FROM THE ARCHIVES
This photograph is described only as “Academy group under Principal Tower (top row, far right)” in Douglas Alan Frank’s History of Lawrence Academy. Alfred Oren Tower served as principal from 1889 to 1897.
Department of Reminiscence Bygone Days at Lawrence Academy by Miss Maude E. Severance (This piece is reprinted from Lawrence Academy Elms, Christmas 1940 issue) Your Alumni Secretary has asked me to jot down some of my recollections of Lawrence Academy, and it gives me great pleasure to have occasion to resurrect those brief, happy years spent there from ’93 through ’96. These were the last years of co-education and there was but one dormitory, Bigelow Hall, perhaps seventy-five pupils, most of
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whom were day pupils, and but three teachers—Mr. Alfred O. Tower, Principal, Miss Alice Chapman, Teacher of Voice Culture and Dramatic Action, and myself, preceptress. Coming to Groton fresh from graduation at Wellesley, and following a very experienced and popular teacher, Miss Helen Wakeman, I had some misgivings lest I prove inadequate to the demands of the situation. It wasn’t easy to fill this position, but in a short time I was brought
into contact with the town’s people through the church and through the Social Friday Club, and whatever discouragements I encountered in my work were usually offset by some delightful surprise in the town. From the moment I set foot in Groton, the place seemed like home to me, and it has never lost for me the romantic charm that I had at first. I liked the way the town was set out—that long main street with its wide-spreading lawns, its quaint
