ASPIRANDO ET PERSEVER NOO: THE EVOLUTION OF T E AVO~ OLD FA~MS SCHOOL AS INFLUENCED BY ITS FOUNDER.
FLANAGAN, HE RY EOW RO, J O~GREE DATE: 1Q78
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l 路
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'LANAG4N, HENRY ED~4RO, JR. 4S P IRANOO ET PERSEvERANDO, THE EVO~UTION . O' THE AVJN OLD FAR~S StHOOL AS INFLUENCED BY ITS FOUNOER.
THE UNIVERSITY OF
MIC~IGAN,
PH.C., lQ78
ASPIRANOO Err' PERSEVEAANOO :
THE EV'Oll1I'IOO OF THE
AVOO OW FARMS SCHOOL AS INFLtJ:ENCEl) BY ITS FaJNDER
by Henry Edward Flanagan, Jr. A dissertation subnitted in partial fulfillrrent
of the requirercents for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Education) in The University of Michigan
1978
Doctoral Camtittee: Professor Professor Professor Professor
George Hills, 01airman William Cave William Dunifon Arthur f.Endel
To Les Anderson, Dan Cooper, and George Mills
in appreciation.
DFDlCATICN • • • •
ii
LIST OF APPENDICES
tv
I.
n.
INrR:lOOCTIOO
1
'mE HERlT1IGE OF THE NFl'l EN:iUIND BOr\roING SOiOOL
4
Early Colonial E:1ucaticn The Influence of the l>cademy Federalist Criticism am the Drergence of the Boys Boarding School 'l11e legacy of FDund Hill The Growth of the Boarding Sclml in a Clanging
Society In. III.
v. VI.
Yn.
vrn.
THEX)[)ATE POPE RIDDLE - 'mE FOR-IATIVE YEAR:> 'mE mx::ATIOOAL AIOU'l'EO' 'mE DREAM REALIZED
GENl'I..EMEN OF THE OlD SOmI.
YEAR:> OF 0WKiE
~
......
OBSERVATIONS
········. ······· · ········ ········
••••••••••••••••••
54 67
. 88 104 115
U9
LIsr OF APPENDICES APPCNDIX A • • • • • •
• • • • •135
Prospectus, 1925, Avon Old Fanns School APPENDIX B • • • • • •
• • • • • • • • • ••
•• .143
A Letter Fran the Survivor of the Lusitania APPENDIX C • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .149
A Letter Fran F.D.R.
iv
0iAPl'ER I
mroooocrlrn DlerscrJ wrote, "An institution is the lengthened CI'le
man."
'!his stateIrent, i f applied to the traditional
boys boarding
~l,
these schools
,,-ere ITOSt often the \o,Urk of
is historically true.
ShadCM
New
England
Beginning in Massachusetts,
a single individual who can-
Dlitted himself to a particular style"of residential education. ~
this fOIlll of schooling has been present for
in t'\nerica, JTOSt educational historians
of
ha~
Althou;Jh
over one hundred years
giVEn it scant attention.
'l.be majority of t.'lat which has been written ab:lut: these schools in
AlIerica focuses
00
the academy, which, in reality, was a predecessor
to the boarding school.
Though many of t.OOse institutions, which
~e
originally founded as boys boarding schools in New England, have becare
either c:oeducatiooa.I or day schools, or roth, there are others that have " renained single sex boarding" institutions.
Avon Old Farms School in
AVOl, Connecticut is one such school.
'11E furxiarlental purpose of this historical st\rly was to inves+-..igate the develcp!eIlt of the traditional New England boys boarding school
and delineate the overwhelming effect UJat Theo:late Pope Riddle had on
the establishrent of the Avon Old Farms School.
Necessarily considered
were the sccial and educational philosophies of Mrs. Riddle and their
manifestatioo in the school's program. answer the questioo:
Further, an atteltpt was made to
Wh,at made Avon Old Farms a distinctive institution
at the t.ilre of its founc1in9?
I
2
'l11ough the study explored, in depth, a single school founder, considerable reference
\o.aS
pur[X)se of other similar schools.
lMde to the history
an:}
an:}
its
educational
lin entire history of Avon Old Farms
School was not undertaken in this study.
nus
investigation primarily
eno::rrpasses the years 1868 to 1946, \ohich are not only the dates of Mrs. Riddle's life, but also teTp:rral parameters gennaine to the growth of the .Alrerican boarding school. In ~s ~rk, there
\o.aS
access to the archives of Avon Old Farms.
Valuable letters, notes, ani drawings of the founder
\o1ere
discovered in
the research process, along with correppordence of early school admini-
strators.
StOOent nespapers, yearbooks, alumni publications, minutes
of early faculty rreetings, ani headmasters' rep:>rts
\o1ere
also collected,
as \<.ere articles fran IMgazmes, newspapers, and periodicals. made by frierrls
an:}
N:Jtes
relatives of the fourrler, as ....ell as tb:>se of
previous enployees of the schcx:>l \<.ere also garnerErl.
Of particular
ilrportance \<.ere the invaluably helpful contributions lMde by four individuals who
all~ Ire
to carluct lengthy interviews with then:
Mr.
Donald Carson, who lived in the fourrler's household as a foster child for many years1 Mrs. F~izabeth M:Carthy, her personal secretary for forty years; Mrs. Blanche Borden Frenning, her COlSin;
a graduate of the school.
and Dr. IDthar candels,
'!he curator of the Hill Stead MlselIn, Mr. Jarold
Talbot, was also generous with his tiJre and allowed
Ire
access into those
areas of the nulseun out of the plblic dcrnain.
Scholarly
~rks
which deal with boarding schools are very few.
'!he notable exceptions to the alx7ve are the excellent stu:lies by Janes M:I.ach.lan, .Alrerican Boarding Schx>ls I 'Iheodore Sizer, '!he lv:Je of the
3
Academies, and Otto Kraushaar, J\merican Non-Public Education .
I was
indebted particularly to the lucid, enjoyable, and thorough treatrrent of the subject uatter by Professor McLachlan.
nus stOOy caltributed to the gttMing body of knowledge coooem-
in'] indeperdent sea::Jldary schools in J\merica. of IndeJ?el1dent Scb::x>1s
~lcared
The Na~onal Association
a further addition to their resources
cx:noerning the historical backgrrund of nanber organizations .
Lastly I
the study was particularly pertinent to the purposes of the Hill Stead ~,
School.
fornerly the residence of fotrs. Riddle, and the Avon Old Farms
0il\PI'ER II nlE HERITAGE OF nlE liEW ElIGIllND BOYS BOARDING s:JIOOL
In order to fully consider the founder and establishment of a single representative institution in the tradition of the New England OOys boarding schJol, one must make certain that the genesis of the stlrly ena:npass the earliest antecedents of \.mat is COITTI'Only called the prep schJol.
To fail to do so ~uld place the schJol
studied, in this case, Avon Old FaIJ11S, in a vacuum, with
00
foundation
of hiGtorical lineage. Early Colonial Education Education in the earliest colonial days was seldCl'i'l, if ever, thought of in terms of being formal and structured.
Rather, the burden
of educatineJ the youth of the fledglirt;J colonies was placed squarely on the s!"\oulders of the family, the church, and the snall cx:mnuni ty. This was to be expected, for in Europe, the transfer of culture 路and learning from one generation to another had successfully taken place through these rreans for centuries.
As Bernard Bailyn explains:
'n'Ie foI1l\S of education assurred by the first generation of settlers in Arrerica were a direct inheritance from the medieval past. Serving the needs of the horrogeneous, slowly changing rural rociety, they were largely instinctive and traditional, little articulated, and little formalized. l
~nard P.ailyn, Education in the Forming of Americ;ar; Society (lEw York:
W. W. Norton & Ccr.pany, Inc., 1972), p. 15.
4
5 It is cbubtful that even the nest far-sighted colonist \\Quld have been able to anticipate the forces which were to affect and radically alter the traditional role of the family as far as educational responsibilities were concerned.
'!he sheer challenge of survival in
the wilderness coupled with the sudden break fran all they had previously known was dramatic.
'!hough the Puritans in Ne.-I "E ngland might disagree
on many matters with the Anglicans in Virginia and the carolinas, the Catholics in Maryland, the DJtch Calvinists in Ne.-I Netherlands, or the GeIman Lutherans in Pennsylvania , they were all in accord when it came to the question of insuring sane degree of education for their children. 2 Furthernore, as the stability of the older European concept of the exterrled family was replaced, through necessity, by a ttore nobile nuclear family, the thoughts of nore formalized scrooling developed, as Bailyn states: Schools and formal schooling had acquired a ne.-l irntx:>rtance . '!hey had assured cultural burde ns they had not rome before. ~\'here there had been deeply ingrained babits, unquestioned tradition, autom:ltic res ponses , security, and confidence there was now d'.-lareneSS, cbubt, formality, will and decision. '!he whole range of education had beo:xre an inst:rtrrent of deliberate social purpose. In many ways the nest nost dramatic, were those colonial Arrerica. In the family's traditional role transfer was jeopardized,
important changes, and certainly the that overtook the faJ11ily in course of these changes, the as primary agency of cultural reduced, and partly superseded. 3
'!he earliest attenpts at education in the colonies on a nore structured basis produced a variety of SlMll schools, nost of which
2Otto F. Kraushaar, Private Schools: Fran the Puritans to the Present, Bicentennial Series (Blexxnington, Ind.: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, 1976), p. 7. klyn, lliucation i n the Forming of Arrerican Society, pp. 21-22.
6
ronsisted of a single instructor and feN pupils .
The manner of instruc-
tion differed with the geographic areas and in no small way was affected by the p:iucity of population and a:mrerce of the local region.
For
exa.'l'lc, in the Carolinas and Virginia, where the plantation system prevailed, the "old field sclxx>ls" came into existence.
'n1ese scll:Jols
were ronducted in open fields and were the first atteTFt to serve the widely scattered population of the agrarian south.
The scll:Jols tatght
only the I!Ost nrlimentary skills and were often supported by a single individual who \VOuld leave a substantial bequest to insure the continued gro,..rth of the sclXX>1.
Thus, these small schools which served a public
function were, fran the beginning, privately financed.
As one can
imagine, this type of schooling in the south was seasonal in that the pupils were called away during the planting and harvesting tiJre. this
SC[lle
In
region, where the Anglican Church prevailed, the individual
parishes gradually developed moqest educational efforts in which the parson \VOuld teach the fundarrentals of reading and spelling.
The middle
colonies of Maryland, Pennsylvania, NeN Jersey, and Delaware were CXITpOsed of heterogeneous mixtures of people, creeds, and ccrrrrercial ventures.
In these rolonies, to a llUlch greater extent than in others,
the education of youth renained in the cbmain of the clergy.
The
Catholics in Maryland, the C\.Iakers, Scotch Presbyterians and Geman Lutherans in Pennsylvania, and the Dutch Refonred in NeN J\msterdam and NeN Jersey all fomed small schools. 4
4Kraushaar , Private Schools: pp. 12-13.
Fran the Puritans to the Present,
7 Beyord the above , the colonial youth could seek instruction in the
dame schools, which, as the nClm:! suggests, were so labelled because
they were often conducted by an indigent widow or spinster in her
oo.re. 5
In sone cases, private tutoring was available in the family
lx:me if there was
enough capital to sup}X>rt such a venture.
It should not be forgotten that during the early seventeenth century, the youth of colonial Arrerica had a brief childhood when canpared to rrodern standards.
It was not infrequent that children en-
tered into apprenticeships prior to their teens, or into matrirrony or the militia by the tiJre they were fifteen or sixteen.
In fact, if one
studies the (:Ortraits of children during the early colonial days, the 9arb in which they were dressed clearly indicates that they were considered to be adults. 6 Thus, the res(:Onsibilities of the adult world fell rapidly on the child and with the assl.llTption of these responsibilities the ccmnit:rrent to fundaJl'ental education was oftentimes threatened. Although efforts aimed at bringing fornal education to the colonies are quite evident in the aforerrentioned re:rions, nCMhere was the situation IIDre favorable to the grCMth of education than in New England.
The (:Opulation of this area was centered around small townS 路
and villages which were accessible by roth water and land routes. 'lliese c:ortpact areas lent thanselves to the formation of sc:hJols
5Otto F. Krausha楼', Arrerican Nonpublic Schools Johns Hopl<l.ns University Press, 1972), p. 57. 6Ibid ., p. 58.
(Baltirrore:
8
and the spread of culture.
who settled
Furtherrrore, \Olithin the ranks of those
the Massachusetts Bay Colony were over one hundred alumni
of Oxford, carrbridge, and the University of Dublin.
It is in keeping
with their backgrourrl that these rren were anxious to offer their children educational benefits similar to those that they thenselves hcrl enjoyed.
F\lrther, evidence that the priorities of these New
England Puritans inc1u:led education may be seen by the fact that in order to assure a supply of learned
lOOn,
t1-Jey founded the first
colonial college, Harvard, only eight years after t.'ley set foot on the new land.
7
To these "Jew Englanders, formal schooling meant only one thing;
an education- in the classical language.,.
As historia.'1S point out:
Since the time of t'1e lIum3.nistic revival of t'1e Renaissance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a person who w:>uld be called truly educated must have studied the ancient languages as a basis for higher study in the universiti~ and as a basis for leadership in church and state. In a very direct way, the early schools of the northeast
pr~
pared young rren for a scoolarly life in general, and entry into Harvard in particular, witt} the eventual graduate serving society in the clergy, the goverrarent, or in teaching.
'llie iRp)rtance of a
continual flow of educated rren into the structure of the colonial society cannot be overetphasized.
'Ihese schools offered a singular
and formidable academic program with the stu::1y of Ultin and to a
7J<raushaar, !'rivate SCtools:
Fran the Puritans to the Present,
p. 9.
SR. Freenan Butts and Lawrence A. Cremin, A History of Education in American CUlture (New York: Holt, !linehart and Ninston, 1953), p. 121.
9
lesser extent, Greek at the very center.
This is quite understandable
as the course of stooy at any college or university in the 1600's was taught fran texts written in Latin.
Thus, it can be truly stated
that the original type of secondary schco1ing in l\rrerica was the Latin gramrar school trode1ed, to a great extent, after the classical schools
of Britain.
The inportance of the training that a boy received at
these schools was succinctly stated in the entrance requiresrents to
Harvard, the only college in N<:!W England for over seventy years. 11le Harvard requiresrent read as follows: When scholars so far had profited in the grarnnar schools that they oould read any c1a'Ssica1 author in English, and readily make and speak true Latin, and write it in verse as \<.ell as prose; and perfectly decline the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue, they \<.ere jooged
capable of admission to Harvard Co1lege. S
The first of these Latin grarnnar schools was the Boston Latin
School founded r in 1635.
Typical of other similar 1atinized schools
1odU.ch t.ere to folla.> in RoxbllIY and CalIDridge, Boston Latin's course of study was seven years in durat,ion with the final year's program
encarpassing a sound understanding of the Latin and Greek Cicero, Vergil, Horace, Harer, lsocrates, and Hesiod.
~lts
of
The abrosphere
at these schools was stern, to say the very least, with severe discipline, an E!l'q)hasis on corporal punishrrent, long school hours, inflexible daily and weekly lessons, and an academic calendar which often
inclu:1ed studies throughout the surme.r IrOl1ths. lO
9Sra.>n, Elner E., Education in the United States (New York: American Book Company, 1910), p. 43. l째Butts and Cremin, A History of Education in Arrerican CUlture,
p. U3.
10 Typically, these institutions were the recipients of private
as well as public financial supfOrt and interest.
The towns arrl
villages in the Bay Colony mme nurerous and varied efforts to establish and maintain their Latin sdlools, as the folla.ling indicates: At Boston, the to..rnsrnen voted that "our brother Philaren Pornont shall re entreated to bec:xr.le schJolmaster, n but made no provision for his upkeep. After Pornont' s departure, forty-five of t.1,e richer inhar-itants each subscribed an aramt to engage a new m:lSter. When this proved insufficient, the ta.n assigned the rent of Deer Island to cover the deficit. lfuen this too proved inadequate, the ta.msmen turned reloctantly to the ta.In rate, that is, a sort of head tax on each child attending school. Other toms experinented with ot.t)er means. At R:)>dJury, the school was suRX'rted by private donors wt-Dse children were adlnitted free, wr.ile others paid tuition. ScIre town scrools \o'ere endo..1ed with gifts or legacies oonsisting of land or furrls, Wtile ethers tried to defray costs by applying rent fran public lands or the proceeds fran profitable enterpris~ such as fisheries, farms , ferries, mills, or license fees. M1en taxation was resorted to, it took the fOIm of a rate, that is, a fixed charge by the subjects studied or by the "''ee.~, levie::i only on fanilies whose children attended sd1ool. 11 cne slx>uld RJt, h:Jwever, be led to relieve that the Latin sdxx>ls were established with the rank and file of youth ~ mind, for they clearly were RJt.
Rather, they test serve::i t.hct smUl, but
iqlortant el€r."ent of youth in oolonial society who would enter oollege, the clergy, and EU>lic service.
'!bough these scrools are scrretir.es
referred to as · -free" schools, they seldan were, and the IIBjority of them required tuition
pa~ts
fur.t all in attendance.
'!be la.os of the day paid credence to these schx>ls .
statutes placed on books in Massachusetts (1647)
~ushaar, h i vate Sdlools: pp. 9-10.
am
In fact ,
Cbnnecticut (1650)
Fran the Puritans to the Present,
11
decreed that every t.own of one hurrlred families establish and maintain a Latin grartll\:lr school which 'AQUld uphold the traditional European approach to the classic education.
One such school,
fo~
by a single
iOOividua1, was the Hopkins Grartll\:lr School in New Haven, Connecticut: One of the oldest secon:1ary school; in America on a private fourrlation, this school was established with the bequest of Ldward Hopkins , five tiJres Governor of Connecticut, who himself had atterded a grarmar school in England foorrled by EdNard VI. At his death in England in 1657, at which t.ine he was a na:her of Parliarrent, he left mJst of
his New rrent to hopeful for the
England estate in trust "to give"serre encouragethose forrayne Plantations for the breeding up of youths both at the Granrnar Schoole and Colledge publique service of the country in future tyrres. "12
Earlier, in 1642, the General Court of New England had passed su::cessive acts through which they strove to make the tCMl'l governrrents responsible for the supervision of schools and later, in 1642 that sane legislative body required the local se1ectrren to make inquiries of parents and masters concerning the education of children and apprentices. 13 '!hus, the Latin school essentially represents an institution that perforrred the irnp;:>rtant function of college preparation for a limited nurber of stlrlents in the first bo.Q-thlrds of seventeenth century J\rrerica.
In many ways, these earliest of formal schcols
were also a reflection of the religious orthodoxy and social rigidity that was Puritan New England.
There is no doubt that the "religious
f~r
found in flew F:ng1and <i1ring the seventeenth cer.tury had a
York:
l~est Barrett Olanberlain, Our Independent Schools (New American Bcok ("..cnpany, 1944), pp. 45-46. l~aushaar, Private Schools:
p. 10.
Fran the Puritans to the Present,
12 gcxxl deal to cb with the establishment of such sch:Jols.
Education
was often a child of rrother church, as V. T. Thayer discusses: In Puritan theology, the Bible was the source of all law, civil as We ll as religious. Consequently, the ability of each child to read and to understand its injunctions asS1.Il1l'!d social as \-/ell as individual i.mtxJrtanre and was so reaJgnized in 'b gislation . . â&#x20AC;˘ enacted to insure the ability of each child to read, write, perfoDll the simple operations of arithmetic, master the elements of some calling, labor, or emplo~nt . . . Thus, early did Jlrrericans care to ronceive of the school as a supplencntary institution, one designed to achieve through associated action What , individuals alone' are unable to realize. l4 The L:ttin granrnar sch:JoI, at last, nust be viewed as an extension of the classical schooling present in England at that ti1re. Clearly, the developrent of these colonial counterparts served to fill a void in the young society.
IVhat is rrost inp:lrtant in a con-
sideration of these institutions is that they represented preparation, farnal training, and a foundation for further intellectual grcwth in the colonies.
Perhaps lhlter H. Small best sUllTllarizes the contributions
of the L:ttin grairm3.r scrool to colonial education in the follCMing:
tmen all obtainable light has been shed up:," the subject, but one ronclusion can be reached:
the granmar sch:Jol was
rot a FOpular institution; it was conceived, SUPFOrted, and perpetuated by the few; its extension "''as slCM; its course in ITOSt toHns was erratic; and yet,aJI1Sidering all the struggles of this perioo, it was a rrarvellous institution, the hedrock of future educational systems. 15 With t..'1e arergenre of the eighteenth century, the L:ttin granmar sd-ool becarre less able to serve the needs of the growing and rapidly
York:
l4V. T. Thayer, Fornative Ideas in American nlucation (New D:xld, tlean and CtxTpany, Inc., 1965), pp. 12-13.
lSwalter H. Small, Early New England Schcols (New York: Ginn and Company, 1914), p. 18.
13 changing colonial society in New England and elsewhere.
As the
intellectual and practical interests of the colonists took a new turn, it becarre apparent that the singular hummistic tradition of classical scholarship was SOITL"Wlat \.U1Sui ted for the social development that had occurred. SI":lall way affected
The- gro,.;th of the cc.tTTrercial interests in no
a change in the education available.
Exparrled
trade with foreign cotmtries made expertise in shipbuilding, navigation, bookkeeping, accounting, and foreign languages of prilre importance.
At the sane tilre, this trade brought the colonials into
the culture and influence of lTOst European nations.
Beyond this,
the exploration and settling of new lards on the eastern tier of the vast North American Continent called for skills in surveying, mathematics, and engineering .
Further, as the coas tal ci ties of
Boston, Philadelphia, William5burg, and others matured, there developed a "polite society" and with it, a desire for music, darx:=ing, and the arts. l6
for schools \-ruch
~d
Thus, there grew an ever stronger support respond to the gra-nng ccmnercial interests
of the nation and afford instruction in subjects that were lTOre practical and vocational in nature.
Small, one-teacher schools of
this nature began to appear in the colonies during the first years of the eighteenth century and were tenred English gramnar scll.x>ls. Essentially, the English gramnar school: • • • tau:Jht what the young people wanted; they charged fees for specific courses ; they he ld classes early in the lTOrning or in the late afternoon or evening to serve
l6sutts and Cremin, A History of Educ<i.tion in American CUlture
p. U4.
14
young people who had job!> during the day: and they held classes at regular daytime hours for everyone else. 'lhe clientele of such schools was thus much broader than that of the Latin schools which were designed primarily for college-bound boy!>. Girls as well as boys were often welCXlre in the English sdDols, SOlT'etimes in separate .classes, SOlT'etimes in classes with the boys.17
'1hese schools prepared their stOOents for callings other than college and church.
As one would expect, the curriculum incllrled 路
a broad rarge of subjects that rrost often included the various branches of matharatics, accounting, penmanship, letter writing, surveying, navigation, gunnery, astronomy, Irodern laNJUages, 9~y,
InU'Iic, dr"awir\g, logic, natural philosophy, and rhetoric.
fb,1ever, of equal if not rrore irrp:>rtance than the aJ:nve, was the introduction of the stlrly of English gramnar in these privately ccntrolled schools.
As historians indicate:
t:htil English becaIre an alrrost tmiversal stlrly in elerentary and secondary schools, there could he no guarantee that hlerica would beccrre and ranain a unilingual nation rather than a nul tilingual one. 18 Chu"ly, t.l-te p:>pularity of the English gramnar school was in response
to the burgeoning enterprise of the ns., society as well as a trend away from the strict traditional educatict'l. ~
the practical and
a~ay
'lhe extent of the rnoverent
fran the classical is evidenced by the
fact that between the years 1709 and 1758 there were over fifty schools in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia offering navigation, bookkeeping, and surveying. 19
17Ibid., pp. 124-125. l8Ibid. 19RdJert F. Seybolt, 'lhe Private Schools of Colonial Boston Greenwocrl Press, 1970), pp. 108-109.
(\-Jestp:>rt, Conn.:
15 Ho.vever, these English gramm..r sclx>ols were rrost often the enterprise of a single individual who alone served as headmaster, faculty, and trustee.
'!heir permanence was ephesreral and rested solely on the
ability of the enterprise to remain solvent. the tiny schools closed.
tfuen this did rot occur,
'!he English gramm..r schools were continually
clouded in an atm:>sphere of financial instability and, in many cases, the only remnant of these enterprises is a ne.vspaper advertise:-ent or a faded broadside. 20
It is because of their teJlF)rary nature tJlat
they can only be oonsidered as an educational link bebrJeen the earlier Latin grann>ar school and their successor, the acaderoy.
None-
theless, they served as a vehicle of institutional change which was
to have an effect on the educational curriculum in the years to follo.v. '!he Influence of the Academy During the seoond half of the eighteenth century, with the gradual demise of the Latin granmar sclx>ol ard the tenoous nature of
the English grarmar sclx>ol, there were fe.v alternatives renaining
for a youth who desired training for further and higher education. 'lbJugh the English grantl\3.I" schools had made strides toward a practical
curriculU'll, they failed to bring permanence of any type to secondary education.
a cx:rrprcr.ti..se
Essentially the acadert짜 rrovarent which follo.ved represented be~en
the practical education of the English gramm..r
sc::txx:>l and the ITOre tradi tiona! and classical education"of the Latin gramnar school. 21
Academies would daninate lI!rerican education fran
200rheodore R. Sizer, The l\ge of the Academies, Number 22 of the Classics in Education, ed. Lawrence A. Cremin (Ne.v York: Columbia University, 1964), p. 2. 21 Ibid., p. 19.
16 the years prior to the Revolution until shortly after the Civil War. The champion of the early academy novement in America was the ingenious and practical Benjamin Franklin.
Long outspJken on matters
pertaining to education, Franklin envisioned schools that would generate a broad educational program.
lis early as 1749 he had published his
revolutionary treatise entitled, "PropJsals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsil vania," which outlined his plan for a new school s~ly
called the academy.
In that proposal, the atq:Jhasis ta.-lard
a utilitarian approach to education is at the
I11a.rrI:::M
of his thinking
as the following indicates: Franklin's real hope was to enlarge and make respectable an education for civil and occupational life that would not need to rest upon religious instruction nor upon the classics. 22 Great emphasis was given by Franklin to the stooy of the English language.
In his plea for rrore sUpp:lrt of the English depart:Irent
of the academy, one can easily discern Franklin's zeal for the furtherance of this discipline: Thus instructed youth will care out of this sdlool fitted for learning any business, calling or profession, except such wherein languages are required; and thou:jh unaCXJUainted with any ancient or foreign tongue, they will be rqasters of their a.m, which is of nore inrrediate and general use; and withal will have attained mmy other valuable accanplishllents; the tine usUCl.lly spent in acquiring those languages, often without success, being here arployed in laying such a fourrlation of knowledge and ability as, properly ~roved, may qualify them to pass through and execute the several offices of civil life, with advantage and reputation to theMSelves and country.23 Franklin's educational vision evolved into an academy with
(New
22.rromas Woody, Educational Views of Benjamin Franklin York: :o1cGraw-Hill, 1931), pp. 129-130.
2~lner E. Brown, The Making of Our 11iddle Schools (New York: Longmans Green & Company, 1902), p. 180.
17
a rourse of sttrly divided into boo parts, a classical curriculum
in the traditional latin school nold
am
an Dlglish curriculum.
JJa.oever, the breath of the total offering may be seen in this canprehensive announcerrent lNhic:h appeare:l in t ...e Pennsylvania Gazette: !'In'ICE is hereby given, ~at t "'e Trustees of the AO\DEMi of Philadelphia, intend (Q:rl willing) to open the sarre on the first Monday of J anuary next; lNherein Youth will be taught the latin, Greek, Englis!l , French, and r.erman Languages, together wit.... History , Geography, Ou"O'1Ology, Logic, and Rhetoric: also Writing, Arithmetic, Merchants Accounts , Gecrretry, Algebra, Surveying, Gau:Jing, Navigation, J\stroncmy, Drawing in Perspective , and other IlBthematical Sciences; with natural ard nechanical Philosophy, & c . agreeable to t.~ Ccnstitutions heretofore published, at the Rate of Four ~ per annun, and '!\.'enty Shilling entrance. 24
Franklin's a.m efforts to establish an acadsny as he envi sioned it in
Phil~elphia
were eventually in vain.
~ition
f r an the in-
fluential clas sicists and lack o f ent....usiasm by the first provost, William Sr.Iith shrotDoo the innovative plan in failure.
-'<!
sCOOol
adopted a far nore traditional curri culum than its founder had ever ~t
p:!ssible .
'lh::>se o f the Irerchant classes , who had voiced
ovenmeJ.ming enthusiasm for the plan , withdrew their Alth:rugh his
0Nl'l
Sl.Ip!X>rt.
acadany could rot sustain the curriculum reform and
expansion prop:!Se:l, Franklin's efforts were the harbinger of later acadeny growth v.uc:h f ollO\led in the oorth.
!b:h like the earlier
dellelopnent of the Latin scl)ools, the ac:adÂŁnf
~d
gro.<I initi ally
and nost rapi dly in New fngland. IlcMever, attarpting to generalize about the academy in New
ErÂĽJ1and beCXllTeS an ardoous task as its s....ape was sarewha t anorphous .
24pennsylvania Gazette,
18
~ 115e .
18 Claude M. Fuess, past Headmaster at Phillips Andover, recognized this difficulty: Nearly everyone has, I suppose, a vague oorception of the nature of the !IIew Englard academy, and there are many who can visualize some such institution of their childhood. To define and describe it, l'lc::Mever, is not easy. The academy was never standardized; its aims were frequently determined by local oonditions or by the whims of sore erratic founder. Irregular, arrorphous, and unstable, it was adapted to the shifting and Sgt altogether settled state of society which prcduced it. If Plato had only krloNn, as he walked amidst the trees in
the AcadEmlS, the diversity of meaning which w:)uld later be 路applied to the term academy, he might have coosen to walk elsewhere. Initially, the Greek academy referred to roth the sCOOol itself ard the OOdy of tren it produced.
'Ibis is related to the Renaissance meaning of
academy which referred to learned associations such as PDyal or
French Academy.
John Milton, when referring to the ideal in edu-
cation, used the word as did English dissenters when they were forced to develop their awn form of education as a result of the Act of Unifonnity in 1662.
This act barred them fran atterrling the older
national or public school.
'Ibe academies that were formed by these
people were different in that their calrse of studies was much !TOre practical than classical, ard their purrose was to shape dissenting clergyrren.
It is fran this latter predecessor that Franklin and
others were to cane to kn<::M and use the term when establishing their own schools based on a !TOre practical approach to education. 26
25Clalrle M. Fuess, Creed of a Schoolnaster (Boston: Brown and Company, 1939), p. 82. 26 Ibid ., pp. 83-84.
Little,
19 It is no surprise that post revolutionary schools carried the name academy . There can be little doubt that the influen<;:e of John lDcke
had great value on the edocational thinking of the day and the philosophical basis for the academy m:J\/'enent.
His ideas concerning
edocation and society, expressed in the work, Serre Troughts Conoerni.ng Education, were familiar to many Alrericans in 1772 as the text was then in its fourteenth editicn.
Theocbre Sizer speaks to the associa-
tion between Lockean theory and the burgeoning Alrerican nation: In mxl.ern terms, what lDcke denied is the existence of in.torn tendencies to think, feel, arrl act in ways, pre-determined and unrelated to the experience of iIrlividuals; his concept of hllIMn nature was admirably designed to validate Alrerican ideas of innate e<]Uality already in pro::css of winning popular aa:eptance. 27 A rather striking example of a
\o01\an
who held an admirable be-
lief in Locke's theory may be seen in the example of Mrs. Josiah Quincy, who in 177 5 ,
acting on a suggestion of the bachelor philosoFher's, treated her son to a hardening process, in the course of which she carried him, when he was only three years old, fran his warm bed, in winter as well as sumer, to a cellar kitchen, where she dipped him three times in a tub of cold water fran the PUlp, as Achilles was sul:rnerged in the Styx. It is significant, perhaps, that Locke, breakinq away fran the scrolastic tradi ticn, had maintained that diaractcr is !lOre to be desired than intelligence, and that great aIphasis soould be laid on instruction in practical matters. Locke ranked the four chief requisites of a gocx:l Erlucaticn as virtue, wisdom, breeding, and learning. 28 Trough "the above may be considered extreIle, let it be sl.llTt!aCized 27Thayer, Fornative Ideas in Arrerican Edocation, p. 48. 2~ess, Creed of a Schoolrraster, p. 87.
20 that l.ocke's theory concerning the active and not passive approach to learning aided in the creation of in J\nerica.
bo.Q
divergent scrools of tOOught
Academies with various purposes and curricula errerged.
Beyond their varied approaches
to curriculun, these early
acader.lies were governed in a coqorate sense by a b:>ard of trustees. Hany academies were· granted both land
am
fW"rls by the state, thus
indicating t.'1at they were conoeived as having an i.rttx>rtant public function for the well-being of the citizenry.
In the years immediately
follcwing the Revolution, "public" inplied the perfoI.11\3J'lce of broad social functions by an institution of learning for the general good of the heterogeneous, non-exclusive citizens.
Because they were
self-perpetuating institutions, academies were under limited state control, yet their policy was to alla..' any citizen to attend.
Mcleod
adds qualification to the latter statanent, indicating that: At the sane tine, incoqoration, which created a stability and a sense of permanenoe, also generated the institutional selectiveness of the academy. Even tl'Pu3'h all were welcare to attend, tuition paynent was crucial to the academt's existence; in this respect, enrollrtent was limited to families who could pay. 29 ' . 'Ihecdore Sizer devotes a good deal of st\rly to the question of why this grassroots pattern ·for cx:mrunity acaOOnies through the tOOughts of both Benja..un
~h
cane
about.
Sifting
and Henly Barnard, Sizer
finds these scrools:
•• to be the agents of conversion, the means of assuring the permanence of the Ame:"ican form of goverrarent. An educated electorate was the cornerstone of dem:x:racy, and dem:x:ratic goVernnent had to provide for it. These senti-
29John P. Mcleod, "TIle New England Boarding School: An J\nalysis of Its Historical,. OevelopTel1t and Cbntanporary Uncertainty of Purpose" (Ph.D. dissertationJ University of t1assachusetts, 1973), p. 17.
21
rrents played a particularl y important r ole in the stru:Jgle for comron schools, for the teaching of nrli.ne1tary literacy and oonputation that the unsophisticated American felt ~ be s ufficient to .prepare an i ntelligent voter. Yet they influencerl the gro.oJ th of academies and colleges as well : the early l eaders , Rush anong then , cons tructed on paper elaborate educatio nal systens, all of which were cr~erl by inst itutions to train a t a l ented e lite , the rren wro ~uld l ead the na tion. 30 The academy was also SOII'eWhat rrore versatile than any other form of sch:x>ling that had been kno.m to the early JlIrericans .
~
perrling on the institution, acadenies offered curriculuns that would all.c:7.l an individual to enter directly into college or, having com-
pleterl formal schooling at the academy, go di,rectly into an occupation.
Sizer states that the academy fit the JlIrerican ideal for:
• • it providerl a smattering of roth useful stulies and traditional rook learning, a veneer of education . This was considererl g:xxl by Alrericans who distrusted the narrtM eru:iition of the college gradua te. Jlrneri cans were ropeful that sorre learning of a practical kind might better than, might help them becare, as George Orwe ll rrore recently put it, "rrnre equal. " The r e 'Alas no prof Ol.. .1 love of learning for its ~ sake, no intellectual a spiration here. There was. the material hope of getting ahead and the poli tical rope of iJnproving the republic. The acadeITlf founder was the optimistic entrepr eneur rather than the reflective scholar. 31 In Us.' Dlgland r.any academies were establisherl, oftent.iIres in such close proximity that there ....-ere sinl'ly not enough stooents to supp:>rt them all.
Such was the case when five academies were es-
tablished within a ten mile radius of North Andover, Massachuse tts. Of those original five, only one remained intact six years later . Interestingly enough, that sarre scrool, phillips Andover Academy,
3:JS izer, The Age of the J\cademies pp. 13-14 . 3lIbid •• pp. 15-16
22 continued steadily and flourishes today as one of the rrost highly regarded private secondary schools in the world. Am::mg the schools which were in the vanguard of the New England academy llOVatCnt, Governor Dtmrer is the oldest.
Opening with twenty-
eight students in 1763, the school was entrusted to five freeholders and one clergyman of the town of Byfield, Massachusetts.
early students at Govern::>r
!).mner
were the
yQ1.l!~
'I\.Jo of the
Sarruel Phillips, Jr. and
Eliphalet Pearson, roth of whan were to play an integral part in the foun:1ing of the academy at Andover.
waked upon by rrost as a
business enterprise, ~.he academies served society in loco paIentis. Contrary to comron belief, the early acadenies were or I:oarding schcols.
~
residential
Kraushaar aptly addresses the subject:
Since the acadanies attracted sttrlents l'1ot only from the local tONTl but from distant points, educational historians usually characterize them as "boarding schools." If that tenn is taken to rrean an institution at which students are lodged in dormitories under the care and supervision of the master and faculty, then rrost academies in the northeastern states were day rather than I:oarding schools. The students generally lived with respectable families in the tam, not in camp..1s residential facilities. Phillips Academy, Andover, built its first clornitory fifty years after its founding. The fCl'uly of Sarruel Phillips, Jr., the fourder, was among th:Jse that took in boarders. The schools tried as best they could to exert a disciplinary influence over students to curb the excesses of youth ebullience, but it was the family that stocx1 in loco parentis rather than the school. 'nle fanily and tONTl thus becarre for the academy sttrlent an introduction to living in normal cormtunity, rather than the age-segregated grouping that was to prevail in later schools and colleges. 32 John McLeod finds this arrangement quite in keeping wit.'l the education objectives of the 1970's: In a way, the early academy form encapsulated three influences
32I (raushaar, Arrerican tJonpublic Schools, p. 61.
23 "hlch educators in the 1970' s argue are crucial ingredients of a successful education-a source of fontal knowledge (the academy proper), the family tradition (parental va lue s ) , am socie ty .a t l arge (the camunity and local f amily). Certainly within the society at that t:iJre , the academy education represented a r BTarkab1e degree of exposure am potential for 1earning . 33 <D\.<ernor
DJaner, under the
"preceptor~hip "
of Salruel M:xldy , made
sc:b.llarships available for "charity sttrlents. fI
Lastly, it should
be noted that this early academy was supported by the English
uethxl of errlov.nents in
lam. 34
'!be b.o rrost farrrAlS instituticns to care out of the academy
IilJIi6lelit were, in fact, the prcx:luct of the Phillips family, already Dent.ialed.
it
lo8S
In scrutinizing the acaderny at Andover, one discovers that
founded with neither
instea:l with the
am
p.Ire
rope of sternning
academic or entrepreneuraf zeal, rut the flow of dishone sty, loose rrorals,
distressing behavior evident in the populous.
SaIruel Phillips, Jr.
tm:ned to an educatiooal solutioo for the social ills that he,
felt present.
am
others,
'!be religious overtones are obvious in the following
statsrent: Let then a p.1blic bJilding be erected for the ~se , am the children sent, be S1.JFP:lrted and continued there for
a certain term, say fran the age of seven to fourteen .. O'le of the best of nen can be found to take <XI1lMJ'ld , wro
shall proportion his attention to the various branches of education according to their iJnt:ortance, wro shall make it his chief concern to see to the regulation of the rrorals of the pupils, and at~~tively and vigorously to guard them in the several regulations they sustpin to Gcxi, their neighbors, am make their wrole course of education one oontinued lecture on all that is great and good.
33l-k:Ieod, "New Fl1glaIrl Boarding School," p ~ IB. 34Jarres f.'clachlan, American Boarding Schools (New Yor k : Scribner's Sons, 1970), p. 37.
Charles
24 For such an institution as this what a surprising change might be reasonably expected. Instead of the present degeneracy ,which has increased upon us with such rap~ity, what blessings may we not look for. We have rrore reason to hope for success f ran such labors than fran those of priest and magistrate united. How great an advantage has the teacher in exerting his influence up:>n his pupils so earl y in life and keeping them away fran bad examples , as was done in Mr. M:Xxly ' s (C>..mmer) school , although i t was attended with rrore difficulty there on account of collections (Le. , students) fran every quarter than it ....uuld be here. When we oonsider that this plan had such success anong the ancients, what may we not expect fran it when joined to the advantages o f the Christian r e ligion? J\!rong the thirty to wIY.Jn I have Jrentioned the plan , I have not heard pne dissentient voice , rut have' Weived vastly high approbat ion than I had reason to expect. Educational historians have care to consider Samuel Phillips,
Jr. as sarewhat of a radical in t.t)at he wished to do away entirely with the study o f Latin and Greek.
He
was,
~r,
dissuaded fran
eliminating these classical languages by Eliphalet Pearson, his long time friend and associate.
'ltJus, the 'first Phillips Academy maintained
sane aspects of the older Latin gramnar school but was carved along the lines of Lockean practicality
of~.
Fa.mded in 1778, the
academy owed its early success to b.o major factors: ~
factors especially CCl1triruted to make it {XlPUlar. In the first place, it was established by a family with distinguished social and p:>litical cormecticns, and they and their friends-~lls, Q.llncys, \'Endells, I'brses, HolJreses, Abbots, and otrers- sent their children to Andover. Seven near relatives of General Washingtoo were, during those early years, enrolled arrong the sttrlents . In the secorrl place, Eliphale t Pearson, ungracious though he may have been, was a gifted . teacher, a man of ilTpressi ve persooality and powerdecidedly the right person for the place. 36
35
.
Ibid., pp. 38-39.
36FUess , Creed of a Schoolmaster, p. 89.
25 The second Phillips Academj was fcurded at Exeter, New Hampshire.
SOITE
three years later
Dr. John Phillips, wealthy uncle to Samuel
Phillips, Jr., was the pr.i.rnary benefactor.
Unlike the strictly college
preparatory curricul\.Il\ offered at Andover , Exeter divided its studies into those falling under the general headings of "Course of Preparation for College " and the "English Departrrent".
Encrnpassed under the rather
misleading title of the English Departrrent , were the stlrlies in Spanish and French, noral and political philosophy, geography, gearetry, trigooorretry , logic, chemistry , astronany , U.S. and nodern history, and, as one might expect, English gramnar. 37
No cbubt, nearby Harvard College was nore than glad to support these two institutions, for they would, in years to cane, supply well prepared stlrlents, nost of whom could pay the tuition charged in Canbridge.
In nost every way, these two academies set the pace for
others to follCM and established a tradition of academic excellence that <x>ntinues into conterq:x:>rary times.
r-Dre important, they carre to
be regarded as <x>llege preparatory instituti ons which offered a rounded and well-shaped curricul\.Il\.
In the educational confusion of
the early academy age these two schools were to have a lasting impact on the future emergence of the New England boarding school.
Wi thout
question, they were exarrples used when, in later years, others would search for an academic standard.
Furthenrore, the <x>nstitution and/or
trustee system originated at the two schools, would later be iJrplerrented at Groton, Leicester, Ivestford, KiIrball Union , Williston, Westfield,
37McLachlan , American Boarding Schools, p. 44.
26 and Wilbraham. 38 But Andover and Exeter were to beCO!T'e the exceptions and rot the rule as far as academies were concerned.
Unlike most academies,
they were single sex, they enphasized preparation for college, and despite their expansive
curriculum urder the Engli5h Departrrent,
were rrostly classical in academic approach.
Beyond this, the two
schools were soundly backed fran a financial stand!x>int, and had tJ:!e distinct advantages of widespread rotoriety, facilities, land, and location.
The typical academy of New England prior to the close of the ~ighteenth
century was quite a different matter as it:
• • • was coeducational; it had a so-called English Departrrent in \v!1ich a wide range of non-classical subjects were taught, it was less ooncerned, therefore, with preparation for c::oUege than \vhat it was pleased to call "preparation for life"; and its resources were usually exceedingly small, if not actually rre~re. 39 'lhis latter type of academy, acccmrodating the general PJpulous, grew rapiclly during t.1-e first half of the nineteenth century.
'lhe
acadern.ies spread throughout the young, growing, and optimistic nation.
Theu- establishrrent in ns... territory becarre the business of ntrrerous concerned and edocationally minded 1Irrericans as Kraushaar explains: The rapid spread of the academies across the land suggests that they were well suited to the character and condition of the people who founded and utilized than. Academies appeared successfully everywhere in the Republic, first in the ~rtheast \vhere they originated and \vhere thP.}' had long retained a classical cast, then in the South \vhere they grew rapidly,
3~s, Creed of a S~hoolmaster, p. 90. 39 Ibid ., p. 91.
27
chiefly under Presbyterian auspices; they were nrultiplying in the Middle Atlantic states by the turn of the century, and reached the t<1iddle West, often with the aid of denaninational Hare Mission Societies, in a climate charged with Jacksonian poli t ics and the Sturm and Drang of Second Awakening revivalism. They reached the Far l'lest last of all, largely with the help of New Englanders who followed the course of empire westward . 40 At their peak in 1850, roughly 6, 085 academies existed with 12,260 teachers and 263,096 pupils. '41
Because the academy was concerned
with college preparation f or sate of i ts students and a tenninal education for others, there was a tremendous age spread am:mg the pupils.
In effect, there was but a scant atterrpt to establish
anything resent>ling grades or foons, as they would have been called. For exanple, Josiah Quincy (later to becciTe Harvard's president,
and Boston's路 mayor), age six, attended classes with Janes Anderson,
age thirty, during the first year of Andover Academy's existence. 42 These academies, varied and singular as they were, served the nation particularly well during the decades between 1800 and the Civil War. H~ver,
the academies, perhaps because of their insular form
and diversity of purpose, . gradually fell into demise shortly the Civil War.
Though
foll~g
there is no singular explanation as to this
occurrence, the academy IlOSt likel y failed because of the shift in population fran the widespread rural areas to the rrore thickly settled city.
Nineteenth oentury industrialization called for an
40Y-raushaar, 1Irreri can Non-Public Schools, p. 60. 41Charnberlain , C>..Ir Independent Schools, p. 48.
4~aushaar, 1Irrerican Nonpublic Schools ,路 p. 61.
28 ever increasing nurber of people. 43
Being an institution best designed
for a rural population , the acadeny, as it then existed, was unable
to continue in great nliTbers.
Better suited for the rore urbanized
Alrerica was the newly formed public school.
Mann, Barnard, and others
had long been advocates of a system of schools which \ooOUld be publically
supp:>rted and tuition free..
As V. T. Thayer states:
Horace Mann and Henry Barnard in particular stressed the importance of schools, publicaUy supported and attended by all children, as a maans for developing values that all might share in ccmron despite differences of class, creed and national origin. 44 . • • • by 1860, the Alrerican people were camritted to the establishment of free schools, publically SUptXlrted and publically controlled. From the conviction that all men are created ~ and that govcmlrents are created arrong men to insure to all the rights of equality . • -.45
Federalist Criticism and the Dnergence of the Boys Boarding School Criticism of the acadeny system had,
h~,
surfaced decades
prior to the eventual transition of these schx>ls into other types of secondary education.
In 1804 a group of intellectual leaders in the
ci ty of 80s ton established the Anthology Society, which, in turn, produced a scll::>1arly monthly journal entitled, "'llle Anthologist".
Of great concern to these men was the cultural fate of the ne,..r nation. In essence they vi6ol'ed the opportunity for cultural progress or demise
as resting in the hands of the fragile and varied sdn>ls in Alrerica.
43Sizer, The Age of
th~ - Academies, p. 40.
4~yer, Formative Ideas in 45Ibid .
A'l1eI"ican Education, p. 14.
29 CcrtpJsed of professional rren, they believed that a generation of
Olristian gentleren and scholars must be developed i f Arrerica
to bea:rre an intellectual wasteland. in their
C7WI1
\¥ere
not
Critical articles that aweared
publication, as well as, -Blac:kl>.OOd's Edinburgh Magazine,"
STllhasized the lack of advanced study available at J\irerica' s academies arrl the poor educational training that one received in this nation as
cmpared to Europe.
Although the society itself enjoyed but a brief
career, lasting only until 1811, it attracted a po..erful group of rren, not the least of whan was John Kirkland (President of Harvard), William
Dterson (father of Ralph Naldo nrerscn), Dr. SanUlel Parr, the forem::>st classical scholar of the day, and Daniel Webster. 46 A
man greatly influenced by the Anthologist tatperarrent was
Joseph Green Cogswell.
Having graduated fran roth Phillips Exeter
Academy and Harvard, Cogswell sttrlied law under the conservative Federalist and Anthologist devotee, Fisher Anres, as well as Judge William Prescott. academies.
Cogswell was an aggressive critic of the Alrerican
He thought than to be shockingly ill-equipped to provide
a suitable education beyond the rrost elerentary level.
A description
of Cogswell and his belief is nore than adequately surmarized as follows: • Cogswell was a Federalist intellectual and a social arrl cultural elitist who was convinced that the spirit and substance of Arrerican secondary and higher schcoling \¥ere teo pedestrian and utilitarian to arouse that love of learning which was essential to the develcprent of a high culture in the United States. 47
46l-lcLachlan, J\irerican Boarding Schcols, p. 46. 47J(raushaar, Arrerican Nonpublic Schcols, p. 63.
30
For all practical puI"£Xlses, Cogswell becarre the sp;>kesman for a generation of learned
!lEn,
inspired by the Anthologists.
He sirrply
did not believe the nation would progress without a cultural fourrlation carpJsed of worldly genUeren and true scholars.
'n1e
acadernt,
he can-
plained, was unable to adequately perform its educational and social role because it confortred to: • • • the practice of leaving 00ys too mu::h to th€!!lSelves. 'n1ey live separate fron their masters, who krDw nothing of the use, which they make of their tirre, exrept wfen they are collected in the schocil rocms, and being but about seven l-ours of the dav, the residue of it is, of
.
course, spent in idleness. 4S
Cogswell, along with his associate and fellow graduate of Exeter and Harvard, George Bancroft, looked to Europe for scl-ools fran which Anerica could pattern their own institutions. the b.o
!lEn
undertook an extensive journey
thro~h
In 1810
Gennany ard
s....itzerland in an effort to gain insight into those institutions which were the manifestation of the latest educational thoUJht on the Continent.
Altho~h
Cogswell would visit the
r~n
eCuca.tor,
Jd1ann Heinrich Pestallozi at his scl-ool in Yverdun, 9w-itzerland ard d:lseIVe the product of the latter's theory that the child's
natural facilities should be developed through inmediate sense :i:mpress ions ard nanual activity instead of the abstracticns of the printed page,49 he w:>uld be much ITOre influenced by the \><IOU of Pestallozi's stwent, Dmanue1 von Fe1lenberg • .Fellenberg's larrlschule at Hofwyl had a trerend:>us effect on Cogswell ard would be
48McIachlan , Anerican Boarding Schools, pp. 47-48. 49Kraushaar, Arrerican Nonpublic Schools, p. 60
31
tre singlenost important factor in the fOnTlation of the Arrerican' s thoU:Jhts on education.
TaJcen one step further, the Hofwyl enterprise w:Juld in-
fluence the OOys boarding school tradition greatly in the years to follow.
Thus, a brief consideration of the school is essential. Fellenberg, though a product . of SWiss aristocracy, conoeived
of a school which woulc;l serve the various levels of social strata in EUrqJe.
His was actually a cluster of schools, located at Hofwyl, which
were boarding in nature and distinctly different fran each other. idealogical basis of the cluster school at Hofwyl was explair.ed by
Fellenberg in 1819 to John Griscan, an Arrerican who was visiting Europe.
Griscan recounted the experienoe:
• • • and entered upon an explanation of the principles of his establislvrent, and the particular views of education, which had induoed him to engage in it. He consider.s society as divisible into three distinct parts; the higher CCXJTprehend.ing the noble and the wealthy), the middling, and the poor. The greatest defects of education, he supposed to exist in the tw:J extrere classes. ~t these distinctions or classes atrong !ren, w:Juld always prevail, in every civilized country, he believed to be incontrovertible, and, of course, any attempt to breaJc down the distinction, w:Juld be fruitless. It is, therefore, of consequenoe that they should be each educated in a nanner conformable to their situations, but both in such a way, as to develop, to the highest extent, the best faculties of their nature; and, while it preserves the proper relation between them, it should, at the satre tiIre, encourage the feelings of kindliness and sympathy on the one part, and of respect on the other. This, he thought, could be effected upon no plan, so effectually, as by bringing th:m up side by side, so that they should have each other (Xlnstantly in view, without any necessity of mixing or associating. The rich, by observing the industry, the skill, and the importance of the lalx:lring classes, w:Juld learn to entertain just sentilreJlts respecting them, and the poor, by feeling and experiencing the kindly influenoes of the rich, would regard them as benefactors. 50
5°McLachlan , Arrerican Boarding Schools, p. 58.
The
32 Beyorrl the first rate carbination of classic and m:rlern academic training thdt a yourq man received at Hofwyl, the fO\.U1der had also nade provisions for each sttrlent to have a plot of ground for the growing of crops and the encouragement of "foresight, lalxl\Ir, and perseverence. " Also found at the school '.짜as a carpenter shop, a riding sdlool, and
facilities for fen:::ing and swimning.
Lastly, the students were re-
quired to take outings throughout the Swiss co\.U1tryside. The daily schedule of each student allowed for very feN, if any I free ITDlrents but the periods of rigorous study were separated by
t.iIIe for exercise and ganes.
ThrolXJhout his grand scherre for the
edu:ation of }Uuth, Fellenbe.rg held that the rroral, intellectual, and physical developnent of YO\.U1g men could be served best in a
residential atrros?lere devoid of strict discipline based on fear or punishrrent.
As Kraushaar explains:
In the fornation of character Hofwyl abjured praise and blarre or the incentives of enulation and fear in favor of a close, benevolent parent-like relationship bet:v.een pupils and tutors. Besides, the rural setting wa'5 CO\.U1ted on to exert a benign lItlral influence. 51
The atrrosphere of the campus at Hofwyl reflected the fourrler's
belief that a sch:x>l IlUSt teach YO\.U1g men to use their }Uuthful resources in activity every working m::rnent in order that there would be no roan or tine for evil to develop in the hl.l1lim character.
His
tight sdleduling of tine and activity during the sdlcol year was to later influence the basic approach follo....ed by private boarding scOOols in the United States.
5~aushaar Jlmerican !bnpublic Schools, pp. 63-64. I
33 While Cogswell formulated definite ideas at Hofwyl, his younger associate, Bancroft, following two years of stLldy at ~ttingen, rrcved onto Berlin.
Here he assured responsibility for a young lad
narred Frederick Hedge, son of Harvard's Levi Hedge.
Bancroft's task
was to find a suitable scrool for the boy, and in his search for such a school, he becaJre familiar with one of Gennany's rrost prestigious hoarding schools, Schulpforta .
oorded thoroughly in a
~lve
His observation of the school is repage letter to Professor Hedge, the
oonclusion of which clearly indicates that Schulpforta was education incarnate.
Later, in October of 1821, Bancroft reoorded the following
in his journal which gives wideflce to the fact that he was vastly influenced by what he had seen there: In reflecting on establishing a school on a large foundation, it appears to Ire that sarething neW might be undertaken with usefulness and advantage. 1. Greek should be the first language taught . . . . 2. Natural History should be taught; it quickens all the powers, and creates the faculty of ac=ate observation. Even in the town schools so IIUlch of natural history as' relates to the plants i f husbandry and weeds which toment the famer, ought to be taught siIrply but thoroughly to every boy, and rrost of all to the poorest - whose lot it is to till the earth. 3. Emulation IIUlSt be carefully avoided, excepting the general and l!U.1tual desire of excelling in virtue. No one ought to be rewarded at the expense of another, and even where there is nothing but prizes, they who fail of gaining than, may have been inpeded by the nature of their talents and not by their want of exertion. 4. Corporal punishmmts IIUlSt be abolished as degrading the individual, who receives than, and as encouraging the base passions of fear and deception. S. Classes IIUlSt be fomed according to the characters and capacities of each individual boy. 6. Country schoolmasters might be fomed with little expense by ,annexing to the school an institution for orphans, to be educated for schoolmasters. Of these the best might be chosen for a learned discipline, and be fitted for taking care of academies . 7. Eventually a vast printing establishment might be annexed to the school. 52
S~chlan,
Alrerican 30arding Schools, pp. 67-68.
34
When they had returned to New England, after more than a decade of search, stooy and introspection, Cogswell and Bancroft inoorporated the theory and practice they had observed into a reside ntial school in Northampton, f.13ssachusetts.
Founded in 1830, Round Hill was the
i deal of t.he Anthologists' philosophy and, in many respects, reserbled fbfwyl and Schulpforta.
'!he birth of the school is particularly ger-
naine to this study for it was the first institution of a true boarding nature for young rren in this nation.
Beyond this, Round Hill
was the result of plans, shaped and dramatically influenced by the
Educational and intellectual rebirth in Germany, which placed the stooent in an isolated, untainted, and cultured envirornrent; all this, of oourse, under the ever observant eye of the school's masters. The irrq:x:>rtance of the solitude and geographic beauty of Round Hill's location to the t:\..o foW1ders cannot be
ov~errphasized .
'!hey
had obviously I::een impressed by the school settings in Europe as the 1823 Prospectus for Roun::l Hill illustrates: Jirrong the ancient and nodern writers on education, there is but one voice respecting the grateful and salutary influence, exercised by the beauties of scenery on the mind, and many of the eminent schools in Europe are hardly less celebrated for their site, than for their literary excellence. 53 In that sarre publication, Cogswell and Bancroft brought
forward other proposals that would be later seen not only in their Otm
school, but in toys I:x:iarding schools that were to be established
in the years which followed.
They would influence the character and
minds of their students by residing with them and serving as paternal
53 . Cog~ll, Joseph Green and Bancroft, George, "Prospectus of a School to I::e Established at Round Hill," Northampton, Massachusetts, 1823.
35 guardians and instructors.
Educational gro,.;th could be indoced , they
believed, in a school which developed a family atrrosphere governed by persuasion and persevering kindness .
As for the curriculum, they felt
that it should "edocate rot for an ideal \<,Qrld, but for the ....orld as it is.
We ....ould make not laborious students only, but faithful and
useful citizens ... 54
As l1::Lachlan surrnarizes:
T"",arcls this end they outlined a curriculum that was essentially a carbination of the classical and English rourses of centemporary academies . It was to consist of English, the classics, m:Jdem languages, mathematics, science , his tory, and geography. The elerents were rot novel, but the rorrbination was. Round Hill's curriculU!\ could be t aken ei ther as a rollege preparatory or a tenninal rourse of study; it would prepar:e a boy for either Harvard or Yale, State or Wall streets. 55 As was the case in so rrany of the sd100ls they had seen in
Europe, the founders inooq:orated 路"devotional exercises" into the daily schedule in order to insure that students had proper religious training.
No one religion was mentioned in the prospectus as that
which they \<,Quld erbrace.
Beyorxi this, a rorrparison of Fellenberg' s
school at Hofwyl arxi the AIrerican oounterpart in Northarrpton, were undoubtedly intf'rtwined in philosophy, curriculun arxi practice, as the foll"",ing indicates: The similarities are striking: at both Pound Hill arxi !lofwyl every rn:J!1Erlt of the studen ts' day was de t ermined by an elaborate schedule --''we rranage our boys by keeping them en~l9Yed," said Bancroft. The curricula of both schools were alIrost identical (Bancroft even foll"",ed the Herbartian practice of beginning sorre students with Greek). At Round Hill, as at Hofwyl, students were provided with their o.In garden plots and given lurrber for carpentry projects. The latest in the
54Cogswell and Bancroft, ''Prospectus of a School," p. 9. 55Md.achlan, AIrerican Boarding Schools, p. 80.
36 new German gymnastic exercises was used at both schools , and the stOOents at each were provided with a riding school and a swimning-bath. The stooents at Hofwyl made annual
"pedestrian journies" about the SWiss countryside: those at ltJurrl Hill made an "annual journey" to pl aces as far afield
as Saybrook, Connecticut. Perhaps rrost significant was the similarity in the ethos of both sct짜:x:>ls: so far as possible, each avoided the use of amliation, of oonventional rewards and punishmmts, in their discipline, with the purpose of enoouraging individual growth. 'lhis was to be accanplished by parental goverrurent, aocording to the oonception of both institutions as idealized families. 56 '!he scrool, receiving the supp:>rt of nearby Harvard,
flourished at first despite the warnings of its radical nature by early critics.
Beside the fact that it provided exoellent training
for both college and career, Round Hill was k:rx:Mn arrong intellectuals of the day to be a place which instructed stooents in thinking as opp:lsed to rote marorization.
This, indeed, was refreshing.
1Ioother factor leading to the scOOo1's fuU enrollment was the timing of its fourding.
In the 1820' s, lIIrer ica 's cities were graving
rapidly and with that expansion developed both positive and negative aspects of urban grav"th.
There grew, annng the well-established
families in the cities, serious doubts as to the benefits of raising and educating their offspring in the nnrally tainted atm::>sp/1ere of
the city.
These doubts grew in direct prop::>rtion to the crirre and
confusion of the cities to such an extent that: In the centuries after 1823 such mistrust of the city as an envirormmt for children would rerai.n one of the rrost oonsistent t:hem:s in the founding of lIIreri.c an roarding schools . Insofar as the United States was concerned, the nineteenth century claustration of the child in bbarding schools seems to have been due as muCS9 to urbanization as to changes in the idea of the child. .
It must be obvious that the Anthologists sUPpJrted the venture, for 56Ibid., pp. 87-88. 57Ibid., p. 93.
I'
37 J'X)Where els e were they to find a school in 1823 that enbodied their beliefs in intellectual, IIOral, and physical ~t as did RJund Hill.
It.:: graduates '-Ould enter directly into the final or next
to final year at either Yale or Harvard when they finished at l'brtharrpton . ~t
is IrC6t interesting is that the (X'licy of the colleges was to re-
quire tui tion payrrent for the first two or three years even though these students had been at JbW"d Hill.
Needless to say. Cogswell and Ban-
croft fought this issue with the colleges.
In sane way the RJund Hill
graduates were too well prepared and lb.!rd Hill . therefore, occupied
a rather precarious (X'sition, for although the colleges wanted the \Vell-trained gradua tes, they wanted then on their tenns and for IIOre thilll
ale
or two years.
The school, nu:h like Franklin's early
academy years before, was simply ahead of its t.iDe and:
• • • dominated as the Alrerican acadEmic S)'StE!!l was by the college, Round Hill '-Ould not be integrated within it. As an institution Round Hill \>las at least one, and perhaps two generations early on the Arrerican scene - and tmaSsimilable foreign elancnt to the structure of J\merican education. tvrerican colleges \oiOuld long attenpt to do. in Bancroft's '-Ords, "what never can be done jointly and ...'ell, at once to inpart elenentary instruction and to teach the sciences and professions. u58 Round Hill closed in 1834.
"nle
reasons for its termination
after only eleven years are varied, rut the l!OSt visible are quite
understandable.
Forarost of these was Barx:roft's departure in 1831
in order to tend to family financial obligations in Ohio.
From
an
adninistrative stardpoint , Bancroft had been the keystone to the early years at Round Hill. coupled wi th the continuing
58 Ibid ., pp. 98-99.
In his absence. fiscal chaos reigned. 'lhis,
need fur Cogswell to raise an ever
38
increasinC) arount of funds placed the financial. future of the school in jeopardy. Rourrl Hill, h:J...tever, made its mark and all that follows in the
bats boarding school tradition in NEM England emnates fran this institution.
I t drew boys largely fran wealthy and intellectual families
fran throughout the United States of the early nineteenth century.
There can be ro doubt that the school created an at:m:;lsphere which was conducive for the gra...rth of the cultured gentleman who had also been taught the inp:>rtance of roral integrity and honesty.
At the same
tine, the lifestyle at the residential school was such that it
created a suhcul ture of boys who would be instrurrental in the furtherance of similar boarding scmols throughout the ~r of the century. t-t;Lachlan observes: The image of Round Hill never faded a'#a"f oarpletely; many of the social conditions that had contributed to its initial suc-
cess only intensified over succeeding di?cades. Scores of its alUnni would treasure its nierory and seek for their sons an edocation which \-,QuId recreate the brief <]Olden day of their own and the republic's youth. 59 The Legacy of Round Hill
In 1827, four years after Round Hill had been founded, an
Episcopal clergyman narced William rtuhlenberg lx>arding school on long Island.
founjed
a small boys
Flushing Irlstitute, as the school
was called, reserrbled Fellenberg's school in Berne, SWitzerland and thus, there were nany similarities to Round Bill as well.
Present was
the ranantic rural setting, the enphasis on the irdividual, and the
59Ibid., p. 101.
As
39
efforts rrade at building character in the individual .
The major difference
at Flushing was the clear anphasis on religion in the curriculum.
Cogs-
well's main thrust was the developrent of gentleren and sch:>lars, while ~enberry
clearly desired graduates who â&#x201A;ŹI1'hodied the ideal of the
O1ristian gentleman.
The prospectus of the school indicates that the
balance of intellectual, ?1ysical, and roral training was to ocx:ur in
an at:m::>sphere of a large household.
The sarre educational philosophy
as that found in N::>rthar.pton using a warm, family-style residence as a place for gro.-lth was echoed in the literature of Flushing Institute.
Althou::Jh one of Muhlenberg's major hopes in establishing
Flushing Institute was to train young
l1'eI1
who ..ould eventually enter
the Episoopal clergy, he always strove to keep the talents and abilities
of the individual stu::ient in mind: There is too much aim at present to make mere intellectual rren. Our seminaries look rrore than they ought to the learned professions
as the future sphere of their alunni. AlIrost every parent whose circumstance allo." him to indulge the idea, looks forward to his son figuring at the Bar, lecturing am:mg the Faculty, or holding forth in the Pulpit; and the prevalent notions of Education tend to enoourage the adsurdity . â&#x20AC;˘ . we want practical !!en. !1en of information and principle in all walks of society. We want intelligent rrerchants and manufacturers as well as lawyers and d::>ctors. Sensible and pious layrren, as well as learned and orthodox clergymen. To furnish these, Eilucation must be loosed fran the trafl1l'els of the rronastery, and be girded as a handmaid to the practical spirit of the age. 60 Much like Fbund IIill, Flushing's rapid gro..rth was, in no
small way, doo to the escalating fear that many parents hirl of the city life for their sons.
Muhlenberg
60 Ibid ., pp. 127-128.
me... well that if he was to insure
40 the early success of his school he would have to look to urban areas for students.
Fran every oorner carre the warnings of the dam3.ging
effects of raising one's son in the city: Muhlenberg's voice was only one of a mounting chorus warning of urban evils that swelled throughout the 1830s, 1840s am 1850s as Ar.erican cities gre-l eleven times over -- am were filled not only with native fann boys but with foreigners fran abroad. A ne-l class of juvenile delinquents was appearing in the larger towns and cities of the nation, declared the Ne-I England reformer E&~ard Everett Hale. 61 Muhlenberg introduced a system of "tutors" into the daily life at Flushing.
'lhe system called for the oldest ooys (those over sixteen)
to serve as dorrni tory directors of the stwent body.
the oolleges, oomrunity.
am,
A
am
advisors for the younger rreinbers
similar system of prefects had been used in
no doubt, Muhlenberg gleened his idea fran that
One of these tutors, John Kerfoot, was a young man who
would later becare ordained and follON in the footsteps of his teacher, Muhlenberg, becx:rning the headmaster of America's third ooys
boarding school, St. Jarres. IDeated in Hagerstown, Maryland, St. James was founded in 1842
arxl was an Episcopal school.
It, too, placed a heavy enphasis on the
strengths of the residential scrool for the gro.vth of the Christian character.
Like its predecessors, St. James was rural, idyllic,
isolated fran the ills of urban life, carq:osed of an extremely tight daily schedule, and heavily influenced by a SIl'all
am
dedicated faculty .
As the school was located in llaryland, the effect of the Civil War was
quite forseeab1e. Prior to the outbreak of the struggle, the majority
61 Ibid ., p. 119.
41
of students at St. James were from those few states with the Confederacy. '!hese boys left scroo1 in 1861 to fight for the South.
The eventual
closing of the school did not cx::.rre alx>ut, however, until 1864 when Kerfoot aOO his assistant, the Reverend Joseph H. Coit were incarcerated in reprisal for the Union's arrest of a Virginia clergyman. With the closing of St. James, the initial phase of the grONth of the boys boarding school ended. of Federalist
enthusia~
What had started as a manifestation
for the establishment of a cultural elite
ccrrposed of Christian genUaren at !bund Hill becazre enbued with far greater religious overtones at both Flushing Institute aOO St. James.
'!he schools had attracted, for the rrost part, the sons of
urban fiEilies \ho were financially capable of paying the tuition. With the northern industrial growth during and follONing the Ci viI War, there developed a far greater mrrber of wealthy individuals who desired the best education possible for their sons.
Thus, with the
closing of rrost academies, aOO the uncertainty of the new public schools, the boarding , schoo1 becazre a viable FOssibility for these individuals.
Dr. George Shattuck, a graduate of Round Hill, was one such
man
wro
sought an education for his
o,..tn
sons.
A man of rreans, who had
inherited a large sun of lI'OI'ley, Shattuck fC>1.lOO no scroo1s which erri:xxlied trose e1errents of total edu:ation that; he had found at Northanpton, and therefore,
cwn.
Cil!re
to the only l03ica1 conclusion:
he would build his
'!he training that he had at lbund Hill coupled with his deep
belief as an Episcopalian shaped his thoughts concerning the school, Iohich was to be naIOOd St. Paul's. Concord, New
H~hire,
I.cx:ated in the smll1 village of
Shattuck's school essentially, "was intended
II Ii \
42
to be quite sinply, RouOO Hill in Episcopal dress. ,,62 The founder had also been greatly influenced by physical facilities he had observed in Europe and especially the schools and universities in England.
Fran the beginning, Shattuck remained sarewhat in awe of the physical aspects of the private sch:x:>ls and openly C'CIlmmted on the vast
difference in the quality of education offered in Britain and the United States.
It is no surprise that his own school physically
reserbled that which he had observed. Although Shattuck obviously daninated the early stages of St. 'Paul's, his first headmaster, Henry Augustir-le Coit, developed the tone and spirit of the school.
Through his vision and direction, St.
Paul's School becarre the mxiel of the private school during the last half of the century.
He ranained at the helm of St. Paul's for al-
IIOst forty years and was himself the ideal of the Arri:rican gentleman
in the Victorian Age.
His belief in the developrent of the scholar
and gentleman rested entirely on the principle of honor.
In addressing
his students, he made this abundantly clear: Honour boys • • • (Coit wrote) honour bOys, is not a Chameleon, with one phase for .gentleren in society, and another for Il'fim pursuing their ordinary business, and another for boys at school. The honour which you ought to sheM to one anOther here is just the sarre which you ought to shCM when you are full grown to your fellCM rren. Honour will be I'x:lnour in the dealing with me here. Honour is real manliness, which is able to look every one full in the face; not fI'Cl1l the possession of vulgar brass, but fI'Cl1l a free conscience that has nothing to fear because there is nothing to hide. Honour is real manliness which scorns to do or say anything in a corner,
62 Ibid ., p. 143.
43
or behind the bush, which it dare not care out with boldly before friends and parents. Honour is real manline ss, for it has the courage to speak and to do as its better knowledge dictates, and the steadiness, when it has started on the right track, not to fall back because of a sneering tongue, nor to tum aside to listen and be trapped by a lying one. Honour boys, I say again is real manliness, and that is the tone I want to establish here. It \\Ould soon banish (schoolboy) .. • tricks •.• , for it loves the light that its deeds may be made manifest and approved. 63 In II'OSt respect';, the school's daily operation resembled that
of Flushing Institute or St. James, and the strong tie to the Episoopal background was never in question.
The life was one of siIlpli-
city, and boys who had came to St. Paul's fram rather opulant homes found a sanewhat spartan existence in Concord.
Where the school
differed fram its J\rTerican boarding predecessors was in the emphasis Q'\
cx:rcpetitive sports.
In the 1870's, St . Paul's
b.Q
major sports
were cricket and crew, but twenty years later, a variety of sports ~d
be included, not the least of which were ice h<x:key and football.
Although Coit often warned that if overemphasized, the canpetitive nature of individualized sports could have a detxiJTental res ult, he allONed team sports to
graN
as they furthered a sense of coc:p:!ration
and \\Orking toward a CCITITOn goal.
At St. Paul's, the small \\Orld of the students, and their Jl'aSters was one which encouraged grCMth, but grCMth under an umbrella of innocence,
The 'boys were essentially in a protected envirorurent
which exposed them, in only a limited way, to the \\Orld which awaited them folla,.,ring graduation.
When Coi t concluded his years at St. Paul's
it becaIre increasingly difficult for him to fathan a \\Orld in which
63 Ibid ., p. 167.
44 the stu:1ents, their purpose for education, arrl the society at large As ante-bellum Alrerica becarre nore canplex arrl in-
had been altered.
dustrialized, graduates of St. Paul's increasingly entered the field of business follCMin:] college, rather than the clergy or a specific professional field. In brief, Alrerica was caning of age and assuning her role in
the cx:mruni t Y of nations.
AI t.holJ:lh the atilhasis on roror, genUal\ml y
conduct, intellectual integrity,
am
noral ethics 1IoUIld continue to
be erphasized at tOOse sch:ols which folla..oed St. Paul's, the spirit of the Christian gentleman enveloped I:.1t Victorian innocence \\Ould disappear.
In its place would develop the desire on the part
of Ix>arcling school headlasters to prrdllCe young, educated, and cultured men who ....ould not be content with anything less than full participation and leadership in the nation.
As the Victorian Era waned, the
role of the edocated gent1emm was rapidly altered by nore progressive
'll1e Gn:Mth of the Boarding School in a Clanging SOCiety
Boys' boardi.ng schools established after St . Paul's ....ould, to a great degree, be shaped by individuals who responded to the educationa I and social needs of the t.iIre.
lis the nineteenth century carre
to a close, the nUTber of collegiate institutions in Alrerica increased
with the ever gro<."ing ~pulation.
Even nore, the degree of sophistica-
tim in the curriculun offered at the college was influenced by the needs of a nore technical, industrial, and \\Orldly nation. Kraush3ar explains:
lis Otto
45 Until late in the nineteenth century the level of '-'Ork required by the collegeS was only a little aOOve that of the academies and it did not ~e with that of the European Gymnasium,
\olhich prepared ~lD19 people for the lDliversities. But the gI'CMing American thirst for a brooder and deeper culture, which fifty years earlier sparked the fOlDlding of Round Hill and Flushing, coupled no,.; \~ith the new denands levied by the gro...th of industry and technology, spurred the colleges to offer a nore derMnding, thoroug~ing curriculum. As a natural consequence, the colleges evinced a gI'CMing concern for more thorough college preparation. 64
But where were the colleges to garner these better prepared stlrlents?
'!he academy, despite its weaknesses, had, prior to the
Civil War, been the nain source of ?tlrlents for the colleges .
For all
practical purposes, the academy had vanished fran the educational stage chlrfng the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the newly forrred public high school, thou;Jh in theory meeting the egalitarian
ropes of an optimistic demx:racy,
was not trusted by all concerned:
'nle public high S<:f¥:>ol was as yet unproven, in fact, according to sore contel1p:)rary critics, the whole public school system was an utter disaster. M:1st of its pupils were "unable to read intelligently, to spell correctly, to write legibly,
to describe urrlerstarrlingly the geography of their C7HI'I COlDltry, or to do anything that reasonably well-educated children should do with ease.- [bootless an extreme view, but it expresses well the attitlrle of many towards the public high school. 'lbe well off and well educated were often distressed by the heterogeneous nature of its student b:>dy and its increasingly egalitarian social goals. N::ove all, they appear to have been distressed by the p..1blic high schcol's low academic standards and sheer educational ineffectiveness. Part of this was due to the arergence of teaching as a profession and the subsequent bureaucratization of public education systems. 65 Yale, under the leadership of President Tinothy £Might, was the first college to openly endorse the developrent of a private
boarding school which \\'Ould offer a continual supply of qualified
64Kraushaar • A-rerican Nonpublic Schools, pp. 65-66. 6Sr.ti.achlan. J\lrerican Boarding Schools, p. 195.
46
scholars for entry in New Haven as freshlren.
After a good deal of
business wrangling and persuasion, Dwight convinced the widCM of Benjamin Hotchkiss in Lakeville, Connecticut that her philanthropic
dollars \<,Quld best serve the estbalishirent of such a school.
The
now faJlOUS Hotchkiss school was the result.
Princeton, in an effort to establish a sclxlol in the mid-Atlantic states which \<,Quld provide adequate secondary training discovered the legacy left by John C. Green, a devoted benefactor of the college. ·With the knowledge that Green wished to further help Princeton, the legatees purchased the old academy in ne arby Lawrenceville,
and hired
JaIreS
Mackenzie to develop the school.
Lawrenceville becarre
~ll-kno,..rn
Founded in 1883,
both at hare and abroad not only as
a feeder school for Princeton, but one which had adopted Mackenzie's "house plan" which was unique in Jlrrerica at the t.il1e. ducing the plan
to the lawrenceville trustees,
When int:r<r
~lackenzie
rea::mrended:
• • • the "separate hare" plan of boarding. These hares should be built at convenient distances fran a main school build.iilg; should be large enough to hold a teacher and his family and not rrore than twent;z-five boys; and should be under the imrediate care o f the teacher and his wife to organize and maintain a =ked hare life and supervision. • • • There should be a dormitory for the IlOre matured in character and those of limited Ireans l.\'ho could not pay the necessary charge of the toTes. 66
laWrenceville was also an institution which was a product of
a social and educational tren<1 in the nation which has often been called "Anglophilia."
Although Shattuck of St. Paul's h:.d been inpressed by
English schools IlOre than t....u decades earlier, those whO laid the
66 Ibid ., p. 201.
47 philosophical foundation at Lawrenceville were ove.rwhe.llred by it. This, ha....ever, was quite typical of the wave of cultural and roucationa! iJrports fran the Britis h upper strata that were being adopted at the tiJre throughout Alterica.
It was an age when Britain ruled
suprare in ITOst every way throughout the world.
We adopted the
starched white shirt with attached turnover collar, which,
~h
quite uncanfortable, was worn by gentlerren of good breeding in England. City clubs for
lIEn
echoing their London counterparts, as well as
organizations for the study of Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson flourished. Sinply put, the ITOre wealthy in Alterica looked to Engl.ar.d for the example in dress, social habits, and education.
Early l€fXAts of
Lawrenceville claiIred it would be: • • • on the m::rlel of the English schools Rugby and £ton with such I1Odification as a careful study of the educational rrethods in vogue here may suggest. 67 The influence that the British schools would have on those boys
boarding schools in New England during the l8BO's, 90's, and well into the first decade of the twentieth century was astounding.
Although
these newly fomed schools would certainly retain an Ameri.can flavor, they would adopt mannerisms found in the better British sc!xlols, as
Many schools, which had previously been acadanies sezving a single geographic area evolved into boarding instituti.cEs and acquired a much ITOre national student t:ody as a result.
The Phillips
acadanies in Andover, Massachusetts and Exeter, New Ha!¢ri.re serve as exarrples of schools that terminated their policy of edJcating
67New York Tribune,
1
April
l8B3.
48
some students to enter directly into the working world and others for oollege .
In essence , they viewed their future in direct relation-
ship to the dEmands of the oollege cx:mrunity and thus altered their ool;l!"se by be<X'!Tti.ng roarding scrools whose purpose it was to prepare young men for oollege.
The academies at Deerfield and Munson in
Massachusetts and Ches!tire in Connecticut soon follo.ved this sarre plan and thus avoided extinction . New boarding schools rapidly grew throughout the :lew England states.
In Connecticut alone the gro.vth was indicative of a pattern
being established in neighOOring states.
The follo.-ling school s , all
of \<tlich are still flourishing as roarding institutions, were founded in the period following the Civil War to that immediately after World War I :
Loomis, WP..s tminster, Taft, Hotchkiss, Pcrnfret, Choate,
Salisbury, Kent, South Kent, and Avon Old Farms . In all of these scrools, the sar.e thrust toward residential
education with overtones of a large idealized family was present. this sense, they are direct
d~scendents
In
fran IbUlld Hill with the sarre
enphasis on the individual and his edUcational needs . TOO grot/th of the NCii England roys toarding school during the last half of the nineteenth century and first quarter of this century cannot be explained easily.
As has already been mentioned, there was
oonsiderable ooncern arrong urban intellects over the quality of education that the p.lblic schools wculd provide , but this alone would hardly explain the
trero
of expansion that boarding scrools enjoyed.
Qnni-
present in the mirrls of many lvnericans was the quest fc:r the best education one might find . regardless of the oost.
For sane, the
49 boarding school with its emphasis on preparation for college and character building was the answer.
For others, IlOst of whan had ac-
quired considerable IlOney through business and industry in the 1880's and 1890's, the boarding school represented not only educational praninence, but oocial stature as well.
The lemning-like migration
I:7j the nOlNeau rime fran the city to the newly fortred suburbs also
contributed to the boarding school population in a rather indirect !MIlner.
Initially, so ITUch land <r,.ay fran the urban area was held I:7j
a relatively few people and there was sirrply not enough pop.llation to warrant the establishment of a local school, be it private or public. '!hIlS, the children of
y-.e
early sulmrbanites attendOO schools
i1JNay fran h:::me for practical as \Jell as educational and social rea-
sons. But the boarding school maintained pop.l1arity for trose who
remllned in the ci ty as well: • • • the fan.ily boarding schools flourished, rreeting the needs of the new suhlrbanites as well as those of their well-to-do cousins who remained in a "silk-stocking" district of the politically corrupt city. They were country schools which were as ITUch, paracbxically, the product of the growth of the industrial city and imnigration as were the bureaucratic and rigid urban public high schools. 68
With increased ll;migrants, continued internal corruption, and general clisillusioment \.ith the political system, urban <M=llers sent their sons cr.vay for much the satre reason in 1900 as they would have in 1830 -
to escape the ills of the city, reside in healthy
and isolated at:rroSpheres, and be influenced by strong educational
68McLlchlan , Alrerican Boarding Schools, p. 216.
50
figures who Would rrold their rroral, intellectual, and physical character. Nany of these sane urbanites were at the very center of the industrial explosion in the nation.
The families of Morgan, Firestone, Roosevelt,
Higginson, Borden, Chase, and Levings were only a few that not only chose to send their sons <May to school, but actively supported further growth o f boys boarding schools through financial assistance.
The boarding school had made its mark prior to the Civil War,
and one finds the sane well established family nanes on the student
rosters of schools in New England that were present at RJund Hill and Fl~~1
lnstitute.
A vast, rather CClTplicated system of inter-
marriages arrong nurrerous wealthy families in the east coast produced
a type of upper class inbreeding.
The male offspring of these unions,
for the rrost part, attended New England boarding schools.
Family names
familiar to the history of the nation were definite strands in this maze of geneology:
St. Paul's founder, George Shattuck, had married Anne Henrietta Brune of Baltirrore, the sister of two of his schoolmates at Round Hill. The marriage linked Shattuck and his descendants with the
Brunes of Baltirrore, the newly rich Morrisons of New England and with a branch of the Eliot family. But the intermarriages of the Boston Brahmins are perhaps too familiar. Consider the family connections of another Rotmd Hill alumnus, Samuel Ward III of New York. On his banker-father's side Sam Ward was descended fran various governors of Rhode Island; on his rrother' s side Julia Rush Cart.e r - fran Francis ~1arion, the South Carolina -SWarrp Fox" of revolutionary farre, and fran Benja'llin Rush of Philadelphia, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. One of Sam's sisters married the Arrerican sculptor Thanas Crawford; another (Julia Ward) married the farrous humanitarian Samuel Gridley Howe. Intellectually brilliant , socially c;hanning, and finanCially unstable, Sam himself married Emily Astor, daughter of \~illiam Astor, a son of John Jacob I. Through Emily's rrother the marriage tied Sam to the Livingstons and other old Knickerbocker families of New York. Various other connections linked Ward to scores of families (ran 路Georgia to Maine, fran New York to San Francisco; he could travel fran
51 city to city ard stay only with cous ins. S<mll'fard's situation was not unique. By the 1870's, the tie s of b l ood united scores of wealthy Arrerican families , particularly in the o l der urban centers of tl,e F..ast . A touch in Savannah on one s trard o f this web of kinship oould cause vibrations in Philadel phia, New York, BaltiIoore, Boston, an::l other cities . 69 Many of these s~ families were deepl y involved with the
fu.rthe=ance not only o f education a t the se=ndar)' and collegiate
level, bJt with the spread of culture throughrut hterica.
They were
the backbone of the nation' s largest philanthrcpic efforts to estdblish city orche stras, nuseurns , his tori cal societies , research foundat i ons, an::l academies for the arts .
Ameri ca' s cultural o fferin:Js mushrOCllEd
significantly during the forty year period fran 1880 to 1920 an::l
can be attriruted, to a great extent , to the sincere interest and geIErOSity of a S'1all, afflue nt, aId soci ally a-..are group of indivi-
Vast additions to the ooffers of works such as the Peabcrly
duals.
Omservat ory, the !-1etropolitan Museum, the graduate school at Johns iJc:p.dns, an::l the Boston Publ~c Library Were made not only I::Jy rren of ~th,
but
~
as well.
The ethic of the tirre arrong many of the nation's well-to-do
was absolutely influenced by the progressive spiri t that existed throughalt A::I:!rica at the turn of the century.
Theodore R::losevel t spoke for
an entire generation of progressive thinkers ,VtD also held the finan-
cial, political, ard social position to affect
~e
in this nation .
For ibJsevelt and ot.l)ers, the aim of education was to tra in for s ervice in
t.~
society at large.
In 1904, he urged the young genUeren at
69McLach1an , Arrer ican Boarding School s , pp. 211-212 .
52 Groton that they must assure that role: You are not entitled, either in college or in life, to an ounce of privilege because you have been to Groton - not an OlD1ce, but l..e are entitled to hold you to exceptional accountability because you have been to Groton . Much has been given you, therefore \..e have a right to expect much of you . • •• I was g l ad to hear the rector when he asked you to be careful not to turn out snobs. Now there are in our civic and social life very much ~rse creatures than snobs, but none is IIOre conterrptible .••. The interest you take in this is, can a man aCCCJ'11Jlish anything? If he cannot , then let him give place to one who can. 70
Private boarding s chool s throughout New England were blessed with a group of strong-willed, dedicated, and influential l eaders, many of whan spent their entire life developing a particular institu-
tion .
''/hen one ponders the listing of headmasteI;'S and founders of
these school s during the closing years of the 1890's and the first quarter of the twentieth century, names like Coit(St. Pa ul's), Boyden (Deerfi eld), Mackenzie (Lawrenceville), ~gs (Hill), Sill
(Kent), Peabody (Groton), and Taft (Taft) appear.
In each case, the
personal influence of these rren, trore than any other single factor shaped the individual school.
Each man's personality was deeply ingrained
within the frarrework of the school and in a very direct way, the schcol's strengths and weaknesses \..ere a reflection o f the individual man. J\I!ong boys boarding schools, there exists but one that can attribute its entire genesis to the wisdan of a remarkable and
an eccentric 6.:;';
\olaIlan.
Theodate Pope Riddle created the Avon Old Fanns
001 as a manifestation of her educational beliefs, her architectural
70 Ibid ., p. 293.
53 genius and her faith in a way of life that she saw threatened. 71 Her life's work was a school located in Avon, Cormecticut.
71IntervieN with Tbnald Carson, ward of Mrs. Riddle, 1Jenve.r路, Colorado, 8 October 1976.
CHAPTER III
'l'HEX)I)P.TE
POPE RIDDLE -
THE FORMl\TIVE YEARS
Theodate Pope Riddle, the only child of Alfred Atnore Pope and Ada Brooks, was 00= in SalE!ll, Ohio on February 2, 1868.
Her paternal
grandfather, Alton Pope, was the first rrember of the Quaker family
with an interest in establishing a school. residing in Vassalboro, t-laine. education at this school.
P.e did so in 1840 while
Theodate's father received his early
She recalls the school, an academy serving
the small Vernont township: Grandfather and four other Quaker gentleren fOlmded Oak Grove Academy for the Quaker children of the district. Father and his brothers walked three miles to school and three miles back each day. 72 However, schooling was not to be the life's work of either her grandfather or father.
The main financial source for the family
was a small woolen rull owned and operated by the elder Pope.
Alton
Pope's efforts at business were a failure largely due to his poor financial managerrent and when Theodate's father was thirteen, the mill was forced to close, leaving the family in utter penury.
The
family rroved fran Vernont to Maryland and then eventually settled
in Salem, Ohio: â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ . probably because that town was well I<rlaoIn to the Society of Friends having three 'rree ting houses of different sects of Friends. My grandparents were, I believe, what is called Orthooax Friends. I know they
72Undated notes of Theroate Pope Riddle.
54
55 were acquainted with Jose ph John Guerney of England and traveled with hbn when he care to J\m2rica. 73 Alfred Pope was a determined man who, unlike his am father, was a trcrnendous success in business.
At twenty-seven years of age
he borrowed $5,000.00 and bought an interest in the Cleveland t1alle-
able Iron Canpany, later rencr.oed the IJational Malleable Steel Castings Canpany.
It was in this business that
vast sums of rroney.
Alfred Pope would accumulate
While her father was serving as President of the
c:arpany, the family rroved to the then farrous Euclid Avenue in Cleveland near the hare of John D. Pockefeller, Sr. Her early childhood was a lonely one in which her parents were l<1Jed, but viewed as
~sing
and sorrewhat distant figures.
The re-
sult was an early reliance on her o.m ideas and ju:lgerrent as the following indicates:
as an only child was the extrerre of what the lives of only children are. I do not look up)n this with regret because I feel that the solitariness of my childhood days developed in Ire an indeperrlence of thought Iffiich made it p)ssible for Ire to make independent judgerrents.
My life
I have no treIT'Ory at all of ever sitting in my rrother's lap. My father was s o occupied with affairs that ¡ I was fifteen years old before he reali zed that he was losing his child. 74 Rarely did she associate with young people her o.m age, but instead turned to older people for friendship.
She was a deep, intnr
spective child who, no doubt, often r e treated to the inner depths of
73 Ibid â&#x20AC;˘
74 Ibid .
56 her
own imaginations and drearrs. 75 She left Cleveland when she was in her late teens
attend Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. forward, Farmington was always to be her tore.
m order
to
Fran Ithat time
At Porter's. as the
sdxx>l was and still is called, she grew to love the ~ colonial village, the old hanes, and the gentle rolling hills leading t:o Litchfield.
In her rotes, she recalls the first night at _the s~. the
girls she met and the conversation that they had: With me in Miss Dunning's house were eight girls, mc1uling my cousin Elizabeth Brooks; the two cousins, Alice . and Agnes Hamilton; Grace 11acLeod, Hally Campbell and SUe Usher, who wept the entire year - first bec.ause she was at a boarding school, and then because she had to l eave in the spring. The first evening we undressed and, 'Sliwm9 into our dressing gONTlS, sat on t.'le floor in Agnes and Alice's room. ·T here was a great buzz-buzz. Alice, witRu her curly black hair and red dressing gONTl, stamped h~f UpOn my merrory when she startled us by saying she was qo.imlg to be a doctor. * I Pulled up saroething evidently fran my subconsciousness, because I heard myself saying that I was going to build an indestructible school for boys. 16 '!his was the first mention rede by her of what was to later becorre Avon Old Fanns School.
Like so many of the rejor decisions of
her life, this ocmnent was the result of errotion rather than lengthy tb:lught and consideration.
II
June
Years later, she was to begin the actual
75 Interview with Brooks Erreny, nephew of T. P. Riddle. 1977 •
76Undated notes of T. P. Riddle. *Dr. Alice Hamiltoo was , in fact the first •...unan appointed on the Harvard Medical Faculty in 1919. She was a crusader against the ills of steel mills, chanical plants , and coal mines where she fought the apathy, igrDrance, and greed whim permitted de adly industrial diseases to exist. FollCMing t:he receipt of her 11.0. fran the University of Michigan in 189B, Dr. Hamiilton worked with Jane Adams in the :imnigrant section of the west: side in Chicago. Jlqnes Hamilton became a ~rld renCMn sociologist ariI her sister, Edith, a well-l<noIvn classicist.
57 plans for and oonstLuction of the school only after a trerrendous erotional traUl'd, caused by the death of her fatler. Her experience at the all girls boarding school was such that
she was rontinually thrust into an atrrosphere tmfamiliar to her.
Be-
cause of the CCJTpact time schedule and shared living quarters, she
was unable to achieve the privacy krown in Cleveland.
Conversely,
she felt that the school's cloistered atrrosphere did rot allCM the girls an opportunity to experieoce the world outside of Farmington. It was difficult for rre to adjust myself to the frantic life of a girls boarding school, and I must oonsciously have resented being p.llled out into the life of extroverts, when my unoonscious w!sh must have been to roll up within myself. One day in spring the thCl.lght had crystalized in rre that I must Im::Jw what "real" life was like. This meant for rre at that time a desire to urrlerstand the life of working people. So I started off on a Saturday rroroing, wearing
a little French flannel S[Drt suit, striped in rose, pc:1<.der blue and ~ihite, but without a p.Jr5e. This, of course, was long before the days of trolleys and rrotor cars. I began walking on what was then a lOnely dirt road to Hartford, nine miles <May. t+j object was to ootain 6ll'loyment in sare farmh:Juse as a r.aid of all ~rk, knowing, of rourse, nothing about any kind of work. 7 She was an adventures!; at heart who, t.'lroughout her life,
was always experiencing sarething lenge. 78
flefI
and taking up a different chal-
lIer sojourn <May fraTI Porter's and the rore traditional
curriculum in search of what she Callen "real life" is but an overt r.anifestation of feelings toward education that she would later apply to her school in Avon.
77 Ibid â&#x20AC;˘ 78 Interview with Blanche Borden Frenning, cousin of T. P. Riddle, Little Ccrrpton, Rhode Island, 28 July 1977.
58 Theodate oontinued at Hiss Porter's curl was graduatErl in 1888, whereupon, as was the custan arrong many people of ~lth, she stayed nearly a year abroad with her 1TOt.'1er and father.
On this grand tour
she spent ITOSt of her tirre making drawings of, curl stu:lying the architecture of the various countries and especially Englcurl.
Her interest
in ardu tectural style continued to grc,., follCMing the trip curl was to develop into far nore than an avocation as years passed. In what nust have been a gallant attempt on the part of Mr. and !-Irs. Pope to introduce their dau;jhter to society follCMing their
retum fran Europe, they oostErl a gala caning-<JUt party.
The respJnse
to their efforts on the part of 'lheodate was, as one would expect, different fran other
class ritual.
~ung
girls who had gone through a similar upper
She recalls:
'!here were t'brth gCMl'ls fran Paris, and oh, tPoi I loathed it all! I was sullen with rage curl ooredan ITOSt of the tiJre, and my parents finally gave up trying to fit Ire into their pattern. I was pennitted to rent a =ttage on High Street in Farmington. 'lbey believed I ,",'Quld be tired of it in three I!OOths -- row wrong they were! 79 . Thus, she retumed to the Farmington Valley where she soon purchased the =ttage (which she had only hoped to rent), another
small structure which was affixed to the main =ttage, and forty-t\.'O acres of land nearby.
In these dwellings, Theodate was to gain the
experience in life that she had long desired.
As both of the structures
were in need of great interior and exterior work, she had the oppJrtunity to put into practice scr.e of the architectural ideas that she
79UndatErl notes of T. P. Riddle.
59 had developcrl.
She atten;>ted to, arrl was very su=essful at reoon-
structing and restoring the two houses in the rural style of an early nineteenth century famhouse.
80
In that section of the house which
had been added, she began a small shop kno,.m as, -0Jds arrl Ends," and
also operated a tea roan which was open to the general public arrl Miss Porter's students, in particular.
The profit realized fran these
ventures paid for a visiting nurse in the TcMn of Farmington.
This
was one of her early gestures of generosity to this particular oomIIllI'lity and it was certainly not to be her last.
I1er excitarent with
her new d.4elling arrl independent lifestyle was cbvious: Life in my oottage gave rre just the experience I had been longing for fran the t.irre I ran <May fran scrool in my atterq:>t to see real life. For a year I cooked fNerY rreal. Through the night, I frequently struck matches to see my watch by carrlle light, in order to be up at six o'clock to build the kitchen fire. The experience was all so deliciously new to me that I felt I had stepped over a frame into a picture. 8l Deyorxi her supp:>rt for the visiting nurse, she purchased the
old and unused academy building which she refurbished arrl established classes in what she termed darestic science arrl sewing for local girls. 82
The salaries of the instnlCtors were paid for by Theodate
80 Interview with Hr. Jarold Talbot, curator of Hill Stead t1useun, Farmington, Connecticut 6 July 1976.
8~ated note.<; of T. P. Riddle. 82 Ibid â&#x20AC;˘ In !-trs. Riddle's earlier notes, she nakes reference to her nnther's capability for running a proper toTe. Yet when Thoodate asked her Jrother i f she oould help do the house..Qrk, the response fran Mrs. Pope \VciS, "Nell, \oIOUld you have rre dismiss the maid? It would sirrply disorganize the houserold." Thus, in her oottage in Fa.nni.ngton, which was rrost synrolic of her . ind~, she . had an opp:>rtunity to experience a great deal deru.ed her Ul early hfe. .
60
am
there was no tuition charge.
of the building
am
83
The Ironies for her initial purchase
land in Farmington came directly from Alfred Atrrore
FOpe, who, by this ti.rre, must have realized that his daughter was a person who had strong convictions ta.mrd causes that in the broadest sense would serve society. Her initial involvement in Farmington led her to expand her
interest in helping others.
Because N60I York was only a f60l hours
<!May, it was an easy matter for her to maintain her !l::xre in Connecticut
am
also keep an apa.rtJrent in the city.
This she did for sane
nonths while she served as a volunteer worker in the Lillian Wald Henry Street Settlerrent.
Apart fran her work at the Settlanent, she
also l'짜:!lped at the New York psychiatric institute, becane a supporter of the
Suffragette r-bverrent, and, moch to her family's
l!E!lber of the Socialist Party. 84
di~y,
a
The latter staterrent is generously
illustrated in a note written by a r.ruch older Theodate Pope Riddle just four years prior to her death.
She wrote:
I \vas very radical when I was young -- as I think every young person should be - . I used to talk al:out Socialism to anyone who would listen to Ire -- my father was infuriated when he heard Ire, am my notl1er told me one day in her roan, with her black eyes snapping, "1 want to tell you that if you don't stop talking about Socialism, your fat.'ler is going to leave you out of his will." Of course, this irrpelled me to talking" it more am rrore, with delight. One
S\.JTll'er
evening when we were sitting on the porch with guests
who had dined with us, 1 began again. 1 could see my father getting red in the face. Then 1 said, suddenly, "Why, Father,
you uP
mY
think that 1 invented Socialism, am that if 1 just shut there would be no Socialist Party." Everyone laughed, even father. 85
83Intervi6ol with ~tiss Elizabeth McCarthy, personal secretary to Mrs. Riddle, Fannington, Connecticut, 22 July 1976. 8 4lb id. 8SJheodate Pope Riddle, nOte of
16
June
1942.
61 Though her serious intent in being an active nanber of the party can be questioned, she was continually surrounded by individuals who 'oIere involved with the social issues of the day.
B2sides her lifelong
friendship with the HaMilton sisters, she was also close to r11ss Jane l\dams of Hull House in Chicago
am
referred to men like Charles
\'/. Eliot, John Dewey, as well as Henry ard Willitllll James as her Wlcles. 86 These men were frequent visitors to Farmington and were rrost influential in helping to shape Theodate's
views concerning education in its rela-
Throughout her life, an:l. especially in the fonna-
tion to rociety.
tive years pr ior to the building of Avon , she was influenced by these men, the fonner b.u of whom are best rerranbe.red for their progressive views on education. 'l11ough certainly exhibiting great interest in such work , she alro desired to enhance her kn::Mledge of architecture. in l89B she becane the first
WOI':1an
Typically,
permitted to atrlit architectural
classes at Princeton Uni versi ty, where she spent several rronths. FollCMing this exposure, coupled with frequent trips abroad, she becari'e well founded in the subject matter and set about drawing
sketches of a gran:l. house to be located in Farmington. custom
throug~ut
As was her
her life, she \-lOuld hire draftsrren to c:orrplete the
scaled architectural details fran her renderings.
1lle hare, which is
today Hill Stead 11useun, was to be built for her parents.
Theodate's
task was to o:mvince them to leave the horre in Cleveland arjd move eastward.
After
SaTE
persuasive effort ' on her part,87 aided by the
86 In te rvie.y with Miss Elizabeth McCarthy. 871Jotes of Mrs. Grace Flandrau,
sister-in-law to Mrs. Riddle.
62 fact that her father was retiring at Cleveland Malleable, she was
~cessful.88 The hare was her first architectural undertaking , beyond the
earlier cottage restoration, and the finn of McKim,
~d,
and White
was employed to build the stately heme which was located on the original forty-bo,Q acres that she had purchased.
All of her irragination, love
for traditional colonial architecture, and individual personality ~t
into the design of Hill Stead, which was cx:rrpleted in 1901.
rouse becarre well-kno.vn at the turn of
The
the century not only in archi-
tectural circles, but arrong the art world as well.
The reason for
the latter was the large and outstanding collection of original Inpressionistic works collected by Miss Pope I s father.
Henry Janes,
a popular guest at Hill Stead, wrote: • • • a great new house on a hilltop that overlooked the JrOst CO!pOSed of cx:mnunitiesl a house apparently conceived - and with great felicity-- on the lines of a magnificent Mount Vernon and in which an array of trodem "impressionistic" pictures, mainly French, wondrous exarrples of ~1anet, of Degas, of Claude Monet, of lmistler, of other rare reCent hands, treated us to the m::rrentary effect of a slippery sweet inserted without a warning of half-conscious inanition. 89 Though her JrOther was to host lavish parties at Hill Stead with luminaries fran the cities on the east coast, her daughter main-
tained the singular dislike of such large, iJTpersonal gatherings. She continued to live on the Hill Stead property, but remained in the
cottage which she had purchased years before.
90
With the purchase of
88Interview with Hr. Donald Carson. J'IIrerican
89Janes , Henry, "New England: /In AutU!lU1 Inpression,· North ~view, No. DLXXXII, May 1905. 90Interview with Miss Elizabeth McCarthy.
63 rrore land and another Structure which beC<m\e kna.-m as the Field House, she continued to develop the lams around the grand h::roo and pro-
doced a snaIl \ooQrking farm.
At her works end, she had created an
idyllic agrarian estate about which Theodore Roosevelt, when writing
to his sister, a friend of l1iss Pope's, said: I shall always be glad that you took me to the Pope's house -it seeJred to tre the ideal of what an lIrrerican country hare shoold be. 9l
Her ir.terest in architecture JlU.Ishroaned over the next fifteen years.
Besides tre nunerous opulent residences that sre designed, she also cx:mpleted the Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut, which was finished in 19U, as well as the Hop !1eadow School in Naugatuck, Connecticut. AltOOl.楼Jh she gained trarencbus notoriety at the time for the architectural talent displayed in the buildings, Theodate considered them only
as interesting projects
am
a challenge in design.
Never were 路either
of these schools to mld the personal lrnfOrtance to her that Avon would in future years. 92
Her faroo was, in part, due to the fact she was a
wcman enterL1g into a predaninantly nale darain.
In 1910, she had be-
cane a registered architect in both Connecticut and flew York and was later selected as a Fellow in the Arrerican Institute of Architects. The next three years (1913-1916) brought a series of tragic
events into her life which were to have a profound effect on Miss Pope. She had regarded her father as a true gentleman of honor, courage, and
9~tes of Mrs. Grace Flarrlrau. 92 InterView with Miss Elizabeth McCarthy.
64
trust throu;1lx>ut her years.
Their relationship had grown closer as
she had grC7Wl1 older and there existed a strong and loving booo between than.
His death on August 8, 1913 threo..,. her into a deep em:>tional
state for sane tiroo, during l.mich she abandoned her architectural efforts. 93
In her few notes, she does make reference to that moment
in which she regained her creative will and restated that prcI\use of years before: In the aut\.lTU"l of 1913, a few ~ after the death of my father, I was in the Ell Sitting !ban at Hill Stead with my l!'other and
Harris Whittemore. I announced that I was going to found a scixlol for boys in 11'elT'OI)' of Father. My mother was appalled at the idea, but Harris Whitterrore said, "She can do it. n My rrother, having perfect trust in llarris'judgrrent, said, NOh, I kn~.,. she will do it i f she says she will." She was able to smile wanly at the prospect. But I was strong, because I perceived no difficulties ahead of Ire: 94 OVer the next six years she bought roughly 3,000 acres of farmland exteOOing northward fran Fannington to Avon on which the scl'col would eventually be located.
Her efforts to begin plans for the sclxlol.
were interrupted by an overwhelming and time consuming interest .in psychic research.
Her notes are filled with mem:>ries of seances in
Boston ac:ccrcpanied by lVilliam Jarres and Eusopio Palladino, a world fam:ms mediur.t.
Such was her devotion to the advancerent of this re-
search that she attE!11pted to establish a Chair at Harvard.
In her
effort to gain support for this venture, she traveled to England to seek the aid of Sir Conan !byle, a leader in the field?5 '11le result
93Interview with Blanche Borden Frenning. 94 Undated notes of T. P. Riddle 95Interview with Miss Eliza~th McCarthy.
65 of tm voyage aboard the Lusitania in May of 1915 is well-known.
She
1'larX'O\'1y survived and took rronths to recover fran the ordeal. 96 The Harvard project was abandoned.
Her life gained a great deal of stability when sre !ret and rrarried John Wallare Riddle of Philadelphia.
In many aspects, Riddle was Theo-
date's q:>posite, and perhaps this is what attracted the t...o to each other.
While she was carpulsive, errotional, and flarrbJyant, he was a
'"' was described as patient, intellectual, tactful, and generous.
97
IIBO
He
would need all of these qualities, not only in his marital affairs, but
also in his professioo, where he served this nation in the diplanatic corps.
Follc:wing graduation fran Harvard in 1886 and Colunbia Law
Sdxlol in 1890, he had further prepared for his career while studying languages, diplcmacy, history, and international lqw at l'Escole des Sciences Politique in Paris. 98 He had served in Turkey, Egypt, and
Russia prior to treeting his future wife. fobst of all, John W. Riddle provided for her the strength
that she hadlT\i.ssed since her father's passing. husband
throlJ9hout
his years with 'Theodate
He was an understandirq
and although often unable
to fathan her carplex personality, encouraged her, in a very fatherly way to excel in these things which interested her.
He was a gentlerren' s
gentleman and essentially the ideal of mannerly and diplanatic conduct. 99
96Theodate Pq:le Riddle, A Letter Fran a Survivor of the Lusitania (Privately Printed, Brs. Alfred Atlrore Pope, June, 1916). 97 Interview with Blanche Borden Frenning. 9~atiCX1al cyclopedia of Arrerican Biography, Vol. 30, (New York: J.nes Mute Carpany, 1943).
99Interview with Miss Elizabeth McCarthy.
66 JUs strength was needed, for follCMing their l1\llTiage in May of 1916, Gordon Brockway, a young orphan ·~ihan she had raised fran infancy, died of polianyelitis at age four.
Scx:n thereafter she gained custo1y of two
other boys, who were orphans of missionaries.
These boys, Donald Carson
and Paul Martin, lived with her at Hill Stead and were raised as if they
were her a<m sons. 100 In 1917, Mrs. Riddle began the actual drawings for the school
that had so long been in her thoughts.
Her close friend, Grace
Flandrau, was present for those first renderings. I was at Hill Stead when she began the drawing of the first building and fran that rrarent, she was a possessed, dedicated, and transfigured 1o.OT'arl. After years of fumbling, she had found the work that she was born for, and that t«>uld make her ~Ole. She plunged into a passim that was to be sustained ~or years, drawing, desigrJ.ng, and supervising the slew grcwth of the buildings, as well as developing the long docurrent, her educational ideals, and aspirations for what human beings could and should be. 101
Thus, the actual process for the construction of the school began.
The buildings, philosophy, curriculum, and daily life at the
school was shaped by this one c::arplex and detennined
1o.OT'arl,
and much
like its founder, the sch:x>l was to receive both plaooits and scathing
criticisn during its early years.
In all, the main construction of
the school took six years to c::arplete (1922-1927), but the founder
would spend the remaining years of her life and the better part of a fortune in an effort to ilTplerrent the educational beliefs that she held.
10°Interview with Blanche Borden Frenning. l°lundated notes of Grace Flandrau.
OIAPTERIV
The previous architectural experience gained from the tinE of Hill Stead onward served 11rs. Riddle well during the building of the scrool. Plans for the school's architecture, which for years had been developing in her mind, were extrarely detailed and called for a style of the sixteenth century familiar to
~e
Cotswolds of England.
During her trips
abroad, prior to and follCMing her marriage to John W. Ridjle, copious notes were made dealing with the architectural styles found throughout
England.
In these notes, she observed t.l,e buildings in Kent, Sussex,
Surry and fiarrl'shire in particular.
The brick work in the earlier cottages is of English I:xmd, and of Flanish in the latter ~le. The nUITber of courses in the given height is also different, the former taking five courses to li~" and the latter four or thereabouts; the joints, too, in English bond are wider; and in Flemish flared headers are alrrost invariably used. Another rrethod of brick laying is to place the bricks all around with stretches placed also on end, but parallel instead of right angles to the wall face; the course then being 4~" deep instead of 2lo". Between half tint>er work they are laid in courses of stretches or herring-bone fashion. In other walls, the bricks are 0ccasionally laid one header to three stretches and in Sussex . in the stone district, bands of stOl1es are sanetirres introduced in brick walls of English bordo r10st of the earlier cottages are of ti.rrber framing and plaster. The timber in nearly each case is of oak and the panel is fornro by fixing upright hazel rods in grooves cut in top and bottor:l, and then by twisting thinner hazel wards around ther:l. The panel is then filled up with solid plaster of marly clay and chopped strcll'1 and finished \'lith a thin coat of linE plaster. I02 I02.rheodate Pope Riddle, undated rotes on construction of buildings in England . 67
68 Beyond this, she was a frequent visitor to tl1e public schools
in England, and particularly Eton.
Here she studied the educational
lifestyle that existed in post Victorian England and \v.as very much irrpressed with the architecture.
Of particular interest to her was
the feeling of strength and power that existed in the sturdy style of In her own school, she hopOO to capture that
the scmel' s buildings.
same strength and formidable appearance present in so many of the structures at Eton.
103
AltholXJh certainly influenced by Eton as we ll
as Worcester College at Oxford, the plans f or the school were distinctly the singular prodoct of an individual who blended the best aspects of various architectural styles into massive undertakings with its own distinctive flavor.
Her creation was not only that of a group of
scrool buildings,. but instead, an entire CotSl-I01d village. In planning for Avon, t1rs. Riddle often went through periods of creative outpouring when she would, in a relatively short period of tine, sketch major aspects of the total design.
Such an occurrence
took place in June, 1918: The details of the school's architecture were continually on her mind and those who knew her best feared for her health as a result of the errotion and energy that was o~viously conslmEd by her efforts surrounding the schoo1. 104 This snphasis on detail and architectural integrity was foli!1d everywhere in her ....ork. 10S
In 1923,
\men the first
group of buildings
was about to t:e constructed, she "IrOte a lengthy rrenorardun to those 103InterView, Elizabeth ~1O:arthy. l0'ilotes of Elizabeth Md:arthy, 1918. 10 Srnterview , Elizabeth Md:arthy.
69 E!llJloyed on the project.
This, and other orders of a similar nature,
clearly indicated that she believed the mtrod used in a:mpleting the separate buildings was of equal i111portance as the structures thanselves. She recalled:
Before starting this work , all trades were advised that, inasIT1.lch as the effectiveness of these buildings would depend to a very great extent up:m the way the various surfaces were finished, it is most important that the workmen dispense with all I1EChanical methods and wherever p::>ssible, use old tools and processes in carrying out the I-.Ork. They were instructed to work by the rule of thUITtJ and to gauge all verticals by /?fe; as a natural variation in line and surface was far more desirable in this work than a=uracy. The roofs of the Forge, Carpenter Shop, cind l'lheehvright Shop were framed in accordance with methods in use in England during the early sixteenth century. All roofs were framed wi th principals and rafters, without ridge tinbers, and all the rreni:lers pinned together with oak pins. The oak used throughout the eI)tire group was cut in the forests of the school property and axed at the sigh~ of the buildings. OVer the roof rrenbers \oJere . Mind split oak saplings to receive the actual roof covering. The Forge roof is of ro~h red slate, laid in cement mortar. 106 OVerseeing the vast majorl..ty of the construction, l1rs. Riddle, clad in her high boots, field clothes, and jacket, was a familiar sight each day.
She would often relieve men of their job on the sp::>t i f
their woriananship was shoddy or they E!llJloyed methods of construction rot in keeping with her stri~ orders.
She had special tools, repro-
dtrtions of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, designed for use in building the school.
The wood was hewn with a broad axe, the oak
floors laid wi th staples and wedges, and the wall I:oard finished with a box scraper as it would have been three centuries before.
l07
l06Urrlated rotes of T. P. Riddle. 107 Interview wi th William Kegley , enployee of Avon Old Farms for fifty years, Avon, Connecticut, 15 September 1974.
70 No.mere were rrodern tools or building techniques to interfere with the atmosphere created . In designing the oollege, as she called it, Mrs. Riddle
based her plans entirely on the ooncept of a self-sufficient village roilt in the rural style of the CotS\o.Olds.
Hers was an original design
and attracted the attention of architects throu;Jhout the nation and the world.
Nurerous articles in journals of the day described the
grand schare for the boys roarding school surrounded by three thousand acres of forest and fannland, located on a bluff overlooking the Farmington Valley: Grouped about the Village Green are the library and gallery, cloister, chapel, quest house, gate house, bank, refectory and the houses of the naster and provost. Cottages for the faculty and seven stone dormitories and comron roars form ~ quadran:Jles kna.om as the Pope Quadrangle and the Brooks Quadrangle. The infinrary and the FOWer rouse are oonveniently located. The farm buildings, including the smithy and carpentry shop, form a group apart.
The buildings are of a brown stone quarried on the place and are surfaced by the old English peen harnrers . The masons lay the stone without plurrb or level, making their patterns as they g:J. Heavy slate is hung on split oak saplings which have been The saplings are split and barked and the slate is set in cerrent. cut in the school's forest.
The tiJrbers .:rre hand ~ewn . All of the woc:xiI-ork used in the construction of the buildings has been turned out, by a mill on the estate. 108
When needing advice relating to the !lOSt practical design for classrocrrs, cbrnU tory accaroda tions, e tc., she rarely, if ever, sou:Jht out headrrasters fran preparatory schools then in existence, but
108"AV'On Old Fanns, A Sd-ool for Boys," The Arrerican Architect,
November , 1925, pp. 391-392.
71 instead turned to adninistrators fran leading universities of the day. She was especially enchanted by the noo-gothic buildings at Princeton an:l received continual help fron President Eliot at Harvard.
For the
nnst part, OOwever, her plans for construction were very little affected by advice fran afar.
Despite the authentic look of both the exterior
an:l interior of the structures, t.re founder ingeniously allowed the
conveniences of the t:\o.I:mtieth century to quietly (k.Jell. Cleverly worked into this seventeenth century simplicity, OOwever , are innurerable reminders of the century in which we live . Oak gratings along the walls oonoeal rrost rrodem radiators; hand-nacle wincbw panes, iJlt:orted fran France, contain the sought-after violet ray; pewter an:l iron sconces between winclcMs oontain electric lights of rrost efficient perfornance , an:l straying out of a wainsooated rcx::rn it is always possibl e that one will burst into a white-tiled kitchen, designed for a ITBster's wife, or a ~ supplied plentifully with Crane plurbing fixtures, or, in the case of the kitchen , equipped with electric stove, electric refri ge r a tor, and she! ves and cupboards to delight the heart of the ITOst casual oousekeeper. Fran the shCMer , i f it happens to be a shcMer that one has s tmbl e d upon , a step leads into the long donnitory hall , for a peep into one of the forty-.e ight cubicles that, on each floor, are fitted for the boys ' use. Here is another surprise, and one's first reaction nay well be "why, where is a ll the furniture? " For there isn ' t any. One c hai r , with canfortahle leather seat, and an aim for r eading or writing oolds the floor alone. At one side is a built-in bunk -- copied, it is said , fron the Chinese -with drawers beneath and boxes that pullout for purposes of stowing cr.,-ay W1considered trifles. At the head of the bunk, a narrow door bursts out of the wall, revealing a mirror inside and shelf t o act as a bureau. r1:>re drawers under the shelf c:x:JTplete the appurtenances. Beauty f irst and then simplicity, seen to have been the watch-words under whose inspiration Mrs. Ridlle has worked. 109
109"Aspirando et Perseverando," Silhouettes, October, 1927,
p. 16.
72
In 1925,
thE! ITOSt active period of
the scho::>l's construction,
there loere a total of 550 workers on the payroll. 110 The majority of 6ll>loyees cane fran the surrounding tcMns of Unionville, Torrington, Plainville, Glastonbury, and Simsbury.
It was no coincidence that Mrs.
RieHle was able to garner sore of the finest craftslren available, for
in those comnunities there \oere large settlemmts of imnigrants from Italy, Ireland, ard Poland, many of \"hom were expert stonaMsons ard
carpenters. 111 The cost for the entire enterprise was in
dollars by 1927 when the school began operation.
eJ<CeSS
of seven million
This figure reflected
the cost for only a p::>rtion of the total buildings originally pt"OfX'sed,
as well as the initial expense for the land.
Initially, the plans called
far the establi.shnent of the residential secondary school, which would prepare stlrlents to enter their freshman year in college and the Junior
O>llege which:
• • • ranks Avon with public sC0001s of Englard, the lycees of France ard the gyTlU1asia of Germ3.ny and will prepare boys to enter the sop/'x:m:>re or junior classes of the Universities. An earnest stlrlent should be able, by taking the Junior College course, to enter these classes a year younger than the average stu:lent, thus saving a year of his formal education. ll2 By 1921, of the bolo major residential areas proposed, only the
ll~eodate Pope Riddle, undated Business Ledger of the schcol. At this tine, Mrs. Riddle received lengthy correspondence fran Joseph Alsop, a TOted Farmington resident, in which he accused her of hiring good \<.Orkers <Nay fran local trercJ:ants and businessll'el1. His claim was that she paid t'lem double or r.ore at Avon. Mrs. Riddle raredied the situation by alla-ling 111:". Alsop anp1e opportunity to examine the b:oks kepton errployees ard wages. In effect, this effort squashed the runnrs surrolDlCling high wages at the school. lllInterview with Elizabeth ~y. ll~e
Architect,
Decelrher, 1926, pp. 309-310.
73 the Pope QuadraNjle had been c:crrpleted .
This area housed the ooys of
the preparatory scrool in the four dormitories provided.
The Brooks
Quadrangle, arrl thus the rousing for the Junior Cbllege students, was to be completed after t.l)e initial successful phase of the scrool was underway.
HCMever, the stock market crash of 1929 severely affected
the noney available for further expansion of the school arrl to date,
only one quadraNjle stands. realized.
The Junior College at Avon was never
Virtually, all of the II'Oney needed to provide for the
ooilding of the prep:u-atory school carre fran the roffers of Mrs. Riddle. ~uld
Close friendS and relatives often warned the founder that she
spend her last dollar on the enterprise and advised that she
take a less active role in its ronstruction and operation.
1l3
Hew-
ever, her ccmnitJrent to t.l)e scrool had been a foregone conclusion . which had already been legally formalized in I1'eIlt of the Alfred Atrrore Pope FOUndation. by Mrs. Rid:lle, consisted of John
1918 with the establish-
The foundation, rranaged
\vallace Riddle, Mrs. Alfred Atrrore
Pope, Henry F. Pope, and the long tiIre family friend and ronfidant, Harris Whittarore.
The foundation simply served to provide an illusion 路
of a bcdy of advisors.
In effect, the building, funding, and total 114 developrent of the schcol \~as always a one wanan venture. Although Mrs. Riddle agonized over the ronstnrt.ion of the physical design of the school, it was only fitting that she do so, for the completed village 'M)uld rouse her particular contribution to
ed~tion.
In her attempt to recreate an atIrosphere similar to that
ll3Intervie.o1 with Blanche Borden Frenning. 114 Intervi e.o1 with Donald Carson.
, 74
of sixteenth century rural England, she was ove rwhelmingly successful. Her efforts to provide the sense of austerity and tradition in Avon's ~es we re not unlike those lII'rlertakings at St. Paul's, St.
George's, and Lawrenceville.
The difference at Avon was in the degree
to which the fourrler designed her canpuq in the authentic style of old
fh;Jland and the rret.'xxi by which she insisted the building!3 be amstructed.
Her \IIOrk at Avon was tnt that of sinple reproduction falling into the realm of Anglophilia.
Rather, inspired hy a dream of a boys boarding
scb::lol shaped by a different educational philosophy, Avon represented
an architectural staterrEnt. If the architectural purpose of Mrs. Riddle's efforts is
easily discemable in the stylized rrassive buildings at Avon, the educatimal foundati.oo and programs of the school were, at the tine of the
sctD>1's fourxling, less so.
The fo..u-rler had, for mmy years, formulated ,
ber thoughts concemi.ng the future operation of the school and had made cqrlous notes and scattered maroranda.
HCMever, in 1927 when the school
first opened, there existed no singular formal docurrent offerinq an explicit directive fran Mrs. Riddle as to the operation and governance Of the school.
'!be only written description of the scrool' s policies
was the Prospectus \ohlch had been printed in lieu of a catalogue and
test served as an aid in introducing the new school to the general plblic and attracting candidates for admission.
For the rrost part,
this Prospectus presents a general overview of the scrool as seen by , not d eta~'led III ' ~'ts scope â&#x20AC;˘ 115 the founder rut 1.5
cne 115 ~B).
nay. therefore, conclude that it was sarewhat ironic that
1'r'oSpa--tus, Avon Old Farms, 1925 (as presented in
7S
this same individual who manifested such overwhelming concern for architectural detail and design slu..tld not have a definitive ins t.J:urent with which to clarify educational policy as it applied to Avon Old
FaIIIIS.
~r,
Mrs. Riddle believed that an educational institution,
particularly in its initial stage of develQtIrent, should not be confined by an externally imp:>sed adam:mtine decurrent.
In the Minutes of
the sclxlol' s first Faculty Meeting the founder stated that: Avon will regard educatioo as an unfinished problan. W::! shall ~ set up rigorous rules and regulations at the outset, but shall rather expect the school to evolve its a,.m rrcde of operation throogh reasonable study and experience .116 In a similar fashicn, she oc.mrented that the daily and ~ly schedule
of classes
as well as the extracurricular activities \\OJld be equally
malleable, and the minutes reflected that: A preliminary schedule was adOpted with the thought that it IoOUld be remade in accordar1ce with the needs of the boys as these becaire apparent .il7 At this same gathering a lengthy address was given to the faculty at which tine the founder put into words tOOse fundarrental acadanic principles which she wished
to be applied to Avon.
The following
a:mrents, made by the founder, are useful if one is to gain a better understarrling of her essential educational tenets as well as her hopes for the school. WJUl.d
~
Central to her thinking was the need ¡ for a school which
work to deter individual creativity with autOOritative and
oppressive instruction.
She clearly saw the need for the application
of varied nethods of instruction as it pertained to the individual.
116Faculty Minutes, Avon Old Fanns School, 26 September 1927. ll7 Ibid â&#x20AC;˘
76 The notion that the SClxx>l may be fitted to the toy is
~ old.
It was the rrethcrl enployed ·by great leaders of education in Greece, and exemplified in the teaching rrethods of Socrates and Plato. The reason that it is SO infrequent today is because mass production and machine-like efficiency is much si.rrqJler to han:ile and involves a min.im.Jm of thought and trouble . .. SChools appear to be built for the teachers and for the Head, rather than for the lx>ys. But it is a well-known fact that the higher levels of intelligence are opposed to formal regiIrentation and trifling restriction, and that ·t eaching in its ocmronest form, which is dictatorial, is an enemy of learning. We .can derive not a little help from the ·old master and apprentice system, where toth were engaged upem the · same projects, where there was a real need and reason for the work and where master and apprentice were learners together.:J. i B This same enphasis on the individual may be seen in her cxmrents regarding the tooks which were to be used as well as the
indeperrlent study \otrlch she viewed as an essential segrrent of the students I total education. '!he use of library books instead of a single text will be encouraged in every departrrent, aIld should be effective at once iJ:l such fields as history, English, science, and mathematics, arrong the major subjects. Thus, each toy will not ~udy parrotlike the same book that is being studied by any other boy., rut he will seek out informaticn in many different books, using hl1at might be called the research rrethcrl. This will mi1:<e our toys excited atout things of the mind, a feeling which. is desirable above all else. Each toy will also be encouraged to carry forward one major piece of \<,Ork each year. This may be the writing of a took or essay, it may be poetic -translation or a prose adaptation, or it may fall entirely into different fields, becaning the scientific keeping of poultry, the 1;u.ilding of a toat, or the making of a painting.ll~ Sore of the atorarentioned thoughts have been suggested in
the previously referenced ProSfeCtUS.
In that same docurrent such as-
pects of the entrance requii:errents, curriculum, and in fact, aim of the sclxx>l, as she envisioned it, were presented :
llB Ibid • 119Ibid •
77 As one might expect, Mrs. Riddle was very mx:h opposed to
rigid entrance tests and favored a rrore flexible admissions poHcy which served the test interests of both the individual and the institution .
Concerning entrance requirarents, the Prospectus stated: Boys will neither te accepted or rejected on the result of written examination alone. The candidate's entire previous realrd will te very carefully examined and must satisfY the requirerrents of the scJ-ool tefore admission is granted. Cha,racter is the first qualification considered in admitting a student. Achieverent and intelligence tests will determine the form a student may enter .120
Sre also foresaw an academic curriculum which
en four major areas:
~uld
focus
Science, The Classics, History and the Fine Arts.
Particular anphasis was to te given to Physics, Olernistry, Biology and General Science in the total science offering, as the following iOOicates: '!be study of science has an unquestioned value in 'assisting a boy to rreet the conditions of trodern life. Training is given in the use of the scientific method in fields other than the sciences themselves. Throughout the courses t:l1e human-service values of science will be especially emphasized. The method of teaching science is equal in irnp:>rtance to the subjects taught, the stWent teing trained to seek !mao/ledge and seek facts for himself. Ul . 'l1le Classical languages were to te offered in the upper
grades as many professions of the day called for a sound understanding of either latin or
Greek
or "both.
History was to serve as the cultural
base to the curriculun as it also included those allied subjects such ' as Geography, Ethnology, Mythology, Literature and the Histories of
Science and Art.
120Prospectus , Avon Old Farms, 1925. 121Ibid â&#x20AC;˘
78
Courses in the Fine Arts were to be available for trose students stOOy.
\o.h)
expressed an interest in and had a talent for this area of
Furthenrore, she interrlerl to present to the school the family's
collection of oils and water colors by Manet, M:lnet, Degas, Whistler, as \<Iell as the mezzo-tints, the Japanese prints, and the Chinese and Italian pottery and porcelains. 122 Lastly, the fCl\.ln:ler, when describing the aim of the school in the
Prospectus, presenterl unquestionably laudable goals, but did so in a very general manner with no indication as to heM these were to be attainerl. She staterl: 'nlere is a great need today for rren of independent trought, who are capable of assuming responsibility on a strong ethical basis. A specially erlucaterl group sOOuld courageously project and steadfastly uphold the highest sccial and political ideals. They shoold act witrout thJugh~ of praise and should be willing to merge their personal interests with the larger interests of the cxmrunities in which they live, thus identifying themselves with great human problems and rrovenents. 123 In effect then, there had been a great deal of theoretical plan-
ning nOO~ for the school's policies, rut it is abundantly clear that in Septerrber of 1927, nothing had been forrnalizerl.
AlthJugh in theory, IMIlY
may have envisionerl productive results fran the fourrler's initial policies, or lack thereof, rut in reality, the school's first Provost, Francis M. Froelicher, had little to guide him. ' 'Ihoogh it is certain that Froelicher
was very familiar with Mrs. Riddle's notes, as \<Iell as the essentials of the Prospectus, these were of only lirniterl help to him as they collectively represented a SCJre'\IIhat ill definerl and confused ccrnpen:lium of U2.r!lough the founder had originally hopei to present these works of art to the school where they \o.Ull.d be displayed in the school's own â&#x20AC;˘ gallery, this was never done . . The majority of these are today part of the collection .found at the Hl.ll Stead Museum. 123r>rospectus, Avon Old Fanns School, 1925.
79 thought.
further, the founde r had JMde no provisions for a Board of
Directors during the initial p,ase of the school's existence.
Thus,
Froelicher was charged with the task of taking the helm of a fledgling residential institutioo which was tmde r the inmediate control of the fCUlder, who, in turn, served as the chief administrator of the school's
finances . ~Irs.
As was inevitable, there developed IIOre than one occasion when
Riddle's position of fOlD1der and financial manager caused difficulty
far the Provost.
Her frequent and lengthy trips abroad caused Froelicher
no little concern for he was without any guidance whatsoever during these tiJres.
Despite the prob1ans which have been cited, he was able to be-
gin the business of running the school and did so for the next b.o
years.
~ver,
due to the first Provost's own lack of financial and
business acunen COJpled with the founder's absence, the school was soon
to ~ate considerable debt. U4 In 1929, Froelicrer resigned for reaSCIlS
that he tenred as perscna1, altl1algh it is clear that neither he nor
the founder had been fully satisfied with the arrangerrent. Cherry, Avon's
l25
George E.
Dean, served taTporarily as the chief officer of the
sclDol during the 1929-1930 academic year.
The founder had also appointed
l24correspondence and notes indicate that in November of 1927, due to the absence of a COTlJt.roller at the school, coupled with the death of the Foundation's chief financial advisor, Froelicrer was ~red to sign checks relating to expenses incurred in the naintenance and academic areas. '11le founder's notes further indicate that upon her return fran abroad in the Spring of 1928, a review of the books was conducted whereup:n it was discovered that the Provost had made ex-panditures approaching $90,000.00 in areas which were not vital to the daily operation of the sclDol. '!he result was the creation of tw::l separate depart:Irents, the J\cademic (headed by the Provost) and the Estate (charged to an Executive Q::mn.i.ttee chaired by the founder). 125Fi:-oelicher had, at first, requested a leave of absence and in a seccnd letter to Hrs . Riddle, resigned fornally. He ~nt on to found the Fountain Valley School in Fountain Valley, Colorado.
80 an Executive Ccmnittee, whose purfOse it was to find a successor for Froelicher and tend to the overall managerrent of the semel.
H~ver ,
the respoosibilities of this ccmnittee ~re not fully made clear to its
members and as a result, it appears as trough they overstepped their tnmds of auth:lrity on ntmerous occasions . 126 This caused ill feelings and apprehension arrong the faculty, parents, and bet~ the fourrler and the individual members.
It is also ilrpJrtant to note that Mrs.
Riddle was in flIrope during =h of that academic year, tluls, once again providing none of the much needed guidance.
long before the founder re-
turned to Avcn in the Fall of 1930, she had been made aware of sore of the internal turbulence at the school that had been a result of the act;ions of the Executive camu.ttee, as Cherry.
~ll
as the inconsistent rretlx:rls of rEan
Thus, it must have been ahlndantly clear to her that her earlier
belief that the semel \'JOuld evolve its own rrode of operation through experience, sint>ly was not \'JOrking.
Further, there appear
to have been
pressures fran all quarters that this matter be resolved. 'Iherefore, it was out of certain necessity that the founder drew up a peJ:'m3l1ent docurrent which defined the basis of authority for the
Directors, the Provost, and other officers of the semel, as
~ll
as es-
tablishing the fundarrental educational ideals and principles for the school.
Follc:Min:J the drafting of an initial docurrent in May of 1930,
the arrended and final Deed of Trust was signed on February 14th, 1931.
Mrs. Riddle dedicated this revised Deed of Trust to those wOO IIIO.lld govern
A~
Old Farms and rra:1e the following staterrents as a matter
U6Undated notes of T. P. Riddle.
81 of introduction: '11rls Deed of Trust gives legal form to the educational principles advocated by the fotmder and set dONn in notes by her over a periOO of b.o years. The form in which they are presented had proved to be necesS3rY to insure the governance of Avon Old Farms according to those principles.
It is the rope of the fourder that all who are responsible for the functic.n.4lg of the College will in order to insure its success, observe .the spirit as well as the letter, of the provisioos set forth in this Atrended Deed of Trust. 12 7 Essentially, the long docurent was canposed
of one major
parti.cn (the Deed) and frur separate sections entitled, Description of ~ Estate. statutes Governing Avon Old Farms, the Charter of the Village of Old Fanns, and Clothing Regulatioos.
Specifically, the body of the
actual Deed addresses itself to the managerent of the scrool as it le-
gallyawlled to those empowered as TrUstees and Directors. finds statarents relating to the Finance camu.ttee, the Trustees, the
~s
Here One
~s
of the
to arrend tile Deed, the auditing of lxx:lks, the sub-
mi.ssicn of the budget, the preservation of the estate, the wildings, etc..
In the Deed of Trust, the founder reaffi.med emphatically her in-
tent to be an active and controlling voice in the \ooOrkings of the scrool. ~ the expiration of the term of membership and directorship of any active rrember and director, or in the event of ~ resignatioo, death, or inability to act of any member and director, su:h vacancy or vacancies shall be filled by the affirmative ~ of a majority of the Executive camu.ttee of the Board of
Directors of the Trustees as then constituted, provided that during the lifetine of the founder such affirmative vote shall iIclooe that of the founder .128
U7 Deed of Trust, Avon Old Farms Schx>l. 128 Ibid â&#x20AC;˘
82 It is clear fran this and other staterents in the D2ed of Trust that the fourrler had been deeply influenced by the earlier actions of the Executive Ccrrm.ittee which had acted without her approval.
Pl9
When establish-
this pemanent directive, Mrs. Riddle made certain that she ~ hold
an influential and deciding place on the Executive Camlittee for as 1009
as she lived. As one \>.UUld expect, the section entitled, "Description of
Feal Estate," pertained
to information re:Jarding the land holdings of the
school and the le:Jal boundaries as established in dcx:urents held by the Pope-Brooks Foundation.
It was in the "Statutes GoveIning Avon Old
Fanns~
that the
fourrler, after SO long a period of delay, finally put pen to paper and stated the educational policies of the scrool as well as the governance and inplerrentation of those policies.
She wrote that:
The educational policies of Avon Old Farms shall be progressive, but sound. The academic \\Ork shall be directed tooIard deepening and enriching the thought processes of the st;u:Ients that they may be able to appraise existing situations and those which will confront than later in life. Efforts shall be made to develop in the students the ability to think in the abstract. 129
These policies were an outgrc:Mth of the overall aim of the school which was tersely stmnarized by the famder as being the establish-
trent of an institution which was: • • • fourx1ed for the sons of the gentry. The a~ purpose of the fO\.U'rler is to provide for such youths instruction and activities which shall tend to develop honor, courage, and culture .130
l29 Ibid • 130Ibid .
83 Pegarding the acadenic disciplines at Avon, the foonder focused only on b.o areas, Science and Art.
l\s she had indicated in the Pros-
~ six years prior to the arrended Deed of Trust, Science was to
given particular ettilasis at the school.
t:e
It seems as tlulgh Mrs. Riddle
viewed science as a vehicle for the developrent of self-awareness and
sense of perspective. as ~1l as a discipline which had other practical applicati.oos, and thus she stressed its importance: Chly by an awakened sense of \\Onder may a youth becate aware of his relation to the universe. He possesses an intellect with which to rreasure and a spiritual nature with which to ~iate the marvels of creation. Through his studies with the miCX05Cqle and telescope - extensions of his own senses - he aCXlUires a certain knowledge of the physical universe and thereby understands rrore fully his own unique position in the cosros. 13l
AltOOugh cmt>le provision
was to
t:e nOOe in
for the general sb.rly of Art, only those students innate talert in this area
~re
wro
the curriculum
had manifested an
encouraged to make the stu:ly of Art a major
interest. 'lhese students should lend themselves wrolehearteclly to their study because an art once 5eIVed with sincerity will never wrolly abandon one, ana later in life may t:ea:me a source of pleasure in hours of leisure arrl prove to the b3sis of ale'S own particular culture. 132
t:e
'ltle statutes further made clear that there 'oOlld t:e no singular religious fc::.o.mdaticn at the school and no specific creed taught.
StOOents
were enc:o..Iraged to wmiliip in the spirit of God but only as it applied to their in::lividual betids.
~ver,
regarding the formation of character,
the fouriler was quite EJIllhatic using verbiage reminiscent of New England
13l Ibid â&#x20AC;˘ l32 Ibid â&#x20AC;˘
84 transcendentalists:
TI-e sttrlents shall be taught t:.re value of righteous wrath. IU.ghtoous wrath marks the rroral progress of the human race. l33 Of particular irrp::>rtance in this sect.ioo of t:.re Deed of Trust
is the attention given to t:.re specified poI>ers and duties of trose positiens follOl'l.ing under the categories of administration, faculty, and staff.
Here, the founder issued directives to tr.e Provost, aide to the
Provost, Dean, and O::rnptroller, all of whan held essential posts at Avon Old Fanns.
It was obviously r.er desire to avoid any future ronfusion on
the part of the administrative off1cers regarding their responsibilities
to the school. The Provost was, for the rrost part, charged with the responsi-
bility for the overall academic and extra-aca:lemic \o1ell-being of the school.
He was to prepare along with the Dean,
t:.re academic schedules,
administer scholarships, present reports on the functioning of the acadank and non-acadE!nic areas of t:.re
~l,
appoint faculty rrernbers and
. I!'ake certain of t:.reir proper execution of duties, assign coaches, preside
over special occasions held at t:.re school, confer awards, collaborate with the CaTptroller in the preparation of t:.re Wdget, and uphold the emended version of t:.re Deed of Trust.
TI-e Aide to t:.re Provost was primarily resp::nsible for the discipline of the sttrlent tx:x1y and was to be t:.re recipient of written reports fran t:.re faculty and staff regarding any infractions of regulation or incorrect conduct.
Altro.Jgh he was given no authority over students
in connection with their academic \<.Ork, he was instructed to oversee all extra-academic activities of the school.
He was responsible for t:.re
85
details of transportaticn for the stOOents, the carrying out of clothing regulatioos, daily roan inspection, the instruction of students in deporbrent,
am
the inculcation of such habits as personal cleanliness
and p.D"ctualitywithin the students.
~ fOl.ll'Xler seared
to be very sure
of the type of training that the Aide to the Provost ought to have: ~
Aide to the Provost shall be a graduate of a military or naval acadany and a forrrer officer of the regular Army or Navy of the United States or of any English-speakin;J country.l34 ~ Dean,
while offering instruction in
ale
or I10re subjects,
was respcnsible for the preparation of academic schedules, meeting with
the acadernic staff, ard perfooning other duties in the absence of the Provost.
F\Irtheorore, it was his duty to assign extra stu:ly hc:ors for
students when necessary and file written reports of incorrect corr:luct
or rules infractions with
the Aide.
In essence then, the Dean maintained
a close relationship with the students and faculty and was the academic b.Jlwark of the school. ~
Ccrrptroller was in charge of the business administration of
the school in a total sense.
It appears as though the fOI.lI'Xler, having ex-
perienced difficulties surrounding the financial management of the school uroer the direction of the firsit Provost was desi..JnlS of penmnenUy separating the financial and acadenic responsibilities at AV'CI'I. the C'aTptroller was given great latit:u:le by the foonder
am
In fact,
made reports
directly to her as opposed to the Provost. Other respcnsibilities for the Psychologist, l-bsters, Librarian,
Printer, Postmistress, Board of Correlation, Chief Engineer, Fann Manager,
134Ibid â&#x20AC;˘
86 Forester, Foreman Carpenter, Steward, and Security Force ~e also presented in this secticn.
'nle Olarter of the Village of Old Fanns, which cc:rrprises fourth section of the doc:::urent restates that the Provost has
the
the
ccrrplete
authority for the welfare, training, and ultimate discipline of the stulents, rut also intrcdu:es the laws of the village and the voting
privileges in school affairs: StOOents of the four 10l'Jer fonns shall not vote at the first election after their entrance at the College; and the stOOents of the Sixth Fonn shall not vote at the election in May. No stulent may becare a candidate for office when he is not qualified to vote. 135 . FurtIlenrore, the authority vested to the Board of Co\mcillars (reSIXlf\Sible for the proper election process of students), the Courts System and the individual student leaders is clarified.
Lastly, the final secticn of the Deed of Trust dealt
dress code at the school and
~ized
with the
the in'p:>rtanoe of standardized
attire which was to be worn at varirus tiJres of the school day as dem:ulded
by the occasion. In retrospect, the Deed of
Trust did provide a written reference
to the fo.mder's t:.lnlghts en educ:atien in general and the governance of AvtIl Old Fanns in particular.
It had been long needed and certainly
might have nade the first years of the school's existence sarewhat less teTpest:ucAls than they were.
With the exception of those parts of the
document which delineate the administrative and corporate responsibility of the school's officers and camlittees the remllnder is ticn of those beliefs which Mrs. Riddle had made
135
â&#x20AC;˘
Ib1d.
~
rut
for
a formaliza-
many
years.
In
87 this sense, the Deed of Trust was a direct extension of the notes,
merroranda and Prospectus concerning the school.
CHAPTER V WE DRFAM RFALIZED
Avon Old FarmG School, at thcl time of its founding, was based up?n a delicate balance of progressive and conservative educational philosophy.
'!'he school catalogue fur 1930
begins by stating that
Avon was founded with a twofold purpose:
••• to preserve the best in the schol astic tradition which has c:x:r.1e down to our NEM England schools from the great English schools ; and at the sarre time, t o consider carefully and to mxlify and adapt, nel~ and significant educational developnents, such as those followed in the general field of progressive education. 136 '!'his dual purpose is seen throughout the extra-curricular, acadanic, and social programs of the school, and serves to definitely distinguish Avon Old Farms from other day.
N~
England roarcling schools of the
In a similar fashion, the founder of the school was the product
of roth progressive and traditional influences and shaped a school which reflected these two aspects of her own personality. As early as 1921 Mrs. Riddle made a public announcanent concem-
ing her plans for a different type of 00arcling school.
The
N~
York
EvPning Sun ccr.rnented on these plans stating that:
Architecturally and eduCdtionally, the Pope School for Boys . will be unlike any other great preparatory school. It will differ fran Groton , St. Paul's and st. !\ark's, for instance, in giving its students the daily mt.erest of genuine country life in the shape of a little practical farming , forestry
136Catalogue, Avon Old Fanns School , 1930
88
89 dairy ing, carpen try, and what not, in adell tion to a full allowance of the highest standard of academic work. 137 The founder was roost skeptical of many New England boys boarding
schools then in existence and considered then snobbish institutions which, to a great extent, did very little to develop strength of character in the4- students. Most of all, she disliked those students 138 that were products of the amalganation of the "St. Grottlesex" scmols. To her, their grcrluates were of litUe value to Jlrrerica or the ...orld
and \\ere only capable of functioning in a social atrrosphere conducive
to that of the dilettante.139
She criticized these schools openly
and roore in;lortantly ccmnented or. the shortcanings of the educational
approach used in these institutions: Life nowadays is artificial, and the present educational II'eth:>d is only too successful in turning out paragons of charming supeificiality.140 Her thol짜Jhts dealing with the education of youth were not
esoteric.
Rather, a direct approach to education catering .a round
real life situations was continually at the marrow of her philoscphy. "Unfortunate was the child," she felt, "wtp was denied the experience of overcaning obstacles during his fonnative years." 141
l37The NEW York Evening SUn,
9 March
1921
138 Interview with Elizabeth ~-"St. Grottlesex" was the unique narre used by Mrs. Riddl e ({>rd)ably the cari:Jination of St. P~ul's, Groton, and rtiddlesex) to distinguish those New England boys boardl1l9 schools who produced a certain "type" as she called it. Essentially, she viEWed these school!? and others like than as places where a superior attitude prevailed and a lack of backbone wa~ characteristic in the students. 139 Interview with [):>nald carson. 140 '!he New York Evening SUn,
9 March
14~nterview with Donald carson.
1921.
.• I
90 The first prospectus for Avon Old Farms makes clear the founder ' s
stance on this matter: Boys of two generations ago carre face to face with the vital problems of life during their formative years , which were often spent on farms in direct contact with nature. TOday our boys are deprived of this character-forming experience, for they pass these early years in cities, surrounded by conveniences ard luxuries which were unkncwn to their grandfathers. The problen thus created deperrls for its answer on our sch::>ols which can, i f properly conceived ard vigorously achinistered, bring out the qualities of industry and perseverence which distinguis.'1ed our ancestors. So long as there is no solution for t.'U.s :iq;ortant educational defect, and so long as even slight obstacles are sroothed Cblay fran the path of youth, as i s now too frequently the case, just so long will many of our y.pn9 pecple approach maturity with weakened rroral fibre. H Even rrore, she feared there existed arrong these sclx>ols a belief that excellence within the institution denarded conformity to type.
For Mrs. Riddle, a school which was based on rigidity of
curricula at the expense of the individual's creativity was abhorant: The central fact in its program is an atphatic belief t.'1at a boy must be respected, served, ard preserved as a separate ard distinct irrlividual. Plainly, this is a definite departure fran the traditional point of view inherited fran the English PJblic sc.l-xx>l systan, ..tlich rests on the belief that one type of boy is a rrore desirable product than another CXXlseqUently that the fundarrental function of a school is to take boys in the raw ard s!lape them according to the desired pattern. To be sure, a fe-l sc.'1oo1s have rrcdified their attitudes in recent years, but there is still evidence arrong them that excellence consists in conformity to type. Nhile 1\von follONs the broad cultural traditions of old wi th t.l-te greatest respect well symbolized by its architecture, nevertheless it atphasizes not sarreness aoong ooys rut differences, not patterns but personalities. '!his does not r.-ean turning a ooy loose to ru., wild. 1lor does it rrean a camruni ty in \...ru.ch the individual' 5 freedan to
l42'Prospectus, Avon Old Fauns,
1925.
91 develop along his own lines is the outstanding characteristic. It lreans a heavier-than-ordinary accent up:>n individual attention. 143 Evidence that similar beliefs were held by the headm:!sters or fourxlers of other boarding scl'DOls of the IX'st-war period is difficult, if not inp:>ssilile, to find.
In fact, when questioned as to
whether sttrlents at a particular and well th:>u;Jht of boarding school srould be encouraged tcMard individual trou;Jht, one headIMster resporded su::::cinct1y, "Teach him to think for himself?
Teach him, rather, to
think like other poople â&#x20AC;˘ .J.44 Avon Old Farms was the antithisis of such trought.
In her Deed of Trust, a d:x:urent which outlined, in detail,
her tb:lughts concerning Avon, Mrs. Riddle made her feelings tCMard
lock-step conformity k:rPwn.
"'!he sch::lOl," she stated, "l1'USt ever
strive to rreet the needs of the individual stu:lent for the ways in which people differ are nore inp:)rtant than the ways they are alike. ,,145 Long a supporter of nerrbers of the older sch:lol in the Pro-
gressive Education Association, Mrs. Riddle had been closely associated
with the educational beliefs of Dr. Cllarles W. Eliot, President of Harvard.
'!here is no doubt that his own emphasis on a broader range
of elective studies at the secondary and college level affected her
own plans for curricu1un.
Furt.herrrore, the association with I'lilliam
Janes, and to a lesser extent his brother, Henry, brou:]ht her into contact with sare of the lTOre forward thinI<ing educators both at hare and abroad.
l43 John K. M. Abbott, "Avon Old Farms," Town and Country Magazine, JalUary, 1935, p. 38. 144 "'lWelve of the Best J\merican Schools," Fortune Magazine, JcDuary , 1936, p. 48. l45 Deed of TrUst, Avon Old Fanns School.
92 Q)
her b:lokshelves at Hill Stead, one discovers rrost of the
books written by John rewey, then the Honorary President of the Progressive Education Association.
Of particular interest to Mrs .
Riddle seaned to be Dewey ' s anphasis on the inportance of teaching i.niividuals at different levels according to their separate educa-
tional neeCls.
Beyond this, his work in bringing real life experiences
into classroans throtXJh the Laboratory Sc!Yx>l was instrurrental in Mrs. Riddle's thoughts.
Her <:Mn effort to intrcx:luce oooking, sewing, and
daIestic science classes in the taomship of Farmington some years before len:is furt.l)er credibility to the argurrent that she, much like Dewey, felt
a deep
need for edu::ation that woold be rore practical than
theoretical. tlhen creating her village in Avon, Mrs â&#x20AC;˘ . Ridjle developed an atl:Ds{:tlere where young rren would experience on a much srraller scale the responsibilities that they encountered in a larger derrocratic
society.
To the del;Jree to which the stu::lents governed this ccmnunity,
Avon had ro equal anong New England boarding schools. Like the rural comnuni.ties of New England that surrounded Avon Old Farrrs, the sch:x>l held toÂŤn meetings on a rronthly basis.
Here,
IIBtters of concern to the residents of the scrool were voiced and acted
qxn.
The elected leader of the sclxx>l and narbers of the O:>uncil
~ fran the
uwer
two classes.
'ih.is governing body was charged with
the responsibility Jor levying taxes, granting charters, floating bond
issues, and preserving the welfare of the stu::lent body.
Unlike student
groups in positic:n of governrrent at other residential institutions, this group dealt with all everyru.y concerns of the school outside of
93 the acadanic affairs .
Faculty involvenent was limited only to an
advisory capacity.146 A curious feature of Avon's village ooncept was the judicial system established to maintain the laws provided for the well-being of the citizens.
The laws of the village, lOClst of which were developed
by the students themselves, placed the responsibility for minor dis-
ciplinary ma.tters in the hands of the court.
Election to position on
the court was coveted by students, and boys had to pass a rigorous bar exanination dealiJB with the village laws before they were permitted
to
I\II'I
for judicial position.
ca.u:t proceedings were held on a weekly
basis with the defendant afforded the opportunity of
of the Old FaDIlS Bar Association defend him .
hav~
a menber
If the accused was fCl\.lOO
guilty of breaking the laws of the village, his sentence carried a p.mishment of between five and twenty oours of lal:x:>r, during which time he toOuld have to catplete tasks assigned by the co.rrt for the gocx:1 of the
village.
'1he work, \oAlich for the lOClst part included raking leaves,
cleanirg blackOOards, clearing paths in the fores t, or painting,
was done either on weekends or vacations, but always on the student's
own tirne. 147 A c:omnent on this systen appeared in numerous publications, one of which stated the following: A gratifying result of this plan is that a boy learns lOClre about parliamentary law and ordinary legal procedure than is krown to a great many of his educated elders. It has proved an cdnirable rethcd of training boys to accept genuine responsibility. Most irrportant of all, it has
146 Catalogue, Avon Old FaDIlS, 1936 147 InterView with Dr. wthar Cardels, Avon, Connecticut, 15 June 1977 â&#x20AC;˘
94 virtually done a!Hcly with petty sCOOol rule s am regulations requir:in:J incessant faculty vigilenc e to enfor ce . It is typical that the dormitorie s are run entire l y by stude nts , there being no necessity for faculty r e sidents . Throughout the school exists a similar tendency to get rid 9f small official anroyances am constant surveillance,14t:! Near the Village Green, a structure with an imposing D:>ric
facade was built to lnlse the sch:>ol bank.
It was the founder's
belief that the boys should be accountable for their a.m funds and further, should have a rudimentary kncMledge of banking and finance prior to graduation fran the school.
The parent::; of students were requested to
send r짜;l funds directly to the boys, rut instead, were to dep:lsit rroney
into the roy's account.
~ly
limited annlnis of rroney could be with-
drawn on a weekly basis by the students.
If a roy wished to draw rut
a larger . amount than was nonnally allowed, his check had to be countersigned by the Heacbnaster.
Furt.her, at the end of each m::>nth, the student
sul:mitted his checkbook to the scOOol' s bursar to make certain that he had balanced it properly.
A1 though the degree to which the village concept of sttrlent organization centering around the council, court, and bank made Avon sarewhat different fran other boardirg sCOOols, it was the program of a:mnunity service that was at the very center of the founder's ~. In the Deed of Trust, Mrs. Riddle enpasized the importance of young
rren gaining experience in life and learning rrore arout thanselves in
ways other than academic: The Founder believes that a boy who has never kna.m the hardship of work on a far:m, in a forest, or in shops has never experienced
148 John M. K. Abbott, "Avon Old Fanns," p. 38.
9S the joy of canpleting a task , even though it meant erduring physical disccmfort, has been deprived of one of the rrost valuable experiences that life can offer for the development of character .149 The camunity service prO:Jram consisted of \<.Urk done after classes by all of the students on the school's farm, in the forest, stables, chicken run, print shop, carpenter
shop, garage, or science laboratories.
A student was scheduled to work at various tirres in ,all of these areas as an urrlerclasS!1\3.Il, but had a cI'Pice of department as an upperclassman. At the beginning of the final year, each senior signed a contract with the village clerk and thus, assumed responsibility for a certain area of the services provided for the carmunity at the school.lSO In discussing this interesting part of the extracurricular
programs at Avon,
~路trs.
Riddle openly indicated that the hard physical
work would supplement the mental endeavors of
~le
classroom:
Their minds will work the better for it. It is the old New England idea, for which there is no equivalent nCMadays - that healthy interaction of farm and school by which the vitality of the soil enriches the mind, 'and the training of t.he brains is aided by the \<.Urk of the hands.lSl But beyord the mere exercise gained through such endeavors,
stuients at the village learned to give of thanselves for the wellbeing of their small carm.mity.
Faculty and staff were also partici-
pants in this sct-oolwide \<.Urk effort.
In this, Mrs. Riddle undoubtedly
favored the views of those progressive eC.ucators who clair'led that this at:rrosphere of cx:mrunity participation was lacking in traditional sch:x>ls
149Deed of Trust, Avon Old Farms School. ISOInterView with Dr. Lothar candels. ISlDeed of Trust, Avon Old Farms School.
96 and thus created an authoritarian role for the teacher .
Dewey, for
example, states: I do not wish to refer to the traditional school in ways which set up a caricature in lieu of a picture. But I think it fair to say that one reason for personal ccmnands of the teache r so often played an undue role and the reason why the order which existed was so much a matter of sheer obedience to the will of an adult was because the situation alJrost forced it UfO"I the teacher. The school was not a group or cx:mnuni ty held together by participation in cammon activities. • • • the primary source of social control resides in the very nature of the work done as a social enterprise in which all individuals have an oPP9rtunity to contribute and to which all feel a responsibility .1 52 Despite the daily involvenent of each roy in the carpentry or
machine shop, the printing roan or the fann, the athletic program at the school also foll~ a different course.
At Avon, the errphasis
of the various sports was at the intramural level, pitting the Eagle squad against that of Diogenes.153 The only extramural sport supported
by Avon was polo .
Though the founder wished to allCM the students
an opportunity for grCMth in both a nenta1 and physical manner, she did not
vi~
the gridi ron as the place to best encourage that process.
Her objection to the errphasis in cx:rTpetitive interscholastic sports
in general and football in particular was made pointedly clear: The Founder had observed that students, attending schco1s where extramural sports are part ot the -sports program, talk of nothing but football all autlllm long. This is an artificial whippin:/up of interest and roys becare so obsessed with the thought of their garres that their nental developrent is interfered with; too much football talk stullifies the brain. These toys have no de sire for quiet thought, which, afterall, i s the
152John Dewey, Experience and Education Company, 1938) , pp. 60-61.
(N~
York: McMillan
153 Interview with William Kegley, Avon, Connecticut, 10 December 1974. These were also the narres of the two major dormitories at the school which housed the uppef~lassrren. The student body was divi ded equally on the two teams.
97
breeding grourrl of wisdan. 154 Instead of fomalized sports, she encouraged the full use of
the forests and streams at Avon for hiking, horseback riding, hunting, and fishing. by the scrool.
To that errl, experts in these latter areas
\>ere
employed
Furt.hernore, for those boys wOO shcMed a particular
interest in forestry, an opportunity for membership in the scrool' s Nimrod Club was available.
This organization, under the guidance of
Vernal Priest, a Mrlne \oOXlsnan brought to Avon by the founder, was
especially responsible for stocking the streams with trout, tending to the well-being of the \oOXls and operating the annual maple sugar
harvest, lm:lwn as, "SUgar Bush. It 155 '!he academic program designed by Mrs. Riddle canbined the best aspects of the tutor system then used at Eton and Rugby in tandan with
an expanded system of indeperrlent study and electives similar to those suggested by Harvard's Eliot.
'nloogh serre of the rrore conservative
headmasters looked askance at the brOOd elective offerings at Avon,
this was precisely the netln:l by \\hlch the founder hoped to enrich Avon's otherwise traditiooal acadenic preparation for college.
As I
ne:ntiooed in Chapter IV, the first prospectus of the scrool listed electives in geogrCifhy, ethnology, mythology, literature, and the histories of science and art.
F\lrt:hmrore, upperclassren
\>ere
able
to enroll for courses in preparation for later stlrly in the fields of the Foreign Service (O::inSUlar and Diplanatic), Finance, Architecture, Banking, I.a\-1, and M:rlicine. 156 l54Deed of TrUst, Avon Old Fanns School.
l55 Interview of William Kegley. l56r.ouise s. Pdams, "Avon College -- A Ienarkable W::m3n's Remarkable Project," The Illinois Clut-wanan I s World, October, 1925, p. 17.
98 Stu3ents manifesting an advanced understanding of certain subjects areas were enoouraged to initiate an independent stooy in that discipline.
If fun::ls were needed in relation to the study, stooents were able to take a loan fran the village bank. 157 By modern standards perhaps these aspects of the acadanic curriculun at AVon do not sean advanced, but when a:rnpared to the inflexible course fo11o..;ed by boarding schools
in the 1920's they are indeed. Fzan the public schools of Englard ccune the full use of the tutor at Avon.
Essentially res[Xlnsible for the acadanic and social
well-being of ro rrore than eight students, this faculty rrember met with his charges on a daily basis.
Of particular importance in this systan
was the infol'lMl relationship that encouraged stooeniS to view their tutor as a trusted friend and advisor.
Not unlike the family atrrosphere.
created a century before at Found Hill, Avon's tutor systan had its strength in the individual attention given each boy by the faculty rrenber. '1he tutor system, as it was kno.-m at Eton, was augrrented by
a teaching Clethod not alployed in other sch::lols.
Because the founder
enphatically believed that an interdisciplinary approach should be follo..ved in the curriculun, an effort was made by the faculty to accarodate that desire.
Percy G. !\anmerer, the head of the school in
1931, described the essentials of the multi-discipline methcxI: If we take a group theme, such as "trans[Xlrtation" or "hunan inventions" as the subject for a year's work in the first or sed:lOO fo=, and if we fo11o..; this project through
157Pros~, Avon Old Farms, 1936.
99 general science and mathematics , as well as in the field of social science and m:xlern literature, if we read the poetry of Kipl ing and Drinkwater, and sing the songs that bear upon our theme, then we may gain that perspective upon human experience that the r.ti.nd normally seeks, and be freed fran the necessity of separating one phase of human Jmo...tledge fran another at t.l)e sourrl of a gong. Furthenrore, and !:Ore irntx>rtant, le.uning will link itself with experience, and what is so often ~rely an abstraction, will assure its proper relationship to life. Sanething like this approach underlies our efforts in the academic life at Avon Old Faons. l58 'lb:>UJh being surroorcled by three th:>usand acres of verdant forest, Avon was located much differently than rrost other New England
boarding sclx:>ols.
Specifically, the sclx:>ol was situated b.o miles to
the west of the major route ronnecting New Haven, Connecticut to
JInilerst,
~1assachusetts.
Highway, there
\0135
On this road, rrost frequently Jma.m as College
a ronstant flow of students, lecturers, and
p~
fessors, as well as touring t.l)ea路t rical and orchestral ~ traveling
between
Yale and th:>se rolleges in the Airherst-Northartptal area.
'lb)UJh it is very doubtful that
~lrs.
Riddle had the cultural stimulation
afforded by this entourage in mind when she locatee the sclool, its
site provided opp:>rtunity for a OOst of educational and entertaining cultural events.
Furt.'1emore, Avon rould not be CXlillSidered isolated.
Hartford, with the Bushnell Theatre, Wadsworth Atheneun, and Synphony Orchestra, was a thirty minwte drive, while New York and Boston were easily reacred by train within three hours.
Cultural events scheduled,
for exarrple, during the sdl:>ol year of 1927-1928 were: Lecture: Concert:
Mr. C. S. Howard, t~ Dedford W,aling !-lIselIn: The Harvard University Double ()..Iartet;
158 Percy G. I<a!Tr.lerer, "Avon Old Fanns." Junior League :1agazine,
March, 1931, p. 29.
100 Lecture: Mysterious Nanads of Arctic Lapland, Dr. Clyde Fish~r, Yale University; Concert: Boston Synphony Orchestra, Bushnell Theater, Hartford; Dramatics: French Play, "Un Clinet Serieux;" an original English play by CMen 'l\Jdor, entitled, "The Valley of the ShadCM." Piano Recital with flute aCCCllpaniJrent - Miss Hildegard Kolbe; Hartford Jiorse Show, l-1est Hartford Amory, West Hartford; Musicale: Dr. Benjamin Pascus, violinist; Musicale: Mr. and l>1rs. Justin ~lilliams; Recital of Ballads and Chanties: Mr. and Mrs. George Whicher; Lecture: The /v;1e of Queen Anne; Dr. W. W. Ellsworth; Motion Picture: "La Traverse du Grepon," and lecture by Mr. Willard Helburn; lecture: The League of Nations, Dr. Brooks Ell'eny; Poetry Reading: Mr. Edward Davidson; Musicale: Mr. Louis Shenk, Baritone; lecture: Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler; Musicale: Mr. Iti;ert Asher, Yale University; Concert: Cambridge Wocx1wind ouartet; lecture: The Canary Islc.nds, . Dr. Rir~ Peny, Amherst College. Piano Recital: Mrs. T. Worthington. Aval'S erergence into the relatively small "-Orld of the New England boys boarding sch:x>l !ret with various reacticns.
For /TOst,
the school with its ccmrunity based programs and village ooncept, repre-
sented an educational experiJrent quite different fran any other at the
t..ilre.
The fact that the stu3ents themselves held positions of authority
in the o:mnunity's hierarchy was questioned by many educators.
The
lack of interscholastic sports, the eIll'hasis on a student based judicial body and the rrore infOIm'il relationship beo.een faculty and stu3ents
in both the tutorial and cx:mnunity service program ran counter to the
traditional boarding school. Educators like De\.ey and Eliot supported Mrs. Riddle's village c:alcept and, in particular. favored the shared "-Ork experience as
159Faculty Minutes, Avon Old Farms School, 26
September
1927.
101 evidenced in the cxmnunity service prcqram. 160 The latter, for many years a close friend and educational advisor to the founder, praised t.~ sCOOol puhlic1y as the ncble project of a remarkable wanan:
I have had the priVilege of examining these plans and being nWe ao::ruainted with the anple provisions for the college and scOOol in lands, building, and equiprent. In part already aCXJUired and in part definitely propos ed. I have also had opportunity to studY in two revisions the "Statutes of Avon. II I am therefore able to testify that t.'1e general plan of Avon is highly interesting and pranising, and that it is also a bold and far looking expe.riJrent in the secorrla:ry education of boys on the principles of the sc!1ools called "prcqressive." It has already danarrled the investrrent in lands and buildings of large sums of noney given by Mrs. Riddle, and will require the continua:l generosity of its founder for many years to cxxre. '!be debt of Arrerican education to Mrs. Rid::l.le will be deep; and all Arrerican t.eachers must wish her health, strength, and judgrrent to bring her Wldertaking to errluring success. 161
FittirY::J also were the CXIl1reI1ts of Vassar's President !-facCracken,
. Mlo, when addressing the student body on the topic of nE.".4 and exciting develClfJTlents in education, focused the \\,Ork of
:路trs.
~ddle.
'!be
delivery was part of a symposilml held at Vassar concerning the role of waren in Arrerica's educational future.
He said, in part:
I kne,.r of no recent expe.riJrent in Arrerican educaticn
in which a single individual having \\,Orked out a philosophy o f education for herself, has so steadily and courageously carried a project to.-Iard carpletion in I'la.In'aly with her own design.
160Joseph R. Curry, "!bunt Herman fran 1881 to 1971: An Historical Analysis of a Oistinctive Alrerican Boarding ScOOo1" (Ed. D. dissertation, lhiversity of ~lassachusetts, 1972). The !-bunt Herman Scroo1 in Northfield, ~1assachusetts, which was established to give a Olristian education to boys of limited rreans, also develq:Jed a \\,Ork program Wlder the guidance of !Might L. ~bcx1y. The !bunt H~ program \-ra5 based on the financial fact that the school had 路ll.ttle 1IDIleY, was :::crp:lsed entirely of scll:Jlarship students, and needed a sch::>ol-wide \\,Ork progra.1\ to ra'la.in solvent. At Avon, the prcqram had a different genesis, and was part of the sc.'-ool for reasons ober than financial. 16INew York T:iJres, 17 NovectJer
1924.
102 The organization of the college provides for the utmost liberty of both teacher and of pupil, and, unlike many gifts of dalors, provides for continued gro.vth beyond what is I1<JIoI CX11tenplated. The plan of education incltrles the use of all the opportunities available in the physical envirorurent and the social life of the college as essential parts of the training. It incltrles the developrent of various skills whic;:h are probably best fitted to adolescent boys. In pr0viding a laboratory of this kind, where experbrents may be carried on under ideal , conditions, Hrs. Riddle is performing a very real service to public as ~ll as to private education . • • • I am therefore glad to give personal testimony to the liberal and progressive spirit in which her great scherre has been developed and the patience and detennination with which it is ripening into full maturity. 162
The Hartford Courant featured the school in its education
sectioo with full size headlines which read, "Boys Are Tat.¥Jht to \'brk With Their Hands as Well as Their Heads Under Unique Ccmrun.ity SeIvice Systen
~ated
at Avon Old Farms . "
The thrust of the articles des-
cribed Mrs. Riddle as a "generous" and "forward looking" wanan whose school represented a protest against those preparatory schools which stamped an educational sarre.,ess on their students.163 H~ver,
to envelope a desciiption of the school in such arror-
phJus adjectives as progressive, experiJrental, and far-reaching is to
162poughkeepsie Eagle News, 15
February
1927.
163 Hartford Courant, 13 May 1934. Subheading and hunan interest stories in that SaIre article constructed a scrrewhat rananticized version of the school. For exaI1lJle, one subheading read: "Russian Prince Supervises Bedmaking, Mule Scion of Statesman Tends Large Flock of Hens." S:iJnilarly, the following appeared in the Ixrly of the article describing a conversation between a Courant reporter and stu:1ents fulfilling their daily camrunity service task. \ihen asked who his father might be , the youth responded, "The fonrer editor of the New York \'brld, sir, but he's dead now." The reporter asked, "Do you like your work?" to which the sttrlent an~red, "Very 1!U.lCh, , sir." The article continued, "And there he was, the son of a ooee 1mportant figure in the world of journalism on his knees cleaning a dynarro. Hubbard is getting all the cultural advantages of any exclusive prep school, but he's also learning what 's more inportant - the other fellow's viewpoint and the value of work."
103 rot fully capture the essence of Avon.
!1any observers were correct
in stating that Avon Old Farms represented a sarewhat different appnach to education than that offered at the Eastern bastions of preparatory school tradition.
However, there ran deep in the character
of roth the founder arrl thus the school a relationship with a past which emphasized tre role of the educated gentleman in society. following chapter examines that association.
'!he
GENrUMEN OF WE Oll) SCHOOL
In the notes and papers of the founder continual reference is made
to the school's responsibility for producing young rren of integrity who \oOUld eJl'erge fran their training at Avon well founded in the code of formal gentlerranly conduct.
At first, this idea may seem an anatherra to
the aforerrentioned programs stressing the rural agrarian informality
of the school, but such was not; the case.
Essentially, Avon attenpted
to offer its stooents varied social experiences.
'Ihus, it was in
keeping with the grand scheIre of the school to balance the informality of the c:atTI'IUnity effort with a rrore structured formal atrrosphere.
Per-
haps the founder rest sumnarized these desires: I relieve in strong contrasts. I look forward to seeing our boys enjoy their MJrk in the vegetable garden or the dairy, etc., in rough MJrk clothing and then in the evening they must dress for dinner. I wish to see them equally at hare in the drawing roan and the carpenter shop. l'lidely contrast.irlg experiences enrich life and help a toy to feel at hare in any setting.l64 The tradition of the Arrerican Gentleman Scholar, long refore
established by the Anthologists,
\짜clS
continued in the twentieth century
by nest New England boys l:oarding sclxx>ls.
At Aval, hc1.iever, the tra-
dition was not only continued, it was embellished and magnified by the founder.
A fundarrental understanding of the inpact that Alfred Pope
l6~ew York EVening Sun, 9 March 1921. l-.'hen ~1rs. Riddle referred to dressing for dinner, she rreant specifically formal attire.
104
105 and John Wallace Riddle had on Mrs. Riddle's conception of the genUe-
II'fII'l in society is essential i f one is to consider that emphasis at Avon. Alfred Pope affords the student a fine exanple of the business entrepreneur in J\lrerican ~iety at the beginning of the ~tieth century. tl'ene.
In lI'fII'ly ways, he was the E!llbodirrent of the Horatio Alger
Fran humble beginning in Verm::mt, Pope rrade spectacular nonetary
gains during his lifetine.
Along with his business success, he developed
an overwhelming interest in fine art works of the inpressionist school. He filled his hCll'e with originals by Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Van Gogh,
and Rodin.
Although not a II'fII'l of letters, he was a II'fII'l of culture.
Self-educated, Pope, ITU.lch like his daughter, had a .g reat capacity for
re~
and grew especially fond of poetry .165 It was during a tine in
his life when retirement was at hand that he granted his daughter's wishes and rroved to Farmington.
At Hill Stea1, Pope was a =try genUe-
man who sare-,mat indulged his precocious daughter and expanded his cultural kn<:Mledge throughout the remaining years of his life.
OVertones reflect-
ing her own father's background and characteristics are present in the follCMing, written by Theodate Riddle as a sunnary of what a genUenan
should be: Throughout the centuries, birth and ~alth ~re considered the necessary background for gentlemen. Studies should be rrade of the great gentlerren in history, such as Plato and Duke Frederigo of Urbino. Changes = t be accepted here, hcMever, as in so II'fII'lY other fields. Aristocratic birth and ~alth are no longer essentials. Absolute integrity, unflagging interest in the welfare of ~ind, c;m~ leUFe in which to aCX1Uire culture, are the bas~c necess~t~es.
l65Interview with Jarold Talbot. l66Theodate Pope Riddle, "Revolutions and Gentlemen," 1940.
106
'!he effect of Jolm Wallace Riddle on the founder's life has, to a limited extent, been discussed.
However, the degree to which he ful-
filled Mrs. Riddle's image of the, gentleman cannot be overenphasized.
His educational, social, and cultural backgrolD'ld suited his diplanatic c:al.lin<} well and his own interest in world affairs was adopted by his
wife. 167 As was the custan of the day arrong affluent Riddle becarre a 'club nan', for social
IreIl
of the world,
as well as business reasons.
held II'I:!l"bership in such socially prestigious
rren' s
He
organizations as the
Unioo, Century, and Knickerbocker clubs of New York City, the Rittenrouse Club of Philadelphia, the
~tropolitan
Club of Washington, D.C., the
Minnesota Club of St. Paul, Cercle de L'Union of Paris, France and the
Itlyal 'l11arres Yacht, Brooks, and Garrick clubs of LOndon. 16B Fortresses of the leisure class, these clubs and institutions like them were cern-
posed of influential, and for the nnst part, conservative thinking
fran throughout the world.
IreIl
A small I!Ultinational fraternity of leaders,
of, whan John Wallace Riddle was
ale,
served as the standard of gentlemanly
cx:n:hct for the world.
167 Interview with Jarold Ta1.lx>t. At Hill Stead, .one finds nurerous volures dealing with {Xlli tical science, sociology, diplanacy of the day, as well as gifts and treasures given to John Wallace Riddle during his years in the foreign service. Several photographs of \'IIu te Russians who inmigrated to the New Britain area of 'Connecticut with the help of John and 'i1leodate Riddle are found in the Drawing Roan. On the back of one of these photographs, this student, Ill.ICh to the curato::'s surprise, fourd a penciled note in l'Irs. Riddle's hand "Jhich read, "To GrandJrother Breskovsky, I gave her $50.00 and told her to buy a banb." As to the seri~ intent or purpose for this note, nothing was discovered. l6BNational Cyclopedia of Ar.erican Biography.
107 One of the fears continually expressed by Mrs. Riddle was that
the class of gentlmen, canposed of men like her father and husband, was
becaning smaller as the new century progressed.
She envisioned a ~r1d
in the years ahead which ~u1d need leaders who had been educated to serve capably, honestly, and faithfully in the true manner of a gentle-
man. 169 The Founder wishes to bring to the attention of the boys the value of social life of those whcm \..e refer to as "gentleIren of the old school." Such gentlmen are fast disappearing in this scientific and rrechanical age - this age of specialization in thousands of new fields. Men in anyone of these COlUlUess new enterprises cannot speak the language of men in other fields of endeavor. Provision should be made for a unity of rroral and intellectual background, and this can only be done in youth and should be begun in the harePO Thus, the training received at AVon Old Farms not only allo.ved a student to experience the dem:x:ratic systan in a social microcosm, it also embued the boy with a senSe of what it neant to be a true gentle-
man of the
~r1d .
As the majority of students attending Avon \..ere fran
monied and oftentiIres influential families,171 the founder realized that each boy should be made fully cognizant of the responsibility that awaits
169Interview with Donald carson. 170Theodate Pope Ri~dle, "Resolutions and Gentlemen,"
1940.
171 lnterview with Dr. Lothar Candels. This was not true of all the students at Avon during the early years. All of the faculty sons attended the school on a tuition free basis and there were other students there on scholarships provided by Mrs. Riddle. Al though records are not as accurate as they might be, it appears that roughly eighteen of the student bcdy at the schOOl received financial aid. Dr. Candels, son of the school's chef and a scholarship student recalled, "Once a boy was a trember of the school and becaIre a quadrangle resident, tris background, whether rich or poor, did not matter much. We liked or disliked each other for what we were as people, and not because of a boy's rroney."
108
nen of position.
In order to expand their overall awareness of world
affairs, Mrs. Riddle arranged for guest speakers to address the students
on crucial issues in goverment, politics, and education. This speakers program was adjlmct to the cultural series already nentioned. Students were also taught to understand the inportance of maintaining the intJeccable image of a gentle.man.
The assUlTption anong upper-
classzren was that there was no need to lock dormitory doors, footlockers, or closets for at the sdxx:>l there would be no true gentleman who
would steal.
'lh:'!ft was punishable by intrediate dismissal fran the
'lh:'! 1928-1929 StOOent Handbook made very direct reference to
school.
this, stating that any bc7y who brought disgrace upon the school, "shall
be regarded as tmfit to remain in association with genUaren and shall be asked to leave. "172 fIa"oever, beyond this code of honor established at the school, there
\oe.re I!Ore
in ways of a gentleman.
overt efforts made to instruct the students
Ccntinually visible was the founder's atterrpt
to instill the proper intellectual background rnarmers
and deoonm in
stu:3ents: . Students should steep themselves in the Hunanities, which always make for a CCIltllXl understanding. Tine should be given in this oonnection to a study of, and to the acquisition of, the qualities which make up the fiber of a gentleman. Are you a man of integrity? If not, toss aside all thought of belonging to this socially valuable group, unless or until there is in your innerII"OSt soul an unshakable steadfastness and an inner poise that is born of faith. lIfpreciation of style in all outward things, as well as in personal appearance and in never-failing good rnarmers, proclaim the genUeman. 173
172Avon Old Farms Handbook for 1928-1929 (Boston: mount Press, 1928), p. 29.
173T â&#x20AC;˘ P. Riddle, -Fesolutions and Gentiaren."
The Mtirry-
rer
109 Students at the sch:;x:)l were required to wear regulation clothing. Mrs. Riddle firmly believed that a gentlerran must understand the irnportance of proper dress f or the proper occasion.
Further, she felt that
distinction in manner, speech, and dress was required of a gentleman if he was to properly represent a darocratic society through business
or diplomatic ventures .l74 •• • These regulations are made with the ob ject of establishing and maintaining a standard of snartness in attire of the student b:x1y as a whole , thus training each boy in a genuine appreciation
of the value that distinction in dress will have for him in later life. Regulations relating to mat erials and cut, and other details, shall be determined by the Aide to the Provos t . School Clothes: Grey coat, ve st, and long trousers.
Grey overcoat. Brogues - Tan. Shirts - Choice . Ties - Avon t i e and choi ce. Socks - Choi ce. Hat - Regulation. Cap - Regulation. \"k)rk Clothes: To be worn for all work in forest, fields, farm and shops. Knickerbockers -- Either tan col ored whipcoard
. or tan color ed drilling . WJoleri shirts . Golf stockings . Brogue s or waterproof boot s. Leather jackets (optional). Sport Clothes: Standard clothes for the various sports. Red-blue bl azer -- Regulation. ~ te flannel trousers -- (optional ). Grey flannel shorts - (optional ) .
174 Interview with Blanche Borden Frenning.
110 Evening Clothes: Black double-breasted coat and vest, grey striped trousers. Whi te shirt. Stiff collars - both turn do..on and wing Regulation Black bo...t tie. Black socks. Black leather shoes. When Avon Old Fanns has thirty or rrore students in the First Form these stooents shall ~ar the precribed clothing for School, Work, and Sport.
For evening, members of the First Form shall
~:
The Avon black jacket, vest, and grey striped trousers. White shirt. Stiff collar turning over coat collar. Black string tie. Black socks. Patent leather shoes. 175 As all the rreals ~re served in the family style with the faculty
members heading the long ook tables, there was anple Of{Xlrtunity for the cultivation of manners.
Whereas other schcols had adcpted a policy of
inforrra.1. rreals with a casual atnosphere, Avon
follo.-~
just the opposite
pattern with candlelight, white table cloths, and silver with the evening neal.
Mrs. Riddle certainly l1U.ISt have seen her much desired "contrast"
realized as the
saIre
young rren who
~re
seated at evening tables wi th
black bo...t tie, wing collar, and formal evening attire
~re
only one
hour before working the farm, clearing timber, or cx::npeting in intra-
nural sports.
Furtherrrore, all students shared the responsibility for
waiting tables throughout the course of the academic year.
fOl.D1der's belief that i f they were
~
It was the
expect good service in places where
175Deed of Trust, Avon Old Fanns School
III they \>,QuId dine in future years, they must first learn to give good setvice as young rren waiting tables themselves. 176 The visual aspects of the sch<x:>l grounds, the Cot.s\o.old buildings,
and the boys in their class day garb of grey sportcoat, Avon sch<x:>l tie, and grey trousers might lead one to believe that they were, in fact, in
England at a public school.
Though Mrs. Riddle continually stated that
hers was an lIrrerican school with only the best traditions of England incorporated, there were certainly overtones which were overwhelmingly British. Her love for the architecture of Britain and her respect for its public
schools was obvious.
Further, she considered the British gentleman to be
in a class by himself, and definitely \>,Qrthy of enulating.
In an amusing
excerpt fron a letter to future presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, Mrs. Riddle voiced full support for the gentlerren of Britain, while chiding Mr. Willkie
CI1
his awn lack of good taste:
I am enclosing t:\o.O photographs of you, one taken when you
were going up the Volga River and the other when you were in Irak with Sir Kinahan Cornwallis.
The Volga photograph is
very pleasing because you are wearing a vest, undoubtedly because of the cold. In the other photograph you are vestless, with your coat unbuttoned. In many of your photographs you are the only man in a group \.mo shCMS an expanse of shirt frent, with belt and gaudy tie. This is typical of the way hundreds of thousands of Arrericans dress all sumrer long. The fact that it is practically the J>,rrerican sumrer uniform does not make it any nnre acceptable to cert:lIin lIrrericans. There is sarething strangely interesting arout dress . The man who is the best dressed in a group of !!'en always has the jmp on the others. Englishlren who are the best dressed nen in the \>,Qrld are CI1 top of tne \>,Qrld. 177 176 Intexview with Miss Elizabeth l'1d::arthy. 177 Letter fron Theodate Pope Riddle to Wendell Wilkie, 26
1943.
July
112 It was the illusion of gentlemanly conduct with no rreaningful social purpog:!that Mrs. Riddle abhorred.
While she strove to develq>
an elite group of leaders who would someday hold positions of public
power, she continually guarded against the creaticn and perpetuaticn of self-serving wealthy individuals.
Unlike the founders of other toys
00arding schools, many of which ~ church affiliated, Theodate Pope Riddle was surrounded t:hrc:uJhout her life by affluent individuals,
who used their positions productively for society.
It is also certain
that her social order brought her into contact with those she t.enred as perfectly incipient and useless snobs. 178 She had very
li~tle
patience
for this prOOuct: of the upper class and preached to her toys that: A gentleman is at ease wi th all classes of society, although with the passing of years he will be rrore and rrore drawn toward the srrall group to which he belongs - renenbering always that a is never a gentleman because no gentleman is ever a snob.
srw
A len] tiIre frierrl and clcse associate to Nicholas Murry Butler, President of Colmbia, Mrs-. Riddle often asked him to speak to the sttrlents aboot their social responsibility to the demxracy under which they liVed.
'lhroughout the many official schcx:>l docurents, printed by hand on the student q>erated press, excerpts fran Butler's various deliveries may be found.
Of particular interest are his ccmrents made in 1929, whi~
echo the notion offered years before by 'Ihecrlore Roosevelt that the major educational aim of the gentleman should be training for social service. Clearly, these \oOrds serve ~1l to smmarize Mrs. Riddle's thol.짜Jhts:
178:tnterview with Miss Elizabeth McCarthy. 179Riddle , "Revolutions and Gentlerren."
113 Oerocracy's aristocracy is not one of birth, of inherited privilege or of ~alth, but is one of character, of high intelligence, of large knOwledge, of zeal for ~rvioe, recruited fran the bosan of derrocracy itself . ISO It came as no surprise to those
wro
knew her that during the
1930's Mrs. Riddle becarre an ardent supporter of Franklin Delano
Ib:>sevelt. 181 In her mind, he was the quintessenoe of the Social Demx:rat, that nan of gentile heritage, who served for the public gc:xxL Ullike other people of wealth who saw Ib:>sevelt's New Deal programs as
a trerrendous threat to their
CMn
financial holdings, Mrs. Riddle viewed
him as an individual \olho had the political awareness am personal strength to lead the nation out of a IMssive depression.
It is not
the p.n:pose of this study to c:x::mrent further on the programs or policies of Mi. Ib:>sevelt.
SUffioe it to say that Mrs. Riddle paid no heed to
tOOse frierrls am relatives who warned her that he
lifestyle to \otUch she had
grCMn
accustared . 182
~ld
destroy the
FUrt.hernore, she con-
trihrt:.ed heavily to his canpaigns am had the President as a guest at Hill Stead during his years in offioe. staOO why Mrs.
It is not difficult to under-
Riddle favored R:x>seve1t' s style of strong charismatic
individual leadership which, at tiJres, seerred autocratic.
no other manner in \otUch to lead .
She recognized
Decision by consensus Was foreign
to her. In tetrospect, Mrs . Riddle possessed IMnY of the sane character
traits that she desired to instill in the graduates of her school. total reliance en her
CMn
The
judgrrent and intuition IMrked a l eadership
l80Ieport. of Nicholas r-urray Butler, President, Colmbia university, 1929. lBlInterview with Miss Elizal:leth ~y. lB2 Interview with Blanche Borden Pleming.
114 style
~11
suited for that tiJre when a single irrlividual with
strength of character, educational vision, arrl determination could
be the daninating force in the establisl'JT1ent of a school.
0IAPl'ER VII
A brief ronsideration of the nineteen years fran the tirre of the school's fourding W'ltil Mrs. Riddle's death in August, 1946 reveals the trererrlcml effect that she had on the school.
FUrther, that
influence continues to manifest itself in a sarewhat m:xlified form long after her death.
In many ways, Hrs. Riddle's reluctance to re-
lease her daninance over the institution that she created n
' in
serious problems for those heading Avon and ultimately led to a pattern of divided authority.
It was as though sm \<Jere a rrother hovering
over a wayward child.
Although Mrs. Riddle had finalized the aforerrentioned Deed of Trust in 1931 to lend rrore direction to the school, she essentially superceded the docurent by her very presence. 183 lXlcuments and letters relating to the term of Avon's second Provost, Dr. Percy I<amrerer, certainly attest to this. 184 /ier cootinued interference With the day l83The Deed of Trust, much as the fourder had wished it, required that the Aide to the Provost, as \<Jell as the Ccrnptroller, report directly to her, thus circumventing the authori ty of the Provost. It was as th:Jugh she had developed a security rreasure to keep check on the Provost and' further, strip him of sare of the responsibilities ~ch clearly sIDlld have been ' in his danain . 184 Dr. Kam"rerer Served fran June, 1930, to December, 1939, . bJt was not the first choice for the position. TIie founder had origi- . nally cx:ire""to terms with Dr. Robert n. French of the Yale English Departrrent . The prospect of having a prCl1linent figure as Provost caused great excitarent at I\von, rut at the eleventh hour, Dr. French asked Hrs. Riddle to release him .fran the agreerrent, feeling the managerent of the sch::xJl was out of his control . This decision caused an exoous of the raMining faculty who had served under Froelicher , and Kam"rerer' s first job was to find a faculty. 115
116 to day ~rking of the school did not help to inspire confidence in the administrative leader nor did it give any incentive for carpetent individual s in private education to desire caning to Avon.
In the best
and ~rst sense of the term, the institution remained Mrs. Riddle's
school.
She made certain that those aspects of the scmel which she,
alone, deared as essential to a boy' s education, \Yere ilTIplerrented.
In
this sense the scmel , under Kamrerer, did not evolve as did other I:oarding institutions of the day.
The programs and policies as es-
tablished by the founder \Yere little altered .
Her insistence during
the 1930' s on the lack of an interscholastic athletic program coupled with the extren'ely fQmal dress code for classes, in general, and evening neals, in particular, probably discouraged many potential student candidates fran applying to and eventually attending Avon. 185 Correspondence fran Mrs. Riddle indicates that she was frequentlyon the canpus during Karrrrerer's term as Provost and was not overwhelmingly pleased with the results of his
~rk,
particularly in
the latter years.186She made these feelings quite \Yell known to the rrenbers of the Pope-Bro::>ks Foundation: I found 5QOIl after Dr. Karrrrerer took up his ~rk at Avon in the Aub.mU1 of 1930 that he 'nCllld have to be supported, or buttresSed, as he seems to have a congenital disinclination to making a sus-
tained effort in any direction. His interest is certainly not wholeheartedly in the school. I dj) not know if this is because 185 Intervi~ with Dr. Lothar Carrlels. 186 Mrs. Riddle visited the c:amp.1S in her chauffeur driven Fblls Payce, fittingly called the "Yellow Peril" by those at the scJ:!ool. Perhaps this is not 50 llU.Ich a reference to the color of the autarob11e or the driving habits of the chauf~~ as ~t was the character of l1rs. Riddle as viewed by the scmel adr:wustrat1on.
....
117 of his physical frailty or the lack of willpower, or if it is because his interest is flowing into another channel. '!he D:x::tor is frequently away fran Avon making addresses at other sch:::lols and churches, and urdoubtedly receives an honorarium on each occasion. School has just opened rut he has been absent three nights. The Directors will see fran this stateIrent that the n:x::tor has nuch free tiIre which sm.u.d be devoted to the interests of Avon. 187
Karrrrerer, no doubt, felt the very evident pressures caused by Mrs. 'Itiddle and resigned fran the Provostship effective Decernber, 1939. '!he interim Provost, Levings Hooker Sarers, a rrenber of the Avon faculty,
seens to have done an admirable job in keeping the sch:::lol on an even keel during the winter arrl sprin:J of 1940, while another search camli.ttee, the second in ten years, considered candidates for the permanent fOsi-
tion. final
Mrs.- Riddle, as past events \ooOUld indicate, rraintained the
\<,Oro
as to the individual selected.
A particularly strong candi-
date, John HallOl>ell, declined the Provostship following a full consideration of the fOsition as it was presented to him.
HallOl>ell objected
st.renuc:xJsly to the manner in which instructicns, as he inposed UfOn him at the oot.set of the negotiations.
was able
to foresee
~enred
them, were
Perhaps Hall<Jll,'ell
the fOtential for increased interference in his
nanagerent of the school and was certainly reluctant to accept a fOsiticn which would not allow him freedan of administrative action.
As
future events occurrErl, his decision was well fcurded.
Mrs. Riddle and the Executive Ccmn.ittee of the Board finally settled on the Pevererrl W. Brook Stabler, the Chaplain and Boardman lec-
turer on Orristian ethics at the University of Pennsylvania.188 Stabler's l87I.etter fran Theodate P. Riddle to the Finance Ccmn.ittee of the Pope-BrooK.S Foordation, Inc. dated 1 April 1939. l88The Hartford Courant, 21 August 1940.
118 acceptance of the [:Osition was greeted with enthusiasn by all of those associated with the school and it appears as though he was oost successful in attracting interested students to Avon and adding a sense of stabil-
ity to the
~r,
Canp,lS.
after the first year in this position, he,
too, must have felt increased encroaclunent on the part of the founder ani the Executive Ccmni.ttee for in May, 1943, Stabler requested a one
year period in which to operate the schx>l without interference .
In
effect, the request was an ultimatum which threatened the walkout of the entire faculty unless the dâ&#x201A;Ź!lT'al'lds which pertained to governance of the scOC>ol Ioere !ret.
Essentially, Stabler took a starrl against the con-
tinual instructions ani overbearing presence of the founder and Board of Directors, while
~lrs.
Riddle clearly vieloed Stabler as breaking his
contract with the school by not enforcing the clothing regulatiops and refusing to engage an Aide as the Deed of Trust instructed.l 89 Thus, they
~re
inextricably at odds.
The foonder flaUy rebuffed Stabler's
request, and the administration of the schx>l becarre increasingly trapped in a quagmire of confusing dictums and whims greatly effected by
the ro.t seventy-six year old
\<.OToan.
190
The continued erosion of the Provost's energies in an effort
to assuage many of the demands made on his titre and abilities by the issue
lead to an overall
~
in the faculty oorale.
en
March 12, 1944,
189 The founder was further upset by the fact that Mr. Stabler was unable to obtain the proper cloth for the scOC>ol uniforms and because he had decided to use coal instead of fuel oil to heat the school (both ~ due to the warti.rre st-Drtages). The mere fact that she was unable to fully accept the nece:sary ~ges caused by ~ ~ ~rhaps indi- . cates her inflexibility III other 1ssues as ~11 III this t1tre of her hfe. 190 Intervi.e\~ with Dr. IDthar Candels.
119 Mr. Stabler sul:rnitted his letter of resignation.
It was accepted.
In
May of that sane year, the faculty of the scrool resigned en IMSse as Stabler stated they ~d.
The school was closed.
In a general letter which was sent to all of the faculty and staff at the school follCMing this occurrence, r--.rs. Riddle stated the following : Mr. Stabler kro.-s that he and all of the rresrbers of the faculty have broken Avoo. . When the faculty carre to Hill Stead to see Ire and resign in a txxly, I was stunned with surprise. If three or four of you wtD had been at Avon so happily for so many years, those of you ~ my husband and I admired and considered our friends, had stayed by Ire, I \o,Ould have felt that I must struggle to keep the school alive, and it could have been done. But a kindly Providence carre to my aid when the Army was not only willing, rut enthusiastic over the prospect of taking over Avon as a center ;~r the rehabilitation \o,Ork for tinse bliri:led in the services. 1 The Army's rehabilitation corps remained on the campus for
two years.
Literally hurrlreds of veterans resided in those sane Cots-
wald dormitories and dinerl in the lulge refectcy that had served the students at Avon. 192 Mrs. Riddle died in August of 1946 follawing a prolonged illness .
Her dealings ",'ith three Provosts over the seventeen years of the
school' s initial mase had been marked by confusioo, misunderstanding, and Jrore than a little interference on the foonder's part.
in all three cases was the resignation of
the~.
The result
Conversely,
Mrs. Riddle had kept the fina'1Cial heart of the school beating despite
19lcenera1 letter fran'lbecdate Pope Riddle to the recently resigned faculty, 17 Hay -1944. 19~rds indicate that the Army gave a $100,000.00 grant to the school to repair daJMge that had been done to the facilities and help restore the site to -its or~ginal specifications.
120 poor fiscal resronsibility on the part of Froelicher and l<aImerer, in particular.
In fact, the founder's records indicate that she ex-
pended over $117,000.00 per year between 1927 and 1944 on the deficits
of the school. 19 3rn a letter of 1wgust 7th, 1944, she ccmnented further
on her overall
supp:>rt for the
entire Iilysical plant.
Avon has been an incredible financial rumen to Ire for seventeen years. '!he land, the Wildings and the neeting of part of the annual deficit has cost me seven ninths of my capital. I simply co.Ud not continue.l 94 Her
~
was that Avcn Old Fanns, as an institution, \olO.lld
te able to survive the ordeal of the closing in 1944 ard the tw::> year military occupation.
In the
final lines of her letter announcing
the closing of the scrool, the founder stated siIrp1y, and sc:rrewhat sadly: Of course, I cling to the lqle that after the war is over, Avc.n will reopen and function cleanly as the sc:h:Jol I founded. 195 As a result of determined action on the part of the t.rustees
then serving on the Pope Brooks Fourdaticn, the sc:h:Jol was reopened in ~t
of 1947.
The task of reruilding the sd1oo1 fell upcn the shoulders
of Ikmald t-1. Pierp:nt, who was to serve as the scOOol's fourth Provost
until his death in SeptaTber, 1968.
Dlring that tiIre, he gradually
solved many of the prob1ens of a school which had no students or funds and a unique rut
checkerEd past at
the tine he aSSltIEd his post.
By
1966, he had bInlght the enrollnent of the sd100l to 218 students and 1eS
corrlucting a n::n-<leficit fiscal policy for the fourth straight year .196
193 Letter fran F. Reed Estabrook to the nerOers of the Board of Directors, October, 1977. 194 letter fran 'I1'leo:Iate P. Riddle to interested constituents concerning the close of the scrool, 7 August 1944. She left no enda..rnent to the sd1oo1 in her will. 195 letter fran T. P. Riddle, 17 ~1ay 1944. 196 letter fran F. R. Estabrook to the I!BI'bers of the Board of Directors.
121 Pierpont profitted fran the lack of interference fran the Trustees and the relaxation of administrative provisions previously demaroed by the founder.
The school survived and grew.l97
In July, 1969, George M. Trautman began his term as Avon's
chief aaninistrative head.
am
The sc:h:Jo1 realized t:rerendous expansion
change urrler his leadership.
By Sept.anber, 1977, the total enroll-
IIEIlt had reached 317 stOOents and the school had continued to operate
m a sound financial basis.
An overview of
sare of the measuranents
of the growth and success enjoyed by the instituticn during the 19691977 pericx:l are as follows: An
iricrease in the stuient body fran 194 to 317.
An increase of the faculty fran b.e1ty-six teaching nenbers to
thirty-six. An expansion of Avon's physical plant inchrling an art studio, hockey rink, radio staticn, student lounge, It'aintainence tW.1ding, library, printing center, guest .lx!use, and lecture center.
An increase in the total nUTber of applicants by over 200%. An expansion of the intersdn1astic sports offerings to fourteen.
'!he addition of new departJrents in music, psychology, and econanics and law. An increase in total scholt9FP nonies awarded to stOOents fran S48,820.00 to S160,000.00. As a result of the trerTerrlO.lS progress nade at the school, parti-
cularly in the past decade, Avm Old Fanns presently enjoys a stable financiZll situation and a very respected position arrong New England boarding sdnols.
H~, the
single IT'Ost inportant factor in the
sdxxll's recent ' sUccess has little to do with the business aspect of the 197The interim academic year (196B-1969) was ably administered by Allan M::Millan, who served as a te'np:>rary Provost. 19Br.etter fran F. R. Estabrcok.
122 sctrol.
Rather, it re5ults fran the fact that Avon remains a distinct
and Singular secondary institution, clearly separated fran other resi-
dential sctrols.
It appears to be the continued influence of the fOtll'rl-
er's philosophy fran MUch Avon Old Fanns has maintained its
singlen~ss
of purfOse and unique quality of education . Her errqXlasis on education suited to the individual needs of the student is at the foundation of the present p:>licies of
the
scrool.
As
evidence of that belief, Avon Old Farms has been reluctant to allow its I'I\.I'OOer of stOOents to grow I::eyond the 1977 figure of 317, fearing the attention afforded the Wividual will suffer as a result.
'!he present
Headrraster, George M. Trautman, clearly echoes the aTphasis en this personalized approach to education so strongly favored by Mrs. Riddle
in the following: I certainly think that Avon is unique in the area of individual attention. As a matter of fact, we excell in this area. If I loeI'e to rate Avon as a private school, I "QUId say Avon is high on the list in that ~ do what ~ say \-Ie do: ~ care for the individual. Both faculty and administration are catmi.tted to the belief that all students do not learn or progress at tbe S3!1le rate and that the individual '-Orth outsin~ the formal classroan setting is a vital part of oor program. 199
'!he formality favored by Mrs. Riddle continues at the school,
trough, as one \oJOUld expect, it has been rrodified by the dem.'ll"lds of the tines.
COats and ties are '-Om by the all m3le student bcxly to all
classes and rreals.20 °Thc rreals tremselves continue to be served in a
199 '1l1e Avonian,
Winter
1977.
200 As of June, 1977, there ~re five all m3le toarding schools in New England. They ~e: Avon Old Farms, Deerfield, Brooks, Tabor, and Sa lisb.lry â&#x20AC;˘
123 family manner with a faculty rnerrber heading one of the original broad oak. tables designed by the fourder.
stooents wait on the tables.
Dinner is by candlelight and the
M3nners continue to be stressed.
'!he concept of the village with its student participatory system prevails.
'nle Student Courts, Bar Association, StuJent Bank,
and StuJent G:7vernrrent are ITUlch the sane in practice as they w::!re \oihen
the scrool began.
The sense of ccmrunity at Avon has, if anything, in-
creased throughout the years follONing the reopening in 1947. p:lrtly due to the willingness of the
~
This is
recent administrative heads to
expand upon the programs of stuJent participation at the school.
The
M:lnitor System in the stooent dormitories places great responsibility
in the hands of the sttrlent bcxly and the tutor system introduced by the founder continues to serve as an effective counselling rrechanisn beb;een
residential faculty advisors and their advisees. '!he importance of giving of oneself for the well-being of the
village is a t.hene which was stressed in all of Mrs. Riddle's efforts and was nost easily seen in the schx>l's c:x:mrunity service program.
This
camunal effort continues to exist, with sare rrodification:
All members. of the ccmm.mity continue to participate in the Village of Old Farms which assigns responsibility for the welfare of the Schx>l to a governrrent rrodeled on that of a snall New England tmn, with its t.cMn rreetings, court and jtrlicial system, nonitors, and student bank and post office all functioning lDlder the purview of the Headmaster and Board of Directors. As was true in the Schx>l's earliest days, all are expected to \o.Ork for the ccmron good and to appreciate the dignity of labor the value of ooop:rration, and the significance of cannuni.~ service. As society has changed and with it the economics of New England life, the earliest activities of Avon stooents relating to the Schx>l's I;Qrking farm have been essentially replaced by an equally well-developed athletic program which stresses the values of self-discipline,
124 individual developrent, team sPirit arrl the responsibility of each to himself and to others.20l ' The rrost recent exarrples of this continued C(X)perative effort
may be evidenced in three major buildings on the camp..1s which were renovated or fully constructed through a joint stl.rlent arrl faculty effort.
\'brld.ng together, they played a major role in the realization
of the sclxx:>l' s Green House, Student lounge, arrl Arts Center.
Beyond
this, the Nimrod Club, an organization fostered by Mrs. Riddle arrl for
...n::rn
she acquired the teaching skills of a Maine
ishes.
~sman,
still flour-
As she had instructed, it is the responsibility of this group
of interested outdoorSlrel1 to maintain arrl protect the sclxx:>l' s \>.OOClland
acreage. The influence of her
~rds
relating to the admissions policy
of the sclxx:>l still serves as a guideline at Avon. standards with inflexible
requir~ts
Rigid entrance
focusing solely on the results
of standardized testing have not been incorporated in the admissions policy, despite the large increase on the total number of applicants. Rather, each irxlividual carrlidate is evaluated on his
OIoJIl
distinct
nerits as reflected in his acadanic potential, personal recarrrendations, and character. Leavitt,
The present Director of Admissions, Frank G.
CXI11'I'eI\ts:
The real strength of the student body evolves fran an individual's desire to achieve in all areas of stOOent life. This
20l'Ihe Avonian, Fall 1977, pp. 9-10. The older concepts of the stOOents continues in the form of village jobs which entail such things as waiting on tables, dishwashing, sett0g up laJ:oratory experirrents S\\eeping both camp.ls arrl refectory, raking lecwes, etc. Beyond this,' a daily maintenance crew (~sisting of students who do not desire to participate in an athletic errleavor) does a great deal of major grounds ~rk in the village.
125
desire is rrore im{:.ortant to us fran an admissions standpoint than one's. intrinsic intellectual ability. hle want to admit boys who w1ll succeed academically and will give of themselves. 202 However, in any consideration of her influence as it re-
mains today on the CantJUS at Avon one cannot escape the amipresence of her architectural
creation.
'!he entire educational enter-
prise that is Avon Old Fanns rEm3.ins enveloped by her works and in
a
~ry direct manner, the tone of the school is affected by the
rrere grandeur of the setting and the individual bJildings. ..
'!he eye
.
devours the splendor of the founder's architectural fruits.
Her in-
fluence ranains. 'l11e Approaching Challenge
Avon's future as a New England boarding institution rests to a limited extent within its own power to control and"to a greater extent, depends directly on the entire system of privately funded education in this country. Fran the vantage point of an observer familiar with independent residential schools in New England, it would appear as though Avon's future is fairly secure. tion.
There are numerous reasons for this observa-
First, the school possesses an excellent and debt free physical
plant, a maximum nU11ber of stooents, a sound fiscal policy, a sufficient end~t,
a
~th
of
~ed
acreage, an enthusiastic and financially
supportive parent and alumi constituency, and a stable administration and faculty.
Further, the school appears to be in a position in which
the future will see increased services offered to sttrlents without increased enrollment.
The trend of applications to the school has shcMn
a dramatic increase over the past five years and exhibits no symptans 202Intcrview with Frank G. Leavitt, Connecticut, 16 January 1977.
126 of lessening.
The fact that the school is located in the very marrow
of that region of New Ingland wch has traditionally been associated
with residential schools should not only aid in future recruiting efforts, b.Jt should also provide the opportunity for cooperative educational
ventures with sch90ls of a similar nature.
As an institution, Avon has
developed a definite sense of confidence in its ability to serve the
Wividual student.
'1he college placerrent fran the school has been rrore
than satisfactory to parents and stWents alike.
It is alrrost as though
the school has gra..n st:rcl'lger as a result of its struggles to overcare the progressive disability wch led to its prior denise in 1944.
as the schcxll' s rrotto persevered and
ncM
~d
M.lch
indicate, Avon Old Fanns has aspired and
seems to be realizing its full educational potential.
Avon's strong present position
am::JOg
independent OOarding schcols is
partially a result of the fact that it rem:tins a single sex institution, thus providing an alternative style of secondary schcol education.
If viewed fran the larger perspective of sore of the present trends and predictions for privately funded ed~tion in the United States, Avon's prospects for the future seem, in sore regards, further brightened.
Today, private secondary education in this country is
uroergoing an
~
wave of p:::p.tlarity.
As of April, 1977, the
National Associaticci of Indepen1ent Scl짜x>ls, the nation's largest grouping of such institutions, reported findings wch revealed a
total enrol1.Jrent
~
of twenty-four percent arrong rrenber schools
during the past five years.
F\I.rther, two-thirds of the new stooents in
these schools had previcAlsly been enrolled in p.ililic institutions. Another figure released, wch nms counter to
CCIl1TOn
belief, is that
U7
thirty percent of those stwents atten:1ing private schools
caIre
fran
families with total annual ina::nes of less than $25,000.00.203 Thus , it ~d appear that the st\Xlent awlicant enrollJrent base for many private toarding institutions has, in the recent past, broadened considerably.
'!his is, of cx:rurse, in direct opposition to the national
denog:raphic curve Wrich predicts a continually shrinking IX'r:Wation at
the secorrlary school level through 1980.
~, despite these
seem-
ingly optimistic trends in enro1.1Jrent, it ~d be specious thinking to
0Yerlcd< the very real dangers Wrich await Avon and all other privately funded institutions in the years ahead. It is rrost probable that the nest damaging threat loaning in
the future for these institutions is cx:ntinued infiaticn.
The
UfWcII'd
spiraling costs of maintaining ncn-profit schools have already caused sare to limit the services they can offer their stu:lents or charge nere for these services, \cIhil.e others have had to cease operation altogetrer. '11E illusory belief that nere active giving by wealthy supp:>rters, grants fran \Dltarped fOl.ITrlations, or perhaps a revised investnent portfolio
will turn the tide at a single institution and stan the inflationary
tide, is short sight.e::1 and falacials, at best. that at sare point in the
not-~stant
There can be no doubt
future the pililic, in gen-
eral, . and the goverment, in particular, will have to play 路a nere
cw:ti.ve role in the support of not ally private education, but other private enterprise, as well.
In the Annual Report of the Carnegie
Q:mni.ssions, Alan Pifer clearly voiced alarm at this decline of private
203Tbe wall Street Journal, 13 April
1977.
128 incentive and su~rt in educaticn and elsewhere in our society: Unless this decline is arrested and reverse::l, ~, and our children after us, will alJrost certainly be living in a society where the idea of private institutions for the cx:mron gocrl has becare little rut a quaint anachronism l argely associated with the rrores of an earlier age. Perhaps a t that tirre there will be JVrericans wOO are reasonably satisfied with the kinds of lives offered them by a" society which functions solely through p.lblic institutions. But there nay ~ll be others with a great yearning for rrore variety, rrore choice , rrore aniroaticn, and rrore freedan in their lives than such a system ~d be likely to provide. If so, they will certainly \o.Orrler at the heedlessness - the sheer negligence - of the generaticn before them that could have all~ a systan which has these attribltes to atrophy. 204
204 Alan pifer, The Jeopardy of Private Institutions (New York : Carnegie corporation, 1970). pp. 14- 15.
0i1IPI'ER VIII
'!his study investigated the develot=rrent of the traditional New fh;land
that one
boy's OOarding school and delineated the over..nelming effect
1oOIBJl,
Theodate Pope Riddle, had on the rretal1'oq:ilosis of a The school was the creation of this
single school, Avon Old Farms. ~
arxl \\ealthy
1N(l'Mll,
who ruled suprere in her stall educational
fiefdon \nltll her death in 1946.
DJring her lifetirre, her entire re-
serve of creative energy was spent on the sch:x>l and its programs. Avon's academic and non-academic arq:hasis all
grE!IoI
fran her grand plan
for a boy' 5 school different fran those that existed.
The school's
"-Urldng farm overseen by students, court system, stOOent bank, village ~k
pzogtau, printing center, forestry club, etc. all went in hard
with her efforts to create an educational at:l'ros!ilere \ohere students '-OUld leam social responsibility by participating in a microcosm which
reflected a uuch larger and CCJTt>lex '-'Orld. FJ;an
the tine of the school's founding, Hrs. Riddle greatly in-
fluenced the oourse that the chief aaninistrators follCMed.
Her danina-
tion of the governirq body of the school and her insistence regarding the !nt>lerrentation of certain policies in no srall way caused considerable problems for the three Provosts who served Avon fran 1927 to 1944. 'Ib:x.Igh she nay l:e criticized for frequently ~ing herself
will upon the institution that she had created , it stn.Ud l:e
129
and her
aIIJUed
i I
/
130 that hers was obviously a lal:or of love.
Sre gave entirely of rerself
to ensure the future of Avcn and her stamp was evident in every aspect of the school.
Not only did she finance the entire enterprise and
personally design and OIIersee the detail of the ruilding, she also
pr0-
In rer exercise of ~r,
vided the educational vision for the school.
she was saretim::s gentle and saretin-es harsh, rut always final.
The
lengthened shadow cast by Theodate Pope Riddle fell on Avon Old Farms
fram its first moment. While the influence of this individual
\;Ulla!1
played an essential ~re
part in the establishrrent and oontinuance of the school, there
other relative factors crucial to the developnent of this institution Iohich should not be discounted.
Arrong these
~
the school's geograr:tUc
location, the growth and internal expansion of colleges and universities arrl with it the increased need for rrore and better prepared students,
the influence of progressive educators, the school's affiliation with
the distinguished, well-krloI.n John Wallace Riddle, and the general intellectual and socicreconanic climate of the natioo. ~ted
in the very center of Connecticut, Avon Old Farms was,
fram the start, the inreritor of a wealth of advantages not enjoyed by boarding institutions found in other parts of the country.
As established
in Chapter II, the 00ys boarding school had long flourished in Ehgland and especially in connecticut.
New
There existed a tradition of
aca~c excellence which surrounded these schools and their graduates held positions of authority in mmy Yankee cxmnunities.
Essentially,
New England was then, and still is, the center for such schcxJls.
~r,
there grew, thro~t the Hartford area in particular, a cluster of
131 residential secondary instituti ons of which Avon Old Farms was one. For many New Englande rs, this type of schooling was the rule and rot the exception .
Of particular iITp:::>rtance in consideration of Avon's
geographic advantages is the school's proximity to three major rretrep:>litan areas , as \<.ell as a quickly expanding surburban swath along the Atlantic coast just north of Manhattan. the availability
There can be no doubt that
of many applicants fran
New
York City, Boston, and
Hartford played a major role in the school's early developrent.
Be-
sides serving as a source for p:>tential stu::lents, these cities also pro-
vided easy access to cultural and social events.
'rhus, although Avon
was surrounded by thousands of acres of verdant ~ands, it was rot iso-
lated, and was in easy travelling distance to urban advantages. If the cities themselves represented a base fran IOhich the school ~ld
draw stu::lents, the newly established and mushrocming area along
O:I'lnecticut's southern shoreline was nonetheless so.
'I'oNns such as
Greenwich, New Canaan, and Darien S\o.elled in nurrbers as the rretrop:>litan web expanded and the "CCIT1lUlter" becarre a reality.
in these and other areas was the
direct
Tre suburban growth
result of an influx of rronied
people \<.t1o desired the benefits of both the urban and
~try
life.
SUf-
fice it to say that many of these sarre people sought the benefits of residential education for their children.
The result, as it hcrl been years
before, was the creation of boarding schools.
Avon profited fran this
trend.
Likewise, following vlorld "lar I, there had been a trerrendous ~
and expansion found in the nation's colleges and universities.
With this developrent came an increased need on the part of the !lOre
132 ~ll-established and ccmpetitive colleges in the East to have better qualified students enter their institution .
The boarding schools in New
fngland, sore of which had been establisl-ed to serve this very need, ~re looked to as a source for such students.
Avon's energence onto the
preparatory school scene in 1927 was 짜.ell-tired fran that stand~int. '!he institution's chances for survival ~re enhanced by the very nature
of the academic preparation offered to its students. Beyond the favorable climate ~ch the school enjoyed because
of its ability to readily train young wen for college, Avon also profited fran the wave of progressivisn in education roughly
~ch had ~pt the
a decade or rrore prior to the school's founding.
nation
T.-.ough the
high water mark of the Progressive Educational Association, as a unified
and functioning OOdy, had run its course during the early 1920's, the
ebbing tide of that rroverrent left determined
out the land. by John
~
pro~ts
scattered through-
Those who favored the varied educational approach fostered and Charles Elliott saw in Avon a school
~ch
canbined
sore of the same elerrents of education for the individual emphasis on social responsibility and a less theoretical approach to curriculun that had t:een Although it is clear that, in
so much of the Association's
platform.
reality, the school's programs
~re ccrnposed
of both traditional alld non-
traditional elerrents, the progressive advocates seared to disniss the conservative "prep school" aspects of Avon, and <'h.ell entirely on the new approaches to education found there.
As has br:en seen, the school gained
considerable notoriety as a result, and its founder was heralded as a forward and progressive educator.
was given much publicity.
The end result of all this was that Avon
I t was a school which surfaced and remained
134 It is in these final observations that one discovers a sarewhat circuitous educational pattern which has evolved .
Interestingly, it was
for similar reasons that the lInthologists, ITOre than one hundred years before, sought to better the educational and cultural abTosrhere as it then existErl in the academies.
Furthenrore, the developrents at Pound Hill,
Flushing Institute, St. James, and others serve as predecessors for the larger IIO'IIeIl'eIlt of OOarding schools in New England .
Avon, in this sense,
was but a new link in a chain of previously establishErl institutions . Despite these critical factors, all of which were crucial to the developrent of the scmol, the amipresent fact remains that Avon Old Farms was always and will remain the manifestatim of the efforts of ale .~,
Theodate Pope Riddle.
APPENUIX A
Prospectus, 1925
Aval Old Faons !ichool
135
136
PR)5PEl:'rus, A\UII OW FAFM> THE POPE-BJroKS FOUNDl\TION
.
Incoq:orated Bal. John Wallace Riddle President DL<w::TOPS
Charles Francis Adams Clarles Francis Choate, Jr. George C. Lee, Jr. Henry Francis Pope Mrs. John Wallace Riddle Bernard W. Trafford Harris Whittem::>re Ste~
Perkins cabot
Executive Pegent A.B. Harvard, 1892. (A.M. (Hon.) Brown, 1921. St. George's School, 1901-1926 (Headmaster, 1917-1926) I
Mr. cabot ....>ill be in charge of the affairs of the School until the Provost takes office as the ScOCol executive during the sumer of 1927. Francis Mitchell Froelicher, A.H.
ProvoSt
A.B. Haverford, 1913. M.A. John~ Hopkins 1921. Park School, Baltimore. 1913-1921. Heacltaster Oak Lane ColD1Uy Day School, 19211927. r-enber New FÂŁlucation Fellowship, Iarlon. President P!"ogressive :ruucation Association. George Frederick Olerry, A.B. Dean
William D:>rsey Kennedy. A.B. Bursar
'!he follOl.nng is a g~ statarent of the aims and policies of .l\.von. Old Farms. A list of the full teaching staff. the curriculum. school calendar and other information will be issued l ater .
lJl
Avon, Old Farms , is a Se conda1-y School and Junior College for ooys located in tl-e 'J'cwnship of Avon, Connecticut. It is five miles fran Farmington, Connecticut, and t\velve miles fran lJartford. The College has an estate of nearly 3,000 acres, oordered on the east by the Farmington River. Part of the ~ropi!rty has been knOVil'l for a century and a half as Old Farms; the southern portion is a rough forest where deer are often seen, and through which b.I::> trout streams
flow. Old Fanns is tl1e narre of the village designed and built to Grouped about the Village Green, overlooking the meadows and pastures where the sheep and ca ttle graze, are the library and hall, cloister, chapel, guest house, south gate, gate house, bank, refectory, post office and the houses of the Provost and Dean. The cottages for the othe r rranbers of the faculty and the seven stone dormitories and camon roc:ms for the sttrlents form the Pope and Brooks (Uadrangles. house the College.
Extensive farm buildings with smithy and car?â&#x201A;Źflter shop form a group apart. The infirmary is on the south side of the By-Road. 'l11e ~r house is conveniently located in relation to the village. 'l11e buildings are n'dinly built of stone quarried on the estate, and their unique beauty is perhaps one of the nost important educational features for the boys whose fOImative yells are spent at Avon. Religioos instruction at Avqn is positive and continuous. No attanpt will be nade to instruct the ooys in any given creed, but they will be lead to v.orship God in spirit .:url in truth and to look upon the teachings of Christ as the foundation of all right living. While the :-eligi::AJS life of the school will centre in the chapel, Avon will endeavor through its !l'd!1y activities to i.'11plant in the ooys a sincere belief in tlle reality of the life of the spirit, that they nay be strengthened in the unfaltering conviction that: "Though our day by day , while \<Ie things which are not but the things which
outward !l'd!1 perish, yet the inward n-an is reneo..ed look not at the things which are seen, but at the seen, for the things which are seen are ~ral, are not seen are eternal."
Avon offers b.I::> courses
the Secorrlary School course and
the Junior College course.
Tbe Secon1a.ry School course prepares students to enter the Freshman class of the lmiversities. The Junior College will prepare boys to enter the Sopharore or Junior classes of the universitie s. It ...>ill also offer to ambitioUs students who nay not intend t o go to a senior college an opportunity to do b.I::> years of lXls t-graduate ~+:udy at Avon. A sincere effort will be made to de t e rmine and deve l op t.le particular talent or aptitude of each be. I f pos s ibl e , a student should, on completio~ of the Junior Col~ege y course , have nade hi s decisi on of the career he Wl.s hes to follow. \'h th
/,!A
138 this end in vi~ exploratory courses will be offered in preparation for the di!ferent profp.ssions. Boys will neither be acceptei\ nor rejected on the result of writThe cardidate's entire previous record will be veri carefully examined and must satisfy the requirenents of the schcx>l before adnission is granted. Olaracter is the first qualification o:msidered in admitting a student. Achievenent aud intelligence tests 1Ici.ll determine the fonn a student may enter.
ten examinations alone.
Special emphasis is laid upon the study of the sciences. The science building is equi~ for the teaching of General Science, Physics, 01cmistry, and Biology. The study of science has an unquestioned value in ~;sting a boy to rreet the conditions of rrcx:1ern live. Training is given in the use of the scientific rretrod in fields other than the science t:.henselves. Throughout the courses the hLllM!l service values of sciexe 'Ioill be especially onphasizcd. The rrethod of teaching science is equal in irrportance to the subjects taught, the student being trained to ~ knowledge and establish. facts for himself. Latin ard Greek are electives for the students of the upper foLmS. Th::>rax;<h training in the grarmar ard advanced reading of the Classics are offered to those students wh:J need one or both as a foundation for their dDsen career. The Classics, as such, are not taught in the la.-.er forms, except at the request of the parents. The stud~nts are given a ~ training in English, including a study of words ani word-origins , to de<telop a broad vocabulary. History and allied subjects are used at Avon as the chief cultural oosis. -n-.e allied subjects consist of Geography, Ethnology, /-1ythology, W-terature, and the Histories of Science and Art. History is required each :tear fran the First to the Sixth FOLmS, inclusive. Scholastic work at Avo!. \rill be based upon the principles of apport.i.cned work carried out through the technique of individual instruction ar.d supplerrented by group activities. This rretrod encourages the able sbDent to avoid the lock-step, and to use the tirre thus saved for a br.:l3lder ani deeper education at each level. Individual work also saves tirre for those students who would normally be repeaters. Avon shall always starrl for sound, progressive rretrods of education, whatever may be the fOGD ani manner in which these rretrods manifest themselves in the future. Avon will provide instructioo for students 路who desire =urses in The boy wh:J is the fortl.mate possessor of creative ability will be given an opportrn:ity to develop his particl.l~ar gift. 1he student with talent should l~ ~l~ \..oo~eheartedly to tlus form of expression, for an art served Wlth sl.l1centy Wlll never.wh:JllY abarrlon one and in later life fTlay be<..ure a source of plea sure m hours of leisure ~ prove to be the basis of his particular culture. any soecial field of the Fine Arts.
A small but exceptionally fine collection of canvases by ~bl1et, Manet-, [egas and :\'histler; . of engravings ~ etchings, rrezzcr-tints . and Japanese p!"ints; and of Clunese and Ita] lan pottery and porcelams,
ll9 has been presented to the school by the founder. It is imp?ssible to overestimate the value on the development of chara~er that 1S due to the overcoming of obstacles. A boy's enthusiasm 1S th::>roughly arousOO when he has brought a task to conpletion as ~ result of patient and prolonged endeavor. Many parents are consc1O~S o~ the sober fact that it is practically brqJossible for than to proV1de 1n rrcdern hares occupations for their boys and girls which are in any way suitable equivalents for the invaluable tasks that necessity in{loses. So long as there is no solution for this in{lortant OOucational defect, and so long as even slight obstacles are smoothed away from the ~th of youth, :IS is now too frequently the case, just so long will many of our young people approach maturity with weakenerl rroral fibre. 'nle New England Farm of a few generations a:]0 affordOO an ideal environrrent for youth. It bred initiative and cultivated habits of industry. One of Avon's rrost distinctive contributions to the field of OOucation is the revival of Old Farms of many of the features of that early life which ~re rrost effective in arousing a boy's interest and ambition. Avon offers an i.nc:arqJarable program of activities on the farm, in the forest and in the srops, which will suess equally the developrent of mind and bcdy. The value to the boy of these extra~ricular acti.vities Will be in exact proportion to the interest he brings to than. Sare boys will be interested in cultivating vegetables , fruits, or in the raising of p:mltry; others will follow the highly-specialized ~rk of the rrodern dairy. Avon's herd include s the ~r ld 's champion Gue rnsey. A forest is ever-changing; in spring the tender green of new leaves and tassellOO rods, birds nesting or in the migratory flight, flowers and curled frond s of ferns pushing through ~t, black earth; in sumer 0001 shadows along lazy streams; in auturm r oo trees, blue mist, the rustle of fallen leaves; in winter bare oak branches and murmuring pines, srv::M de licately patterned with the track of ~land animals. Avon forest serves as a deronstration of rrcdel forestry nethcrls for foresters, as ~ll as for Avon sttrlents, and is a continual source of pleasure to all interestOO in Natural History. '!be students are taught to identify the trees, s hrubs and other forest plants. They are taught h::lw a tree grows; how a forest is deve lQFed; haN trees and forests are injured by fire, disease, insects; and the general principles of properly caring for forests, They learn the service that a fOFeSt renders to the general public, as ~ll as to the owner , and what treems produoe the different \oAXlds u serl in the manufacturing of articles in everyday use. 'nle students participate in the laying~t ard- building of trails, and in the developrent of other forest impr~nts. Each boy is taught how to take care of himself in the \oAXldS, h::lw to pitch his tent , keep his camp sanitary and so sirrq:lle oooking ,路,rith a rough and ready kit. Boys of a necJ:lanical. turn of mir:rl will find unf~iling interest in the activities carned on 1n the machine shop, electncal laboratory, smithy, carpenter shop an~ ~ic~l drafting roCI1\S. The printing press of "The Avon IECord" is at ~1~ ~n nurrerous ~ys . . The managenent . calls for a boy with execut1ve ab111ty ; the editorship demands one W1th
140 a certain arrount of literary tale...it, while the working of the press will inter7st othe:s. A boy may have his choice of anyone of these activities, and Wl.U recel.ve excellent instruction in each. Craft \o.Ork is an ilrp)rtant part of the younger boy ' s daily occutr.e i.rrp:lrtance of handwork 1ll the developla1t of the brain. This field of errleavor is provided at Avon for its educational value only. No trades whatever are taught. ~tion , as educators are nCM fully aware of
Avon is a cultural institution. Harrlwork will be discontinued for the s t trlents of the upper forms, as they will need arrple t:iJre in which to concentrate on their acadenic \o.Ork in preparation for their college entrance examinations. Grea t stress is laid upon training the boys in the proper use of troney. I t i s ilrp)ssilile to arrive at this desired goal by rrere precept. Every s t udent upon entering Avon opens a bank account in the Bank of Old Fanns. Each boy has a check 'book and keeps a cash account . These accounts are examined and criticized for accuracy and neatness in the office of the Bursar. Out o f his checking or cash a=unt the boy mus t pay for certain essentiul articles and is permitted to p.1rChase others which are optional . The boy who realizes that he is reS[X)l1sible for the payrrent of his purchases has the actual value of noney impres sed upon him in the rrost pr actical manner. \men a boy ' s expenditure exceed: what i s considered a normal figure , the question will be taken up with' the boy himself and the parents notified. Parents "'ill be infonred by the Bursar o f the am::>unt needed to cover the ordinary expenses . 'l'he boys may engage in projects , provi ding these are approved and involve no great expense. J\irong such pro jects are the raising of early vege tables , f rui ts , poultry , beef cattl e illld sheep to be shCMn at a Fair to be he l d at Avon each year. The Bank of Old Fanns will loan snall S\.mS f or this purpose on the boy' s note at a 10101 rate of interest. The students thus have an earl y introducticn to business rrethcx:is conducted on a miniat ure scale .
A specia list in mental hygiene ,,'ill be on the staf f. He will be responsible for the operation of the infi..rl1'ary, supervise the health of the students and take special rreasures against the spread of d isease. ere of his rrost ilrp)rtant duties will be to acquaint himself with the character and mental capacity of each boy, with the view of helping him develop to the fullest e~t J:Us spec~al abiliti7s. 'l1le 7PDrt~ leader coopera tes with the physl.cl.an 1ll planrung =ect.ive exerclseS for the boys who need then â&#x20AC;˘ . He direc:-s the <;>ut of door ~tt.i.l;g up drill supervises personal and (can J.nspectlOn. He also trams the boys . J.n correct posture. This is ~ health ~sure that cannot ~ overestlJl\3ted, as it i s not only of imnedJ.ate bene .. lt to the boys, but l.S a safeguard
ru:n
for health in later life. The Village of ,O ld Farms is build ~pon, high land, consis~ing of surface loam and a deep stratum. Of. sand , Whictheh J.nlsured f' SWl.ft <;rrt!~ge. Infinite plans have been taken J.n reg ard to p ans .or sanl. 100.
141 'llie entire water supply is fran a deep rock-driven well. The milk, cream, and butter are supplied by the Guernsey herd, and the vegetables, fruits, poultry, and eggs are provided by the farm . . . The students themselves manage their SIX>rts, under the general superv.ls.lon of the sports leader, The SIX>rts consist of football, soccer, basketball, l:aseball, boxing I tennis, fishil'ig, swimning, and canoeing for the boys who have becare expert swimrers. The boys fonn their own fishing clubs according to state laws for the p:!rservation of garre and fish. There is a "swinroing hole" by the edge of the ~s and ten miles o f bridle paths through the forest. The winter sports incllXie coasting, skii.rq, skating, and snowshoeing . A charter is granted by the Board of Regents to the Village of Old Farms . 'llie boys will thus participate as citizens in the op:!rations of a 911all cx:mronwealth . 'l11ey are trained in the use of the ballot and in habits of responsible citizenship through controlling actual agencies of self-government similar to those by which they will govern themselves in later life as Iileroers of a sovereign state. The Provost of Avon r.ay review cases in the course and reverse the decision when he deans it advisable.
'l11ere is great need today for rren of irrleperrlent thought IIoob:> are capable of assuming the responsibility on a strong, ethical . basis. A specially educated group should courageously project, and steadfastly uphold the highest social and political ideals. They should act \-li. thout tho\ight of praise, and should be willing to rrerge their p:!rsonal interests with the larger interests of the ccmnunities in which they live, thus identifyir.g thenselves with great human prOOlems and rroverrents. Ava'l, Old Farms is represented sym\:x:>lically by a figure canposed of a beaver with he wings of an eagle. The device is "Aspirando et Perseverando. It How best to a\omen aspiration and develop perseverence is the earnest and enduring purpose of Avon, Old Farms . OPENING OF 'mE SOfCOL
Avon will open in Sept.arOer, 1927. 'l1lere will be six foI1TlS fran the 7th to the 12th grades inclusive. Ordinarily I boys should be ready to enter the first fonn at 12 . In 1917 boys will be receive:! into the first foms only. Those IIoob:> will have passed their 16th birtlday at the op:!ning of the school will not be a:lmitted. '!he Junior College will not op:!n before 1929.
142 TRANSroRl'ATlOO
Trains care directly to Hartford fran Boston and New York in three ~s. Passengers arriving in Hartford should engage a motor at the Railroad Station for the ~lve mile drive over the mountain, to Avon, Old Farms. P.O. --Express--Avon, Old Farms, Avon, Connecticut. Telephone--Fanninton, Connecticut . Telegrams--Avon, Old Farms. via Hartford, Connecticut.
The charge is $1500, payable semi-annually, $750 on October 1st and $750 on February 1st. This charge includes rCXJT', mard, tuition, lectures and nusicales. A limited m.llT~Jer of scholarships will be available to mys whose parents cannot pay the full tuition. Conditions governing these scholarships may be had, on application, fran the Executive Regent. Application for adnission may be made a t any tiJre. A registration fee of $25 is payable at the tiJre definite application is made. An application may be cancelled, with no financial obligations, tw::J months before the opening of the autumn tenn, in which case refund of the registration fee will not be made. No deduction can be made for absences or withdrawals after the fall and winter teno begin. The infirmary charges after the first t...o days, which are free, will be $3 per day, with an additional charge if a consultant p1ysician and special nurse are required. Charges will be made for lessons on the piano, violin, and other instrurrents, for riding, dancing, freehand drawing, I:x:lokbinding, . I:x:lxing, wrestling, and laundry. The list of clothing require-'! will be mailed to parents three nonths before the date on which the my enters Avon, Old Farms. CorreS'[X>l'lClence sho..lld be addressed to STEPHEN B. CAOCII', Esq.,
Avon, Old Farms, Avon, Connecticut
APPElIDIX B
A
Letter
Fran a Survivor of the Lusitania
143
144
HOIT:L DE CRII~
Place de Concorde PARIS ~
1:larl ing 'lother:
I am going to try to tell you alxJut the Lusitania. "1a.rjorie will wish to J-nCAv SCM:! day, but I rrolly think she should not hear the details yet. Please be very careful about this. It might have such a bad effect on her and the baby, but you knav that bet ter than I, of course . You l e ft us Ivhen they called out , "All ashore ! " but I was sorry when I real ized we might have had more time together . The ship did not sail for two hours af t er t:klt; we were taking on passengers f ran the Cameronia , I was told . toJhen we pulled out of doc!;. I was in t..'1e wr iting- roen ard SCM then for t..'11'! fi rst time in t..'1e rrorning Sun the German threat . I said to ~. Frie nd , "That rreans of course th~they in t end to get us," though t'le name of t'le ship was not given . !ve were a very quiet shipload o f passenge r s . I ccrnfortcd !T1Yself \oIit..h the thought that l-Ie . Io.\:)uld .surely be convoyed when lYe r eached the war zone. I talked with practically no one on !xJard except ~tr. Friend and Mlle. Depage, as I was very t i r ed . The Pursar changed my staterocn for one on the boat deck, as there wa s a very ooi sy f amil y next to rre ard I could not sleep. Early Thut:sday morning , the day before the disaster , I was alvakened by sl-Jout..s and the scuffling of feet. I lcoked out of my p:>rthole ard 'Hatched tl1.e crew loosening the ship's boats and swinging them cleat: of t..he railing. In the afterncon, ~ tr. Friend read rre parts of Bergson's " ~lat..iere et ~1er.oire," translating as he read . There were passages that il lustrated so wonderfully sane of the ccmron difficulties in cor:rnunication. Thev were rrost ilhminatin<], and I could see the vividness of the in.:;piration t.'1ey \vere to :1r . Friend; and as we sat side by side in our deck-chairs, I marveled to mfself that s~l-J a man a s Mr. Friend had been found to cart:y on the investigation. I felt very deeply the quali t짜 of r.ly r cspt ~ and a~ation for him. . He was endCMed so richly m heart and r.und. I had bll.l l t so much ~n my future of whic!1 he and his lvork \,'ere to have been so very large a part.
145
, After Fathpr's death I h.1d laboriously reconstructed my life
and, th~s structnre has also <Jone. But my agony of mind has been for ~Jorie and I have wondered if s he would have the strength to see ~
return vlithout him.
I do not think she oU<Jht to see me yet.
It
w~ll be much harder for heor' tJ1Lln sr,e realizes and it would be too
cruel to give her additional schock. Friday r.orninq, we came slc:;Ml y through fog, blONing our fog horn . It cleared off about an hour before we went belON for lunch. A young Englishnan at our tc:ble 'lad been served his ice cream and was waiting for the stClo/ard to brill<] him a spxm to eat it with: he looked ruefully at it and suid he \~o;.u d hate to have a torpedo get him before he ate it. I'le all laU<Jhed , and then ccrrrnentecl on hON slONly we \~ere running: 'Ne thougr,t the engines had stopped. Mr . Friend went up on deck B on the sUrboard side and l eaned over the railing , looking at t he sea whic" was a marvelous blue and verv c1.3.zz1ing in the sunligllt . I said, "HON could t!1e officers ever see a periscopr.! 'th en~? " The torpedo was o n its way to us a t t.'1at II'lY.eIlt , for IIC vtent a short distance farther ' tcMard the stern, t urning the rorne r by the S!'Oking roan, when the ship was struck on t.'1e starboard side. The sound was like that o f an arrON enteril1<] the canvas and s traw of a target, magnified a tix:lusand tiIres am I imagined I heilrd a dull explo~ ion bclo;~. The water and timbers flew pas t t.'1c deck. tfl:. Fripnn ,s tmc k his f i st in his hand and said, "By J ove , t hey ' ve <JOt us." The ship steadied h~self for a few seconds and then listed heavily to starboard, thrONing us agains t the wall of a small corrider \~e had quickly turned into. \~e tr,en started up to the boat deck , as I had told ''Ir.. Friend and poor Robinson , t.lJat in case o f troub l e , we ",onld meet thpre and not try to run around the s hip to f ind one another . The deck sl~2l1ly looked very strange , crONded with peopl e , and I rernat1hcr t.'1at 0.10 1,'(Fen were crying in a pitifluly weak I~ay . An officer was shouting orders to stop l ONering the boats , and loR were to l d to qo do;Nn to deck B. We fir st l ooked over the rail and watched a boat filled I.,ith men and waren being laoRred. The s t ern was l owered too quickly and half the boatload \.Jere pulled bacl;,\~ards into the ,.,ater . I~~ l ooked at each o ther, s ickened by the sight , and tl,en lI\3de our \~ay t.~ough the cr~ for deck B on the s tarboard side . There I"e suw boats be ing lONe red safely frcJ!\ above. T'1e s hip was sinking so quickly we feared she vlOuld fall on and capsize the small boats, and it seerrcd not a good place t o jUTlp fran for t."e S ilP.E reason.
!ole t urned again to rrake our ",ay up t.'1rough the rush of oeopl e rorning and CJO ing. ~~e "'alkcd clos? lCXJether side by side, each ;'it'1 an arm around the ot.l,er's lVaist. I'e passed '!rIC. Depage : her eyes wer e wide and startled, but brave. Sh~ had a man on citJ1er side of her , f riends of hers so I cUd not sp?a]" It was no tine for YIOrds unless one rould offer !-elp. On
the port side of df'Ck A, again we saw rrore boats safely
146
:::~er~ ~ ~1r. Friend \"ished me to join the throng of rren and waren
O"'th~ l.nto one. He 1.>Duld not take a place in one as long as there were stl.ll waren aboard and, as I \~ould not leave him, we pushed our w~y ~ards the stern, l.flich was n0.4 uphill work, as the bo.Y was sinhng so rapidly. '芦)binson appeared on my right. I would only p..1~ my Ilard on her shoulder and say , "~h, Robinson." Her habitual SI1Il.le , ~ppeared to be frozen on her face. l1r. F路riend said, "Life . belts. and I ~nt with him into nearby cabins, where he fOlD'1d three. He ~ied t.hEm on us in hard knots ann \.,e stood by the ropes on the ou ter sl.de of the deck in the place which one of t.he boats had occupied. Ne 'l ooked up at the funnels; \~e could see the ship nove, .she I~as going '50 rapidly. I glanced at ~. Friend - he .was standing very stra ight, and I thought to myse lf, "t.he son of a soldier." \ole turned and l ooked do-m the side of the ship. Ive could n0.4 see t.~e grey hull and knew it wcis time to iLl11P. I asked him to go first. He ste ~ over the ropes, slipped do.-m one of the uprights and reached, I thi nk , t.~e r ail of deck B, and then jurrpecl. Robinson and I watched for him t o c:une up, ~ihich he did in a few s econds, and he looked up at us t o encourage us. I said, "Cane, ~in son" and stepped over the ropes as he had, slipped a short ,4.istance , found a footho l d on a roll of the canvas used for deck s hie lds and then jU11ped. I do not kno.oI whether RJiJinson foll~me.
'!he next thing that I r ea lized was that I could not r each the surfa ce, because I \vas being \~ashed and ~lhirled up against wood. I was swa llONing and breathing the salt water, but fe l t no special d i s canfort nor angu ish of mind - - was strangel y a!'dthetic. I opened my eyes and t.~9ugh t.~e green water I could see what I was .:>eing dashed up against. It \~as the under part of a deck . I would see t.~e matched boarding and the angl e iron over t.~e railing. I had been swept be tween decks . I c l osed my eyes and tho1.X]ht , "this is of course t~e end of life for me ," and then I thought of you, dearest rrother , and knew tha t Gordon would be a ccrnfort to you . I was glad I had made arother will, and I COlD'1ted the buildings I had Pesigned - the one built and building, and hoped I had made good. QJie tly I tho1.X]"lt of the friends I love and t."len comnitted myself to G:ld's care in thought -- a prayer wit~ut words. I must:: then have received t.'1e bl0.4 on the top of my head which made me unconscious. My stiff Strdlv hat and my hair probably saved r.e from being killed by it . Then for perhaps half a minute 1 opened my eyes crt a grey world; I oould not see the sunlight because of the bl0.4 on my head. I was surrounded and jostled hy.hundreds of frantic, screaming , shouting hunans in t.'U.s grey and watery inferno. The ship I1l.Ist have just gone cb.m.
A man insane with fright was clinging to my shoulders . I can see the panic in his eyes as he looked over my head. He had no life belt on and his wei'lht Ivas pulling me under again. Had I struggled against him, "Ie probably Ivould "lave clung to me , but I never even fel t the inclination to. I said, "Qh, please don' t" and t.~en t.'1e
147 _~r closed over ne and I becarrc unconscious again.
He must have len ne wt:en, he found, ne sinking under him. I opened my eyes later 0I!il the bnlllant sunllght and blue sea. I was floating on my back. 'l1he uen, and waren were floating with wider spaces between them. A man 0I!il ~ nght had a gash on his forehead; the back of a wanan's head was near ne. I saw an old man on my left, upright in the water, and as could ~ the horizen, I asked him if he saw any rescue ships caru..ng . He dl.d not. An Italian, with his arms around a small tin tank as a float, was chanting. There were occasional shouts; I OJOUld see the =c:rwUed ship's boats far away. I wondered where Mr. Friend was. I noticed the water felt waDll and saw an oar~ I reached for it and pushed one end of it toward the old man 00 my left, and then as my heavy clothes kept dragging JTe CcMn, I lifted I11f right foot over the blade of the oar, and held it with my left hancL This helped to save ne. I tried to lift my head a little to see for myself if there was not saTe aid caning . Then I sank back "eCY relieved in my mind, for I decided it was too horr'i ble to be t:nE and that I was dreaming, and again lost consciousness. nus was about three o'clock.
t:e
The next thing I was aware of was looking into a small open grate fire. This was half past ten at night and I was in the captain's cabin on the rescue ship Julia. I decided that the opening of the grate neasured about 18 x 24 inches; I did not rertember the shipwreck. I saw a pair of grey trousered legs by the fireplace and, t:UI:ning my head, sal'" a man leaning over a table, looking at ne where I lay wrapped in a blanket on the floor. I heard him say, 路She ' s conscious," and tv.o \\CJlEn cane up to JTe and patted me and told me the doctor was cx;rning. I thought they looked alike and asked them if they were sisters and what their narres W'ere. When I tried to talk, I found that I w'aS shaking fran head to ~ in a violent chill, thou:]h there were hot stones at my feet and back. A doctor carre and picked me up, calling tv.o sailors, who IMde a chair with their harris and lifted ne. I was too stupid to hold on to them and fell I::ack, but the doctor caught me by the shoulders and I was carried off the ship and through the =c:rwUs on the dock, the sailors shouting ~, way:" They lifted me into a motor and in a few m::rrents we st:.cHJed at what proved to be a third-rate hotel. I told the doctor I could step out of the car myself, but in trying to, I crurpled up on the sidewalk and was picked up and carried in. I was left on a lour.qe in a rcx::rn full of men in all sorts of strange ga.rJrents, \.mile the proprietress hurried to bring ne brandy. 1'Te Englishman at our table, who had been so anxio~s to eat his ice cream was in a pink dressing-go.m; he cane and sat by me. I asked him if he had seen Hr. Friend. He shook his head without answering. I was given brandy and with help walked t:pStairs and was put to bed. All night I kept expecting Nr. Friend to appear, looking for me. All night long, men kept coming ~nto ?ur roam! snapping on the l~ghts, bringing children for us t? l.dentl.fy, tak.wg telegrarrs, ,get~ ~ carnes for the list of survl.V?r~, etc., et~. ,I kept ~skl.ng offl.Cl.als for news of Hr. Friend and gl.vmg a de scnptl.on of hl.l!1.
148 A civil engineer I.rnO lives near Hartford and knew of Ire took it up:m I-timself to look everywhe re for r1r. Friend -- in rotels and hospitals and private houses. He returned every two or three hours, but brought roo news. I will rot write rrore now of that night and my illness and frightful anxiety about ~. Friend. Three days later, I-ihen I was taken to Cork by Mr. and !1rs. Haught\'n , I became convinced that Mr. Friend was delirious from injury and unidentified and Mr. lIaughton, at my request, put notices in two papers for a week. I siItply canrot \.,rrite any rrore about it now. lirite soon and often to Ire my darling rrother. Tell ~jorie l have written, perhaps you can judge if she would better read this. She must take roo risk. P.S. Did Mr. Haughton tell you of the way in which I was saved? Mrs. Naish, to whCI!I in a great treasure I ONe my life, saw Ire pulled up on board wi th boat hooks; the oar had worked up under my knee and kept Ire afloat . I was the last one rescued by that ship and was laid on deck with the dred. "Irs. ~aish touched Ire and says I felt like a sack of ceJ1'ellt. I was so stiff with salt water. She was convinced I could be saved and induced two rren to work over Ire, which they did for two rours, after cutting my clothes off with a carving knife hastily brought frcra the dining saloon. They say that one suffers grreUy in being restored fren drowning, but I was totally unconscious of it all, ONing to the effect of t.he bl"" on my head, and was unconscious for 路 some tiJ1'e after breathing \-las restored; had also .severe bruises aI:xJve and belcw MY right eye, which disfigured Ire by the 路 swelling and discoloration. I seem to have escaped several separate deaths in a miraculous way and yet I truly believe there was no one on the ship who valued life as little as I do. I had told ~tr. Friend one day, as '..e stcx:xl by t.r.e rail, that i f the Germans did torpedo us, I hoped he would be saved to carry on the work we h.:ld so ruch at heart. I have tried to tell it carefully, but I cannot dwell on it. Thy Theo
APPENDIX C
A Letter from F.D.R.
149
150
THE WH ITE HOUS[ WAriHING rON
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