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The Annex: A Brief History of the First Women Students at the Academy
Archives
Headmaster Ebenezer Parsons
THE ANNEX
Dummer Academy 1898–1899
A brief history of the first women students at the Academy
We owe a debt of gratitude to Imogene Robinson ’13, whose research during her time as a student at The Governor’s Academy, as well as further study while at Centre College, provided much of the information contained in this article.
While the school celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the admission of women in 1971, Dummer Academy admitted women nearly 100 years earlier, for two brief and often forgotten periods. It all began in 1872, when the newly hired Headmaster Ebenezer Parsons welcomed a group of young women, in part to solve the sudden economic crisis that faced the school after a period of significant prosperity. The admission of these young women, however, was a figurative footnote in the school catalogue, whose only mention of the female students, in addition to their names being tagged on to the bottom of the list of male students, was this brief statement: “The school is now open to young
LEFT: Mrs. Sarah Parsons; RIGHT: Carrie Knight Class of 1901
ladies.” The catalogue also listed Sarah Parsons, wife of Ebenezer Parsons, as an instructor at the school. Her primary responsibility, not specified in the school catalogue, was educating the young female students, who made up about thirty-three percent of the student body. Numbers alone did not indicate the significant impact these young women had on the school. Despite their status as day students (and therefore less important) at a boarding school, these young women were disproportionately successful. Carrie Knight won one of two Moody Kent Medals, which were the only awards presented at graduation aside from the Sons of Dummer award. Other young women also received commendations during commencement exercises during Parsons’s administration. While this might lead us to believe that these young women were fully integrated into the school, we would be mistaken. When referencing the female scholars, publications referred to them as “residential scholars,” meaning that they were residents of the local area, rather than students who came from more distant towns and boarded either in campus dormitories or with local families.
Despite their success and the welcome they received from Ebenezer and Sarah Parsons, who seemed to fully support coeducation, some of the male students enjoyed playing pranks on their female classmates. One such trick involved a box of sleepy snakes placed near the fireplace in the classroom. When the snakes warmed up and began slithering out of their box around the room, the shouts from the surprised female students became the talk of the campus for years to come. Other female students were defended rather than teased by their male classmates. When Carrie Knight had to stand on tiptoe to write her math homework on the board, her instructor laughed at her. After noting that Knight was visibly upset, her male peers threatened to boycott class until the teacher apologized to Knight. After Parsons’s departure, the new Headmaster, John Wright Perkins, wanted the school to return to first principles, meaning a return to its status as a traditional boys boarding school. The loss of the young women meant a a decrease of the student body by one third, without an accompanying decrease in expenses. It is no wonder that the archives are filled with literature produced during the era, promoting the merits of Dummer Academy as a “Home for Boys.” Philosophically, the Trustees gave their full support to Perkins, while at the same time struggling with the fiscal challenges facing the school.
When coeducation returned in 1897 under Headmaster Perley Horne, little fanfare was made of the transition. During Horne’s first year, the catalogue announced that, “a few young ladies from the village come in to some of the recitations but are otherwise are not connected with the school.” The 1898 school catalogue made their presence
seem somewhat more integrated stating that, “Daughters of neighboring families are allowed to attend the Academy as day scholars.” Although permitted to attend, Byfield girls did not receive the tuition discount given to boys from Byfield, but instead paid full price. During this era, instead of male students threatening strikes to support female classmates, they celebrated them with the “Dummer Yell.” One of the occasions for this came on a night when the girls secretly dropped off a gift basket of treats at the boys’ dorm and ran away. The boys, followed by Headmaster Horne, took off in pursuit and gave them the Dummer Yell to thank them for their kind gift. Boys also gave girls the Dummer Yell after what the school newspaper, The Dummer News, referred to as “an evening of Annex entertainment.” (The girls were generally referred to as “the Annex,” to differentiate them from the rest of the Academy.) Unfortunately, we have no recordings of this yell, so we are left to our imaginations. Academically, the girls seem to have been integrated into student life, for the most part. When the school newspaper published some of the daily themes written by students, they published themes written by both boys and girls. The school debate club was coed, with most debates involving teams of one male and one female. The panel of judges likewise frequently included women, often alumna from the first round of coeducation, who remained involved in the school through an organization referred to as the “Daughters of Dummer.” (The alumnae educated under Perley Horne created a new association, “The Allies,” which later morphed into a parent group.) After graduation, several of these young women sat for the examination to enter Radcliffe College while their male counterparts sat for the Harvard examination. While there is some debate as to whether these young women were given official diplomas at the time (under Parsons they did receive diplomas), they undoubtedly had greater opportunities for postsecondary education than most of their female peers. By 1904, Perley Horne left Dummer Academy at the request of the board, and coeducation ended for almost seventy years, with the early experiment largely forgotten except by those who participated. While Carrie Knight (now Carrie Ambrose) continued to be a campus presence, her death marked the end of an era in the academy’s history of coeducation, not to be revived until 1971, when girls were finally admitted permanently.
History Lesson
Imogene Robinson graduated from The Governor’s Academy in 2013, only to return as an archival intern two years later to continue her groundbreaking historical research into the Academy’s early eras of coeducation as part of a grant awarded to her by Centre College’s Brown Fellowship program. On February 17, 2022, Imogene was invited back to Newbury to give a presentation on her research at The Museum of Old Newbury. Like many other venerable institutions, the Academy was a boys-only school for most of its long history. More than 200 years after its founding, and a few brief periods of educating women, the school finally embraced coeducation. Unpacking these two early periods of coeducation at the Academy reveals a remarkable history that speaks to the controversy surrounding the era’s burgeoning women’s rights movement.
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