everyday miller. Before that year, 1784 , Lincoln had , at one time or another, been constable , selectman, and town clerk of Hing82

ham, representative to the General Court, and representative to the revolutionary Provincial Congress. H e rose from Lieut-Colonel to Major General during the war, was badly wounded in battle, received Cornwallis's surrender sword at Yorktown, was chosen Secreta ry of War, and was elected the first President of the Society of the Cincinnati, which position he held until his death . In 1784 h~ was appointed a commissioner to work out a treaty with the Penobscot Indians, which position he held working with the Creeks, and again with the Western Indians. He commanded the .militia which suppressed Shay's rebellion, was elected Lieut-Governor of Massachusetts, was a member of the convention which ratified the Constitution of the Un ited States, was appointed by President Washington to be the first Collector of the Port of Boston, and was Commander of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. Benjamin Lincoln had never attended college. In 1780 Harvard awarded him an honorary M.A . Lincoln was born in 173 2 and later married Mary Cushing of Pembroke, whose sister , Deborah, was the wife of Daniel Shute. Two of his sons were to become Derby Trustees; his daughter, Hannah, married Abner Lincoln, the first Preceptor, who was also a Trustee. Lincoln died in 1810. His homestead at the corner of North and Lincoln streets in Hingham is still occupied by his descendents.

WILLIAM CUSHING William Cushing was born in Scituate in 1732, graduated at Harvard in 1751 , and died in 1810. He was to become the first President of the Derby Trustees, a post he retained for Derby's first crucial twenty years. Like so many young college graduates of that time, Cushing taught school for one year after graduation, in his case at Roxbury Latin. After reading law and working within the judicial system in Boston, he went to Pownalboro in the 83

District of Maine to handle Provincial affairs there. At that time,Joh n Adams of Braintree was serving as a Circuit Court Judge in the Dist rict. In the early '70's, Cushing returned to Boston where he was appointed J udge of the Superior Court, a position which had been held for many years by his father. In 177 5, when the careers of men in high places depended upon their loyalties, a revolutionary council of state took over the government of Massachusetts. Every member of the judi ciary was asked his decision. All but Cushing stepped down and declared their allegiance to the Crown. Cushing wavered. After much soul-searching he threw in his lot with th e revolutionary government and was appointed a member of the new Supreme Judicial Court. Although Cushing's future was assured, John Adams noted his indecision and, from that time on, never fully trusted him. John Adams was appointed Chief Justice of this Court but never to ok his seat , with Cushing acting in his stead until 1777 , when Adams officially resigned. Cushing then became Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which position he held for the following twelve years, and during which time he was appointed a Derby Trustee. Among oth er activities, Cushing was a member of the convention which framed the first state Constit ution and had been Vice President of the convention, in Massachusetts , which ratified the Federal Constitution. When the United States Supreme Court was organized in 1789, Cushing was appointed an Associate Justice. Later, with Chief Justice JohnJay spending most of his time in London working on the Jay Treaty, Cushing served as Acting Chief Justice. In 1796 when Jay resigned, President Washington appointed Cushi ng Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, which position he held for one week, re signing because of ill health, although he remained on the bench as an Associate Justice. 84

Although Cushing's homestead no longer exists, that portion of Route 3A running between l:fingham and the North River is named Chief Justice Cushing Highway in his honor. A memorial tablet to honor him is located alongside the highway in Scituate.

NATHAN

CUSHING

Little is known of Trustee Nathan Cushing. His father, William Cushing's father, and the father of bo th Mary Lincoln and Deborah Shute were first cousins. Nathan graduated with the Harvard Class of 1763 and became a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. His daughter, Abigail, was to marry Dr. Cushing Otis, who later became a Derby Trustee . Nathan Cushing's home was in Scituate.

COTTON TUFTS Cotton Tufts was born in Medford in 1732, graduated at Harvard in 1749, and became Master of the Hingham tax-supported town college preparatory school that same year , a post he held for two years. He then re turned to Medford where he was tutored in medicine by his elder brother, a doctor , who had taken over their father's practice there. When a d i phtheria epidemic broke out in Weymouth, young Tufts went to that town to be of service, remained there and married Lucy Quincy of the South Shore's leading family. After Lucy's niece, Abigail, had married John Adams, Tufts became the Adams's family doctor. Being only twelve years older than Abigail Adams , Cotton was: of course, her favorite uncle. And because of John Adams's long absences from Braintree on government business, Tufts became their financial advisor as well. It was he who arranged the purchase of "Peacefield," the Adams homestead in Quincy.

Tufts was a delegate to the convention to ratify the United States Constitution, and became a major figure in organizing the Massachusetts Medical Society, of which he became President. Tufts was to serve as a Derby Trustee longer than any of the original members, a period of thirty-one years, the last eleven as President until his death in 1815.

RICHARD CRANCH Richard Cranch was born in 1726 in Kingsbridge , Devonshire, and came to this country in 17 46 at the age of twenty. He settled in Braintree as a watchmaker, which was his trade , although he must have had a grammar schoo l education in England, for his knowledge of the classics and fine arts was already extensive. What set Cranch apart from others was his delightful personality. This was in direct contrast to the rather dou r aspect of] ohn Adams who, nevertheless, found Cranch to be his best friend during their bachelor days in Braintree. This close friendship lasted all of their lives. In the course of time, both boys found themselves visiting the parsonage of the Rev. William Smith in Brain tree. While Cranch was courting one daughter, Mary, he took time to tutor another daughter , Abigail, in various academic subjects. After Mary and Richard Cranch were married, Adams began tutoring Abigail, and finally they , too, were married. Meanwhile, Cotton Tufts had married the girls' aunt Lucy Quincy. John Thaxter had, long before , married their older first cousin, Anna Quincy. Cranch tried his hand at various business ventures, at one time moving to Boston, at another to Salem, and yet again to Hingham. The Cranches, ultimately, returned to Braintree where he served his constituency as a representative to the General Court for many years. He was later to become a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Boston . In 1780 he was awarded an honorary M.A. by Harvard.

JOHN THAXTER, Junior John was born in Hingham in 1755, graduated at Harvard in 177 4, and died at the early age of thirty-seven in 1792. Immediately after his graduation, youngJohn went to Braintree to study law under his mother's kinsman, John Adams. Although Thaxter was there to study law, Adams was away at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia as much as he was at home. As a result, young Thaxter was given the task of tutoring the Adams children, one of whom was John Qu incy, who was eight years of age at the time . John Quincy Adams was later to become the sixth Pres ident of the United States . Shortly after Thaxter had arrived at the Adams house in Braintree, Abigail decided to pack up the whole establish ment and move into a house in Boston where everyone would be innoculated for smallpox . This was no easy thing in those days, for those being innoculated had to remain in one house for at least a month. The Adamses stayed two months. John Adams, himself, ha d been innoculated some time before this and was not with the group, but Abigail, her three children, John Thaxter , Jr., and Richard and Mary Cranch made up the party. Nine years later Cranch and youngJohn Thaxte r were to be together again as Trustees of the Derby School. It was fortunate that Thaxter had been innoculated , for the next nine years would find him in Philadelphia, as a secretary to the Continental Congress, and later in France as John Adams' s personal secretary. Adams was there as one of Âˇthree Americans to work out the forthcoming Treaty of Paris, which was to officially sever the ties between England and the new country. Although Thaxter didn't contract smallpox abroad, he came back to Hingham in 1784 in ill health. John moved on to set up his law practice in the town of Haverhill, where he died eight years later. 87

BENJAMIN LINCOLN, Junior Benjamin Lincoln, Jr. was born at the family homestead in Hingham in 1756, graduated at Harvard in 1777 , and married Mary Otis, who was the daughter of Patriot James Otis of Boston. Lincoln was a lawyer, living in Boston, and quite possibly was the lawyer who did the first draft of all the paperwork relating to Derby's founding. He died in 1788 at the age of thirty-two. His widow, Mary, was later to marry the Rev. Henry Ware directly after he had taken over the Hollis chair at Harvard, but she, too, died shortly afterward. For a brief time, then, even Trustee Henry Ware had been brought into the true Derby Family. It was Mary's first cousin, Mary Allyn Otis, who married Ebenezer Gay II, which finally closed the circle, bringing a family relationship into the families of all original Trustees.

ABNER LINCOLN Abner, as first Preceptor, was also declared a Trustee of the school, although he had no part in the formation of its original Deed. He was born in 1766, graduated at Harvard in 1788, and became a true member of the first Derby family in 1791, just one month after he opened the school doors, when he married Hannah Lincoln, daughter of General Benjamin Lincoln. Abner died in Hingham at the age of sixty in 1826. Notes to Appendix B 1. References to Ebenezer Gay, Daniel Shute, both Thaxters, and the

three Lincolns are from History of the Town of Hin gham, Vol. I, Part II, by Francis H. Lincoln, and ibid, Vols. II and III, by George Lincoln . Published by the Town, 1893 . 2. All references to the Adams family, to Cotton Tufts, to Richard Cranch, and part to John Thaxter, Jr., are from Dearest Friend, by Lynn Withy, The Free Press, New York, 1981, and from Dictionar y of American Biography, Charles Scribner 's Sons, New York, 1935. 3. Reference to William Cushing from The Li ves and Times of the Chief justi ces of the Supreme Court of the United States, Lippincott, 1839, by Henry Flanders. 4 . Reference to Nathan Cushing from Sibley's Har vard Graduates, by Clifford K. Shipton, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1970.

APPENDIX C TRUSTEES OF DERBY ACADEMY 1984 President Treasure r Secretary

Joseph G. Cook , Jr. Ha rry W. Healey, Jr. Ronald B. Schram Mrs. Edward M. Guild Mrs. Evelyn F. Hitchcock Robert C. Jordan Dr. Clarence E. Kylander Mrs. Richard D. Leggat David G. Lubrano Mrs. Paul L. Lualdi Eli Manchester V cevold Otis Strekalovsky James B . Tiffin Dr. Arnold E. Wolfe TRUSTEES EMERITI Gordon H . Berg Alan G . Carr Jerome Preston, Sr. Samuel Wakeman

GLOSSARY A Compendium of First and Oldest Educational Institutions of the Eastern Seaboard Colonies As we have seen in Appendix A, some thirty -five schools and colleges have survived which were founded in the Atlantic Seaboard Colonies (or former Colonies) prior to 1784 . In making this glossary from those in this list, great care was taken regard ing the subtleties and fine technicalities involved. For example, there is a major difference betwee n "first" and "oldest" although a given school could be both . School and college names used here are those currently in use. The American Heritage . Di ctionary definition of coeducation is the one used, that of boys and girls in the same institution. The Footnotes to this glossary are important . 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

Oldest educational institution. Boston La ti n School First and oldest college preparatory school. Boston Latin School First and oldest college . Harvard College First and oldest independent school (non-tax supported). Collegiate School First independent coeducational school. Collegiate School First and oldest independent school (neither tax nor church suppo rted). Roxbury Latin School Oldest boys' school of any kind. Roxbury Lat in School First and oldest incorporated college . 1 Harvard College

1636 1636 1636 1638 1638 1645 1645 1650

Oldest independent coeducational school. Friends Select The William Penn Charter School 10. Oldest Southern educational institution. College of William and Mary 11. First and oldest incorporated school. 2 The William Penn Charter School 12. First girls' board ing school. 3 Moravian Academy 13. First boys' boarding school. 4 Moravian Academy 14. Oldest girls ' boarding school. Linden Hall 15. First and oldest boarding school in New England. Governor Dummer Academy 16. First and oldest medical school. University of Pennsylvania 17. First and oldest university. 5 University of Pennsylvania 18. First and oldest incorporated academy. 6 Phill ips Academy 19. Oldest independent coeducational school in New England. 7 Derby Academy 20. Oldest incorporated coeducational school in New England. Derby Academy

1689 1689 1693 1697/8 1742 1742 1746 1763 1765 1779 1780

1784

Glossary Notes 1. Harvard College was founded in 1636 (see No. 3) but was not incorporated until 1650. 2. The William Penn Charter School was founded in 1689 (see No. 9) but was not incorporated until 1697/98. 3. The Moravian Seminary for Girls was the first girls' boarding school (1742). In 1971 it merged with the boys ' Mo ravian Preparatory School, which had also been founded in 1742 , to become the coeducational Moravian Academy. Its rights to remain the oldest girls' boarding school were thereby surrendered to Linden Hall, a Moravian school which still remains a girls' boarding school. 4 . See Note 3 above. The boys' Moravian Preparatory School was the first boys ' boarding school (1742). After its merger with the Seminar y

for Girls, it, too, surrendered its rights to the "oldest." However , in this case no claimant to that title is known, for all subsequent boys' boarding schools in this study have become coeducational. We may wonder why the boarding school idea was so strong in our Moravian schools. In answer to this question, the author received a letter from Rebecca H. Heck, Chairman of the De velopment Committee of Moravian Academy, dated September 7, 1983. We quote one pertinent paragraph: The Moravian communal life style dictated tha t all children live and be educated in their appropriate "choir ." After co-ed nursery school age (5-6) all boys and girls lived and were educated in the institutions prepared for them under the auspices of the Provincial Elders Conference, the governing body of the church. In addition to the two Moravian schools seen in Notes 3 and 4, Linden Hall in Pennsylvania, and Salem Academy in North Carolina are both Moravian girls' boarding schools. Salem College developed out of Salem Academy with both now sharing certain administrative officers as well as parts of the same Winston-Salem campus. 5. The University of Pennsylvania was founded in 1749 as a tuition Academy, later becoming a degree granting college , finally becoming a University in 1779 . 6 . Phillips Academy was founded in 177 8 but was not incorporated un til 1780. 7. Derby is the oldest independent coeducational school in New England but was not the first. We have seen in Note 4 to Chapter I and in Chapter VII that Derby was preceded by at least three independent coeducational schools in New England, although none of them have survived.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Allis, Frederic S., Jr., Youth from Every Quarter, Phillips Academy, University Press of New England, Hanover, N.H., 1979. Burr , Fearing, and George Lincoln, The Town of Hingham in the Civil War, The Town of Hingham, 1876. Catalogue of the Boston Latin School, March 1982. Cremin, Lawrence A., American Education , The Colonial Experience, Harper & Row, New York, 1970. Cremi n, Lawrence A., American Education, The National Experience, Harper & Row, New York, 1980 . Cremin, Lawrence A. , The Transformation of the School, Alfred A. Knopf , New York, 1961. Crosbie, Laurence M ., The Phillips Exeter Academy, A History, Printed for the Academy, 1923. Derby Academy Enrollment Books, 1830-1870. Derby Academy Ledger, 1820 -1900. Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1935 . Fantel, Hans, William Penn, William Morrow & Company, Inc., New York, 1974 . Fennelly, Catherine, Town Schooling in Early New England, Old Sturbridge Village Booklet Series, Meriden, Conn., 1962 . Flanders, Henry, The Lives and Times of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, Lippincott, 1839. Forbes, Esther, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1942. Fuess, Claude M., An Old New England School, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 191 7. Fuess, Claude M., Independent Schoolmaster,Little Brown and Company, Boston, 1952. Greenslet, Ferris, The Lowells and Their Seven Worlds, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1946. Hale, Richard Walden, Jr., History of the Roxbury Latin School, Tru stees of the Grammar School in the Easterly Part of the Town of Roxbury, 1946. 93

Harvard Alumni Bulletin, Some of Harvard's Endowed Professorships, Harvard Bulletin, Boston, October 14, 1926. Lentz, Robert, Beams of That Sun, The Newark Academy, Livingston, N.J., 1976. Levi, Eve, The Friends Select Journal, The Friends Select School, 1976. Lincoln, Francis H., History of the Town of Hingham, Vol. I, Part II, Ecclesiastical, Education sections, Published by the Town, 1893. Lincoln, George, History of the Town of Hingham, Vols. II & III, Genealogical , Published by the Town, 1893. Mann, Horace, Tenth Annual Report of the First Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, Dutton and Wentworth, Boston, 1849. Marr, Harriet Webster, Old New England Academies, Comet Press Books , New York, 1959. Messerli, Jonathan, Horace Mann, Alfred A . Knopf, New York, 1972. Middlekauff, Robert, Ancients and Axioms, Secondary Education in 18th Century New England, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1963. Morison, Samuel Eliot, Builders of the Bay Colony, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1930. Morison, Samuel Eliot, Maritime History of Massachu setts , Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1941. Morison, Samuel Eliot, The Founding of Harvard College, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1935. Morison, Samuel Eliot, The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England , Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1960. Morison, Samuel Eliot, Three Centuries of Harvard, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1936. Mossiker, Frances, Pocahontas, Alfred A. Knopf, New York , 1976. McCaughey, Robert, Josiah Quincy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1974. Ragle, John W., Governor Dummer Academy History, Governor Dummer Academy, South Byfield, Mass., 1963. 94

Ruoff, Henry W ., The Century Book of Facts, The KingRichardson Company, Springfield, Mass., 1902. Russell, Francis, Forty Years On, Th; Roxbury Latin School , West Roxbury , Mass. , 1970. Sargent, Porter, Publisher, The Handbook of Private Schools, Porter Sargent Publishers, Inc., Boston, 1983. Shipton, Clifford K ., Sibley's Harvard Graduates, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1970. Smith , Thomas Page, Sarah Derby, Trustees of Derby Academy, Hingham , Mass ., 1957. Sperduto, Frank V ., A History of Rutgers Preparatory School, Rutgers Preparatory School, Somerset, NJ., 1967. Syms-Eaton Museum, The Syms-Eaton Story, Horn Book Series , Syms-Eaton Museum , Hampton, Va. Thaxter, Thomas, A Narrative , Etc., circa 1836. Travis, Rev. Wi liam, History of the Germantown Academy , Ferguson Bros. & Co. , Philadelphia, 1882. Waterbury,Jean Parker, A History of Collegiate School, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., New York , 1965. Wertenbaker , Thomas Jefferson, The Puritan Oligarchy, Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1947. Wheeler, Grace R. , Friendly Beginnings, The Overseers of the Public School Founded by Charter in the Town and County of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, 1982. Whichard, Rogers Dey, A History of Norfolk Academy, Norfolk Academy, Norfolk, Va., 1978. Withy, Lynn , Dearest Friend, The Free Press, New York, 1981. Woodward, W.E., The Way Our PeopleLived, E.P . Dutton & Company, Inc., New York, 1944 .

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To the late Samuel Eliot Morison for his wealth of material on early education in America; to Hingham's 19th century historians, Francis H. Lincoln, and George Lincoln; and to the Headmasters, Archivists, and Development Directors of the many schools listed in Appendix A who provided their own histories, answered questions, and cheerfully gave of their time. To Jack Ragle, former Headmaster of Governor Dummer Academy, whose initial advice was most helpful; and to Jane Strekalovsky, Director of Development at Derby, for her co-operation as archivist. To C.Jay Lafferty,Jr., who served as Principal Editor; to Jay Sadlon, James Godwin, and Martha Roscoe who served as editors and readers; to Rudi Kylander and Ronny Waters for technical assistance, and to the following people who were interviewed: Mrs. Roger Lee Branham, George Col e, Morton Cole, Marius Johnston, Edward McEachron, Jerome Preston, Frank Ranieri, Mrs. George S. Terry, and Mrs. John Tolman. To Jaclyn Green and Nancy Lang, of AlterText, for typesetting, and to Barbara Curtis, of Halliday Lithograph, who manufactured this book. Final acknowledgments go to Ebenezer Gay of Hingham and Vinalhaven for his kind and intelligent insight during these past one and one-half years, and to Thomas]. Waters, without whose help and understanding this book could not have happened.

INDEX Abington Friends School 8, 78 Adams, Abigail 16, 30, 85, 86, 87 Charles Francis 43 , 46, 76 John (President) 16, 27, 30, 31, 76, 84, 85, 86, 87 John Quincy (President) 22, 23, 76, 87 John Qu incy II 4 3, 76 Samuel 2 Samuel , J r. 73 Thomas Boylston 30 Allen-Stevenson School 67 Andover Newcon Theological School 7 3 Andrew , Gov. John 43 Antilles School , The 67 Avon Old Farms 60

Conant, James Bryant 61 Cook, Joseph G. , Jr. 89 Corlet, Elijah 3 Cornish, The Rev. Louis 61 Cranch, Mary 86, 87 Cranch, Richard 16, 22, 23, 30, 31 , 86, 87 Cremin , Lawrence A. 76 Cromwell , Oliver 8 Cros bie, Laurence M. 7 5 Curtis, Miss Isabella - see Tolman, Mrs. John Cushing, Abigail 85 Caroline 48 , 50 Deborah 83, 85 Mary 83, 85 Nathan 16, 30, 85 William 16, 20, 26, 30, 83-85 Dalcon Plan, The 58 Dana, Richard Henry, Jr. 75 Dartmouth College 35, 79 Davis , Harrison M., Jr. 62, 76 Dawes, Elizabeth 30 Delano, Mrs. 76 Derby, Richard 11, 12 Derby , Sarah 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 31, 52, 54, 55 Dickinson College 9, 79 Dorchester School 3 Dummer School-see Governor Dummer Academy Dwight, Timothy 45-46 Dyer , Sarah 48, 50

Beaver Country Day School 56 Berg, Gordon H . 67-68 , 89 Bleakie, John 66 Boston Latin School 2, 3, 4, 76, 78, 90 Bouve, Rosalie 54 Bowdoin Colleg e 62 Brewer , John 66 Bristol Academy 28 Brooks, The Rev . Phillips 2 Brown University 43, 79 Browne & Nichols School 59 Bulfinch, Charles 2 Burdett, Marita 55 Burke, Frederic (Pres.) 58 Burr, Peter 72 Cambridge School 3, 59 Carr , Alan G . 66, 89 Charlestown School 3 Cheever, . Ezekiel 3 Cherry, George Frederic 59, 60, 62 Choate School , The 60 Cobb, Stanwood 56 Collegiate School 7, 45, 78, 90 Columbia Grammar 9, 79 Columbia University 73, 79

Eliot, Charies W. (Pres.) 54, 55, 56 Elizabeth I, Queen 8 Elliot School 72 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 2 Eustis , William 73 Evans School 62 Fay School, The 67 Field, William 56, 61

F1ske, Robert T.P. 81 Fitzgerald, John F. 2 Franklin, Benjamin 2 French, John R.P. 55, 56, 58, 59 Friends School (Baltimore) 79 Friends Select School 8, 78, 91 Fuess, Claude M. 60, 73, 74, 75 Gale, Ezra 44 Gamaches, Marquis de xiv Gay, The Rev . Ebenezer 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 22 , 23, 31, 81 Ebenezer II 39, 74, 81, 88 Ebenezer III 46, 81 Ebenezer (Derby '44) 81 Eben (Derby '72) 81 Sydney Howard 48 Germantown Academy 7, 9, 79 Gill, Jphn 42 Gleason, Hollis 61 Gore, Christopher 24, 25, 26, 74 Governor Dummer Academy 9, 10, 15, 24, 51, 79, 91 Greenfield Hills School 45-46 Groton Academy - see Lawrence Academy Guild , Mrs. Edward M. 89 Hale, Richard Walden, Jr. 75 Hampton Public Schools xiv, xv Hancock,John 2 Harrisburg Academy 79 Harvard College and University 5, 6, 11, 13, 14,15,16,18,19,21,22,23,24,25, 28,31,42,43,47,49,51 , 56,59,61,62, 74, 76, 78,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88, 90,91 Harvard Medical School 13, 73 Healey, Harry W., Jr. 89 Heck, Rebecca H. 92 Henrico College xiv Hersey, Alfred Cushing 65 Ezekiel 12, 13, 17, 20, 21 , 22, 73 Mrs . Mary L. 65 Sarah - see Sarah Derby Hingham Public High School 50 Hitchcock , Mrs. Evelyn F. 89 Hobart, Elijah (Capt .) 42 Holmes, Henry 56 Hopkins Grammar School 7, 78 Hopkins High School 78 Hotchkiss School, The 60

Humphrey, Eben 40-41, 42 Edward (Capt .) 40-4 1 Edwin (Capt .) 41 George (Capt.) 4 1 Joanna 40, 42 Joshua 40-41, 42 Wallace 41 Hun Junior School 63 Hunt, James 48 Ipswich School

Jacobbi, Marianne 69 James I, King xiii, xiv Jay , John 84 Johnston, Marius , Jr . 76 Jordan, Robert C. 89 Kendall, Mary 44 Kennedy , Joseph P. 2 Kimball, Daniel 31, 33, 34 Kylander, Dr . Clarence E. 89 Lane, Anna 48, 50 Lane, Lucy 24, 30, 82 Latin School of Chicago, The 67 Lawrence Academy 28 Lawrence Country Day School 66, 67 Lee, Cassius 28 Lee, Francis Lightfoot 28 Leggat, Mrs. Richard D. 89 Leicester Academy 28 Leverett , John 12 Lincoln, Abner 21, 23, 30, 83, 88 Barnabas (Capt .) 41-42 Benjamin (General) 15, 16, 25, 26,28, 29, 31, 82 , 83, 88 Benjamin , Jr. 16, 20, 23, 88 Beza 42 Calvin 75 Francis H . 41, 74, 75 George 41 Hannah 83, 88 Hosea 42 Leavitt 42 Martin 33, 43 Nathan 41-42 Linden Hall 9, 78, 91, 92 London, Bishop of xiv Long, Gov. John D. 43, 54 Loomis Institute 60, 62 Loring, Benjamin (Col.) 76

Loring Hall 48, 76 Lowell, Judge John 25, 26, 30, 74 Lualdi, Mrs. Pau l L. 89 Lubra no , David G . 89 Manchester, Eli 89 Mann , Ho race 34, 35 Marble head Academy 45-46 Marr, Harriet Webster 75 Marshall , Sophia 3 7 Massachusetts Med ical Society 73, 86 Maude, Da i iel 2 May, Mrs. 76 McCabe, W . Go rdon 72 McEachron, Edward C. 63, 64 , 65, 66 , 70, 76 Meadowbrook Schoo l 63 Med ical Institu tion of Harvard U niversit y - see Harvard Medical School Me sserli, Jonathan 35, 75 Midd lebury College 60 Milton Academy 55 , 56, 6 1 Monson Academ y 46 Moravia n Academy 9, 78, 9 1, 92 Morison, Samuel Eliot 5, 12, 72, 73 Moses Brown School 75-76, 79 Mossiker , Frances 72

Phillips, Samuel, Jr . 10, 26 Plymouth Meeti ng Friend s Scho ol 79 Pocaho ntas xiii, xiv Po rmort , Philemon Preston, Jerome , Sr. 61 , 63, 89 Princ eto n Un iversity 78 Prog re ssive Educatio n Association 5 559 Quebec, University of Qui ncy, Anna 86 Quincy, Lucy 85, 86

xiv

Ragle, J oh n W . 73 Ranieri, Frank 76 Restoration , The 8 Revere , Paul 74 Richardson,Joseph (Rev.) 31 , 74 -75 Robinson , Betsy Âˇ 74 Rolfe, J ohn xiii Rolfe , Lady Rebeccas - see Pocaho nt as Rosenbach , Dr . A.S.W. 74 Roxbury Latin School 3, 4, 16, 25, 43 , 51, 74, 78, 83, 90 Roxbury , school at - see Ro xbury Latin School Russell, Bill 76 Rutgers Preparator y Scho ol 9, 79 Rutgers University 79

Newark Academ y 9, 79 New North Ch ur ch 3 1, 33 New Salem Academy 28 Norfolk Academy 9, 78 Norton, Elizabeth 36, 3 7 Nor ton , The Rev. J acob 23, 24

Salem Academy 9, 79 , 92 Salem College 92 Salem School 3 Santayana, George 2 Savage, James 4 3 Schram, Ronald B. 89 Shimer, John 59 Shute , T he Rev. Daniel 14, 15, 16, 23 , 30, 31, 52, 81, 82 Smith, Abigail - see Adams, Abigail Eugene R. 56 In crease Sumner 34, 37, 46 Mary - see Cranc h, Mary T he Rev. William 86 Stewart, Mr . and Mrs . 76 Strekalovsky, V cevold Ot is 89 Sylveste r, Albert 65 Sylvester, Amy Dinze y 65 Syms, Benjamin xiv Syms School xiv, xv

Old Ship Church , The 11, 20, 23, 24, 31, 61 , 75 Otis, Cushing (D r.) 85 Ja mes 88 Mary 88 Mary Allyn 88 Parents' Association 61 Parkhur st, Helen 58 Pearson, Eliphalet 10 Pend leton, Ellen 61 Penn Charte r School - see William Penn Charter School Penns ylvania, U niversi ty of 9, 13, 73, 78, 91, 92 Phillips Academy, Andover 9, 10, 15, 19,24 , 25 ,2 6, 27,2 8,3 0,4 3, 49,51,52 , 60 , 66, 73, 74, 75, 79 ,91 , 92 Phillip s Exeter Academy 9, 10, 15, 18, 19,24 , 30, 35, 43,49 , 51,52,66, 75, 79

Talbot, Mar y 76 Talbot , Ru dolp h 66 Taylor, Louise 59

Washington , George (President ) 26-28, 74, 83, 84 Washington, George Corbin 28 Washington and Lee Universit y 9, 78 Washington, William (Co l.) 26-28 Waterbury, Jean Parker 72 Waterhouse, Benjamin 73 Waters , Rosalind 67 Waters , Thomas]. 66-70 Watertown School 3, 72 Wayne, Pauline 76 Webster , Daniel 34, 35 Wellesley College 61 Wesleyan University 63 Westfield Academy 28 Westford Academy 28 West Nottingham Academy 9, 78 Wheeler , Grace R. 72 Whitney, Peter 24 , 30 Whittemore, Arthur 61 , 63 William & Mary, College of 78, 91 William Penn Charter School 8, 15, 17, 19, 78,9 1 Williams, Hon. John M. 4 7, 52-53 Wilmington Friends School 9, 78 Wolfe, Dr . Arnold E. 89

Terry, George S. 67 Terry, Mrs. George S. 67 Thaxter , Anna 16 John 15, 16, 20, 22, 82, 86 John , Jr. 16, 87 Thomas 74 Tiffin, James B. 89 Tolman, Mrs . John 76 Travis, The Rev. William 7, 72 Trinity Grammar - see Trinity School Trinity School 9, 78 Tufts, Cotton 16, 30, 31, 85-86 Ursulines , Convent of the Van Brunt , Madam Vassar College 59

Wakeman, Samuel 89 Ware, The Rev. Henry 23, 31, 88 Warren , John 73 Warren, Mrs . 76 Washburne, Carleton 58 Washi ngton , Augustine 28 Washington, Bushrod 28 Washington College 79 Washington College Academy 79

Yale University

100

66, 67, 78