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Susan Mcintosh Lloyd

A Singular School

Abbot Academy, 1828-1973

- V.» 1

A Singular School

Abbot Academy, 1828-1973
by Susan Mcintosh Lloyd

Abbot Academy of Andover, Massachu-
setts, was one of the first educational in-
stitutions in New England to be founded
for girls and women alone and had by far
the longest corporate life of any. It
opened its doors to seventy students in
1829 and endured until those same
doors and all the material goods inside
were entrusted to Phillips Academy in
1973. Abbot's sesquicentennial history
commands attention not only for what it
says about American education and the
history of American women but also be-
cause it is a good tale worth the telling
for its own sake. Many of the sources
were scrapbooks, student notebooks,
and journals, supplemented by sixty
interviews, and letters from alumnae
young and old.

Susan Lloyd, Instructor in History and
the Social Sciences and Residential Dean
at Phillips Academy, writes with humor
and compassion of the students, teach-
ers, and trustees who were outstanding,
and of the hundreds unsung, all of whose
lives became a part of the life of the
School.

ISBN 0-87451-161-5 Printed in U.S.A.

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A Singular School

Susan Mcintosh Lloyd

A Singular School

Abbot Academy 1828-1973

Published by Phillips Academy, Andover

Distributed by the University Press of New England

Hanover, New Hampshire 1979

Frontispiece: Andover center and Andover Hill. Detail from a map drawn
in 1830 showing the population center of the South parish. Andover

Memorial Library.

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 78-56167

International Standard Book Number: 0-8745 1-161-5

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data
will be found on the last printed page of this book.

The University Press of New England

Brandeis University

Clark University

Dartmouth College

University of New Hampshire

University of Rhode Island

University of Vermont

Preface

This is the biography of a school: Abbot Academy of Andover, Mas-
sachusetts. One of the first educational institutions in New England to
be founded for girls and women alone, Abbot had by far the longest
corporate life of any: it opened its doors to seventy students on May
6, 1829, and endured until those same doors and all the material good
inside them were entrusted to Phillips Academy on June 28, 1973.

A legal mind must acknowledge Abbot Academy a thing of the past.
But schools, being congregations of human beings, are always defying
rigid definition. Like a bride from a proud and ancient family, Abbot
brought to the new coeducational Phillips Academy a commitment to
its own historic purposes and a stubborn loyalty to the character set
during its 144 years of life. Thus for earnest, present reasons, Abbot's
history commands attention. Earnestness aside, it is a plain good tale—
or ought to be— worth the telling for its own sake, and for all it says of
American education and of the history of American women. There is
no way to do Abbot full justice. The school has encompassed thousands
of lives, each with its own particular history; if all these lives were
named and accounted for, this would be hot a book but an encyclo-
pedia. A book must have characters, but not too many. Hundreds of
teachers and trustees who did great work, hundreds of the mediocre
ones too, will have to be assumed by the reader. Two appendices list
all Abbot trustees since 1828, and all teachers, with their colleges and
degrees, since 1936. In the text, however, a few students, teachers, and
trustees must stand for the many who created and expressed Abbot's
special character in each age.

So many people have helped me with this research that they cannot
all be named here. Alumnae recalled their experiences to me at every
reunion and Abbot gathering I could attend; conversations on buses
and planes often proved as fruitful as formal interviews. A number of
Abbot's alumnae and friends wrote helpful letters in response to my re-
quests for recollections, or lent me relevant papers they had written.
To these correspondents I am most grateful: Bethiah Crane Accetta,
'62; Harriet Murdock Andersson, '17; Dorothy Bigelow Arms, ' 1 1 ; John

VI PREFACE

and Helen Barss; Louisa Lehmann Birch, '47; Helen Thiel Graven-
gaard, '20; Gale Barton Hartch, '59; Cynthia Lund Heck, '71; Esther
Kilton, '16; Maud Lavin, '72; Lucy Lippard, '54; Julie Owen, '61;
Barbara Moore Pease, '12; Shirley Ritchie; Andrea Ruff, '70; Pamela
Schwartz, Phillips, '75; Katherine Staples, '65; Joan List VanNess, '41;
and Genevieve Young, '48.

Other former students, faculty, trustees and townspeople gave time
for interviews or long conversations; many of them also reviewed the
sections of the manuscript to which they had contributed: Helen Allen
(Henry) Anderson, '32; Carolyn Appen, Phillips '76; Mary Bertucio
Arnold, '42; Germaine Arosa; Jane Baldwin, '22; Marie Baratte; Jean
Bennett; Josephine and Alan Blackmer; John Buckey; Barbara Brown
Hogan, '40; Eleanor Thomson Castle, '96; E. Barton Chapin, Jr.; Mel-
ville Chapin; Constance Parker Chipman, '06; Susan Clark; Sally Cooper,
'73; Mary Crane; Mary Carpenter Dake; William Doherty; James K.
and Katherine Stirling Dow, '55; Arthur Drinkwater, Phillips '96; Susan
Trafton Edmonds, '64; Elizabeth Fauver, 73; Marion Finbury; Louis
Finger; Carolyn Goodwin; Donald Gordon; Jane Hoover, '76; Faith
Howland; Carolyn Johnston; Abby Castle Kemper, '31; Valeria Knapp;
Alexandra Kubler-Merrill, '56; Mildred Bryant Kussmaul, '13; Jennifer
Martin, '71; Rennie McQuilkin; Mary Minard, '55; Ruth Newcomb,
'io; Lia Pascale, Phillips '76; Stephen and Stephanie Perrin; Virginia
Powel; Ruth Pringle, '05; Caroline Rogers; Jean St. Pierre, George and
Frances Flagg Sanborn, '26; Richard Sheahan; Mary Byers Smith, '04;
Nora Sweeney, '12; Alexina Wilkins Talmadge, '22; Elizabeth Marshall
Thomas, '49; Evelyn Neumark; Sandra Urie Thorpe, '70; Eleanor
Tucker; Catherine VonKlemperer, '73; Elaine Boutwell VonWeber, '25;
Beth Chandler Warren, '55; Teresa Wasilewski, '71; and Anne Lise
Witten.

At various times in the past three years eight Phillips Academy stu-
dents have served skillfully as research assistants for ten weeks or
more: Daniel Aibel, Elizabeth Friese, Mary Jean Hu, Louise Kennedy,
Peter Marvit, Constantine Prentakis, Isabel Schaff, and Judith Sizer.
Charlotte Taylor and Angela Leech, secretaries of the South and West
Parish Churches, found important records and documents for me, and
gave me full use of them. Some special typists have helped with much
more than typing: Rebecca King, Cynthia Stableford and Clare O'Con-
nell Sullivan, '32; these three and Juliet Kellogg, Phillips Academy
Archivist, have brought good cheer as well as expertise to the work.
Arthur M. Gilbert of the Historical Society in Dorset, Vermont,
searched for and found some helpful material on Samuel C. Jackson

PREFACE Vll

and his family. Adeline Wright and several other townspeople have
described to me the Andover they have lived and worked in.

The following gave of their time and knowledge in a variety of
ways that have been crucial to the research, or to the writing or to
both: Grace Baruch, James Mcintosh, Kathryn Kish Sklar, and Blair
Stambaugh made valuable criticisms of the first six chapters and gave
equally valuable encouragement. Theodore Sizer read much of the
manuscript, and provided special help on the last chapter. Roger Mur-
ray reviewed the chapter on the Depression, while J. K. Dow and
Richard Griggs brought their financial expertise to bear on an array of
more recent conundrums. Frederick Allis, Robert Lloyd, Millicent and
Rustin Mcintosh, David Tyack, and Genevieve Young have read the
entire manuscript and have contributed greatly to the visions and re-
visions which make a book.

Five people have given so much work and thought to the entire
enterprise that without them the book would have been a far poorer
story. Beverly Brooks Floe collaborated on much of the oral history
research, accompanying me on many interviews and conducting several
herself, bringing with her the interest and financial support which the
Abbot Academy Association has offered from the very beginning, and
tirelessly helping me over some high and difficult passes. Frances Con-
nelly Dowd gave weeks of time to confirm virtually every reference,
and put uncounted extra hours into compiling the index. Philip Allen,
Marguerite Hearsey, and Alice Sweeney talked at length with me about
the Abbot they knew, and reviewed every chapter. At some times they
contested my interpretations, and at all times they generouslv granted
me the freedom essential to a historian's task.

Finally, I owe thanks to the Trustees of Phillips Academy for faith-
fully supporting— and refusing to interfere with— a project consider-
ably larger than the one they first bargained for.

For all they have contributed to the book, none of these helpers and
friends can in any way be held responsible for its faults. These are the
author's special responsibility.

A word about sources: The nineteenth-century Abbot is like a pic-
ture puzzle with many pieces missing. So long as the gaps are small,
one can recreate the design from the surrounding pieces, but there are
great spaces without clues. No one, for example, can be certain what
single person was most responsible for Abbot's founding. Rev. Samuel
Jackson's diary might tell us— we know from his daughter's recollec-
tions that he kept one— but in spite of a far search, it has not been

Vlll PREFACE

found. Phebe McKeen's diary is also lost, as is much personal corre-
spondence that might shed light on Abbot Academy. Self-effacing,
perhaps, or simply wishing privacy, women often burn such things, or
order their heirs to lock them up. There are no faculty meeting min-
utes at all. There are, however, scrapbooks contributed by grand-
daughters and great nieces, a few journals, student notebooks, and
caches of alumnae letters found in musty closets. One such set of let-
ters was written to Phebe McKeen in 1879 and drawn upon by her
in compiling her and her sister's Annals of Abbot Academy, 1829-79.
This volume, with its sequel written by Philena McKeen alone, is "A
story told, not to the great, general public" but to "a dearer family
circle."* Still, these books are eminently useful. There is fiction written
by teachers and alumnae. There is all the more conventional (and in-
valuable) archival material organized by Jane Brodie Carpenter, keeper
of alumnae and school records from 19 10 to 1952, and author of many
historical articles for the Alumnae Bulletin as well as of a book about
Abbot and Miss Bailey, Miss Carpenter's contribution to the present
volume cannot be measured. Two other helpful books are Katherine
Kelsey's Abbot Academy Sketches (1892-19 12), and Alice Sweeney's
Brief Account of the Hearsey Years. I have followed information found
in all of the historical works back to original sources wherever pos-
sible. Student publications, Trustees' Minutes from 1828 to 1973, and
Principals' and Treasurers' reports after 191 5 have been essential to the
research, even though Trustees' Minutes tend to be short on detail and
devoid of debate and student periodicals were heavily censored for
many decades.

After 1895 nve witnesses come in, fleshing out the archival and liter-
ary record. Many former faculty, trustees, and alumnae have gener-
ously written or talked with me about the Abbot they knew. Each
person's Abbot is unique, a vessel for her or his own concerns, but I
have used recollections of people or events in this history wherever
they can be corroborated by other sources. "Alumnae remember . . ."
generally means that many people volunteered a recollection of some
event of importance to them and to Abbot. "A few alumnae" remem-
bering may be as few as three. Occasionally, a single person's recollec-
tion is used (and identified as such) in situations where that one person
is likely to have been the only one who could know of an incident.
Jane Sullivan, Constance Strohecker, and the staff of the Abbot Alum-

* Wesley Churchill, Sequel to the History of Abbot Academy (Andover,
Warren Draper, 1897), xi.

PREFACE IX

nae Office have been enormously helpful in providing student records
and leads toward perceptive alumnae. I have also looked for and found
several alumnae who were disappointed in Abbot, women who have,
for the most part, refused to keep in touch with the school. Their
memories must count too, for they represent a small, significant mi-
nority in every era. Altogether, sixty people were formally interviewed.

The last five years of Abbot's existence have been seen through a
personal filter, since I taught history at the school from 1968 to 1973.
This participant-observer stance has had both advantages and draw-
backs. My effort in researching the period has been to find observa-
tions and opinions supplementary to or contrary to my own, but in-
evitably, an accounting of events so recent is bound to be more journal-
ism than history. The best one can hope for here is responsible journal-
ism. Especially for the modern period, I have found important material
in confidential files, some lent by trustees or former principals, others
available on a restricted basis from the Abbot and Phillips Academy
Archives. I have drawn directly on none of these sources except where
those involved have given their permission to do so. Within them often
lay confirmation of facts gathered elsewhere, however, or clues as to
where to look for more.

Throughout this research I have been inspired and informed by
books that help to establish the context of Abbot's story. Many of
these are period pieces: nineteenth-century histories of the town of
Andover (doubtless read by teachers and trustees of those times); in-
spirational tracts; textbooks and novels read by Abbot girls; speeches,
books, and articles written by educators and psychologists from 1826
on. The American Journal of Education (1826-30) and The American
Annals of Education and Instruction (1830-1839) are relevant if often
verbose. Federal publications issued by the U.S. Bureau of Education
(later, Office of Education) contain important statistics not available
elsewhere, and written debates on a variety of pedagogical issues, es-
pecially the U.S. Commissioner of Education Reports, and the Bulletins,
beginning 1906. Thomas Woody 's History of Women's Education
(1929) is invaluable because Woody so often prefers long excerpts
from primary sources to short, pithy quotations. I have read several
histories of schools and academies other than Abbot, have talked at
length with retired and current principals of girls' schools, and have
frequently used Sargent's Handbook of Private Schools as a reference
work in comparing Abbot to institutions that serve a smilar clientele.
Finally contemporary historians' writings on education, on cultural
and social life, on the history of women, and on individual women

PREFACE

educators have been eminently useful: works by Lawrence Cremin,
Barbara Cross, Ann Douglas, Paula Fass, Edith Finch, Eleanor Flexner,
Joseph Kett, Theodore Sizer, Kathryn Kish Sklar, and David Tyack
are foremost here.

Andover, Massachusetts S.M.L.

July 1978

Contents

v
Preface

PART I. EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

5
1 . Of Times, Town, and Founding Fathers

29
2. Pious Pioneers

49
3. "A Very Liberal Series of Studies"

PART II. SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, I 85 2-1 892

4. Mid-Century Transitions

5. Abbot in the Golden Age

119
6. Progress of a Victorian School

147

PART III. FORTH AND BACK, I 8 8 5 — I 9 I 2

7. Expansion

172
8. Futures

i83
9. "A New England Aristocrat"

2°5

PART IV. AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 - I 9 5 4

2IO

10. The Ladies Stand Fast

240
1 1 . High and Low

264
1 2 . Singular Women

297

PART V. THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, 1945-1963

3OI

13. Teachers and Students and How They Grew

323

14. History in the Making

341

PART VI. THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

346

15. The Trustees Decide

364

16. "Make No Little Plans"

409

17. Endings and Beginnings

APPENDIXES

45 1
A. Constitution of Abbot Academy

454
B. Trustees of Abbot Academy

458

C. Faculty of Abbot Academy, 1 936-1 973

479
Notes

585
Index

Illustrations

Frontispiece: Andover Center and Andover Hill.

i. Samuel C. Jackson. 19

2. Sarah Abbot. 25

3. Edwards Amasa Park. 73

4. Peter Smith. 73

5. Philena and Phebe McKeen. 82

6. Smith Hall Celebrating the End of the Civil War. 85

7. Philena McKeen with Early Students. 87

8. Abbot Academy as a Boarding School. 87

9. A German Play, 1892. 91
10. Harriet Chapell on Clean-Up Day, 1874. 95
1 1. A Draper Reader, 1874. 96
12. "Dancing squarely like mad," 1874. io2
13. Buying "comfits" Downtown, 1874. 103
14. Bedfellows, 1882. 104
15. The Eclipse 17 October 1874. 109
16. "Kate and Virginia" of Thornton Hall. 1 1 1
17. A Picnic, 1888. 116
18. Male and Female at the Boundary. 12 1

19. Behind the Barrier. 1 2 1

20. Professor Churchill Comes to Tea. 130

2 1 . Warren Fales Draper. 1 3 3

22. Tennis, 1886. 143

23. "Plan for Erecting a Group of New Buildings." 154

24. The "AdcKeen Rooms." 159

25. The Abbot Campus, 1 890-1 897. 161

26. Laura S. Watson. 163

27. Emily A. Means, an Early Photograph. 184

28. A Grecian Phase, circa 1900. 193

29. The Senior Nine, 1902. 195

30. Bertha Bailey, 191 3. 212

31. The Abbot Seal Dresses Up. 219

32. Homemaking Laboratory, circa 191 7. 228

33. Senior Class Play, 191 3. 231

34. "Masque of the Flowers," 1914. 231

35. The Abbot Chapel. 236

36. The Dear Old Girls. 243

37. Back When. 243

38. Jane B. Carpenter and Burton S. Flagg. 249

39. Cooking Outdoors in the Grove, 1933. 257

40. Miss Hearsey Greeting Dancers at the Senior Prom, 1941. 265

41. Miss Sweeney Greeting Dancers at the Senior Prom, 1941. 268

42. The Abbot Faculty, 1938. 277

43. Christmas Vespers. 281

44. The Abbot Observatory. 3 1 2

45. Christmas Dolls for the Hinman School in Kentucky, 1949. 312

46. To South Church for Easter Services. 3 1 2

47. Mary H. Crane. 318

48. Lines of Authority: 1964. 350

49. Lines of Authority: Proposed. 351

50. Donald Gordon on Prize Day. 373

51. Stephen Perrin with Jesse, Born in 1970. 384

52. Coed Football on the Sacred Circle. 384

53. Ceramics. 385

54. The Deans: Carolyn Johnston and Carolyn Goodwin. 396

55. All-Girls' Soccer. 399

56. Houseparents. 399

57. Talk and Laughter. 404

58. Growing Up Black. 407
59. Sex Education, Illustrated. 415

60. The Butt Room. 422

61. Coeducation: A Decision Tree. 424

62. Coordination: uThe Gates Ajar." 431

63. The Last Board of Trustees, 197 2- 197 3. 437

64. An Abbot Birthday Party. 446

Early Days, 1828-1852

Abbot's infancy, healthy and precarious by turns, demands a full de-
scription, for the school's character was grounded in its first quarter-
century and set in firm relationship to the needs of the age. Granted,
some features of this early period could not survive, and others— such
as the pedagogical partnership with Phillips Academy— were set aside,
not to be revived until the twentieth century; but the essentials were
laid down: a double commitment to basic intellectual training and
moral guidance, a commitment strengthened by a habit of resistance
to passing fashions, and by— above all— a respect for the importance of
women in American society.

Of Times, Town, and
Founding Fathers

During a ministry of a quarter of a century , /
have been much tried, and have witnessed the trials of
many pious parents, on account of the levity and folly
of youth generally, from fourteen to twenty -two. That
period of seven or eight years, which seals the destiny
of so many for time and eternity, causes more anxiety
to the pious of my acquaintance than any other period.
A rural clergyman of 1828

Do females possess minds as capable of improvement as males?

Subject of Philomathean Society debate,

Phillips Academy, 1827

On February 15, 1828, this notice appeared on trees and buildings
throughout the town of Andover:

Those persons who feel favorably disposed toward the establish-
ment of a FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL in the South Parish of
Andover, are requested to meet at Mr. James Locke's, on Tuesday
evening next, the 19th inst., at 6 o'clock, P.M.

No documents tell us who first decided on the founding of Abbot
Academy. Had a single person been responsible, the story might have
been simpler. We do know that the above announcement was drawn
up by five men: Samuel C. Jackson and Milton Badger, the ministers of
South Andover's two Congregational churches; Amos Abbott and
Mark Newman, two of their deacons; and Samuel Farrar, Esquire, the
Treasurer of Phillips Academy, Andover. Guessing at where their con-
stituency could be found, they posted it in the churches, in the shops,
in the Andover National Bank, and in the classroom building of An-
dover Theological Seminary, the most imposing structure on Andover
Hill. The response must have pleased them, for "a goodly number of
citizens met upon the evening appointed," as Abbot's first historian

EARLY DAYS, I 828-1852

wrote fifty years later.1 The assembled company voted to establish a
school, and set to work.

It would not be easy. More than once, almost everyone lost heart;
for a few hours one July day, the project was officially abandoned.
Only determined men and women could found a "female high school"
in 1828, and only a special community could sustain it. Yet however
weak the plant would appear during stressful seasons both early and
late, it was firmly rooted. The American republic was finally ready to
experiment with education for young women; ideas as to its shape and
direction abounded in the late i82o's. The town of Andover, though
conservative, was peculiarly hospitable to institutions of learning, and
several of its women residents felt it was high time that Andover girls
had their own. Finally, the careful, stubborn men who set out the
seedling knew their business and their law as they knew their commu-
nity: the deeply Christian idealism that moved them was lifeless, thev
realized, without the practical stays by which human works prosper.

The Times

The year 1828 was a dramatic moment in a turbulent time. Andrew
Jackson's presidential campaign and election were political expressions
of social changes that had been building for decades. The sixty years
since the American colonies had begun their drift away from England
had been difficult ones, brimming with emergencies and excitement.
As early as 1776, Samuel Phillips, Jr., the founder of Phillips Academy,
was lamenting "the prevalence of public and private vice, the amazing
change in the tempers, dispositions and conduct of people in this coun-
try." He diagnosed the trouble as "public ignorance" and deplored the
"neglect of sound instruction," a dangerous indifference, given that
"the comfort and grief of parents . . . the glory or ruin of the state"
depend on youth, in all its vulnerability and volatility. Phillips right
then resolved to repair this neglect of education. His Phillips Academy
opened in 1778, the United States' first incorporated boarding school
and the first of the educational institutions on Andover Hill. What
Judge Phillips resolved upon, he accomplished.2

In voicing his anxiety, this up-and-coming citizen of Andover town
was not just indulging his age-old adult right to mourn the weakness
of youth. Twentieth-century scholar Philip Greven documents the
fundamental change in family and communal relationships that took
place in Andover as in many New England towns after 1750.3 For a
century after the incorporation of the township in 1646, Andover

OF TIMES, TOWN, AND FOUNDING FATHERS

fathers had ruled their families and their lands together, passing on
their farms intact to eldest sons. Churches had successfully imposed a
single religion; dissenters held their peace or moved away. No more.
The Great Awakening, by kindling evangelical enthusiasms, had inten-
sified sectarian divisions throughout Massachusetts. Rural sons no
longer waited into their thirties and forties for fathers to turn them
from unpaid help to partners or heirs. More often they declared inde-
pendence from family and village constraints; they went soldiering,
and never returned, or found apprenticeships in faraway towns, or
(with their young wives) sought land of their own in western Massa-
chusetts or the Ohio Valley.4 Finally, the ten-year-old economic and
political conflict between Massachusetts Bay Colony and England had
shaken the larger framework of young people's lives. It was no wonder
that Samuel Phillips was worried.

This was the generation that would eventually set itself and its own
children on a self-conscious search for new certainties to replace those
worn thin, the generation that would carry on the academy movement
the Phillips family had fostered, and in Andover would raise many of
the founders of Abbot Female Academy. From a twentieth-century
vantage point, it looks remarkably resilient. When Revolution washed
over the colonies, these local youngsters found it more congenial than
most of their parents did; later, as adults with families of their own,
they could better tolerate the restive peace that followed, with its po-
litical perplexities and its challenges to ancient social forms. In spite of
privations, Andover handled the post-Revolutionary stresses with a
peculiar unity: "When the state was embarrassed with discontent and
intestine commotion" during Shays' Rebellion, "the town preserved
order and peace," wrote Abiel Abbot, a contemporary observer and
local historian.5 More impressive, two years later this common com-
mitment to order survived a serious split in Town Meeting over ratifi-
cation of the Federal Constitution (115 yea, 124 nay). And though the
residents (nearly all of them stout Federalists) had some struggle to
adjust to the economic pressures created by the decades of boycott
and embargo that followed, the ending of the European wars in 1815
brought freedom at last from foreign threats for Andover and the in-
fant republic. Americans could concentrate on nation-building, on
making plans for generations of republicans to come.

With what should they build? By the 1820's, conservatives had more
to mourn than the patriarchal family and the rigid Calvinism that had
disciplined colonial New England. Each individual's world had widened
toward confusion as scientific discoveries became public knowledge,
population grew, new roads and canals made once self-sufficient towns

EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

dependent on each other, cities filled up and became more accessible.
Too accessible, thought many sober citizens of Andover. "Seldom visit
the capital," Reverend Abiel Abbot warned Phillips Academy seniors
on their way to Harvard at the turn of the century. "It is dangerous
ground. . . . Town pleasures, like forbidden fruit, are tempting to the
senses; but the most innocent of them have a mixture of deadly
poison."6

Perhaps most disturbing— as well as most promising— the rise of in-
dustry was transforming the face and mind of the Northeastern United
States. Women's work was affected no less than men's. During the
colonial era, leisured women were few. Ann Bradstreet, who with her
husband Simon was one of Andover's original settlers, was criticized
by her neighbors for writing poetry when she should be plying her
needle, though President Rogers of Harvard College wrote that "twice
drinking of the nectar of her lines" left him "weltering in delight."7
When her first Andover house burned to the ground in 1666, a library
of 800 books was destroyed. A certain Abigail Foote of the next cen-
tury was more typical. A glance at a day out of her diary in 1775
shows us how a young woman's basic productive tasks filled her life:

Fix'd gown for Prude— Mend Mother's Riding-hood— Spun short
thread— fix'd two gowns for Welsh's girls— Carded tow— Spun
linen— Worked on Cheese basket, Hatchel'd flax with Hannah, we
did fifty-one pounds apiece— Milked the cows— Spun linen, did
fifty knots— Made a Broom of Guinea-wheat straw— Spun thread
to whiten— Set a Red dye— Had two scholars from Mrs. Taylor's—
I carded two pounds of wool and felt Nationly— Spun harness
twine, scoured the pewter.8

Abigail's daughters would spend their days differently. Even before
the factories were raised along the Shawsheen and Merrimack rivers,
farming communities like Andover were inwardly changing in ways
that were to have momentous implications for New England education.
Increasingly, the self-sufficient household made itself dependent on the
town merchant and his wares, while the merchant's wife or daughter
was herself released from the intricate tasks of cloth and soap making,
animal husbandry and gardening, until, on the eve of the founding of
Abbot Academy, the profound, life-sustaining partnership between
husbands, wives, and their older children had broken down.

At the same time, certain work opportunities for women outside
their homes were shrinking. Eighteenth-century women with time to
spare had found scope for their entrepreneurial and other talents in a
colonial economy where talent was always scarce: women merchants,

OF TIMES, TOWN, AND FOUNDING FATHERS

journalists, even physicians were welcome enough.9 Post-revolutionary
maritime strife put home-bound women to work: these earned cash
for their families on an unprecedented scale when the overseas textile
trade flagged and American housewives at their looms took the place
of the mills of Birmingham and Glasgow. Historian Kathryn Sklar be-
lieves that women gained during this time a sense of pride and power—
and a material influence on family financial outlays— that was crucial to
the advent of the female seminary, though none but spinsters and
widows could legally keep their earnings for themselves.10 In the
1820's, however, men were reclaiming all entrepreneurial and profes-
sional jobs and hungering for more, especially in long-settled New
England, while women did their weaving in the new water-powered
mills under men's supervision, or stayed home— often idle if children
were grown or not yet born. As Morton Hunt has put it, "The indus-
trial revolution had both relieved [woman] of her labors and robbed
her of her functions."11 A question seldom before asked by Americans
began to surface everywhere: what were women to do with themselves?

For decades if not millennia, the problem had generally been posed
in a different way: What were men to do with women? They could
ignore them, and many tried, including the early Puritan preacher
Nathaniel Ward, who advised his readers to think of woman as "the
very gizzard of a trifle, the product of the quarter of a cipher, the
epitome of nothing." Unfortunately this did not prevent a fashionably
dressed young lady from disturbing him. "If I see any of them acci-
dently [he wrote] I cannot cleanse my phansie of them for at least a
month after."12 The Puritans, at least, did not fear sex itself; they
thought it necessary and good within marriage. But husbands must
keep their wives and daughters under strict control, removing every
possible occasion for "phansies" like Ward's.

Given the temptations women represented, men could also demand
of Eve's daughters that they share in the "fall of man [and] the de-
pravity of human nature." The Westminster Catechism defined it and
Andover's South Church endorsed it with a matchless single-minded-
ness from its founding in 1708 through 1828 and beyond. Thus, though
men allowed them little say in the practical affairs of the Parish,
women had to support the Church. Women made up the majority of
Andover Church members after 1650; it was the women who shook
heads at the goings-on in the North Parish after 1820: how could those
dances which the Reverend Bailey Loring arranged for his young pa-
rishioners lead them to be born again when every one knew that boy-
girl dancing led straight to perdition? There would be no Unitarian

IO EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

backsliding at the foot of Andover Hill. It was conversion or Hellfire.
Andover men could do more. Thev could vote unanimous resolu-
tions in their (all male) Town Meeting, commanding women to help
the community ride out the economic storms of 1787. Women must

by their engaging examples . . . devote that power of influence
with which nature hath endowed them to the purpose of encour-
aging every species of economy in living, and particularly that
neat plainness and simplicity in dress, which are among the best
tokens of a good mind.13

All new clothes were to be woven from local wool or flax, and elegant
mourning clothes must not be made at all.

In a multitude of ways did men thus define Andover women's lives
and work. One might expect that they would have long since provided
for their education, but this they had not done, beyond arranging that
girls learn just enough of reading to scan the Church's message of salva-
tion. In most Andover families, girls' education had taken second place
to boys'. Once Ann Bradstreet's generation of British-educated settlers
had died off, literary women were almost unknown in Andover. To
the theocracy of Massachusetts Bay colony, higher education had only
one purpose: the training of ministers. It would be frivolous to allow
young women to participate. John Winthrop, Massachusetts' first gov-
ernor, wrote with distress in his journal of a lady who went insane "by
giving herself largely to reading and writing."14 During Andover's first
hundred years, many women could not even write their names. This
ignorance was typical of New England women throughout the eigh-
teenth century, only half of whom were functionally literate.15 The
grammar schools that the ever-optimistic Massachusetts legislature pe-
riodically endorsed were maintained in Andover almost exclusively for
boys— or not maintained at all, for in Andover, as in many New En-
gland towns, citizens counted on their local private academy for an in-
expensive secondary education. There was no secondary schooling
available to Andover girls until the North Parish Free School (later
Franklin Academy) opened a "female department" in 1801, and this
was gradually allowed to languish after the first teacher, Mrs. Eliza-
beth Peabody, left in 1804. Franklin's situation was typical: shaky acad-
emies were forever being taken in charge by able and idealistic teach-
ers, then dropped when idealism was spent or local supporters grew
complacent. Airs. Peabody, as it turned out, had another destiny as
mother of two brilliant daughters who married Horace Mann and Na-
thaniel Hawthorne; Andover's bright young women must shift for

OF TIMES, TOWN, AND FOUNDING FATHERS II

themselves. "Thus learning in this ancient town" (wrote an Andover
rhymester in 1854)

Did early take its stand;
The fruits now everywhere abound,

Throughout this wide-spread land.
But while the males were thus cared for—

The females were forgotten;
The boys of yore got all the lore;

The girls spun all the cotton.16

The best the South Parish could do was done, as usual, by Samuel
Phillips, Jr. Though it never occurred to Judge Phillips that young
women might share in the "higher education" his beloved Academy
provided young men, he did bequeath $4,000 in trust to the Phillips
Academy Trustees, the income to be used "partly for rendering those
females who may be employed as instructors in the several District
Schools, within the aforesaid Town of Andover, better qualified for
the discharge of their delicate and important trust; and partly for ex-
tending the term of their instruction." In purchasing books for this
teacher education project, the bequest went on, "all possible care will
be taken ... to guard against the dissemination of the least particle of
Infidelity or Modern Philosophy; and also against the dispersion of
such theological treatises or speculations, as tend to undermine the
fundamental principles of the Gospel plan of salvation, or to reduce
the Christian religion to a system of mere morality."17 To Judge Phil-
lips, education and religion were inseparable. Most of Andover agreed,
especially when the Phillips family relieved the taxpayer of funding
them. At least until 18 10 the town's priorities were often confused: in
each of the several previous years $15,000 had been spent on "ardent
spirits," sniffed the South Church minister, Justin Edwards— more than
twice the entire town budget for schools and other services.18 Yet in
spite of taxpayer footdragging, the public elementary ("common")
schools gained ground steadily in the following two decades; by 1828
an Andover boy could count on learning to read, write, and cipher, even
though girls were usually relegated to the brief summer session.

All this is not to say that Andover's women were helpless without
formal secondary education. Married, they reared and ran large house-
holds, or if part of Andover's "great company of old maids," they
boarded with relatives, nursed them in illness, sewed and cooked for
them or labored in their fields. One doughty spinster cousin of Samuel
Phillips, Jr., a Mistress Abbot, was "help" in the family of Judge Phillips'

12 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

father, and took care of the Phillips farm after the old Squire died. She
was "a large, strong woman, as able for out-door work as housework,"
wrote local historian Sarah Loring Bailey in 1880. She raised a nursery
of ten thousand trees, which she "grafted and sold profitably." She
lived to be 94. "She was blind before she died, and being unable to give
up her out-door exercise, used to walk by a rope."19 Girls and young
women found much informal education in the "literary sewing circles"
and the prayer or bible-study groups they arranged for themselves
apart from men's plans for them. Furthermore, in the fifty years fol-
lowing the Revolution there arrived in the town a small group of
women who had been educated elsewhere. Principal among them was
Madam Phebe Phillips, a woman whose influence on education in An-
dover— though more quietly exercised— was nearly as important as that
of her husband, Samuel Phillips, Jr. Abiel Abbot knew her and praised
her highly. The youngest daughter of the sophisticated Foxcroft fami-
ly of Cambridge, she was "a lady formed by the dignity of her person,
and the virtues of her mind, to move in the higher walks of life." She
had wit, imagination, and "an ardent thirst for knowledge" which she
slaked by extensive reading and writing. "She was the ornament and
delight of the sentimental circle," writes Abbot, possibly in reference to
the women's literary society that she conducted in the Phillips "Man-
sion House" after her husband's death.20One of her contemporaries
said that "her style of conversation surpassed that of anyone, male or
female, in this country."21 Kind always to the poor, she also made the
first founding gift of $5,000 to Andover Theological Seminary in 1808,
contributing $20,000 more before her death in 18 12. Among her closest
friends was lawyer Samuel Farrar, who was to be a critical figure in
the founding of Abbot Academy. Madam Phillips was a special inspira-
tion to the devout wives of those theological professors who moved to
Andover from much larger, more various university towns after the
Theological Seminary was opened in 1808.

Fine women there were, then, in Andover town, along with men
who admired them and girls who looked up to them. It is typical of
Andover that once the community began to take notice of these ladies,
it claimed them as though by birthright. For Andover was special and
Andover knew it. Even in straits, this "ancient and respectable town"
maintained its self-respect,22 so much so that one English visitor scolded
his hosts: "One thing I must observe which I think wants rectifying is
their pluming pride when adjoin'd to apparent poverty, no uncommon
case."23

Andover, in fact, may be pardoned for a bit of pride. The town had

OF TIMES, TOWN, AND FOUNDING FATHERS 13

survived the tumults of political independence and the early industrial
revolution with far more confidence than many communities. Over-
arching the dislocations and difficulties of the last sixty years was every
native townsman's sense of a long past reaching back to the twenty-
one original proprietors. "Most of the families which first settled in
Andover became as deeply rooted to the land and the community as
it is possible for families to be."24 If the resulting stability tended some-
times toward suspicion of all things unfamiliar, including education for
young women, it also bore advantages. Once launched, a new school
might count on calm waters. The private educational institutions that
had taken over Andover Hill must have powerfully contributed to the
optimism that apparently prevailed among the citizens who met at Mr.
Locke's tavern to found a female high school. By the mid-1820's, An-
dover had become an intellectual center of New England. The estab-
lishment of the Theological Seminary under Phillips Academy's Trust-
ees, so many of whose professors and students would become involved
with Abbot Academy, marked Andover Hill as a Zion rising above the
contentious multitudes. New England theology was beginning to
soften, and Harvard University had long since ceased to teach proper
Congregational doctrine: "Truth in Cambridge becomes a lie in An-
dover, and the same of Andover truth when carried to Cambridge,"
wrote Amos A. Lawrence from Andover during his forced rustication
from Harvard in 1832.25 Andover, at least, was certain it knew God's
Truth.

Andover also knew it had a future. A regular stagecoach from Bos-
ton (soon to be replaced by a steam-powered train) now brought
urban ideas to the small town, as well as wags who thrust their hands
out of the coach windows into the winter air at the Mansion House
stop to warm them in the fires of "Brimstone Hill." Despite its con-
servative orientation, the town was learning to accommodate divergent
opinions. Baptists, Methodists, and Episcopalians were busy organizing
churches of their own, and although the Unitarians were still safely
centered in North Andover, there was more "pulpit exchange" than
had been tolerated in the old days. On its way from 3,389 souls in 1820
to 4,530 in 1830, Andover was growing— though not too fast— and the
town was filled with young people in a young populace (the median
age of all Americans alive in 1830 was 17). Successful manufactories of
cotton and woolen goods along the Shawsheen River were being ex-
panded to employ hundreds of operatives, to make modest fortunes
for their hardworking owners, and slowly to build the prosperity of
the merchants, bankers, and professional people who would, with the

14 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

Hill families, become Abbot's first constituency. The year 1828 found
the town of Andover better prepared than most to support the educa-
tion of young women.

Planning

Education, yes, but what kind? In theory, a high school offered An-
dover parents an admirable answer to the question "What shall we do
with our daughters?" Putting theory into practice meant that the
founders of a female academy must transcend Andover's cautious
stance toward all change, assess well-known schools already serving
young women, and find a way through the maze of conflicting educa-
tional ideas current in the 1820's.

A small number of female high schools had already proven their
worth in other towns and villages; it is likely that these institutions
were known to the Andover pioneers. Some of the older finishing
schools provided an attractive model for the socially ambitious parents
of Andover, though simpler citizens would be skeptical. The famed
school founded in 1792 by Miss Pierce in Litchfield, Connecticut, of-
fered "instruction on those rules of delicacy and propriety so impor-
tant for every young woman." Dabbling in fashionable British text-
books, girls polished their literary skills;26 they practiced lady-like
manners and elegant conversation.27 The "theatrics" enjoyed by Miss
Pierce's students might at first glance shock the pious, but every play
acted was adapted from a biblical text. As in most contemporary fe-
male academies, the primary task was to refine the Christian sensitivi-
ties of wives-and-mothers-to-be. One of the first American education
journalists put it well: "Girls should zealously seek to bring the temper
and feelings into order and proper subjection, and task themselves to
the daily and hourly duty of acting out the beauty and symmetry of
the precepts of our Saviour."28

Above all, American opinion endorsed Rousseau's dictum that wom-
en's education "should always be relative to men." In the bustling,
competitive 1820's this meant that women should cease whatever efforts
they had made to intrude on men's sphere. Even traditional women's
work, such as midwifery, was being aggressively preempted by male
obstetricians, who were usually far less experienced and little better
trained than the midwives. That many husbands fought their own pri-
vate battles with the weaker sex is indicated in the popular article on
female education quoted above. If only girls could receive "instruction
from birth to maturity in the things which belong to [their] peace,"

OF TIMES, TOWN, AND FOUNDING FATHERS 15

it continued, "women might cease to desire to engage in discussions, or
influence the decisions of men in affairs foreign to their peculiar de-
partments." Indeed, many a physician insisted that intensive study of
such "higher subjects" as philosophy and mathematics would render
women infertile, thus unfitting them for their most basic function.

A few dissented. To Benjamin Rush, physician, educator, and states-
man, building a nation required a new kind of female education no
longer based on British models. "It is high time," he said,

to awake from this servility— to study our own character— to ex-
amine the age of our country— and to adopt manners in every-
thing that shall be accommodated to our state of society, and our
form of government. In particular, it is incumbent on us to make
ornamental accomplishment yield to principles and knowledge,
in the education of our women.29

Proceeding from the Society of Friends' central concept of women as
men's equals before God, some Quaker educators experimented with
an entirely un-British idea: coeducation. Other coeducational or coor-
dinate schools were founded not from principle but from penury. It
was cheaper for Bradford Academy near Haverhill (Fd. 1804) to con-
duct separate male and female departments under one roof than it was
to build two different buildings; thirty-three other academies through-
out Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire did likewise.

Yet preference was vying with practicality in favor of all-female
schools. Bradford would bow to it in 1836. Emma Willard felt that her
school, first opened in 18 14 in Middlebury, Vermont, for girls alone,
had provided an extra measure of encouragement for her pupils, and
amply proved the ability of young women to master the higher sub-
jects with nothing but advantage to themselves and their future hus-
bands. She herself had absorbed mathematics and philosophy by assidu-
ously questioning her nephew every evening on his return home from
his classes at Middlebury College. She studied his lecture notes and
textbooks, and asked him to examine her in each field. Mrs. Willard's
commitment to mothering her own small son increased her scorn of
the purely "ornamental" skills that had made a name for schools such
as Miss Pierce's. "When we consider that the character of the next
generation will be formed by the mothers of this, how important does
it become that their reason should be strengthened to overcome their
insignificant vanities and prejudices! "she wrote.30 This theme resounded
in the minds of many citizens who had begun to realize that "the
mothers of republicans" must be well educated if the vulnerable new
republic was to survive, and Emma Willard expanded on it often to

l6 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

mollify the conservatives in her constituency. Child of loving, open-
minded parents, she serenely avoided superficial obstacles, all the while
pursuing her goal of higher education for women. When she moved
her school to New York state, she decided to call it a Seminary in-
stead of a College, even though— like Abbot's founders— she fully in-
tended some college subjects to be taught. "That word . . . will not
create a jealousy that we mean to intrude upon the province of the
men."31

Catharine Beecher was not so subtle in her push for serious schooling
for young women. Bent on enlarging the successful Hartford Female
Seminary she had begun in 1823 with her sister Harriet (later Mrs.
Stowe of Andover) as pupil and assistant, she wrote in 1827 a widely
read article on "Female Education" in which she unashamedly called
on the public to support girls' schools as enthusiastically as boys'.
Sorely needed were "suitable apparatus and facilities" for the study of
chemistry and natural philosophy; specialist teachers who could concen-
trate on one field instead of pursuing "twenty-two different branches
of learning" at once, along with professional libraries for their refer-
ence, ample schoolrooms, charts, maps, research materials, and history
books that communicate more than "the bones of history ... as dry
and bare of interest as was the gloomy collection in the valley of
vision."32 Catharine Beecher 's articles were close in their evangelical
spirit to the sermons of her "zestful and demanding father," Lyman
Beecher, whom Catharine intensely loved.33 "A woman should study,
not to shine but to act" she concluded.34

Reactions against such sentiments often burst into print. A corre-
spondent to the Connecticut Courant said of Miss Beecher's educa-
tional views that he had rather his "daughters would go to school and
sit down and do nothing, than to study Philosophy, etc. These branches
fill young misses with vanity." The girl who undertakes them "will be
a dandizette at eighteen, an old maid at thirty."35 Opposition took con-
crete form in Boston, where the city-run Girls Latin School had proud-
ly opened in 1826. So alarmed were its detractors by its popularity
that they forced its closing in 1828.36

Yet some brave schools thrived. By 1828 Hartford Seminary's enroll-
ment had reached 100. The female department of the generously en-
dowed Friends Yearly Meeting Boarding School in Providence attrac-
ted students of all faiths, while at Emma Willard's Troy Academy,
more than 200 girls took advantage of Miss Willard's innovative teach-
ing methods. Nearer Andover, Joseph Emerson had been talking to
the young ladies of Saugus as if they had brains, according to a con-
temporary observer.37 Two of Emerson's former pupils, Zilpah Grant

OF TIMES, TOWN, AND FOUNDING FATHERS 17

and Mary Lyon, had left prosperous Adams Academy in Derry, New
Hampshire, protesting its constituents' slide away from strict Calvin-
ism, to found their own female Seminary in Ipswich. Thus Abbot
Academy's founders had some solid models to emulate: pious, hard-
working schools that embraced intellectual goals similar to those de-
clared by the institutions already standing on Andover Hill. True, they
had to thread their way through the tangled controversy over the
purposes of female education, but that made an appropriate beginning,
for the controversy would reappear in many guises over the 144 years
of Abbot's existence. In the 1820's the very liveliness of this national
argument must have opened many people's minds to the possibilities of
higher education for girls, and pricked Andover citizens to create a
superior school of their own. Thus the times favored female educa-
tion; the town seemed likely to welcome it. Now the founders must
bend to their task.

The Founding

There is no record of what happened at the first meeting. We do
know that all seven of the men who would serve as Abbot's original
Trustees were there, and that at least five of them were accustomed to
being listened to. These five had much in common to certify them as
belonging to the Andover Establishment. They all served as directors
of Andover's only Bank, Samuel Farrar being President and Amos
Blanchard, Cashier. None could keep clear of politics, whether as ad-
visers or public officers. Amos Abbott took the prize here, for he
served at one time or another as town clerk, treasurer, moderator of
Town Meeting, and School Committee member. He was either An-
dover's State Senator or Representative for much of his adult life, and
he served three terms in Congress. The man of slightest build and
fewest words was Deacon Mark Newman, but Newman was a Phillips
Academy Trustee, having been Phillips Headmaster for fourteen years,
and if his colleagues on the Hill-top rarely lamented his departure
from the Headmaster's post, the men of Main Street respected him,
returning him to the Abbot Board presidency again and again. Busi-
nessmen Hobart Clark and Amos Blanchard made money to use for
the Lord's service as well as to keep their fine houses. More than once
these two would search their own pockets to pay the interest on Ab-
bot's debt. Indeed, all five were church members who had long held
expensive center-section pews in South Church. Deacon Abbott's pew

l8 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

to buy it because he paid one of the highest tax bills in Andover, and
the rich had first choice even in the old days.38 "Throughout the nine-
teenth century," writes Joseph Kett, "no group surpassed evangelical
Protestants in their intellectual and institutional concern with youth."39
These leaders and churchmen of Andover were unusual only in their
special concern for the education of female youth.

The two young ministers needed no pews, having pulpits. Though
they were new to their jobs, their status in the community was crucial,
Reverend Milton Badger's most of all because he led the South Parish.
But Samuel Jackson, an outsider, was a fresh wind, and we will hear
more of him. South Church snobs found it fitting that the upstart West
Parish congregation should be supporting a Vermonter as its minister.
Still up north and always too far away to suit Jackson were several
sisters much beloved, a sophisticated, well-schooled mother, and a
minister father, all of whom believed in higher education for women.
Much evidence suggests that it was Samuel Jackson and his energetic
wife Caroline who first determined that Andover should have the fe-
male high school its leading citizens had long dreamed of.40 Strange
though it seems at first glance, it is not so surprising that this young
newcomer should solidify and lead the inchoate group that had for
years supported the idea of young women's education in Andover. For
one thing, Jackson was already well-regarded on Andover Hill: he had
just graduated first in his class at the Theological Seminary. He also
knew the law: before entering Andover Seminary, he had spent four
years clerking in a law firm and studying at Yale Law School. He as-
sumed that any dream could be made reality, given need, energy and
practical know-how— and though Jackson was slight of build and
would often fight off illness in later life, now he had energy to spare.41
He was already famous among the West Parish youth for being able
to vault a five-rail fence, and for doing so when need or impulse arose;
less dramatically, he had been working to improve the several elemen-
tary schools in his Parish. He enjoyed the respect of both young
and old.

Jackson seems to have looked around his infant parish and discerned
what many a stodgier New England clergyman would discover too
late: women were essential to the Church. Even in Andover, the state-
supported Congregational Church must now plead its case rather than
take its power for granted. Its disestablishment— to be legally completed
in 1833— had long been in progress de facto as ever more citizens
neglected to pay their church taxes, turning instead to town and state
government for the care of local poor, the education of the young, and

OF TIMES, TOWN, AND FOUNDING FATHERS

i. Samuel C. Jackson, Trustee, 1828-1879. Portrait by William McMaster,
1856, currently hanging in Morton House, Phillips Academy.

the general ordering of community affairs.42 Merchants, lawyers, and
manufacturers no longer granted to their ministers the unquestioned
sway that Reverend Phillips had once sustained over Andover residents'
lives and fortunes. Although Andover church membership held up re-
markably well at a time when most of the traditionalist congregations
were shrinking, there were twice as many female communicants as
male in the West Parish, a ratio that would obtain throughout the
twenty-two years of Jackson's ministry.43 Men might hold all the of-
fices for this parish of 870 souls, but it was the women who, increas-
ingly, filled the pews for three services a Sunday, taught most of the
Sabbath School classes, raised the funds that would send missionaries to
the heathen, and knelt to pray at the weekday prayer meetings. A
solid, Christian education could only make their church work more
effective— yet the daughters of West Andover's farm families lived

20 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

much too far afield for easy access to Franklin Academy. To Samuel
Jackson, a nearby female high school must have seemed an essential
stay both for his parish and for his position within it.44

Reverend Jackson took seriously the Creator's impartiality as he
worked among his male and female parishioners seeking to inspire and
save. Since boyhood he had "been repelled by stated, formal, pungent
exhortations to live a Christian life";45 his ministry consisted as much of
mediating his parishioners' disputes and helping them write fair wills as
it did of preaching the Word.46 He also believed that churches must join
with families and schools to build the goodness and intelligence of all
children. A warm-hearted, generous man, he felt more at home than his
older colleagues with the egalitarian ethos that prevailed through much
of the nation in 1828. Later in his life he would work energetically to
improve Andover's public schools and serve for years as Assistant State
Librarian, and as Secretary to the Massachusetts Board of Education.
He was a Trusteee of Phillips Academy and the Theological Seminary
for thirty years, a Trustee of Abbot for fifty. His philosophical ap-
proach to any educational issue, his practical skills, and his openness to
careful innovation remained invaluable assets to all who would listen,
and his Abbot colleagues usually would.

For all Samuel Jackson's enthusiasm, Squire Samuel Farrar was first
among equals, if only because he had for so many years been hoping
for the advent of a female high school in Andover. Squire Farrar was
not a writing man; we have no sermons or essays in which to search
his mind. A technical lawyer, an amateur architect, an "incorruptible
mathematician"47 who husbanded every penny as Abbot's financial ad-
viser and as Treasurer of both Phillips Academy and the Theological
Seminary, his head was filled with schedules, lists, and practical plans,
not fine phrases awaiting an audience. He had, moreover, a genius for
risk-taking which went to work on every project he thought worthy
of his faith, no matter how difficult of execution. Abbot Academy was
not the only survivor of odds. Farrar was also to be chief architect of
both building and program for the Andover Teachers' Seminary (later
Phillips Academy's English Department) and designer of Phillips Acad-
emy's first, cheapest (and ugliest) dormitories.48 He was also cherished
as a friend and counselor by many of the residents of Zion's Hill. Sarah
Stuart Robbins remembered him well from her girlhood days.

Samuel Farrar was not a common man to any of us. With his
delicate face, his long gray hair falling back from a rather peculiar
forehead, a shy, retiring manner, and a very sweet, grave expres-

OF TIMES, TOWN, AND FOUNDING FATHERS 21

sion, even of his hands, he was to us by turns, Moses, David,
Isaiah, John whom the Blessed One loved— any and almost every
Biblical saint. He was a responsible man, carrying on his shoulders
not only all the great pecuniary interests of the Seminary, but
also, seemingly, the responsibility for its theology. He listened to
every word spoken in the small wooden pulpit as if for one and
all he must give account at the last great day.49

Most important to Abbot's founding, Farrar had faith in women's
intelligence. He had been one of Madam Phillips' ardent admirers, hav-
ing boarded with the Phillips family during his bachelor days, and had
taken her into his own home during her last years of widowhood. He
surely absorbed from her some of his enthusiasm for women's educa-
tion. Late in his life, he told his fellowT Trustee Samuel Jackson of the
"bargain" Samuel Phillips, Jr., made with his "refined and accomp-
lished" bride to persuade her to move to rustic Andover from a "pleas-
ant mansion" and "the high life at Cambridge": "It was understood
between them [said Jackson] that if she would unite with him in build-
ing up Phillips Academy, he would afterwards join her in founding an
Academy for girls in the North Parish."50 Phillips died too young to
accomplish this, and his wife's death ten years later left Farrar appar-
ently bereft. He was a coffin bearer at her funeral, and was addressed
in the funeral sermon "as one of the chief mourners— as if he had been
her son."51 Farrar soon married the granddaughter of the great theo-
logian Jonathan Edwards, herself a woman of remarkable intellectual
gifts to whom "theology was . . . like prayer," as Sarah Robbins later
wrote.52 But it was Phebe Phillips who had been Farrar's original
"model for womanhood." He was "constitutionally free from romance,"
Edwards Park assures us, "but he had been electrified by Madam
Phillips." For fifteen years after her death, his commitment to young
women's education remained strong; it was readily activated in 1828
when his fellow townsmen begain to catch up with him.

Although Farrar and Jackson were prime movers, other Trustees
were immediately helpful. Even before the Board had been formally
elected, Amos Abbott and Mark Newman each offered an acre of land
for the school building site, Abbott's on Main Street and Newman's on
School Street, half way up the Hill. Progress so far was smooth. A
committee of seven had decided to accept the Main Street site, to
raise funds by subscription, and to build a two-story brick building.

I Ten days later the Trustees met at the home of Deacon Amos Blan-
chard, their first Treasurer; they appointed Squire Farrar and the two

22 EARLY DAYS, I 8 2 8 — I 8 5 2

ministers to draft a constitution, and appointed a Building Committee
composed of Hobart Clark and Mark Newman, who quickly arranged
for the Main Street lot to be fenced in.

These sons of intellectual Andover, with its "certain disinclination
to economics,"53 could produce a constitution more easily than the
funds needed to put principles into practice. Still, principles came first.
The Trustees were determined that their institution would be a corpo-
rate entity, with a legal framework braced against the weaknesses and
failures of individuals. Abbot's constitution, though a period piece, was
to prove durable. Its detail expresses Samuel Farrar's care for contin-
gencies, its statement of educational purposes the entire group's con-
cern for young women's souls as well as for the workaday needs of
their lives in this world.

The primary objects to be aimed at in this School shall ever be to
regulate the tempers, to improve the taste, to discipline and en-
large the minds, and form the morals of the youth who may be
members of it. To form the immortal mind to habits suited to an
immortal being, and to instill principles of conduct and form the
character for an immortal destiny, shall be subordinate to no
other care. Solid acquirements shall always have precedence of
those which are merely showy, and the useful of those which are
merely ornamental.

The curriculum was ambitious indeed:

There shall be taught in the Seminary Reading, Spelling, Chiro-
graphy, Arithmetic, Geography, Composition, History, Geome-
try, Algebra, Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, Sacred Music, and
such other Sciences and Arts, and such of the languages, ancient
or modern, as opportunity and ability may permit, and as the
Trustees shall direct.

The Principal Instructor could be either "male or female." The Trust-
ees must all be "professors of [meaning those who profess belief in]
religion of the Congregational or Presbyterian denomination." The
Supreme Trustee's support was assumed in the document's closing
sentence.

Trusting to the All-wise and Beneficient Disposer of events to
favor this our humble attempt to advance the cause of human
happiness, we humbly commit it to his patronage and blessing.

OF TIMES, TOWN, AND FOUNDING FATHERS 23

The constitution was unanimously adopted on July 4, 1828, and signed
by the seven founding Trustees.

It is not clear what the women supporters of the "female high
school" were doing at this point— not even certain that they were pres-
ent and voting at the initial organizational meeting. Most likely, their
major influence was exerted in conversation and argument at the break-
fast table. The active wives of ministers, schoolmasters, and theology
professors of whom we read in Sarah Robbins' memoir are not apt to
have kept silent on the subject of their daughters' education. Legally,
however, they were powerless to join in any formal decisions. The
status of Massachusetts women as citizens had actually deteriorated
since colonial times. They had lost the franchise completely after the
colony's earliest decades, when the Old Province Charter formally
granted them the right to vote for a few local officers. Even when the
right obtained, women could rarely meet property qualifications for
suffrage. Under English common law and American practice, only
single women and widows might hold and control property, make
contracts with other persons, sue and be sued. Married women had no
such rights. "The very being or legal existence of the woman is sus-
pended during the marriage," explained Blackstone in his Commen-
taries?* Wives were not to gain independent property rights in any
state until 1839, ana< these state-protected rights were to remain mini-
mal throughout the nineteenth century.

The belittlement of women's legal and economic status may be one
reason why money for the new female high school was proving so
hard to come by. Founders of schools for young men had a far easier
time of it. In an Act which underlined the semi-public character of the
early academies, the General Court in 1797 had supported with 450,000
acres of land grants the founding of academies throughout Massa-
chusetts and Maine— but only a few of these had female departments,
and none was for girls alone. By 1828 Phillips Academy had already
accumulated donations of nearly $75,000 in addition to the original
gifts of land (141 acres in Andover and another 200 in Jaffrey, New
Hampshire). The Theological Seminary's buildings and equipment cost
well over $200,000, assets that are worth millions today. Meanwhile,
advocates of women's education were exhilarated by Zilpah Grant's
success in securing a bequest of $4000 for Adams Academy in 1824.
No one found it strange that Miss Grant's next Seminary in Ipswich
had to open in a building rented from a group of male investors look-
ing for a profit. Catharine Beecher could not herself persuade the
wealthy men of Hartford to give a penny of the $5000 she needed to

24 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

expand her Hartford Female Seminary. Women were not altogether
without resources, however. Miss Beecher finally rallied the ladies who
had attended her weekly prayer meetings, and the $5000 materialized
after all, the largest donation coming from the father of a student
whom Catharine Beecher herself had converted to confession of Chris-
tian faith the year before.

Another cause of the Trustees' fund-raising difficulties soon became
clear. The women might not vote, but they could exercise an informal
veto over the men's plans. Emily Adams Bancroft, Abbot 1829 and
daughter of Phillips Academy's Headmaster John Adams, later de-
scribed what they were up to.

It was the determination to locate the institution on Main Street.
But many of the mothers were dissatisfied, as this was the street
most frequented by the "Theologues and Academy boys." My
mother and Mrs. Stuart consequently drew up a petition, request-
ing a change in location. Elizabeth Stuart and I circulated said
petition. When we had received a sufficient number of signatures,
it was handed to the Trustees.55

On the morning of July 24 the Trustees, discouraged by these and
other "formidable objections" met in the Banking Room of the new
Andover Bank and "voted, That it is not expedient to erect a building
for a Female Academy on our present plan, with our present means."
All the Trustees were in attendance, "Dea. Newman excepted."

It is almost certain that Samuel Farrar spent one of the next few
hours talking earnestly with his client and friend, Madam Sarah Abbot.
Though childless herself, Madam Abbot had been a close companion
to Madam Phillips and a member of the Phillips literary circle, who had
doubtless joined in conversation about young women's education. In
her quiet way, she was a charitable soul. For two years she had given
a home to Obookiah, the young Hawaiian boy brought to Andover by
a Theological Seminarian determined to educate the heathen; Madam
Sarah had prayed with him every day, and had seen to his schooling.
She was not wealthy— her late husband Nehemiah (a descendant of
George Abbot of Rowley) had resigned as first Treasurer of the Phil-
lips Academy Trustees because his colleagues had too grudgingly re-
sponded to his request for a stipend— but she was frugal and comfort-
able. She doubtless felt a certain prim satisfaction at being an Abbot
by birth as well as marriage. A direct descendant both of George Ab-
bot, one of Andover's twenty-one original proprietors, and the Rever-
end George Phillips, Judge Phillips' progenitor, she was surrounded by

OF TIMES, TOWN, AND FOUNDING FATHERS

2. Sarah Abbot, supposed to have been painted by T. Buchanan Read,
currently hanging in Abbot Chapel, Andover.

prestigious relatives— and probably as many who were less prestigious,
for there were over forty Abbot and Abbott families in Andover. In
such a setting a woman need do nothing special to distinguish herself.
Until now Madam Sarah had merely lived an inconspicious life between
her home near the top of Andover Hill and her church at its foot.

In a single afternoon, all this would change. Legend has it that Sarah
Abbot asked Squire Farrar, "What shall I do with my surplus funds?"
and that he, as though he had been waiting years for this very mo-
ment, immediately replied "Found an Academy in Andover for the

26 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

education of women." This conversation probably took place some-
time before July 24, but Madam Sarah was one of the women who
quietly opposed the Main Street site, and her gift had not been made.

In any case, a few hours after the first meeting had been so dismally
adjourned, a second was called. Deacon Newman was present this time.
Squire Farrar announced Madam Abbot's promise of a bequest of
$1000, conditional on the building location being moved, as Farrar had
undoubtedly told her it could be. Mark Newman again offered his
acre on School Street, and both gifts were accepted. Farrar would lend
the Trustees the $1,000 immediately needed, with Sarah Abbot's be-
quest as surety. "The day was saved!" exults Jane Carpenter, Abbot's
chief archivist, in her lively account of the school's founding.56 The
Academy building could now be raised.

When the Trustees met to prepare their application to the General
Court for an act of incorporation, they readily voted to name the
school Abbot Female Academy after its principal donor. As Reverend
Raymond Calkins later remarked, "How cheaply some people have
bought immortality!"57 Like most Abbots, Sarah would live long. Her
lingering was to keep Abbot in suspenseful debt for twenty-two
years; but her final legacy to the Academy amounted to $10,109.04, a
crucial sum for the struggling school. The money had not come cheap-
ly to Sarah. A latter-day Abbott58 wrote that to his Jewett grand-
mother, "the Abbotts were educated fools, who would put beautiful
books and grand pianos into leaky houses. ... I suppose every one
of old George's descendants is highly individualistic and original." But
Sarah Abbot was neither educated nor foolish. To give so generously
of what she had for women's education was an uncommon if not an
original act in her time. She earned the honor that Andover has granted
her these many years.

Abiel Abbot, in his History of Andover, 1829, rounds off his descrip-
tion of the town's most prominent buildings by noting "an elegant
brick building for the Andover Female Academy, soon to be com-
pleted."59 It had been swift work. Contractor David Hidden of New-
bury port, who was on hand during the summer of 1828 erecting one
of the Theological Seminary buildings, was immediately engaged to
plan the Academy structure, with ample advice from Squire Farrar and
Principal-elect Charles Goddard. Hidden hired three carpenters at the
end of August and began the work, paying Mr. Berry $1.16 a day, Mr.
Holt $i.491/£ a day, and himself as master carpenter $1.50. Hidden's
tally book with its minute notation of detail suggests that he and
Farrar must have agreed well together.

OF TIMES, TOWN, AND FOUNDING FATHERS 27

My Work on the Academy
Female

Began to Work Statedly on the Academy Friday August 29, 1828.

Raisd Oct 25th

myself 69% & 14% days

Mr. Parker 6SV2 & 4% days

Mr. Holt 46V2 & 4x/4 days

Mr. Berry 663A & 6V2 days

Mr. Saunders workd on the Colums 13V2 Days & on the Bases

8% Days at Cambridge

My Expenses of Jorneys on the Academy
August 30— my Expenses of horse keeping & Dinner to Tyngsbury

to se about Stones . ....... .62

Sep 1 1— Dr to 34 Feet of pine Plank for Bord Timber . . .85

Sep 15— Dr to 1 5 feet more of Plank 37

What work my hands on the academy has Done at other places

to be taken out of time I have set Down

Sep 1 7— Mr. Berry half a Day helping me make a Coffin

Sep 18— Mr. Amos Holt half a Day making a Box for Mrs.

Hitchings

By November the roof had been raised, and the original donations
were spent. Farrar offered to advance $1000 toward the building's com-
pletion, "the said building to be considered as pledged to him for the
eventual payment of the money with interest,"60 but the Trustees
chose instead to accept a similarly canny offer from the Phillips Acade-
my Board, on which both Farrar and Newman served, along with
$2000 more lent by Madam Abbot, who apparently found her pocket
deeper as she watched Abbot Academy taking shape, with its grand
portico, its full-story upstairs hall, and its two large classrooms below.
Gratefully, the Trustees authorized finishing off the basement "for
chemical purposes," and granted Sarah Abbot the right to place one
scholar free in her namesake school as long as she lived.61

Hidden and his "hands" were able to finish most of the interior by
spring. The Reverends Badger and Jackson wrote a prospectus adver-
tising the "elegant and spacious edifice, seventy feet front, by forty
feet deep," solid proof of the seriousness of the enterprise. Abbot
Academy promised "to meet the high demands, corresponding with
the progress of public sentiment on the subject of female education,
and with its consequent improvements." If the Phillips Academy Philo-
mathean Society could resolve in the affirmative its question as to fe-

28 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

males' capacity for intellectual improvement— as it did— perhaps the
rest of the world could do so too. At nine o'clock on the morning of
May 6, 1829, Abbot Female Academy welcomed seventy girls and
young women into its halls.

Pious Pioneers

Our classes are now all arranged. The vessel is
ready, sails spread, and we are hoping the pro-
pitious breeze of Industry will soon waft us to
the shores of Knowledge.
Abbot student, Julia Ann Pierce, April 21, 1840

A letter from Samuel C. Jackson to Henrietta Jackson, Dorset, Ver-
mont; written in April 1829:

Dear sister Henrietta,

You perceive from the foregoing page when the school com-
mences, and also the terms of instruction. I spoke the other
evening to the deacon's folks about your coming here to spend
the summer and attend school with Phebe. The deacon said I
must board you & that your living would make but little differ-
ence, that he might as well provide for three as for two.1 You will
of course eat but two meals here a day, & will do your own wash-
ing & ironing, & we shall find your house room & bedding, so
that the deacon can afford to board you very cheap. If you be-
have well, / shall not charge you much, though I shall expect
to be at considerable trouble to take care of you— you must, most
of the time, be carried to, or brought from school, once a day.
I feel anxious to have you finish your education— to pursue your
studies now in the season of acquiring, & feel as though you might
do it with little expense during the ensuing summer. It is very
decidedly my opinion that you had better fix up immediately &
purpose to be here at the opening of the school, or as soon as
possible. . . .

It will be about a mile & a-half from here to the school, & this
you can & ought to walk once a day, & in good weather you can
on a pinch do it twice . . . You may think perhaps, that it will
be too much trouble to carry or bring you once a day, but as
Phebe will go too, & as the deacon has a horse & chaise & boys,

30 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

& as I have a horse & chaise, we can between us do it with little
trouble. Please to write immediately your conclusions about it,
& when you shall come, if you come at all.

Having begun with one of his favorite topics— female education— Jack-
son goes on to his other two: politics and religion. He feels he must
explain why he voted for Andrew Jackson, since he was one of a mere
handful of Andover citizens to do so.2

Anything but a Unitarian for President. Since Adam's downfall
countenances have fallen several degrees below zero. Adams has
come off rather sneaking; but no more of politics, lest I have
Mother in my hair— I'm really sorry, though, that she is so favor-
able to Unitarians; I used to think her sound in the faith . . .

You will see by the last Recorder that Mr. Carleton's wife is
dead. I have heard of no particulars. She has been cut down in
the midst of her hopes— in the morning of her glory, & where is
she, Ah! where? Whether she had hope in her death, I know not.
If she had no Saviour, she has wasted life & lost her soul!! No
accomplishments, no acquisitions, no worldly prospects can avail
her now— they could not avert the arrow of death, or prepare
her spirit to dwell with Christ. Be admonished, & be wise.

Sam'l C. Jackson

Clearly, the saving of Henrietta's soul was as important to her
brother as her education. And politics absorbed him as politics ab-
sorbed nearly everyone in those times. Andrew Jackson had been presi-
dent for only a few weeks, and already Whiggish Andover citizens
were pulling long faces; it says worlds of Samuel Jackson's tact and
talents that his middle-aged Trustee-colleagues (bank directors all)
were willing to accept his Democratic leanings. President Jackson and
his immediate successors would be hard pressed to give direction to
the amad, shifting world" of the 1830's and 1840's:3 business's boom-
bust-boom cycle would make families' fortunes less certain than ever,
while the democratization of economic and political opportunity gath-
ered speed and intellectuals tried to make sense of it all from their
pulpits, university lecture rooms, or science laboratories, or in their
shaky, exhilarating Utopian communities. Educators, too, contended
with one another over the purposes and techniques of their profession
on the pages of the new educational journals. Many were experiment-
ing with innovations first observed in Europe, or inventing their own.
This first quarter century of Abbot's career was the grand era of the

PIOUS PIONEERS 31

privately founded academy. Abbot both drew strength from the com-
mon academic culture and responded in its unique way to the needs
of its constituency.

Man's Place

Henrietta Jackson, nineteen years old and capable of responding sen-
sibly to her brother's letter, hurried to make her arrangements in time
to arrive in Andover for the opening of Abbot. She would stay at the
Academy for only one term. As will be seen, however, Abbot was to
figure largely in her own and her children's lives, and to be in many
ways a Jackson family affair.

Henrietta came to an Abbot founded for women and run by men.
Masculinity did not, however, guarantee stability. Count the number
of principals in Abbot's first fifteen years and the school looks like
a "mad, shifting world" in itself.

1 829-1 83 1 Charles Goddard

1 83 2-1 8 34 Samuel Lamson

1 834-1 835 Miss Louise Tenney (acting principal)

1 835-1 838 Samuel Gilman Brown

1 838-1 839 Rev. Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth

1 8 39- 1 842 Timothy Dwight Porter Stone

Special teachers and assistants also changed rapidly, except for the
gentle Miss Stone, teacher of the Introductory Class for eight- to
twelve-year-olds. The Academy was deep in debt, its entire plant
mortgaged to Phillips Academy and to Squire Farrar. Though Madam
Sarah Abbot continued to add to her legacy for Abbot's future, she
was still very much alive. In this situation, the Trustees were Abbot's
ballast, always managing to staff the school and (except for one term
during Goddard's tenure) to keep it open. In the leanest years, several
of them paid the interest on the mortgage notes out of their own
pockets. Students, too, were constant: for every "flitting scholar" who
stayed for just a term there was another who attended five years or
more. Trustee Amos Abbott sent all seven of his daughters to the school.
Meanwhile, the succession of principals played counterpoint to the
institutional cantus firmus. All were young, all scholarly gentlemen,
and this in itself made Abbot rather unusual. Gentility was not to be
taken for granted in a day when many schoolmasters were barely edu-

32 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

cated boors. Mr. Goddard's "refined and polished manners were a con-
stant surprise to those of us who had formed our ideas of the male
teacher by the average master of those times," wrote Mrs. Mary Ann
Durant Bullard '37, in a letter to Miss McKeen.4 Three of the princi-
pals were students at Andover Theological Seminary during part or all
of their time at Abbot. Samuel Lamson brought sober orthodoxy from
the Seminary, "quite in contrast to the wide-awake, almost sportive
manner of Mr. Goddard," said Mrs. Bullard. "Of all the teachers I
have known, no one knew so well as [Mr. Lamson] how to reach the
conscience in matters generally considered too trivial to be referred to
it at all."5 The "vivacious" Timothy Porter Stone, adopted son of Sem-
inary professor Ebenezer Porter, was more appealing. He brought a
barrage of new ideas— so many that "he hardly stayed to place one plan
steadily on its feet before he dropped it for another," according to
Philena McKeen.6 At least one alumna found him a "delightful teacher,"
and recalled that he managed to be simultaneously a writer, a father,
and a kindly landlord for Abbot boarders as well as a theological stu-
dent.7 The special language instructors were often "theologues" too.
William G. Schauffler, just arrived from Germany for his ministerial
studies, was a master teacher of both French and German at a time
when few academies offered German at all. A highly cultured man, he
also (writes Miss McKeen) possessed a "weird power" over his flute,8
and his commitment to missionary work in the Near East was even
then an inspiration to a Christian academy.

Goddard and Lamson were capable men, but it is Samuel Gilman
Brown, the third of Abbot's six male preceptors who best illustrates
the benefits Abbot gained by functioning on the principle articulated
by M. Carey Thomas, first woman president of Bryn Mawr college.
Said Miss Thomas of her extraordinary faculty: "We get them while
they are young, exciting teachers, and they leave to grow old in the
universities."9Abbot's Brown was not a Woodrow Wilson (a young
teacher whom President Thomas never liked), and one can hardly say
he later ossified as professor at Dartmouth and President of Hamilton
College; he was, said alumnae, "one of the kindest and best of men . . .
very decided but not harsh;" "a most refined and scholarly man, a
faithful, accurate and enthusiastic teacher."10 Earlier, Mr. Lamson had
begun the Abbot tradition of frequent walks or buggy rides to the
ocean or other places of interest (some of these started at 4:30 a.m.);
from alumnae recollections we get an image of Samuel Brown pa-
tiently lifting one sodden adventurer out of a ditch on a berry-picking
expedition to which the whole school had traveled by train. The en-
gineer waited while her clothes were dried at a nearby farmhouse,

PIOUS PIONEERS 33

then covered the seven miles from Wilmington to Andover in only
twelve minutes, a "wonderful feat" in those days.11

The public expected the principal of an academy to attend to each
pupil's moral character, to uthe improvement of her mind as a whole,"
and to her intellect's connection with "the great purposes of life."12
Brought up since age seven by his "serene, saintly" mother,13 Princi-
pal Brown seems to have had a special understanding of young girls'
needs. He also possessed a determination modeled on his memories
of his minister father, "one of the most honorable representatives
of a profession which then controlled society," and president of Dart-
mouth College at the time of his death in 1820.14 Serious though his
purposes might be, he must have had a sense of humor. He required
one composition class to "prove there is no such man as Andrew Jack-
son." This problem had a "Miss Stow" stumped at first, according to
a friend, "but she did it at last and a spicy thing it was."15 Brown was
a man of wide sympathies: he loved music as he loved children, with a
simple joy that touched his friends. At the same time, "he was familiar
with the whole range of English literature, from its crudest, roughest
elements in Chaucer and Gower to the . . . most refined and polished
numbers."16 It may have been under Brown that Abbot pupils first
attended Shakespeare lectures at the Teachers' Seminary, a daring ex-
pedient at a time when most female academies forbade the study or
acting of Shakespeare altogether, and Harvard's Shakespeare course
was twenty-five years in the future.

Whatever subject Brown taught, "We caught his enthusiasm," wrote
an alumna, "and strove to study well so as not to disappoint him, as
well as for learning's sake."17 Brown's successor, the Reverend Lorenzo
Langstroth of South Church, was also inspiring; everyone regretted his
departure after just two terms to devote full time to his parish. The
best indicators of Langstroth's imagination and scientific interests are
that he tutored math at Yale before coming to Abbot, and that he later
invented the Langstroth movable frame beehive. His design revolution-
ized beekeeping at the time and has remained basically unchanged ever
since.18 He had no difficulty persuading his students to do their mathe-
matics and botany, even though his mind was often on parish prob-
lems. Indeed, Abbot's first six principals, young though they were,
seem to have had few problems with discipline.19 They contrast poi-
gnantly with Phillips Academy's "Master Adams, [whose] wand of
office was a villainous ferule about a foot long,"20 of whom his students
said, "pretty often we could 'trace the day's disasters in his morning
face.' "21 True, Adams resigned from the Academy in 1832, acknowl-
edging himself old-fashioned, but "Uncle Sam" Taylor, who came

34 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

soon after and stayed till 1871, was equally fierce— and equally old-
fashioned. Caning and humiliation were approved pedagogical tech-
niques in many antebellum boys' schools and colleges; fortunately they
were rare in female seminaries.22

Asa Farwell, the sixth and last man to serve as principal, was not so
commanding or vital as the first five, but he had one great virtue: he
stayed. For ten years after coming down to Abbot from the Theologi-
cal Seminary he stayed, applying his "Vermont grit" to practical and
financial problems that had been the despair of his predecessors.23
Abbot's male principals took on their indigent enterprise at their own
risk, serving as their own business managers and reserving for them-
selves whatever tuition money remained after all expenses were paid,
including interest on the debt and a dollar a day for each assistant
teacher.24 After Goddard had resigned in discouragement, the Trustees
decided to guarantee each principal $800 a year (the same sum Samuel
Jackson received from his parishioners), but the system was apparently
allowed to lapse back to the original "no-profit-no-salary" rule when-
ever the $800 could not be raised through tuitions and fees. Thus the
Trustees could not pav a single salarv out of the "empty treasury"
Farwell found on his arrival in 1842.25 So often did principals change
that it is perhaps a wonder that Abbot's enrollment held up at all. Yet
by the time Asa Farwell had been principal for three years, the roster
of pupils had grown to 180. As slow to spend as he was quick to get,
Farwell acted as the school's gardener and day laborer; students often
came upon him with his shirtsleeves rolled, landscaping Abbot's one-
acre grounds himself.

Pleased to have many of their maintenance and money cares re-
moved, the Trustees tended to overlook Farwell's faults as an edu-
cator. They gave him a good press: it is difficult to see beyond the
smooth surface of Abbot's official historv and find out all one wishes
to know about Principal Farwell. We learn of his single-minded deter-
mination from his success late in life as a home missionary who brought
a frontier congregation of five souls (or four, since he had one man
excommunicated soon after his arrival) to self-supporting prosperity
in a year. Yet even Farwell's memorialists (traditionallv effusive) ac-
knowledge that "there have been many men of more showy and . . .
popular talent than this modest man of God."26 Is it possible that he
stayed at Abbot ten years because he had nowhere else to go?

Farwell's principalship was not quite the "unprecedented success"
the McKeens describe.27 Ten fathers with twenty-seven Abbot daugh-

PIOUS PIONEERS 35

ters between them petitioned the Trustees to fire Farwell in September
of 1848. The protesters believed Farwell wholly lacking in "that gen-
tlemanly deportment and refinement of manner which are best calcu-
lated to make favorable impressions in the formation of female char-
acter." They accused him of managing the seminary "with direct refer-
ence" to his own "pecuniary interests" rather than for "the good of
the pupils." He was often absent, even during devotions. They felt he
made a habit of inflicting disgrace "when the pupil was unconscious of
any fault," and found it "an unwarrantable assumption of authority"
for Farwell "to pronounce sentence of expulsion upon individuals who
voluntarily withdraw from the school."28

Strong words, these. Is there confirming evidence? We know some-
thing of Farwell's quirks from alumnae recollections. He gave one in-
corrigible trickster a choice between expulsion and having a note sent
home to her father about her misdeeds; then locked her in the class-
room during recess. That Farwell looked the other way while she
lowered strings out the classroom window so her friends below could
tie on snacks for her refreshment, and that he never did send the note
after all suggests that he was more wishy-washy than tyrant.29 How-
ever, we know from Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's recollections how Far-
well taught spelling: the method "was severe, no doubt. We stood in
a class of forty, and lost our places for the misfit of a syllable, a letter,
a definition, or even a stumble in elocution."30 We can read in many
letters to Phebe McKeen of the collective sigh of relief that greeted
the Reverend Joseph Bittinger, "a teacher of rare power"— who took
Farwell's place for a single year, and seemed to several correspondents
both kinder and more inspiring than any teacher they had ever had
before (Farwell included).31

Finally, there is proof of Farwell's "pecuniary interests" in the six-
teen house lots he managed to amass along School and Abbot streets.
One may assume that they were bought with the profits of his Abbot
work, since he had no other known source of income, and that he
made a pretty penny from the Abbot Trustees when he sold most of
them for $4oo-$6oo an acre before moving west to take charge of an
Iowa mission church in 1866.32 Thus we have at least a suggestion of
the substance behind the protesters' accusations.

In private the Trustees probably took the anti-Farwell petition
seriously. Circumstantial evidence suggests a covert effort behind a
public whitewash to make the Principal and his school once more
acceptable to the disaffected parents. Trustee Peter Smith may have
played a crucial role here, for he was a model of tact, and with

36 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

seven daughters in or coming to Abbot, he had a large stake in the
school's success. Smith was business partner to protester John Dove,
and the wealthy Dove had contributed generously to the Theological
Seminary; Abbot could ill afford any wholesale defection from the
protesters and their friends. In public, however, the Board's only re-
sponse was nonresponse. They refused the protesters a formal hear-
ing—and denied everything. In all likelihood they were so grateful to
Farwell for running a reasonably full school that they were unwilling
to question his day-to-day management; yet the dust-up seems to have
wrought some quiet changes, since only four of the daughters left
Abbot after the protest had failed. Possibly most important, Farwell's
young wife, who had been suffering a painful illness during the year
that the protesters were gathering evidence for their case against him,
finally died. His anxiety for her life ended, one surmises that he was
able to give his Abbot students the attention they needed. In any
case the rumbles ceased. When Farwell left Abbot for a trip to Europe
a year later, nine of the protesters' daughters left the school too, al-
though the year's acting principal was highly recommended.

Like his part-time predecessors, Farwell never had time to become
Catharine Beecher's ideal principal, who, besides being moral leader,
determined each student's course of study and could claim some knowl-
edge of the intellectual character and education of every individual
member of the school."33 Instead, parents generally chose the course
they were buying for their Abbot daughter, true to the laissez-faire
spirit of Jacksonian America, while Farwell was left with "keen grief
that so large a portion of my time must be employed in duties 'outside'
of school and school hours; but it was the sine qua non of there being
any 'inside' to be cared for."34 Possibly, Abbot would have thrived still
better under a single, powerful woman principal, such as Emma Wil-
lard or Zilpah Grant. Yet the school's succession of men, along with
its part-time specialists and several gifted woman assistants, may have
helped to confirm its students' sense of worth as they tackled tradi-
tional men's subjects in a male-dominated society. Thomas Woody
comments:

Abbot Academy was unique in that it was presided over entirely
by men in its early years. The course of study was not regularly
pursued, nor were diplomas granted until after Miss Hasseltine
took charge (1853). But a very liberal series of studies was of-
fered, and the scholarship of Goddard, Schauffler, Lamson, Brown,
and others, all college graduates, probably insured more excellent
instruction than was available in most girls' academies.35

PIOUS PIONEERS 37

Woman's World

It is students who finally make the school, resisting or embracing the
opportunity to learn from their teachers and from each other. Abbot's
girls were a special lot— not only the day scholars from "the Hill and
the Mill" or from the merchant families of Andover town, but the
boarders from the New England states, New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania who made up over a third of every school roll through
1852.'

They came in all ages and sizes. Henrietta Jackson was older than
most of the others "in the season of acquiring" who were Abbot's first
students but not the oldest: academies served girls as both high school
and college in those days. It was common for young women to alter-
nate teaching in a common (elementary public) school with study at
an academy. Throughout the nineteenth century, Abbot's senior class
was largely composed of women twenty years old or more, and
several in each decade were twenty-three or twenty-four. Small girls
came, too, to join the Introductory Class, their parents paying a week-
ly fee of twenty-five cents for the privilege. Sarah Flagg was one: she,
like many of her friends, was less interested in lofty educational pur-
poses than in the fact that her father came along that first day "for
protector," and that she and her sister were "wearing little pink ging-
ham calashes, with a bridle attached, to keep them on."36 Elizabeth
Stuart, later Mrs. E. S. Phelps, a prolific and popular writer, was a
member of the Introductory Class, while several of her sisters and
other precocious girls from the Hill were sorted into First, Second, or
Third Year students.

The Stuarts, the five Woods girls, and the Adams and Murdock
girls were daughters of warm, intelligent mothers and of scholarly
theology professors or schoolmasters. For decades to come these un-
usual families' lives would intersect with Abbot's progress. Sarah Stuart
(Robbins) later recalled that "the Hill, with its great common, its
severe buildings, its monastic human figures, made up our whole child
world ... we never went to the circus or to dancing-school; but were
always expected to take part in whatever went on of services or cele-
brations within those studious walls."37 From infancy the Stuart girls
had heard their renowned professor-father reading Hebrew passages
aloud behind his study door, or watched him hurrying "like a long-
legged colt"38 from lecture room to Hill printing shop, where for
years he set all the Hebrew type for his books himself. And the sense
of being something special continued into the second and third gen-
eration. Mrs. Phelps's daughter (who took her mother's name when

EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

she, too, became a writer) remembered her own friends on the Hill
as "especially open-hearted, gentle-minded girls," innocent as only
youngsters prayerfully raised in a circumscribed "university town" can
be.39 Andover girls did not waltz or attend Christmas parties. They
did leave notes for boys in the cleft of a certain well-known rock, and
they knew their way through the forest to the safest meeting places.
The Stuart and Woods girls especially helped to set the intellectual
tone of Abbot Academy. Harriet Woods later wrote that "during the
year which followed, I woke up wonderfully and enjoyed my studies
exceedingly."40 Harriet would eventually join the company of women
writers born on Zion's Hill. So would her sister Margaret, whose writ-
ings are of special interest, for she reached out to— and touched— Hen-
rietta Jackson. In her memorial to Henrietta, Margaret remembered
how her lifelong friend struggled at Abbot to master her moods, those
"heart-sinkings" that would plague her until her marriage.41 Henrietta
had "a deep, earnest, kindling eye, which told of a world of hidden
emotions beneath her calm and reserved exterior."42 The two friends
had a future in common, for all but one of the first twenty-one Hill
students married ministers. Yet they cannot have taken themselves as
seriously as did the Seminary men, "professors and students alike," all
of whom "felt themselves anointed kings and priests, with momentous
tasks to perform for the world."43 Orderly though their upbringing
was, a schoolmate called the Stuarts and Woodses "the jolliest girls
among us."44 The Sabbath was silence itself, but it ended at sundown,
and often enough the Stuart girls could be found gaily shaking off the
day's torpors with a clamorous game of ball among the pillars of the
Abbot Academy porch.

Unfortunately, Andover's "Mill and Till" girls have left us fewer
words about themselves. However, they too had grown up enjoying
advantages to match the restrictions with which all girls were then
raised. The fathers of the Flagg and Gould girls were engaged in an
ambitious printing enterprise, one which they consciously operated to
serve the cause of Christ, printing the nation's first temperance news-
paper and the first publications of the American Tract Society.45 The
A4arland sisters must have had a particularly eventful childhood, since
their father ran one of the largest mills on the Shawsheen river. Women
might not boss men, but in Marland Mills, as elsewhere, so Sarah Bailey
tells us, "it was the custom for the wives and daughters of the mana-
gers and owners to work, just as it had been for them to spin or weave
or perform domestic service in their homes."46 Owners' families had not
yet put such distance between themselves and the run-of-the-mill as
they would later create, and Abbot Academy day scholars seem at this

PIOUS PIONEERS 39

time to have considered themselves the pride of their town, not a cut
above it.

During Abbot's early years, the local Andover elite— bankers and
wealthy farmers and theological professors— shared a sense of Christian
mission, a spirit that verified the potential of the humble even as it
reminded them how far they were from being perfect in Christ. The
community, wrote Elizabeth Phelps, had "an everlasting scorn of world-
liness [and of] that tendency to seek the lower motive ... to confuse
sounds or appearances with values."47 Surely status distinctions were
apparent to the inhabitants of this increasingly heterogeneous commu-
nity; after 1845 they must have been aware of the "shanty Irish" pour-
ing into Lawrence, swelling the new mill town's population to over
5000 in 1850, larger than South Andover's already and heading for
100,000 by the turn of the century.48 But there are no sounds of class
struggle heard by Andover's local historians.49 Abbot's and Phillips'
formal curricula completely ignore the changes industrialization was
bringing to so many New England towns. At mid-century Henry
Ward Beecher would explain the silence by weighing the balance of
power between the townsmen: the lower and middle classes' "whole-
some jealousy of their rights, and a suspicion among the poor that
wealth and strength always breed danger to the weak, made the upper
class . . . politically weaker than any other."50 Too weak in Andover
to dare raise the subject of class conflict? It is more likely that An-
dover's industrialists and intellectuals were too self-assured, too im-
mersed in supporting and carrying out their grand educational mis-
sions to notice. The community divided on social issues (abolitionism
was one) far more readily than it split into economic factions. Town
records show that such elected posts as selectman or school committee-
man were roughly distributed three ways: to the newly wealthy, to
the men of importance in academy or church, and to the descendants
of the oldest Andover families. Members of the latter two groups
could be rich or penurious; regardless, Andover seems to have ac-
knowledged their right to leadership.

New England's elite might found academies partly to make up for
their political weakness, but the early Abbot does not seem to have
been a snobbish place. The only suggestion of social division we have
is in the protest against Farwell, for all of the protesters were towns-
men, while Farwell himself and most of the Trustees were strongly
I associated with the intellectuals from Andover Hill. A school founded
with a mission in mind was bound to welcome any white Protestant
*irl who could pay the fee. Tuition for a term ($5.00) could be— and

40 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

commodations were meager. One broken stove "heated" the entire
recitation hall. The Academy building was nearly bare of library
books and teaching equipment, and it was fortunate that the students
had the capacity to "supply by their own bright minds and earnest
will what was lacking in their surroundings," as Samuel Brown put
it.52 After 1832 families looking for a more select school could send
their daughters to Mrs. Bela Edwards' small and expensive seminary
on Main Street, dubbed "the Nunnery" by the Phillips students and
theologues, and considered more aristocratic than Abbot. (The Stuart
family may have found Abbot principal Lamson too severe, for Eliza-
beth later became one of two day students at the Nunnery.) The
wealthier Andover families could easily have afforded the more costly
academies like Ipswich Seminary ($25 a term in 1829), or Miss Beecher's
Hartford Seminary, where an upper-crust urban constituency fully
satisfied her social ambitions. But in Andover both the rich and the
far-from-rich seem to have chosen their own town's frugal "self-made
school," Abbot Academy.53

Early Boarders

Henrietta Jackson had a room at Deacon True's. The first Abbot
prospectus promised accommodations for others:

Arrangements are making to establish in conexion a boarding de-
partment, where young ladies may enjoy the advantages of home
in an unremitting attention to their habits and deportment, in the
parental tenderness and fidelity with which they will be treated,
and in the care and exertion which will be used to form and
guard the character. Situations for boarding can also be obtained
in highly respectable families of the village.

In Abbot's first ten years, formal "arrangements" never finished mak-
ing, but students nevertheless found space, wrote one alumna, "with
private families, some of which were rare homes, indeed, for us young
girls, giving us privileges scarcely less than those of the school itself."54
Samuel Brown's venerated mother took boarders; so did Professor and
Mrs. Bela Edwards, who offered house room to some theological stud-
ents along with a few fortunate Abbot girls. Each boarding-house
keeper was made responsible to the Trustees for imposing a bracing
routine of early rising, study hours, and prayer, while the boarding
students were expected to exercise "Christian courtesy and kindness in
heart, speech, and action" within their boarding houses as everywhere

PIOUS PIONEERS 41

else.55 The "Commons," the Abbot-sponsored boarding house that fi-
nally materialized in 1839, was inspired by a season of unsuccessful
negotiations with the pioneering educator, Mary Lyon. In 1834 Miss
Lyon began seeking offers of help to found her New England Semi-
nary for Teachers, a residential school to be generously endowed from
the first, so that young women of limited means might receive excel-
lent training under "missionary" teachers for whom great work re-
quired small pay.56 Mary Lyon was still young at this time, but well on
her way to renown as one of "the nursing mothers of higher education
and larger work for women," in the words of a latter-day Abbot stu-
dent.57 She agreed with Catharine Beecher that the hours outside formal
class were inevitably "the hours of access to the heart."58 "The teachers
and pupils will constitute one family, and none will be received to
board elsewhere," said the circular addressed "to the Friends of Female
Education" which she broadcast throughout New England. The "style
of living" was to be "neat, but very plain and simple. Domestic work
of the family to be performed by members of the school. Board and
tuition to be placed at cost."59

Abbot's Trustees received this circular just after Principal Goddard
had left. Louise Tenney was running the school successfully, but a
permanent principal was not in sight. As the Trustees' idealism warmed
them to Miss Lyon's proposal, the Academy's practical difficulties
hastened an enthusiastic response. Yes, they wrote back, they would
"change the character of this prosperous institution to meet the general
views" Mary Lyon had expressed.60 "We propose to give up to this
object, free of charge, the spacious and splendid edifice erected for our
school, at the expense of several thousand dollars." They promised to
help raise money for "commons" (a dormitory). They expanded on
the advantages of locating the new Seminary for Teachers in a "reli-
gious and literary" community of "flourishing schools . . . institutions
consecrated to the kingdom of Christ," some of which would share
such equipment as science apparatus, and all of which would attract
students to one another.61 Abbot's Trustees ended by offering their
services as trustees of the new Seminary. Samuel Jackson was ap-
pointed chief negotiator.

Mary Lyon politely rejected the Trustees' offer, saying she wished
the Seminary's location to be selected "by a committee representative
of the public" (not by the Abbot Trustees, apparently) and that "dif-
ficulties" would surely attend an Andover site. Perhaps these unspeci-
fied difficulties turned on the proximity of two schools for males; or
perhaps they were financial: she needed $27,000, and Abbot's cash box
was empty. In any case, Miss Lyon moved on to other towns-and

42 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

for a while, to further discouragements. She attributed her fund-rais-
ing failures to "good men's fear of greatness in women."62 Finally, after
years of labor, she found welcome and funds in South Hadley, Massa-
chusetts, a smaller, simpler town whose rural virtues were congenial to
a farm-reared educator-pioneer. There Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary
opened in 1837, pitching both its charges and its exacting course of
study to "the class most likely to be benefited from it and to use it for
the good of the world."63

The Trustees' subsequent efforts to raise funds for an Abbot board-
ing house came to little, but the Academy did not forget Mary Lyon's
arguments for a residential school. In 1839 tne ebullient Timothy Stone
opened an Abbot Commons at his own risk in the large house north of
the Academy building, later to be known as Davis Hall. By having each
boarder bring her own minimum furnishings, and by asking all takers
to share in "family" housekeeping, Stone was able to set board charges
as low as $1.12 l/2 a week at a time when most landlords charged $2.50
to $5.00.

It worked. They worked. The first two boarders (later nicknamed
Sisters Melody and Cheerfulness by their friends) entered a bare, cold
shelter on October 26, 1840, and cooked their supper in a single copper
pot and a broken tea kettle, using stones for andirons. Soon Sisters
Temperance, Mercy, Music, Calmness, and seven others arrived, with
Sister Affection as student directress. Smoky bread was baked, half-
cooked pies were devoured, and Saturday's washing duly done. The
Trustees began to believe in Commons: they sent the little band a
table, a bread trough, and a pudding stick, each "hailed with delight,"
wrote Mercy and Calmness in their account of the first year's adven-
tures.64 To celebrate, the girls planned a "molasses candy scrape . . . and
we entered heart or rather mouth and hand into it." "Far sweeter" than
the most splendid ballroom dance "were our enjoyments," gloated the
Commons chroniclers, surely Abbot's first Yearbook editors.

By Spring the place was livable. On Presidential Inauguration Day
in March of 1841, "all being Whigs, [we] welcomed the hero of Tip-
pecanoe by ringing all the bells in the house and giving three hearty
cheers." Soon after, however, the well failed. "The water [was] so bad
that horses would turn from it in disgust . . . We have heard of emi-
grants to the west who have lived in this style, but never in the literary
and wealthy town of Andover did the like happen." Still, Commons
was home. "Never can we forget the happy days spent together . . .
When hill and valley intervene, fond memory will love to linger around
these scenes."

After several years, Asa Farwell bought the Commons house for his

PIOUS PIONEERS 43

own residence, married the directress, Miss Hannah Sexton, and kept
on the boarders "at cost." The Commons idea, however, was to be re-
vived. And in the meantime, faraway students continued to travel by
stage to "the 'Hill of Science' on fair Andover's brow," as Julia Pierce,
'41, put it in one of her letters home to Illinois, enjoying alike the
benefits of town and Academy.65

Abbot Academy as Teachers Seminary

One purpose behind Alary Lyon's scheme was to answer a new demand
for women teachers. There was nation-building to do and not enough
men to do it, especially in a field where women's willingness to earn
low pay had driven schoolmaster's salaries in many villages to "a dollar
a week and board round." Emma Willard had early proposed that "fe-
male seminaries" could "place the business of teaching children in [the]
hands [of unmarried women] now nearly useless to society; and take
it from those whose services the state wants in many other ways."66
Horace Mann endorsed women teachers, since there were never enough
capable men willing to do the job— and by 1840 60 percent of Massa-
chusetts' teachers were women. Girls growing to womanhood in small
towns and rural areas saw schoolteaching as a respectable way to cut
loose from the circumscribed lives their mothers led, an opportunity
for travel and personal independence which approximated that avail-
able to young men in these footloose times.67 By mid-century, Henry
Ward Beecher in his novel Norwood would have old Uncle Ebeneezer
saying to the hero, "No, sir, a man should never be a schoolmaster.
That's a woman's business."68

The West especially needed missionaries of civilization. Catharine
Beecher thought every intelligent woman should do her stint of teach-
ing before marriage.

I can see no other way in which our country can so surely be
saved from the inroads of vice, infidelity and error. Let the leading
females of this country become refined, pious and active and the
salt is scattered through the land to purify and save/

These "leading females" were in for a shock. The tough farm boys who

I came to winter schools could bully a teacher unmercifully; a young
man was beaten so badly in Almanzo Wilder's upstate New York
school that he died.70 Later, Wilder's fiancee, Laura Ingalls, earned
twenty-five dollars for her family with two terms of teaching five

44 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

abandoned claim shack in Minnesota. Snow swirled through its cracks
all winter. The tiny school district was twelve miles from the nearest
village; Laura had to live in the cabin of the school board chairman, a
homesteader whose wife hated him, the prairie, and Laura by turns.
Her bed was separated from the others' by a curtain strung across a
single dirty room.71

Still, the hardships only increased many young women's ardor. Men
also responded to the need for trained teachers. Samuel Farrar made
sure that Phillips Academy's Trustees would find an extraordinary edu-
cator to head the Hill's fledgling Teachers Seminary. By the time of his
appointment to the post in 1830, Samuel R. Hall, a self-taught minister,
had already organized the first "normal school" in the nation. His stud-
ent teachers had helped him run a model elementary school in Con-
cord, Vermont, while he edited his influential Lectures on School
Keeping, published in 1829. Hall's Andover students came to the new
Seminary to prepare for work, not for college. They arranged their
courses to suit their professional plans, whatever these might be. They
learned scientific agriculture by keeping their own garden, surveying
and navigation through field experience, and teaching by daily practice
in a model school on the Hill. Abbot students might be denied access
to the Phillips Classical Department, but thev were warmly welcomed
at many Teachers Seminary classes.

The enthusiasm for teacher training soon reached Abbot. Samuel
Hall's daughter attended the Academy (class of 1835). Hall himself
seems to have been a watchful if distant adviser to Abbot's teachers,
and Hall's successor as Seminary principal, Reverend Lyman Coleman,
joined Abbot's Board of Trustees in 1838. In 1839, Timothy Stone
determined that Abbot should systematically prepare young women
for teaching. He introduced a three-year Teacher's Course (possibly
modeled on the Mt. Holyoke curriculum, for they are almost identi-
cal), which he hoped would become the school's primary offering. It
included special lectures and practice sessions for teaching candidates,
in addition to many subjects to be taken in common with the girls
who were committed to two-year "Latin" or "French" Courses of
Study. Graduates would thus be qualified for secondary as well as ele-
mentary school teaching. Stone's first catalogue advertised the new
offerings.

The habits formed in all the studies here pursued are designed to
render Young Ladies qualified to impart as well as to acquire
knowledge; and for those who wish to prepare themselves to in-
struct in Academies and Higher Schools, all the facilities are

PIOUS PIONEERS 45

furnished to pursue a course as extensive as their circumstances
require.

Stone himself seems to have been an exacting Principal as well as a
cheerful one, in spite of his many commitments. He supervised six
teachers, and kept "perfect order . . . throughout the school," wrote
Julia Ann Pierce, whose appreciation of Abbot only increased during
her second year as the teachers-in-training began to arrive in signifi-
cant numbers. "Much more intellect is displayed" than previously, she
crowed.72

The Abbot "Female Seminary" for teachers, as Stone entitled it, did
not survive his departure in 1842, except as the theologues' and Phillips
boys' pet name for Abbot and the students (the "Fern Sems") who at-
tended there. Possibly Asa Farwell realized that the future of formal
teacher training lay with the new state-operated normal schools, four
of which had opened by 1 840. Farrar's and Hall's "educational experi-
ment"73 on the Hill also closed, becoming Phillips Academy's English
Department, a vigorous school that would thrive separately from the
college preparatory Classics Department until the two were combined
in the 1870's. But Abbot continued to promise "special assistance ... to
young ladies who design to engage in teaching."74 While the faddish
monitorial system was never used at Abbot, for years there were a few
student teachers listed under other staff in the catalogue— "girl-teach-
ers" as the youngest pupils called them. The Academy undoubtedly
benefited from the reflection on sensible teaching methods that must
have been stimulated by its own three-year experiment. In addition to
Susan Hall, hundreds of nineteenth-century Abbot students eventu-
ally became teachers, some distinguished, many unsung.

What did they think and talk about, these almost-women and girls,
and what did they take from Abbot into their adult lives? It is difficult
to tell. Surely little was said of the joys of chemistry, or pneumatics, or
Latin grammar. Clothes, yes, though not— so far as one can tell from
the few letters and journals we have— with the compulsiveness common
to most of their contemporaries, an obsession to which writers would
cater incessantly a little later in the century when more girls were al-
lowed to read fiction. The two Dodge girls, both boarders in 1833, may
have been unusually apathetic: they found that "the wearisome mono-
tony of school-girl life" yielded only to the "kindly interest" shown
them by the three Marland sisters, whose hospitality they formally ac-
knowledged before returning home.75 Pleasure in personalities emerges
in the catty comments written next to the names listed in one student's

46 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

1840 catalogue: "spoiled by indulgence," she says of one schoolmate;
"gay, open-hearted joyousness" is another's tag.

moral and intellectual beauty

alas! that falsehood should appear in such a lovely form
a perfect enigma

I cannot love that which looks so much like affectation
The mead of willing sympathy thou gave, and oh!
experience only teaches how sweet it is.76

An 1835 alumna told Phebe McKeen how she "and companions equally
venturesome" had explored the unfinished cellar of the Academy build-
ing on their hands and knees and washed off at the pump afterwards.
Students' letters home speak of "delightful walks" in the countryside
after the close of school at 3:00 o'clock each afternoon, of being too
busy to sleep enough, of clothes and money needed.77

Perhaps Abbot's greatest contribution to its older students' lives was
the protected space in which they might develop their independent
powers, free from the pressures for early marriage that alternately ex-
cited and harassed so many young women of the time.78 Henrietta
Jackson never forgot her short term of attendance there. Abbot helped
prepare her to serve as a common school teacher in Sutton, Massachu-
setts and as a co-founder of Catskill Female Academy before her mar-
riage in 1838 to the Reverend Cyrus Hamlin. She shared with her
husband a profound dedication to Christianity: one month after their
wedding, they sailed for Constantinople, where Hamlin would found
Bebek Seminary (and later would help found Robert College) to edu-
cate Armenian and Turkish Christians in spite of everything the Turk-
ish officials and their Russian overlords could do to discourage him.
There Henrietta met up again with several old acquaintances, come
from Andover to serve the Lord in heathen lands, among them Solomon
Holt, the son of her Andover landlord and companion of her rides in
the deacon's chaise to Andover Hill, and William G. Schauffler, her
Abbot French teacher. Schauffler headed the Evangelical missionaries'
campaign against official opposition; at one point, he went to the Rus-
sian Ambassador to protest the capture and deportation to Siberia of
Cyrus' and Henrietta's Armenian language tutor, Mesrobe Taliatine.
The Ambassador was emphatic. "The Emperor of Russia, who is my
master, will never allow Protestantism to set its foot in Turkey," he
told his visitor. Schauffler bowed low and replied, "Your Excellency,
the kingdom of Christ, who is my Master, will never ask the Emperor
of all the Russians where it may set its foot."79

The Armenian lessons soon resumed. Henrietta's friends were sure

PIOUS PIONEERS 47

she was the first American woman ever to learn the language. "It is
very difficult," she wrote her old Abbot friend Margaret Woods Law-
rence in 1839, "and must be learned without the help of grammar or
dictionary. Do you think I am discouraged? It is not time yet. I ... am
now reading in short syllables. Such choking sounds you never heard."80

Henrietta's mother was certain her daughter had been sent by God
to "the place where the great battle would be fought between Michael
and his angels, and the dragon . . . where the mighty hosts of Gog and
Magog will be slain."81 But from the Hamlins' viewpoint, the holy war
was an endless series of skirmishes to win over an alien people one by
one. Plague, fleas, and stubborn officials were antagonists more immed-
iate than Gog and A4agog. Only two extraordinarily resourceful people
could make a home in such a land. The Sultan having put all Protes-
tants under the ban, none could even find work, much less a Christian
education. The local Greek patriarch encouraged the Hamlins' neigh-
bors to drive them away by any means, as they had successfully driven
the last missionary from Bebek. Though Henrietta and Cyrus had
moved into the Seminary building to protect it and its students, small
boys threw stones at Henrietta as she passed through the village on her
household errands; stones smashed the tiles on their roof at night. In
spite of this, the couple persisted. Not for nothing had Cyrus grown
up fatherless on a stony Maine farm. He set up a workshop where
students might make stoves, rat traps, and other goods for sale to keep
themselves fed and clothed. Henrietta opened their home to all visitors,
often providing sick-bed care to invalid missionaries. Curious Armen-
ians, Jews, and Greeks would come to watch Cyrus' "Satanic" ma-
chines one week, would shyly play with the Hamlins' merry little
daughter, "Henrietta the Second," the next, and often enough attend
Bible classes, English language classes or Protestant services the third.

Henrietta became fluent in modern Greek, which she found a "beau-
tiful and cultivated language."82 Gone was the sense of purposelessness
that had dogged her since her term at Abbot. She taught three of Cy-
rus' youngest students herself, served as chief stewardess and counselor
for the entire Seminary of over forty boarding students, and cared for
her "fat, rosy-cheeked little girl ... the daily delight of her mother's
heart, and the hourly hindrance to her business."83 While Cyrus' ad-
ministrative duties increased, Henrietta quietly won the support of the
leading Greek and Turkish families of Bebek. The community came to
accept the pioneers, even to rely on them to protect its weaker mem-
bers from the cruelty and excesses of their own officials.

Four more daughters were born, three of whom would later follow
Henrietta the Second to Abbot Academy for their secondary educa-

48 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

tion. Wife and children sustained Hamlin— by their playfulness as much
as by their practical help— through the years of complex, often dan-
gerous work until Henrietta's weak health overcame her, and she died
of tuberculosis on the island of Rhodes in 1850. But the daughters she
had raised with such love continued to keep the family's cheerful
home, and to care for their small half-sisters after their father's second
wife also died. They grew up to attend Abbot and teach school as their
mother had done, to marry missionaries or physicians, and carry on
their mother's work.

'A\fery Liberal Series of Studies"

A woman should study not to shine, but to act.
Catharine Beecher

The 1830's and 40's were exciting times for educators. No longer was
secondary-school teaching merely an extension of the ministry or an
"adventure" effort by a lone pedagogue who advertised his or her ser-
vices weekly for perusers of urban newspapers; it had finally become a
distinct, self-conscious profession centered in private or public institu-
tions. Academies had proved to be respectable supplements to parental
instruction in a society where the discipline of farm work or craft
affected ever fewer young people. Even the financial situation was
changing for young women's schools: poverty was only a likeli-
hood now, not a foregone conclusion. Several new institutions such as
Wheaton Seminary and Alt. Holyoke Female Seminary opened in the
1830's with endowments of over $20,000 that would support matricula-
tion of poorer students. The new Oberlin Collegiate Institute admitted
both black and white students, and allowed women to attend classes in
"selected higher departments."1

Curriculum offerings in many academies and colleges reflected the
democratization of learning. Said Robert H. Bishop, the first president
of Ohio's Miami University (proudly advertised as a "Farmer's Col-
lege"), "Literary and scientific knowledge is no longer to be the ex-
clusive property of a few professional men. It is to become the com-
mon property of the mass of the human family."2 Massachusetts boasted
few local grammar schools, but these were beginning to respond to the
state "high-school law" of 1827, which required them to add "general
history, bookkeeping, algebra, geometry, surveying, rhetoric and logic"
to their already mandated courses in classics and English. Though Yale
professor James Kingsley and President Jeremiah Day stoutly defended
the classical curriculum in their famous Yale Report of 1828, shoring up
the arguments of the traditionalists at Phillips Academy for the next
half century, Abbot and other academies offered far more than the
"Latin, Greek and a bit of Mathematics" that one Charles Phelps Taft
received at Phillips in 1859.3

5°

EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

Mental Discipline and Motherhood
Abbot's early curriculum is outlined in the school's 1844 catalogue.

I. ENGLISH STUDIES

First Year

{Greenleaf 's Arithmetic.
Murray's Grammar.
Modern and Ancient
Geography.
Ancient History.

(Arithmetic finished.
Grammar Continued.
Watts on the Mind.
Modern History.

{Mrs. Lincoln's Botany.
Mineralogy.
Parsing select passages of
Poetry.
Linear Drawing.

Third Year

Second Year

(Day's Algebra.
Lane's Physiology.
Smellie's Philosophy of Nat-
ural History.
Drawing and Pencil Shading.

(Algebra finished.
Newman's Rhetoric.
Analysis of Cowper's Task.
Euclid.

Euclid finished.
Spring I Gray's Chemistry.
Term \ Burritt's Geography of the
Heavens.

Hitchcock's Geology.

Fall
Term

Winter
Term

Olmsted's Philosophy.
Whately's Rhetoric.
Upham's Intellectual Philosophy.
Analysis of Thomson's Seasons.

Wilkin's Astronomy.
Marsh's Eccl. History.
Analysis of Paradise Lost.
Butler's Analogy.

(Whately's Logic.
Wayland's Moral Philosophy.
Paley's Natural Theology.
Landscape Drawing and Painting.

II. LANGUAGES

Latin— Weld's Latin Lessons; Andrews and Stoddard's Latin Grammar, An-
drews' Latin Reader; Krebs' Guide for Writing Latin; Nepos; Cicero de
Senectute et Amicitia; Virgil; Sallust.

Greek— Goodrich's Greek Lessons, Kiihner's Elementary Greek Grammar;
Greek Reader; Xenophon's Memorabilia; Homer's Iliad.
French— CoWofs Levizac's French Grammar; Collot's French Reader; French

A VERY LIBERAL SERIES OF STUDIES 51

Introduction; De L'Allemagne par Madame De Stael; Telemachus; Charles

XII; Henriade.

Italian— Bachi's Italian Grammar; Graglia's Italian Dictionary; Scella di Prose

Italiane Conversazione Italiana.

German— Ollendorf's Grammar; Nohden's Dictionary; Follen's German

Reader; Schiller; DeWette's German Bible.

Young Ladies are admitted to the privileges of the Institution to
pursue the studies as marked out above, so far as their time and
circumstances will allow.

The subjects and texts here described differ little from those listed
in the earliest catalogues, and match the course Asa Farwell continued
through 1852. The catalogue goes on to advertise the lectures in chem-
istry and geology that all members of the school might attend at the
English Department of Phillips Academy, successor to the Teachers'
Seminary (although Phillips' Classical Department students were se-
verely discouraged from doing the same). Each language bears a charge
of 20 cents a week over the $5.oo-per-term regular tuition for those
students who undertake this "speediest and surest method of attaining
that discipline which is the main object of all study." Vocal music and
drawing are each about 20 cents extra too, and the twenty-four piano
lessons offered every term cost $10.00.

Most of the required texts were widely used in academies and col-
leges of the time. Watts' On the Mind, Butler's Analogy of Natural and
Revealed Religion, Almira Lincoln's Botany* Paley's Natural Theol-
ogy, and Milton's Paradise Lost—aM were universal favorites in the bet-
ter schools. Butler and Paley were staples for upperclassmen at Har-
vard, Yale, and Dartmouth through 1828. Abbot also experimented with
some ambitious texts less often offered. Francis Wayland's Moral Phil-
osphy was popular in men's colleges, but rarely used by academies in
its 1837 college edition. Smellie's Philosophy of Natural History delin-
eated a sequence of the emergence of animal forms that anticiapted
Darwin's Origin of the Species. Colburn's Arithmetic, used throughout
Abbot's first decade, abandoned mere memory work to emphasize "the
processes by which the answer is obtained, and the reason for it."5 Har-
riet Woods had always disliked arithmetic, but at Abbot, she wrote, "I
became enamored of mental arithmetic, and carried my Colburn's Se-
quel back and forth from school, trying to puzzle my father and broth-
ers over the examples I had conquered."6 Another student (Abbot
1840) said Miss Parker "taught me to love geometry above my natural
food."7

52 EARLY DAYS, I 828-1852

We don't know whether iMiss Parker used conic sections cut from
turnips to illustrate solid geometry as did Emma Willard, but she un-
doubtedly agreed with Mrs. Williard that Mathematics was "of prime
importance because it would train women to think for themselves in an
orderly way, help them impersonalize their problems and solve them on
the basis of abstract truth. Women . . . must learn to reason and face a
subject."8 The "mental discipline" imparted by math— as by language
study— is offered in the 1830's and 40's as prime justification for almost
any subject that might appear initially irrelevant to almost any stud-
ent. Even "a severe course of the most persistent gerund-grinding,"9
such as Phillips headmasters Adams and Taylor served up for sixty
years, is supposed to "call into vigorous exercise all faculties of the
soul."10 Botany, writes Mrs. Lincoln in the text read by Abbot girls,
teaches use of "the laws of association [and] system," which are es-
sential "not only in the grave and elevated departments of science, but
.... in the most common concerns and operations of ordinary life."
Botany thus "has, without a doubt, a tendency to induce in the mind
the habit and love of order."11 Nor is music to be studied for its own
sake, but because its "cultivation . . . has a direct tendency to soften the
ferocious passions, meliorate the manners, and socialize the discordant
feelings of man."12 Any exacting subject will teach concentration and
strengthen the memory; it will build the power of judgment, without
which "no lady can make a custard or a cooky," says John Todd in
his widely read book The Daughter at School.1*

The "mental discipline" doctrine was as nice an excuse to teach what
you please as was the "transfer theory" of the early twentieth century.
There's no doubt, however, that it shored up confidence in the value of
difficult subjects for women. Not everyone agreed with it. Many tra-
ditionalists continued to feel that "the current apology that whatever
is good mental discipline for the male sex, is equally so for the female,
assumes false ground," as one critic wrote when the argument was still
young.

A woman's station in life is one of moral usefulness . . . The
studies, then, which should preponderate in female education are
those which affect the disposition rather than the intellect . . . Mor-
al excellence should be the great object of all human education;
but this is peculiarly true in that of woman, whose offices in life,
and whose influence on society, are those of a purer and gentler
being.14

After all, this "purer and gentler being" was almost sure to be a moth-

A VERY LIBERAL SERIES OF STUDIES 53

er. Her motherhood must be wisely informed, for "the soul of her in-
fant is uncovered before her. She knows that the images which she
enshrines in that unpolluted sanctuary must rise before her at the bar
of doom."15

But Education for Motherhood could be wonderfully extended also.
It embraced the natural sciences, through which a woman could teach
her little ones observational skills and appreciation of God's creation;
it sanctioned the reading and discussion of fine literature. Said William
Russell, Abbot's prestigious Oral Reading teacher for over ten years,
in an address to the school in 1843: "to recount orally the topics of a
useful book is one of the best preparations for intelligent and useful
conversation . . . To the female sex, as destined to furnish the mothers
and teachers of the human race in the stage of infancy, the power of
communicating appropriately, is of inexpressible value ... If the mother
is silent, the soul of the child by her side lies torpid and helpless."16
Most important was study of the mind itself through logic and "Intel-
lectual Philosophy," guaranteed to help women analyze their children's
changing mental patterns and fit maternal instruction to each phase.
Thus Abbot's young women spent much of their time on ethics and
philosophy in various guises.

Science for Souls

Christian educators like Mrs. Lincoln and Francis Wayland thought of
the mind as an extensor of God's original Creation. According
to Mrs. Lincoln:

The Universe, as composed of mind and matter, gives rise to
various sciences. The SUPREME BEING we believe to be im-
material, or pure mind. The knowledge of mind may be con-
sidered under two general heads.

1. THEOLOGY, or that science which comprehends our views of
the Deity and our duties to Him.

2. PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN MIND, or metaphysics,
analyzes and arranges its faculties. The knowledge of matter
which is the science that investigates the mind of man, and

is included under the general term, Physics, may be considered
under three general heads.

1. NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, which considers the effects of
bodies acting upon each other by their weight and motion.

2. CHEMISTRY, in which the properties and mutual action of
the elementary atoms are investigated.

54 KARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

3. NATURAL HISTORY, which considers the external forms
and characters of objects, and arranges them in classes.17

Clearly the study of both mind and matter was a sacred duty. On the
other hand, no one pretended that Abbot students' "knowledge of mat-
ter" was deep or specialized. Homemade science demonstration equip-
ment was the rule in all academies except Phillips Exeter; physics labs
were rare even in colleges. It was difficult to square the study of phy-
siology with "female delicacy." (Characteristically, Emma Willard did
her best: her response to the protests of shocked parents was to paste
heavy paper over all the offending illustrations in the physiology text.)
No Abbot principal that we know of conducted botanizing walks as
enthusiastically as educational reformers were advocating them. But
field trips were frequent, and the daily excursions up the Hill to the
lectures in botany, geology, or other sciences stimulated high interest
among some girls, if one can assume that alumnae recollections are
colored as much by the lecturers' dramatic demonstrations as by the
presence of young men in the hall.18 Samuel Brown imparted his love
of astronomy and meteorology to several students, one of whom wrote
Miss McKeen that since her Abbot days, "everything connected with
the heavens is always interesting." This alumna had been "terribly
afraid of lightning till Mr. Brown gave us a lecture one evening."19

Pious Andover had a special problem with science. Scientific study
might be an amateur affair in most academies— the scientists themselves
were often amateurs— but some scientific findings were seriously threat-
ening religious orthodoxy. Moses Stuart, to whom most scholarly di-
lemmas were food and drink, finally rejected the tortuous analogies
drawn by Butler and many others between the thousand, then million
years of geological evolution and each biblical day of Creation. Stuart
declared that a man must choose between geology and religion. Mrs.
Lincoln had an easier time with botany, for she had no doubt that its
study "naturally leads to greater love and reverence for the Deity; [for
those] who see in the natural world the workings of His power, can
look abroad, and adopting the language of a christian poet, exclaim,
'My Father made them all.' "20 Similarly, William Paley could with
good conscience pack his Natural Theology with comparative anato-
my, botany, entomology, physics, and astronomy once he had intro-
duced the Deity as First Cause and Supreme Watchmaker of the uni-
verse. He concludes that because science can only hint at the character
of this "stupendous Being,"21 we must depend on Revelation to com-
plete our understanding. If only one did not look closely, science and
religion might stand side by side, but tough-minded reconciliation of
the two was more difficult every year.

"a very liberal series of studies" 55

Pedagogy in a moral universe

Abbot students benefited daily from the pedagogical revolution of the
1830's and i84o's. Class recitations were no longer memoriter reproduc-
tions of an entire Latin grammar book. (Little Josiah Quincy, an eight-
eenth-century Phillips student, was sent back to his seat twenty times
to get it word perfect.) William Woodbridge and Abbot's William
Russell had traveled abroad to observe the Swiss educator Johann Pes-
talozzi at work in his model school. Their ]ournal of American Educa-
tion, begun in 1826, was filled with progressive suggestions for teach-
ers. "Let the obsolete system hitherto followed be entirely abandoned,"
they implored as early as 1827. "Make instruction interesting." Make it
"practical; let its relation to business be constantly pointed out; let it
be mingled with business . . . Let the natural progress of the mind be
consulted. Let knowledge commence at home, and gradually extend
itself abroad."22 This meant beginning with the concrete, and moving
toward the abstract. To Abbot Principal Stone, it meant opening a
"store" for his younger pupils, to make mental arithmetic a natural part
of playful financial transactions. In composition, it was supposed to
eliminate favorite essay topics such as "The Right Improvement of
Time," or "Happiness." Composition should not be "practised as a sep-
arate art, as a thing that can exist apart from the thoughts it is meant to
convey."23

By 1836 Abbot students were hand-copying and issuing their own
magazine, The Workbasket. The November 2nd issue contains a stir-
ring story of Greek revolutionaries. The heroic Lysander's children are
torn from their peaceful rural existence (where every evening, seated
before their dwelling, Xanthe and her brother Alexis "unite their artless
voices in a Greek song") by Turkish marauders, who sell them to slave
dealers in retaliation for their father's triumphs as partisan leader. It
also announces

The Thimble Robbery

Beware!! Last Friday one of the members of this school had her
"indispensible" broken open by one of her associates and despoiled
of its contents. Money to the amount of 37V2 ^ was taken . . . and
a silver thimble.

That did come close to home. Woodbridge and Russell would have
been pleased.

For all the reformers' labors, Abbot teachers' duty to promote mor-
al character retarded full acceptance of the new methods. Harriet
Woods, made by "the pretty Miss LeRow" to write a composition ("On

$6 EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

Charity") thought her "brain must have been black and blue with
[that] painful effort. I'm sure my eyes smarted with the effort to keep
back tears." She finally produced a single sentence: "Charity is a good
thing."24 "No activity [was| outside the holy purpose of the overarch-
ing covenant," writes Richard Sewall of nineteenth-century New En-
gland puritanism, and every skill taught Abbot girls had to be ac-
companied by a moral lesson.25 Abbot teachers could not bring them-
selves to throw away their grammar books, as progressives advised.
After Murray's Abridged English Grammar had brought the student
through a tortuous passage of twenty-two rules pertaining to the In-
finitive, Indicative, Imperative, and Potential moods, it offered pages
of ill- written sentences to correct, such as these didactic gems:

To do good to them that hate us, and on no occasion to seek re-
venge, is the duty of a Christian, [pp. 178-179]

Each of the sexes should keep within their peculiar bounds, and
content themselves with the advantages of their particular dis-
tricts, [p. 13 1 ]26

History especially, must elevate and inspire. It was too bad, said one
early critic, that history books were so often written in "formal, un-
interesting style," which tended to "deaden the spirit of patriotism
rather than excite it."27 William Russell joined the reformers who
railed against historical "abridgements and compends."28 Unfortunate-
ly, to inspire may be to distort. It is hard for the late twentieth-cen-
tury skeptic to understand what credible inspiration can be drawn from
those "ample" volumes Russell endorses, which present history as "the
great treasury of just sentiment, the grand depository of character, the
moral record of the world."29

The rhetoric of history and English books often became so elevated
that it left reality behind. Most texts of the time suffered sadly from
their "lofty diction," which students inevitably absorbed into their own
essays. Said a graduate of Coburn's Classical Institute in Maine: "Every
man became a mortal; a horse, a courser or a steed; a glass, a crystal
vase; the moon, Pale Diana."30 The chief aim of many an instructor
was to teach his students to write like John A4ilton.

The new pedagogues insisted that all teaching techniques reflect
sound values. Abbot followed the usual practice of evaluating students'
learning through public, oral examinations. For these, remembers Miss
Theodosia Stockbridge,

the school was attired in uniform, a unique feature of which was
small black lace caps trimmed with narrow pink lustring ribbon

UA VERY LIBERAL SERIES OF STUDIES 57

... [At the] examinations, both dreaded and enjoyed by the pupils,
the upper hall, door-way, vestibule, and stairway were literally
thronged with Theological, Latin, and English students [from the
Hill], with friends from the village and friends from abroad. One
of the most formidable ordeals was the drawing of geometrical
designs on the blackboards . . . also piano solos, given from the
center of [the] platform, and facing the audience.31

The Academy boys kept their own texts open on their knees to check
every girl's answer for themselves. Examinations made some educators
uneasy: they did not square with the prevailing expectations of wom-
en, who, unless they were Quakers or (worse) actresses, should not
even wish to speak before an audience. One skeptic charged that all
exhibitions "were calculated to foster pride, to raise [the scholars] in
their own view to men and women before their time."32 They encour-
aged emulation, always a suspect motive in the nineteenth century. Like
the intricate report cards used at Boston Girls' Latin school, they fos-
tered "rivalry and ambition," said Zilpah Grant.33 Nevertheless, Abbot
continued to hold them throughout its first quarter century.

Abbot's curriculum was above all flexible. Students might "fail"
again and again, yet not be asked to leave. In languages they could go
as far as they were able beyond the prescribed texts. There were pre-
requisites, but no requirements; it must have been a disappointment to
Abbot's founders that only four girls on the 1831 school rolls had taken
enough Latin to be eligible for Greek. Students could enter for a term,
then quit. Eighty-three girls attended Abbot some time in 1839, DUt tne
Spring term roll was only sixty-four. All female academies shared the
problem of the "flitting scholar." Of 1600 students attending Derry and
Ipswich under Zilpah Grant, only 156 received diplomas. Abbot gave
no diploma at all until 1853.

Reformers bewailed in prose and verse the shallow exposure to a
multitude of subjects encouraged by the average female academy.
Many felt the more fashionable schools were fitting out intellectual
dolls who would know nothing of women's domestic duties. "Madame
Cancan's" seminary was a popular caricature. There, Madame Cancan
spent

all her skill in moulding her pets

Into very-genteelly-got-up marionettes.

Yes! Puppet's the word; for there's nothing inside

But a clockwork of vanity, fashion and pride!

Puppets warranted sound, that without any falter

When wound-up will go— just as far as the altar;

58 KARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

But when once the cap's donned with the matronly border,
Lo! the quiet machine goes at once out of order.34

Because of Abbot's solid course offerings and its generally serious at-
mosphere, Abbot students largely avoided these pitfalls. In addition, the
"system of allowing everyone to do that which was right in her own
eyes" was exactly what many girls needed.35 It was only because Eliza-
beth Emerson so loved wild flowers that Mr. Farwell reluctantly al-
lowed her to take Botany, but she did well in it, and found it an "un-
bounded delight." When Elizabeth had at last gained the " 'mental dis-
cipline' . . . for that truly advanced study, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, the
progress through its every problem was a constant rapture."36 Still, to
several of Abbot's Trustees, flexibility implied weakness. For all Abbot's
early successes, they looked forward to the day when their Academy
could boast a fixed course of study leading to a diploma.

"To Form the Immortal Mind"

Abbot's constitution made the school responsible for each student's
soul. Sunday church was required for boarders, the morning service at
Andover's South Church, whose Congregationalism was guaranteed
pure, the afternoon service at the Seminary chapel on the Hill, where
it was purer still. Though Phillips students sat just behind the Abbot
contingent in both churches, all communication was proscribed; older
girls must "write the sermon" for the principal afterwards to prove they
had listened. ("Our Sabbaths had not the element of rest," recalled
Julia Ann Griggs, Abbot 1839-41, later on.)37 Wednesday was "free
day," but on Wednesday mornings and evenings, roommates were re-
quired to leave each other in solitude for a "half-hour" of medita-
tion. Every student received weekly religious instruction. Each one of
Abbot's nineteenth-century preceptors would have agreed with Princi-
pal Samuel Brown, who told a Dartmouth Centennial audience in 1869
that

education, to be truly and in the largest sense beneficient, must
also be religious; must affect that which is deepest in man; must
lead him, if it can, to the contemplation of truths most personal,
central, and essential; must open to him some of those depths where
the soul swings helplessly in the midst of experiences and powers
unfathomable and infinite, where the intellect falters and hesitates,
and finds no solution till it yields to faith.38

A VERY LIBERAL SERIES OF STUDIES 59

On Andover Hill in 1829, "yielding to faith" meant the personal con-
version that Samuel Jackson was urging on his sister Henrietta: a cli-
mactic confession of one's utter depravity and helplessness as Adam's
seed, along with realization of one's total dependence on God and His
Saviour Son. In a much-thumbed book called the Pastor's Daughter,
found in an Abbot student's library, a minister tells his child's story.
"Reader," warns its introduction, "this small volume conducts you to
the lowly tomb of Susan Amelia, from which, though dead, she speak-
eth, and bids you PREPARE TO MEET YOUR GOD."39 Susan's pri-
vate journal shows how she first resisted "surrender to God" at the age
of eighteen: "March 19, 1842. Spent an hour this morning in reading a
novel; of such works I am too fond ... Of course my Bible for this
morning was neglected. . . . Would to God I could keep my resolu-
tions." Susan tries to convert her friend Fanny while she works on her-
self. "Many and severe are the conflicts I have with the destroyer of
souls," she writes Fanny; "oftentimes I am nearly overcome, but my
Deliverer appears."

Though ill, Susan resolves to become a missionary. She prays every
Monday "for the persecuted Christians of Madagascar," every Tuesday
"for the Queen of Madagascar." She admits she is a sinner, and that
"life is a vapor." Susan's imminent death rallies her friends to Christ's
cause, and they pray for a "holy submission" to match hers. Finally
Susan dies happy, called away in "perfect peace" to Jesus.40

The evangelical Protestant's concern for "the heart and its motiva-
tions" combined with his [or her] sense of each soul's infinite worth
could lend strength to precarious lives.41 Good parents began putting
pressure on their children to make their "holy submission" at age seven
or eight; but the most reliable conversions took place after puberty,
stimulated by the young person's general anxiety over physical-emo-
tional changes and life plans. Conversion thus often served to certify
the converted as an adult, and it is not surprising that secondary edu-
cators felt it their duty to assist in the process.42 Mary Lyon personally
brought a quarter of all her Mt. Holyoke students to Christ. Phillips
Headmaster Adams was a "revival man"; Taylor also "savingly con-
verted" many of his boys.43 The spring of 1840 was a season of power-
ful religious enthusiasm at Abbot: with the help of some of the good
women of the town, who visited and prayed with the girls on recrea-
tion days, about fifty conversions were accomplished. Andover's gen-
eral enthusiasm for conversion could be overdone. Describing Mrs.
Porter's "zeal in good works," Samuel Jackson's -daughter Susannah re-
counts a story told her by one of Headmaster Adams' daughters, an

6o K A R L Y 1) A Y S , I 8 2 8 - I 8 5 2

Abbot student at the time: "As she was passing, Mrs. Porter called her
in, took her to an upper room, locked her in, saying that herself and
Miss Mary Hasseltine from Bradford would spend the day praying for
her, and she must pray too. No wonder the little girl yielded more tears
than prayers, and ever after took the opposite side of the street in her
trips down town."44 Yet there was no doubt that to "become a Chris-
tian" at Abbot (or Mt. Holyoke, or Hartford, or wherever) was to
confirm the institution's worth as well as one's own.

But the conversion experience could not be had for the asking. Catha-
rine Beecher struggled in vain for her own and her fiance's souls: all
her father's and brothers' urgings only brought her to nervous collapse
after months of family effort. Finally, she, along with many other
Americans, rejected the exacting system that condemned the uncon-
verted to join still-born infants and uncatechized children in Hell.45 One
of Miss Beecher's critics wrote that if St. Paul were on earth, he would
"discourage the female sex, however gifted and learned, from mixing
themselves in theological and ecclesiastical controversies."46 Andover
professor Leonard Woods argued more respectfully with her in print.47
To no avail. Ironically, the conversions stimulated by revival move-
ments blurred the doctrinal questions which had been so fervently ar-
gued on Andover Hill ever since the Seminary opened.48 By the mid-
1840's, many believed with Miss Beecher that Grace could be won by
steady good works even though no dramatic inner submission had oc-
curred. Evidence of one's Christianity was no longer an inward change
of heart, but a social style.49 The local pastor, defender against hellfTre,
seemed less important now. "Conscience" and "character" began to dis-
place conversion as the dominant religious and educational concern.

These changes must have impressed Abbot girls with a new sense of
the Christian woman's opportunities. With the (all-male) ministry's slip
in status came a gain for women. Not only did women convert in larg-
er numbers than men; they were considered peculiarly adapted to
God's work.50 As mothers, they would "educate not merely a vir-
tuous member of society, but a Christian, an angel, a servant of the
Most High."51 Samuel Jackson's early intuitions about women's special
function were being borne out in new social realities. While men grew
ever busier with worldly affairs, women had to prepare to become the
mainstays of the church, as well as of a Christian home where children
would be kept from "the contagion" of money-making as long as pos-
sible.52 Mothers took over the leading of evening prayers in many fami-
lies. Increasingly, church work and missionary activity were accepted
as ways for women to use their talents outside the home— as legitimate
and safely conservative escapes from domesticity. Andover Theological

A VERY LIBERAL SERIES OF STUDIES" 6l

Seminary opposed women's leadership in parish affairs long after mid-
western revivalists began inviting it, yet the theologues gladly accepted
the tuition support raised for them by church ladies in their own par-
ishes, and after ordination welcomed women's willingness to carry the
main burden of Sunday School teaching.53 It was an ironic affair, this
alliance between the minister and the lady, for together they were
expected to function as "champions of sensibility"; yet the lady's in-
volvement undermined the minister's traditional hegemony in subtle
ways.54 Her Sunday Schools continued to draw emphasis away from
the conversion process which those like Jackson worked so hard to in-
spire, for they taught not sudden enlightenment but gradual self-mas-
tery.55 "These women will be in the pulpit next!" exclaimed a New
England critic of the new Sunday Schools;56 and the Massachusetts
Council of Congregationalist Ministers formally warned women against
carrying their Christian zeal into reform movements that men should
lead: "The power of woman is her dependence, flowing from the con-
sciousness of that weakness which God has given her for her protec-
tion."57 But the clergy could not have it both ways, simultaneously in-
viting women's help within the church and suppressing the radical mes-
sages of Christianity. Women church members became troopers for
temperance crusades which ministers like Jackson initiated and led; in
the West Parish their children made up a "cold water army" and pa-
raded round the parish of a Saturday under the church ladies' eyes.
This was all very well until the confidence that women gained from
their parish labors was applied to more controversial public affairs
such as abolitionism, an issue that would involve many West Parish
women and ultimately split the congregation in two.

The American woman's field for Christian action was steadily widen-
ing, then. The metaphysical texts Abbot students read seem to have
been chosen to follow Catharine Beecher's view that action should
take precedence over erudition. "Forming the immortal mind" meant
subjecting conscience and character to intellectual scrutiny. Abbot
girls studied Francis Wayland's exhaustive rationale of conscience and
its God-given authority, instead of the terrifying sermons of Jonathan
Edwards with which the theologues were regaled during their meals.
Julia Ann Pierce, studying Wayland with twenty-three classmates
under a second-year theologue, thought him "very hard";58 but at least
Wayland found a neat way around the conflict between religion and
science which hounded the Orthodox. He believed that the startling
progress of contemporary science was only more evidence "that a
tendency to universal extension has been impressed upon [each branch
of knowledge] by its Creator."59 Religion remains primary because it

6l EARLY DAYS, 1828-1852

"fosters a love of truth," wrote Wayland.60 To prove how this reason-
ing works, he deftly blended Biblical sanction with liberal thought in
one grand system of "practical ethics," justifying gradual abolition of
slavery, enjoyment of sexual intercourse within marriage, liberty of the
press, and a multitude of benevolent projects to aid the poor. His
twentieth-century editor, Joseph Blau, points to the "arrogance in the
way in which Wayland uses God as the cosmic guarantor of whatever
Wayland believes."61 Surely Abbot's teachers sympathized, however.
In their less pretentious ways, most of them were doing the same thing.

Abbot reached the i85o's with solid experience on which to build.
Despite flitting scholars and flitting principals, its course of study had
remained remarkably stable. Compromises with the original high aca-
demic ideals were surely made, but Abbot remained, said William
Russell with emphasis, an academy, it allowed its students the rewards
of "uninterrupted mental application" rather than diverting them to
study of needlework or other domestic arts. Russell felt proud of
Abbot's having avoided the "universal ridicule" that greeted the "en-
cyclopedic" curricula of many girls' schools. He praised Abbot's con-
cern with "actual proficiency" and its scorn of "extensive and perhaps
superficial cultivation."62

Furthermore, Abbot was clear of debt at last. Upon receipt of
Madam Sarah Abbot's legacy in 1850, Samuel Farrar, that "good old,
wrinkled, immemorial squire," as Oliver Wendell Holmes called him,
resigned from the Board of Trustees.63 "Our debts are all honorably
paid," Farrar wrote his colleagues. He blessed "a kind Providence" for
sustaining him through "so many years of anxious solicitude," and al-
lowing him to witness "so happy a result."64 As one of Abbot's chief
creditors, Farrar must have felt even more relief than he expressed. A
last-minute drama over the Sarah Abbot legacy bears recounting, for
it had put $2000 of the expected $10,000 in jeopardy. Soon after
Madam Abbot finally died in 1848. Lucretia Johnson, widow of the
short-lived and highly promising Phillips Principal Osgood Johnson,
made a $2000 claim on the Abbot estate to compensate her for her care
of the old lady during the last three years of her life.65 Madam Abbot
was "intemperate" as well as ill, claimed Mrs. Johnson, and thus could
do almost nothing for herself.66 The widow Johnson lived just across
Main and School streets from Mrs. Abbot in what is now called "Sa-
maritan House" in her honor; she had kept her family out of the poor
farm by nursing sick students and townspeople for small pay. Good
neighbor she had been, but she had to be paid.67

Mrs. Johnson never got her $2,000. All Abbot's Trustees rallied to

i i

A VERY LIBERAL SERIES OF STUDIES" 63

protect the founding donor's reputation and the school's legacy. Mrs.
Abbot had told her friends, "I pay Mrs. Johnson as I go along,"—
though Mrs. Johnson disputed this. The friends insisted that she had
also given Mrs. Johnson clothes, furniture, and household goods; most
important, she had paid some or all of the Phillips Academy tuition for
one of the Johnson boys after his father's death. It seems that Madam
Abbot thought Mrs. Johnson's care of her was done "as a neighborly
kindness," and never worried herself about formal payment.68 Wit-
nesses for the Probate Court insisted, furthermore, that they "never saw
Madam Abbot disguised" [in drink] or "intoxicated" although she did
use "spirits."69 If old Sarah Abbot was a little too fond of liquor, we
shall never know it for certain.

So Abbot got its $10,109.04 and paid off its debt of twenty-two
years, and the documents that revealed more than Abbot's later ad-
mirers wanted to know of a good woman's failing years were tucked
away in a cupboard. Whatever we may think of the justice of the
outcome, the efficiency with which the case was resolved and then
covered up testifies to the strength of the Academy's corporate char-
acter and of those wily, faithful Trustees who came with it. This was
no fly-by-night "adventure" school, but an institution with plans to
continue, come what might.70

Solid Acquirements, 1852-1892

In the forty years from 1852 to 1892, Abbot Academy passed from un-
certain adolescence to adulthood. The local day school with its catch-
as-catch-can arrangements for out-of-town students became a nation-
ally known boarding school. The parade of men principals gave way
to a shorter parade of women; then in 1859 tne Misses Philena and
Phebe McKeen arrived. The sisters were to make Abbot their home,
and give it the rest of their lives.

Before the school could fullv benefit from the McKeens' committed
leadership, however, there was a period of swift, unexpected transi-
tions: Abbot had to face a local crisis of competition from a new pub-
lic high school, then the national crisis of Civil War. Meanwhile, the
Trustees met the happier challenge of finding and keeping the McKeen
sisters. The McKeens ushered in a kind of golden age full three dec-
ades long during which Abbot prospered as never before, an era to
which, later, more harried generations would look back with both
envy and gratitude.

Mid-Century Transitions

We were told by the historian that

the age of lords has gone out, and

the age of ladies has come in.

J. B. Bittinger, 1879

The 1850's were pivotal years for New England education, as they
were for the life of the nation. Like most private academies, Abbot
glided easily into them down the way established by the confident (if
penurious) forties; but the year i860 found the school changed, forced
by circumstances into a new mold.

Much happened that the Trustees could not have foreseen. They
had planned, for example, to replace Asa Farwell with yet another
man. "Andover was a masculine place . . . used to eminent men," wrote
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps of this time. "At the subject of eminent
women, the Hill had not yet arrived."1 Abbot's male Trustees duly
elected to the vacant post Peter Smith Byers, a brilliant assistant teacher
at Phillips Academy— the only brilliant one in the thirty-eight years of
Taylor's administration, says Claude Fuess.2 Byers first accepted, then
took a closer look. Concluding that Abbot's boarding arrangements
were inadequate, he withdrew. The Trustees tried to lure Ipswich
Seminary's principal and his wife to Abbot. Politely, the couple refused.

Meanwhile, Abbot was being ably led by two acting principals, first
Mrs. Susan Hutchinson, then Miss Abby W. Chapman. Mrs. Hutchin-
son was a young widow whose major education had been the discipline
of misfortune. Early on, her father became "imbued with the then pre-
vailing spirit of speculation in Maine lands"3 and lost the money he
had planned to spend on Susan's schooling. She learned enough to sup-
port herself by teaching elementary school, then married. But her hus-
band died of consumption while she was sickening with child-bed
fever; her infant died, and she was so much weakened in spite of her
"grand and stately" appearance that her health could not stand the
rigors of her Abbot work for more than half a year. While she was
there, she proved extraordinarily kind, capable, and good-humored.
"The crude efforts of her pupils, exciting her mirthfulness, aided her

70 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

in manifesting the needed patience," wrote her teacher-biographer,
who knew that teachers must either laugh or give up.

Mrs. Hutchinson ended Mr. Farwell's military drill, substituting
reels, winding-circle dances, and calisthenics performed with "back-
wands" held between the shoulder blades to encourage perfect posture.
Abby Chapman carried on these innovations, proving equally compe-
tent if not so colorful. Enrollment stayed high with an average of
ninety-five students each term, 150 for the year.

That Abbot's women teachers and students could continue to prosper
during this rudderless year of 1852-53 is testimony to the school's basic
durability. It is worth pausing to take a look at one indicator of educa-
tional vitality at the time: The Experiment, a hand-copied school news-
paper "published" in the summer of 1853. As the Andover Advertiser
reported with mock anxiety about this new competitor, "subjects of
vital importance from 'Mother Goose's Melodies' to the invasion of
Turkey and the probable consequences of a war, were discussed in a
manner worthy of diplomatists."4 "Foreign Intelligence"5 reporter
Hattie Stowe also kept subscribers informed of her parents' activities;
the Seminary's newly arrived Professor Calvin Stowe and his wife
Harriet Beecher Stowe were touring Europe, keeping tabs on the Lon-
don publishers of Uncle Tom's Cabin, speaking to British anti-slavery
societies, "and creating quite a sensation in Scotland."6

The Experiment is a bursting trunk of girl thoughts, girl jokes, and
young-woman dreams, eighty pages long. Poems, solemn memorials to
dead friends, articles on intemperance, and book reviews (on Thack-
ery's latest novel, on a collection of antislavery essays) are interspersed
with riddles, mock political news of 1864, a gossip column, playful
autobiographies (of a broom, of a piece of sheet music), lists of spuri-
ous marriages—

AT INK FARM, June 16th, by Rev. Mr. Merciful, Mr. Worthy
Caution to Miss Prudence Heedlessness

and advertisements—

a new Saloon offers four Information wanted

kinds of ice cream: Cat- Lost: Dropped out of a

nip, Spearmint, Wormwood second story window, a small

and Horseradish. child about two years old.

Found: A bundle of disconnected
ideas (believed to be those ad-
vertised as lost in the last issue).
Finder attempted to make use
of them but without success.

MID-CENTURY TRANSITIONS 71

The hard-pressed editors must have needed some hilarity to keep them
at their copy-work. New subscriptions were always wanted, "terms
reasonable." The quality of writing is high, the syntax over-elegant
but orderly, the spelling impeccable, the penmanship incredible to ob-
servers from this typewriter age.

Mrs. Hutchinson's and Miss Chapman's success seems to have given
the Trustees the last proof they required of women's ability as edu-
cators. After all, Mt. Holyoke had never needed a man. Bradford
Academy near Haverhill had been booming for years under Abigail
Hasseltine, with over 200 girls enrolled. The proportion of women
teachers to men in Massachusetts was on its way from 60 percent in
1850 to 86 percent in i860.7 The Trustees knew that action must be
taken. It was midsummer, and Abbot must open on August 31, 1853.

Open it did, with two major changes. The Trustees not only in-
stalled as Abbot's ninth principal Miss Nancy J. Hasseltine, the ener-
getic niece and protegee of Bradford's Abigail; they also gave up all
that was left of Farrar's Yankee scheme for keeping principals on their
toes and Trustees off the hook. They offered Miss Hasseltine a firm
salary of $500, and took on themselves the full financial risk of the
school.8 Miss Hasseltine arrived fresh from the principalship of a school
in Townsend, Massachusetts, bringing with her a crowd of Townsend
pupils and "three valuable teachers."9 With great energy, she set about
organizing the school. She found Abbot familiar. Bradford and Abbot
had competed for a similar constituency since 1829. Bradford's own
new principal, Rebecca Gilman, was an Abbot graduate. Sixty-eight
girls had attended both Abbot and Bradford, finding Bradford perhaps
a bit more straitlaced under the aging Abigail Hasseltine, but other-
wise much the same.

Young Miss Hasseltine worked a quiet revolution in her two-and-a-
half year tenure. If men had managed Abbot well, she would manage
Abbot better. She strengthened the curriculum, systematizing the En-
glish course with the help of her Associate Principal, Miss Mary Blair,
and offering English and French "certificates" to Seniors who had ful-
filled set course requirements. She was "full of strength and cheerful-
ness," wrote Miss Blair years later.10 While supervising her assistants
and keeping most of the school's business affairs in order, she taught
five or six hours each day. The women in the Bible became heroines in
her hands. "An empress!" exclaimed one alumna.11 But she was an em-
press with a sense of humor. She jollied into action the girls who
turned sullen under her usual firm handling; one alumna remembered
"many small kindnesses to unattractive students."12 She took for her
own roommate "one of the most care-requiring children in school."

72 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

"Delightfully vigorous and breezy," she had both "a very strong hand"
and "that peculiar power of making the right popular."13 The Trust-
ees' Examining Committee reported in July 1854 that "happiness in
well-doing seems to be general." They found the Bible exercise im-
pressive, and praised the Virgil translations. "We regard it as a promi-
nent peculiarity and excellence of this school [they wrote] that the
pupils are taught to think for themselves."14

As soon as she arrived, Miss Hasseltine told the Trustees what they
already knew: Abbot must have its own dormitory. More than a mat-
ter of convenience, this had become a matter of survival. In 1850 Ben-
jamin Punchard of Andover had died, leaving $50,000 in his will, with
$20,000 more after his wife's death, to found a free high school for the
young men and women of his town. Almost immediately after saying
"No" to the Abbot principalship, the talented Peter Smith Byers had
said "Yes" to the Punchard High School one.15 A building was being
erected within easy walking distance of Abbot, to open in 1856.

Fitting it was that Andover, the "New England Athens,"16 should
undertake to provide free to all what Abbot and Phillips had been of-
fering to the many for a fee— even if a low one. Punchard School was
an early prototype of the burgeoning number of public high schools
which would gradually bring the age of the academies to an end.17
Inertia would be fatal to any academy with hopes for a future: Abbot
must change its spots if it would continue to be useful. Shortly after
Miss Hasseltine came, therefore, the Trustees "Resolved, That it is in-
dispensable to the prosperity, and even perpetuity of the Academy, to
raise the sum of eight thousand dollars in order to procure suitable ac-
commodations for the boarding of pupils."18

Several Trustees went straight to work. Still convinced that "the
chief ground of reliance aside from religion" for any community "is
the general education of the people," Samuel Jackson had resigned his
pulpit in 1850 to pursue his broad educational interests as Assistant
State Librarian and Secretary to the Massachusetts Board of Educa-
tion.19 He had long foreseen that Abbot must become a boarding
school in order to continue its mission, and he could still work heartily
for a private school that could supplement public educational oppor-
tunities, knowing that thousands of American communities had no
high schools. With its low fees, Abbot could remain attractive to stu-
dents from the many high schools that locked their student clients into
the social niches already defined for them by birthplace and parent-
age.20 The backing of two newer Trustees— Theological Seminary pro-
fessor Edwards A. Park and Board President Peter Smith, Esquire—21
also proved crucial, coming as it did from men of opposite back-

MID-CENTURY TRANSITIONS

5. Edwards Amasa Park, Trustee and preacher to Andover Hill, 1851-1900.
Photograph from Abbot Archives. Originals of all illustrations may be
found in Abbot Archives, unless otherwise noted.

■:■■

4. Deacon Peter Smith, Trustee, and donor, with his brother, of Smith Hall.
From Memorial to Peter Smith.

74 SOLID ACQUIRI'.MKNTS, I 8 5 2 - I 8 0 2

grounds. Both were parents, Park of one Abbot daughter, Smith of
nine. Park was the last of the great blue-blood Calvinist theologians,
Smith a Scottish immigrant and highly successful member of Andover's
rising industrialist class. Park's elaborate education had prepared him
for life in a shadow-world of contending ideas. As professor of
Hebrew, Sacred Rhetoric, and later Christian Theology at Andover
Theological Seminary, 1836-82, he was a "superb scholar," a "royal
preacher,"22 and a devastating opponent in logical argument, for he
invariably "tried to arrange things so that he could have the last
word."23 His favorite advice to both theologues and Abbot students:
"Whenever you meet a ghost, examine him." Meanwhile, Peter Smith's
day was spent seeing to the welfare of the operatives in the prosperous
Smith brothers' flax mills, ordering new machinery or hiring new
workers from Scotland.24 "A stranger to pride,"25 Smith had hesitated
to accept election to Abbot's Board because of his "want of literary
knowledge," but he finally agreed to serve "in any way that will pro-
mote Knowledge, Virtue and Religion."26

Each in his own way, Park and Smith confirmed Abbot's character.
Edwards Park would be Abbot's link through half a century with the
old Calvinist tradition, which measured man's capacity for both piety
and sinfulness on a grand scale, and spoke to the soul in a language of
awful beauty. Park's fame fed the Academy's pride. Even such a skep-
tic as Emily Dickinson found herself amazed by his intellectual power
the first time she heard him preach in Amherst.27 For years after he
became too old to take an active part in the Trustees' work, he re-
mained the Board President, and every Abbot graduate received her
diploma from his hand. Peter Smith, the self-made man, found Abbot,
the self-made school, congenial. He knew what struggle was, having
worked steadily as farmhand and millhand since the age of eight to
support his widowed mother. He accepted the terms on which the
canny survive, admiring and enhancing all that was practical in Abbot
Academy.

Smith backed with his money the move to transform Abbot from
day school to boarding school. When he saw that his initial challenge
gift of $1000 challenged practically no one, he and his brother John
together first loaned, then gave over $5500 more to meet nearly the
whole cost of the dormitory themselves. Like several of their later
contributions to the institutions of Andover Hill, the Smith brothers' gift
was a tribute to Samuel Jackson, for so many years their pastor at
West Parish Church.28 Though Jackson himself had no money to
spare, he was a magnet for others' wealth. Under his persuasion, a few
other Trustees and parents finally yielded the rest of the $7033.64 re-

MID-CENTURY TRANSITIONS 75

quired, but Abbot's tight-fisted constituents could hardly quarrel with
the Trustees' name for the new building: Smith Hall.29

Smith Hall was a large wooden box divided into about thirty rooms,
each twelve feet by twelve feet, with a dining room, kitchen, music
room, and matron's apartment on the first floor. At first it was an
empty, useless box, for its construction had more than exhausted avail-
able funds. Into this vacuum stepped the wives and mothers, led by
Caroline True Jackson and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Mrs. Stowe knew
how to raise money for the furnishings: "We must have a festival,"
she reportedly told Mrs. Jackson.30 At first the idea seemed outland-
ish—but then, so did many of Airs. Stowe's ideas. If Professor Park and
other high priests of the Hill grumbled that her trips to the Boston
theater and her merry, popular levees led to "dissipation for the stu-
dents" (at one party, a Christmas tree was displayed), much of Andover
approved her "glowing enthusiasm."31 To southern critics, Uncle
T orris Cabin was a "desecration of woman's nature,"32 but Mrs. Stowe's
friends knew her as "the most unselfish and loving of Mothers."33
About thirty-five ladies, including representatives from each of An-
dover's Protestant churches and Mrs. Park, met in the Academy Hall
to hear her "telling speech"34 in favor of Abbot's first Bazaar. Quickly
they organized, and on the evening of September 29, 1854, greeted
throngs of the curious, the generous, and the eager-to-be-seen at fifty
cents admission apiece (about $6.00 in 1978 currency). The Academy
Hall was transformed by flowers indoors and Japanese lanterns out-
side, the last hung by Phillips Academy boys. Richly appointed tea
and coffee tables offered free beverages; Mrs. Stowe poured, wearing a
gold bracelet in the form of a slave's shackle, commissioned for her by
the Duchess of Sutherland.35 Oysters, ice cream, and endless baked
goods were presented for sale. Two thousand dollars was raised in all,
enough to buy furniture for every room and equipment for the
kitchen and dining room, everything "plain and cheap."36 Local mer-
chants sold these goods to Abbot at generous discounts, along with
materials for curtains and slipcovers, which the ladies sewed themselves
in the weeks following the festival.

Miss Hasseltine strove consciously to make her school worthy of all
this help. As Annie Sawyer Downs would write years later, "If (Ab-
bot) was born in 1829, it was born again in 1853" when the Hasseltine
years began.37 Smith Hall made it possible to offer board, washing, and
pew-rent for $2.50 a week from 1854 to 1862, more than the pittance
paid by the Commons-dwellers both at Abbot in the 1840's and at
Phillips next door, but still a moderate sum to match the tuition charges
of $6.00 or $7.00 a term. (Piano lessons were $10.00 extra, Latin $3.00,

j6 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, I 8 5 2 - I 8 9 2

French $5.00, and a "Course of Lessons in Wax Flowers" was $3.00 a
term.) Increasingly, girls stayed the full forty-week year, paying about
$140.00 for all regular expenses. With the building of Smith Hall,
Abbot had become a "school-home" (the term is used again and again
after 1854), a self-contained community run by women for women
which left much less of students' lives to chance than had the earlier,
more casual day school.38 Head matron JVIrs. H. B. Willard was assisted
by Mrs. Angelina Kimball, who would herself become head matron in
i860 and stay forty years. Resident teachers helped them manage the
large household. Mrs. Kimball was a jolly, efficient woman with whom
secrets were always safe— and thus she heard a great many of them.
Bridget the cook ruled in the kitchen, regularly sneaking pieces of pie
up the back stairs to her favorite girls, no matter what economies the
Trustees might order her to make.

The Trustees' description of Smith Hall as a "commodious and cost-
ly building"39 might seem exaggerated to the students who lived in
those tiny bare rooms and felt the winter in their bones during those
first ten years without a furnace, but "we were happy and content,"
remembers an early resident.40 Nor was Smith Hall quite the "still and
secluded home" the Trustees imagined.41 A decade before its construc-
tion, there was exactly one piano in all of Andover;42 Smith Hall soon
had two of its own. The girls danced in the music room while waiting
for their mail each day, and on summer afternoons aspiring young
pianists enjoyed the unseen presence of an appreciative male audience:
the Phillips boys boarding in the two houses that flanked Abbot on
School Street. Students from ten years of age to twenty-two or three
made the dormitory a lively place. It was a new experience for the
many hailing from rural and small-town New England to meet such as
the four Stowell sisters, who had come from San Francisco for school-
ing in New England. With the building of Smith Hall, out-of-class
experience became central to an Abbot education.

Abbot's enrollment rose to 212 in 1856. It was 185 in the recession
year of 1857, while Bradford's roll was dropping alarmingly from 209
in 1855 to 125 in 1857. Bradford did not learn the dormitory lesson
until 1868. Abbot's numbers soon leveled off, but the pattern of enroll-
ments changed significantly during Miss Hasseltine's tenure and the
decade following her resignation. Punchard High School gradually
took Abbot's place as Andover's major secondary school for local girls.
In Miss Hasseltine's first year, 94 of her 169 students were Andover
or North Andover girls, 56 percent of the total; the number declined
only slightly through 1856 when Punchard actually opened after a
delay complicated by Peter Smith Byers' untimely death. By the fall

MID-CENTURY TRANSITIONS 77

of 1858, however, the Punchard Trustees had found an extraordinarily
capable principal in William Goldsmith, Harvard A.B. Goldsmith or-
ganized the school into four classes. With the help of his assistants, in-
cluding Abbot alumnae Rebecca Nourse and Sarah Loring Bailey, he
taught most of the subjects Abbot offered and some others besides:
Butler's Analogy, Trigonometry, one year of French, "Uranography"
(star mapping), and, to those few students anxious for classics instruc-
tion, Xenaphon and Homer as well as Latin through Virgil. During
Punchard's first three years, seven or eight Abbot girls left the Acade-
my to attend the High School each year, among them Mary S. Nourse,
one of Abbot's most talented students, who used her one year at Abbot
to prepare for the classical course at Punchard; but the transfers
dwindled as the years went on, undoubtedly because more local stu-
dents went straight from elementary school to the high school. By
1865, the year Abbot's minimum day scholar tuition jumped from
twenty-four dollars to thirty-two dollars and twenty-five cents, the
local student enrollment had fallen to 16 percent of the total (27 out
of 167).

There are some curious twists to this story. Several students finished
their education at Abbot after trying Punchard. Youngest daughters of
two fathers active in the 1848 protest against Farwell preferred Abbot
over Punchard. Ellen Punchard, daughter of the High School's found-
er, spent five years at Abbot before finishing in 1863— and is not listed
on the Punchard rolls at all.43 As far as can be told from scanty rec-
ords, none of the Punchard Trustees except Edward Taylor, an Abbot
Trustee from 1859 to 1870, had daughters at Abbot, but the venerable
Squire Farrar helped draw up organizational plans for the High School
shortly before he died. The two schools would remain on speaking
terms and better for many years. After Punchard's opening, however,
there were to be far fewer efforts to accommodate the Academy to
the local clientele and fewer brakes applied to tuition raises. The ad-
vent of Andover's first public high school pushed Abbot to take its
own more independent course as boarding school.44

Principal Hasseltine believed in women. She made her teachers col-
leagues rather than mere assistants, consulting them often on disciplin-
ary and curricular decisions, a practice Phillips Academy's "Uncle
Sam" Taylor eschewed as compromising to his supreme authority. Her
teachers seem to have been eminently worthy of this responsibility.
Miss Blair was a true scholar, "the first teacher to send me to original
sources," wrote a student who went on to Wheaton College.45 This
patient and sensitive woman "taught everything as if that was her fa-

78 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

vorite study."46 Samuel Jackson's daughter Susannah, Abbot '51, proved
"a remarkable teacher," recalled Marion Park. She was more than
smart; she was "kind, public-spirited," and possessed of "a tremendous
sense of duty."47 No men teachers need apply to the Abbot of the
fifties. With the exception of an occasional visiting lecturer such as the
renowned geography professor Arnold H. Guyot from Harvard, and
two part-time music instructors in 1856, Abbot relied on its own
women. Miss Hasseltine severed all formal teaching connections with
Theological Seminary students and professors, and put a stop to the
daily trips up the Hill to lectures on science or literature at the Phil-
lips Academy English Department. After her marriage in 1856, her
successors Maria J. B. Browne and the competent Emma Taylor, sister
of "Uncle Sam," successfully maintained the distance thus measured
out between Abbot and the Hilltop.

Why this change? Miss Hasseltine could have simply been copying
Bradford, her old family school, which had been decidedly single-sex
for two decades. But there is a subdued militancy in her actions which
makes one wonder to what degree the new Abbot women were moved
by the push for women's suffrage that characterized the 1840's and
50's. Had any of them heard or read Elizabeth Cady Stanton's speech
at the Seneca Falls convention in 1848?

Woman herself must do this work; for woman alone can under-
stand the height, the depth, the length and the breadth of her
degradation.48

Occupational opportunities were widening once again. True, pioneers
like Elizabeth Blackwell, physician, Maria Mitchell, astronomer, and
Jane Swisshelm, newspaper publisher, might be more notorious than
they were respected, for the numbers of professional women were still
tiny; but their success inspired thousands of young women to reach
for the training they would need to do such work themselves. Susannah
Jackson recalls Harriet Beecher Stowe's telling girls that "women
should do whatever their gifts qualified them to do."49 Although no
woman suffragists had yet appeared in Andover, the antislavery move-
ment made women a political force to be reckoned with. Mrs. Stowe
was only its most famous adherent; there were others like Caroline
True Jackson, who supported Essex County antislavery societies with
far too much verve to suit her colonizationist husband Samuel. Simi-
larly, the temperance movement began educating women citizens long
before women voters existed.

Here is a paradox: While a few women were demanding entry into
man's world, many Americans shared a new consensus emphasizing the

MID-CENTURY TRANSITIONS 79

differences between men's and women's roles, a view to which Abbot
may have been responding.50 It is ironic but probably not coincidental
that the fifties should hold side by side the expansion of women's op-
portunities and the early- Victorian retreat back into the home. While
the first half of the nineteenth century saw an absolute increase in
women's political and economic activities outside the home, they lost
real power relative to men. This was a time of dramatic expansion of
manhood suffrage, and a girl's chance to work in a mill for low wages
was small compensation for woman's loss of responsibility for basic
production. New England had completed the "transition from mother
and daughter power to water and steam power," said Horace Bushnell
in 1 85 1.51 Men wanted— and took— the new supervisory and profession-
al jobs. Many of the stronger sex panicked on hearing the suf-
fragist rhetoric; it was much to their interest to put women back in
their places. Too, women themselves often feared the clamor of the
marketplace or the hustings as much as men feared their competition
within them, especially as the end of the decade added economic panic
to wrenching political cleavages. Better (thought many) to accept the
power trade-off implied by Horace Bushnell in his popular book Chris-
tian Nurture*2 as wife and mother of immortal souls, woman must be
supreme in the home while man remains supreme in the world at large.
A "cult of true womanhood" had gradually evolved between 1820 and
i860, as historian Barbara Welter asserts. Man, the "busy builder/'
"occasionally felt some guilt that he had turned this new land, this
temple of the chosen people, into one vast counting-house. But he
could salve his conscience by reflecting that he had left behind a
hostage, not only to fortune, but to all the values which he held so
dear and treated so lightly. Woman . . . was the hostage in the home."53
Within that home, one German visitor observed, "Woman is the center
and the lawgiver, and the American man loves it so."54 According to
another, woman's status in society was certified by men's "limitless re-
spect [for] and boundless submission" to "The Ladies!"55 Thus in the
1820's Catharine Beecher had stood for woman's right to an education
equaling that of her brothers, while in the fifties Miss Beecher more
often exalted "Woman's Profession" as the manager of family and
household. Even more than her sister Harriet— who at least gave lip
service to woman suffrage— Miss Beecher had shied from the logic
which asserted that women's proven ability to pursue equal education
entitled her to equal political rights; instead she urged her contempo-
raries toward acceptance of a legally subordinate role. Women's self-
sacrifice would help to create a new national ethic to balance the
rampant self-seeking that characterized men's affairs.56

80 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

Whatever Miss Hasseltine's views on sexual equality, her successors fell
in line with Victorian convention. The 1857 catalogue pledged Abbot
"not only to develop and invigorate the intellectual growth, but also to
refine and soften the manners, cultivate the moral affections, and mould
into symmetrical proportions the entire character." The Commence-
ment speaker of 1858 chose "Women's Rights" as his topic, and warned
the Abbot students not to assert them: "Every female of delicacy must
revolt at finding herself in contaminating contact with the influences
of the polls," lest she "be placed in conflict and on a level with every
blackguard."57 The queenly Maria Browne advised her graduating
Seniors to welcome the difference between their own futures and the
"active life" open to male graduates of "classic halls." From men's
"grand activities divine Wisdom has excluded you . . . The miserable
contest upon equality of power and place is vain, and idle, and pre-
posterous. God has written the answer to the question with his own
finger upon the very constitution of woman." She is not "an indepen-
dence," but "a co-operating power."58 For the time being, the cult of
true womanhood had won out.

Such sentiments came naturally to Miss Browne, who had been
teaching belles lettres59 to young ladies in Virginia when she was
called to Abbot for the 1856-57 school year. Her successor Emma
Taylor did nothing to challenge them. "Lovely in character, with the
culture that comes from travel, she was the material of which noble,
true, forgiving friends are made," wrote Elizabeth Emerson, '56, who
had needed forgiving friends as a novice teacher under Miss Taylor.
Miss Taylor specialized in women's specialties. She organized the study
of art by using photographs she had brought back from Europe; she
further enriched the literature offerings. And as she was later to record,
just before she left Abbot to return to Adams Academy, "We were
blessed with a revival of religion, and quite a number became Chris-
tians ... A citizen remarked of one of the converts that he would
know by her walk on the streets that a change had taken place."60 The
revival spirit might be waning among Congregationalists and Presby-
terians elsewhere; not so on Andover Hill.

The McKeens Arrive

Abbot Academy was flourishing, but the Trustees were having no
better luck holding the female principals of the fifties than they had
the male ones of the thirties. By 1859, the Board was determined to
find a committed woman who would not marry, like Miss Hasseltine,

MID-CENTURY TRANSITIONS 8l

or leave for a more comfortable position, like the misses Browne and
Taylor. To their surprise and satisfaction, they finally found not one
such person, but two. Philena and Phebe McKeen came to Abbot
as Principal and Assistant Principal from Western Female Seminary in
Oxford, Ohio, where they had been teaching together since that insti-
tuition had been founded "upon the Holyoke Plan" in 1855.61

Given their ages— thirty-seven and twenty-eight— one might suppose
that Philena and Phebe McKeen had long ago left behind their orig-
inal home in Bradford, Vermont; both women had been teaching in
schools and boarding seminaries from the age of sixteen. But ages de-
ceive. Throughout their lives, the sisters carried within them memories
of their home life and powerful images of the ideal family that shaped
their work at Abbot. In their hands, the "school-home" became also
the "family," an ever-larger company whose values mirrored those in-
stilled in these two, the fourth and the youngest of seven children, by
their parents and by the circumstances of the simple farming com-
munity in which they grew up. Indeed, Philena had never attended a
formal school: her minister father had taught her himself, consciously
turning every conversation into a lesson. A benevolent authoritarian,
Silas McKeen "never allowed an ungrammatical expression to escape
correction."62 Furthermore, he urged his children always to put their
imaginations into words, himself delighting in speaking to trees and
stones, each according to its special character, when he took his
daughters on long drives around his parish. Any child might be com-
manded at dinner time to "address a table," or "address a vine."63 He
took personal responsibility for each child's religious conversion; he
taught his older daughters to read the New Testament in the original
Greek at a time when Greek was considered impossibly difficult for
any girl to learn. To Abbot, Philena and Phebe brought the unques-
tioned assumption that "beyond learning was character, that religion
was indeed the chief end and aim of life," and that all students and
teachers should rejoice in the opportunity to serve others.64

Above all, both sisters learned from their parents to educate them-
selves. To them, teaching and learning were companion processes.
Phebe's three-year tenure as instructor at Mt. Holyoke was especially
stimulating to her. Philena liked to say that "Whatever I study I be-
come interested in,"65 and whatever interested her she taught to others.
Each summer vacation from Abbot, Phebe would take up her writing,
and Philena would immerse herself in Bible study, or in the history of
art, bringing fresh ideas to her students in the fall. Philena was the
more serious of the two. "She was a wonderful listener," wrote one of
her young colleagues,66 with a "lucid and logical mind" which brooked

SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

$. "The binary star''1; Philena and Phebe McKeen, 1864.

no obstacles.67 As teacher, wrote a pupil and colleague, she "sought not
merely facts and dates, but required opinions . . . Before her clear-
sighted inspection, mere fluency disappeared."68 She brought a profu-
sion of visual materials to the classroom to illustrate her lectures, yet
she never said or did anything merely for effect. She was a practical
person, and deliberate show was wasteful.

Philena McKeen— always "Miss McKeen" to her students— was large-
framed, tireless, certain of her authority. Marion Park, who tagged
along as a child of eight or nine on carriage rides with her grand-
mother Park and Miss McKeen, remembered her size, and her fright-
ening way of asking small children questions to which she already
knew the answers. "Miss Phebe" was taller, slimmer, with quick black
eyes behind spectacles, eyes that missed nothing. She had a brilliant
mind, as well as a "mordant wit"69 ready to turn upon the student with
the shoddy answer. A sensitive, lively writer, her published novels and
stories reflect her joy in nature— a gift of her father and of long child-
hood rambles in the mountains near her home— and her complex per-
ceptions of other people.70 Theodora, a Home Story is partly about
her girlhood; it is an intricate novel that is constantly overflowing the

M ID-CENTURY TRANSITIONS 83

boundaries of conventional religious fiction. Abbot alumnae absorbed
Phebe's holy enthusiasm for the "sparkling snow" and the "mellow,
fragrant" summer "because in the excellence of your wisdom you
made us go out to look at these things every single day of our lives."71
They remembered her extraordinary skill in conversation and her
teaching of Chaucer and Horace. Through her encouragement, her
students came to feel "that they too were worthy to read Milton and
Wordsworth."72 Her greatest power as a teacher seems to have been
her open love for and interest in every one of her girls. The older ones
were as sisters, the younger as daughters.

Philena McKeen drew for herself on Phebe's love. Clearly they were
to each other much of what husband and wife can become; each had
also that rich comfortableness in the other's company that only siblings
can share. They were often referred to as "the Principals" of Abbot
Academy73 or, as Professor Park called them, Abbot's "binary star."74

One of the first things the Trustees said to Miss McKeen was that
"she must be content with what she had," recalled Marion Park. "But
she was never content for a single moment, and from her discontent
rose the Academy itself."75 Smith Hall might be adequate for now, but
the worn Academy building, its walls smoked gray by many whale-oil
lamps and nearly bare of pictures or other ornament, the tiny shelf of
books that was Abbot's entire library (a pitiful contrast to Bradford's
1500 volumes), the empty equipment closets— all cried out for im-
provement. Miss McKeen had a bit of the hustler in her: if this was to
be her home, she would fix it up in a manner that befitted her station,
no matter how low her salary at first. As she wrote much later, "We
began to devise, as women will."76

The Principal ordered that all waste paper be saved and sold to buy
framed pictures for the classrooms. She and her teachers mounted a
series of lectures and entertainments, for which admission was charged.
One was a cantata, "The Haymakers," the parts sung and acted by
Abbot girls and theological students who raked real hay in a perfor-
mance so near to a stage play that one Seminary professor took his
daughter and walked out in disdain. Another was a charades party
with both Phillips boys and theologues as guests. (The theologues
played crows in one skit, flapping their umbrella wings.)77 For a good
cause, Hilltop males were now welcome at Abbot once more, and thus
Miss McKeen found funds for carpets and for classroom whitewashing.
When she surveyed the motley drawerful of Smith Hall spoons— a few
silver teaspoons left behind by old scholars, plus a ghastly matched
set of cheap alloy dessert spoons provided by the Trustees— she invited
the Board to tea. The dessert spoons had an annoying tendency to up-

84 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

set the teacups, but Miss McKeen wiped up efficiently and kept the
conversation going; shortly afterward, Trustee George Davis sent a set
of seven dozen monogrammed silver spoons to Abbot Academy for
the use of the Smith Hall family.

In spite of her energy as collector of goods, Miss McKeen probably
had no more material pretensions than anyone else in Victorian Amer-
ica. Abbot's setting was in many ways congenial to simple tastes. The
sisters' small-town background made them deeply suspicious of city
life with its "mad scramble for money and place . . . wretchedness and
luxury mocking each other," as Miss Phebe wrote in Theodora.78
"There are no 'servants' in Vermont,"79— and though there was abun-
dance of Protestant pride at Abbot, there would also be conscious ef-
fort to minimize class snobbishness. To Miss Phebe (or at least to
Theodora's favorite uncle), "the most hopeless sort of folks are those
regular society people, who are all run in one mould."80 Much evi-
dence suggests, however, that Miss McKeen took seriously the Puritan
equation of wealth and virtue: powered by her desire to match Ab-
bot's physical setting with its educational worth, she would lead the
school through an expansion of buildings, grounds, and teaching re-
sources that was to have dramatic consequences for Abbot's own place
in the educational world.

Civil War

Within a year of the McKeens' arrival in 1859 Abbot was immersed in
the general excitement over the presidential election. Women might
not vote, but the whole Abbot community joined in celebrating
Lincoln's victory. Andover had passed from Whig loyalty through
Know-Nothing insanity in 1854 to solid Republicanism. The theologues
purchased 1200 candles to "illuminate" on the night of November 7,
and Smith Hall residents answered with candles in each of their win-
dows. Hannibal Hamlin's vice-presidential election meant as much as
Lincoln's to Abbot, since Hamlin was the brother of Cyrus and the
uncle of all the Abbot Hamlins.

The McKeens' childhood home had been a station on the Under-
ground Railroad. Miss Phebe especially admired the militants' courage
and decisiveness. When the Civil War began, Abbot swung enthusias-
tically behind the Northern cause. Students spent all of Wednesday
and Saturday afternoons "working for soldiers."81 They sewed uni-
forms for Phillips Academy's Ellsworth Guards, rolled bandages and
knitted socks for soldiers, and sent comfort bags to border state hospi-

MID-CENTURY TRANSITIONS

6. Smith Hall ""celebrating the surrender of Jefferson Davis" according to
the penciled legend: the students in their gym suits. 1864.

tals accompanied by encouraging notes, to which they signed fictitious
names, in obedience to their teachers. "Carrie Felton," probably Caro-
line Jackson, received thanks from a wounded soldier in Washington,
D.C., who finished his letter by writing, "A man must be a good sol-
dier when sustained by smiles and encouraging deeds of fair young
ladies whose hands can knit . . . such comforts . . . for the rude rough
man of war."82

The war seemed to underline the differences between man as activist
and woman as the moral power back home. As Abbot's major Semi-
centennial speaker Richard S. Storrs, D.D., was to say: "It was that
conscience in the American woman, sending out half a million of men,
its instruments and ministers, to the bloody field, which finally . . .
swept from existence that detestable system [of slavery]."83 Theodora
tells one of her soldier-suitors:

"I want you to feel you are one of the champions of a
Government as strong as it is free, which will bless the nation
years after these armies are all dead."

"Perhaps I might [he replies 1 if I could always kindle my
enthusiasm at those beautiful eyes."84

But contradictory trends again appear. The war also opened a mul-
titude of chances for women to do "man's work," whether in the
hayfields, the offices, or the hospitals. Harriet Beecher Stowe was
certain that the end of slavery would allow the nation to turn its at-
tention to women's rights and needs, "to purge out" aristocratic and

86 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

"Old World" ideas.85 Though one can find no talk of women's rights
among Abbot students, they gladly put up with shortages and extra
work on the upkeep of buildings and grounds. Certainly the Academy
shared in the elation of a job well done at the war's end. The whole
population of Smith Hall students climbed onto the roof dressed in
their gym suits and kicked their heels, through their gymnastic exercises,
the closest thing to a dance ever allowed in those days. (They displaced
so many tiles that the next rain brought floods into the third-floor
rooms.) On April 15, 1865, however, all the teachers arrived at morning
prayers in tears. Miss McKeen could not read the news of Lincoln's
assassination; Miss Phebe barely managed it. An alumna remembered the
collective grief: "Down went one head after another on the desk in
front, and the sobbing continued until we were dismissed."86

Thus ended the elation for Abbot as for all of Republican Andover;
but the long-term effects of the war years remained. The Academy had
prospered. In spite of raised yearly charges— now $251.25, partly a
response to wartime inflation— the halls were overfull; many an Abbot
father was making tuition payments out of the high price of apples,87
or by supplying the endless requirements of the Grand Army. In 1865
Trustee Davis purchased the Farwell house and land just north of
Academy Hall for $4500 and donated it to the school, protesting the
name his colleagues gave the new boarding house: "Davis Hall." He
then lent the Trustees funds enough to buy "South Hall" next door.
The next year, Smith Hall was enlarged and provided with bathrooms.
For the first time the Academy was reaping steady profits, most of
which were used to enlarge and landscape the grounds. The McKeens
had early taken over from the Trustees the receiving and screening of
applications. Now an admissions examination was instituted; for a dec-
ade afterward, enrollment in the school ranged between no and 181
pupils, and boarding applicants were often turned away.

Well might the McKeen sisters be pleased. The students had tried
them— both were "studied day by day," one wrote a friend in 1859—
and, on the whole, approved them. "We have learned to love our new
teachers dearly, but we think some of the new rules monstrousP Still,
the "universal verdict" was that they "were true, consistent and de-
voted."88 Miss McKeen chatted contentedly of her daily concerns in
a letter to one of her relatives in 1864: "The school has been full and
pleasant this year. We mourn the loss of the senior class . . . Katie
Johnson is with us this term and is doing very well. She is a good
scholar, and patient & cheerful & beloved. I wish she might become a
Christian." Abbot had successfully negotiated its bumpy adolescence,
and entered into its Golden Age.

MID-CENTURY TRANSITIONS

7. Philena McKeen with her first Senior Class (i860) and the Class of 186 1

8. A boarding school. The students'' entrance to the Academy building
(later Abbot Hall) faced Smith Hall for thirty-five years, ignoring
School Street.

Abbot in the Golden Age

There were giants in those days
Anna L. Dawes, 192 1

By the mid 1860's the McKeen sisters were well settled at Abbot. They
were strong-willed, yet ideologically moderate; they juggled nicely the
often contradictory interests of their expanding constituency. They
wove new ties with the prosperous Andover community, and brought
Old Scholars (the "Dear Old Girls") back into the Family. Almost
immediately they reestablished some of the Hill connections that Miss
Hasseltine had broken. Happy in the memory of their minister father
and brother, they were more fond than wary of men— the right sort of
men. Nor did Philena McKeen scorn town for gown, as Farwell seems
to have done. She did all she could to involve Abbot in the churches,
clubs, and entertainments of Andover. No flaming reformers, both
McKeens believed the world could best be saved "man by man."1
Abbot's growth during the McKeen era would be woman by woman,
gradual but enduring. By the time the McKeen era ended in 1892,
the basic pattern the twentieth-century school would follow had been
well laid down.

Offerings

Abbot's formal curriculum looks much the same during the McKeens'
tenure as it did in the i85o's. A few subjects were added as time went
on, but one can find little sign of coherent academic planning. The
Course of Studies conformed to teachers' particular interests or skills.
Philena McKeen was fascinated by the history of the early Christian
Church, so she made it a staple of the Senior year. History of Art
entered the Senior curriculum by the same route. Yet Abbot did not
entirely give in to the usual Victorian division of labor, whereby men
were the serious artists and women studied all their works,2 for studio
art became a favorite course when the exacting Emily Means began
coming every Saturday to teach it.

ABBOTINTHEGOLDENAGE 89

Some themes recurred under new headings: the concerns of Psy-
chology, added to the Senior course in 1876, were little different from
those which Abbot women studied in their "Moral and Mental Phi-
losophy" classes of the thirties and forties. Wayland had been dropped,
as had many of the early textbooks, but teachers like Elizabeth Storrs
Mead continued to ask Wayland's questions: "What is knowing?"
"What is seeing?" "How does the infant develop?" "How does the
soul know its own states?"3 English reading lists were conservative.
While Emily Dickinson was reading Emerson and Thoreau at her Am-
herst retreat and expressing her release from the old formalism in her
poetry, Abbot girls stayed safe with Milton and Tennyson.4 One
Abbot student of 1861 copied some of Margaret Fuller's Woman in
the Nineteenth Century into her journal, but there is no evidence that
such radical readings were ever assigned by Abbot teachers. The Mc-
Keen sisters' History of the English Language,5 first offered as an alter-
native to the Senior Trigonometry requirement, was so often chosen
that Trigonometry was eventually dropped. All surviving student com-
position books suggest that standards for writing were high. One
alumna, responding to Phebe McKeen's request for alumnae reminis-
cences, tells us how well the teaching stuck.

I feel a good many qualms about writing to you, remembering so
distinctly as I do all the personal remarks that used to be in my
compositions. I don't believe you will have time to correct this
and send it back, but if you do I will copy it in my best hand
even if it takes me four hours . . .

Yours with ever so much love to both you and your sister,

Sarah Maria Barrows Dummer, '67
Her Mark X6

Science laboratory facilities were pathetic, however. It took the enthu-
siasm of Wellesley graduate Isabella French to make physics and chem-
istry finally worth while in the 1880's, and to prepare for Katherine
Kelsey's and Alice Hamlin's wider offerings and more extensive shar-
ing of Phillips Academy science equipment later on.

Abbot's modern language program was one exception to this rather
haphazard evolution of curriculum. Though it is doubtful that either
of the McKeens spoke French or German themselves, they carefully
fostered the study of both languages. They concentrated on improv-
ing offerings in these two instead of reviving the showy smatterings of
Abbot's earlier years, when Italian and Spanish instruction was adver-
tised along with French, German, Latin, and Greek.7 They introduced
a systematic oral language program that put Abbot's language training

90 SOLID ACQUIRKMENTS, 1852-1892

on a par with Harvard's elective French and German courses and far
outdistanced Phillips Academy, which would offer no modern lan-
guage at all until the mid 1870's, when a single year of elementary
French or German was added to the Classical Department curriculum.
This seems surprising until one realizes that Abbot in the early Mc-
Keen era served much the same age group as did Harvard (about fif-
teen to twenty-two), while the Phillips Classics Department was a col-
lege preparatory school.8 Miss McKeen early encouraged Caroline
Hamlin, '66, Henrietta Jackson's daughter and a Senior so proficient in
French as to be listed with the faculty, to head a French-speaking table
in Smith Hall. After 1869 French students lived and ate together in
Davis Hall, speaking French for all but two hours of their out-of-class
day under the care of the French teacher, who (said Phebe McKeen)
gave them "admirable instruction along with that home influence that
is more to them than any gift of tongues."9 Separate diplomas for the
English, French, Latin, and German courses were given until 1876,
when— because too many students were avoiding it— language study be-
came required of all students, as it had been for several years at Brad-
ford. By that time German had become a fairly popular subject, and a
German House in South Hall soon opened. South Hall's Vassar-trained
preceptresses first felt obliged to expurgate most of the German texts,
but their native German successors were more daring;10 Frau Natalie
Schiefferdecker, the most skillful and interesting of these, would stay
a full twenty-one years. Even Miss McKeen's antipathy to theater was
softened by educational logic when language students asked permis-
sion to put on German and French plays. Both were enthusiastically
presented from the early eighties on, often with elaborate costumes and
scenery.11 The audience inevitably included uthe elite of this old liter-
ary town," said the Andover Townsman,12 as well as crowds of Abbot,
Phillips, and Theological Seminary students.

As with many of Miss McKeen's projects, her desire for rigorous lan-
guage teaching was strengthened by her attentiveness to the fashions
of the times. The McKeens knew that fluency in French or German
was the mark of a sophisticated lady; this knowledge was motive
enough to bring Abbot's language program in line with those in the
best schools and colleges for young women. Meanwhile, serious mod-
ern language study was considered frippery for busy young men. M.
Carey Thomas, bemoaning the provincial character of her native Balti-
more long before she left it to become Bryn Mawr's first dean,
complained that "French and Germans were only teachers in girls'
schools."13 Not until the twentieth century did boys' schools catch up
in this area. Comparisons over time are complex, because nineteenth-

ABBOT IN THE GOLDEN AGE

g. German Play in the Chapel, 1892: Die Huldigung der Kunste (Schiller).

century students scanned their French texts clause by clause much as
they did their Latin or Greek; thus they could work their way through
literature as difficult as that now read in the most advanced (college
level) Phillips Academy courses. There seems no doubt, however, that
the McKeens' oral language program was first rate for its time and
would be first rate now.14

Throughout the third quarter of the nineteenth century, in fact, the
"Fern Sem" down the Hill was offering a richer academic experience
than the renowned prep school on the Hilltop. In a sense, it was fortu-
nate that the majority of America still refused to take women's edu-
cation seriously: Abbot students were free of that thralldom to the
ancient college preparatory tradition which Phillips boys suffered
under Principals Adams and Taylor. It was only when Phillips gradu-
ates found their "Latin, Greek and a smattering of Mathematics"15
inadequate for entrance to Harvard and other of the more progressive
colleges that Uncle Sam Taylor began to open the door for Principal
Cecil Bancroft's reform.16 After Bancroft took over in 1873, Phillips'
curriculum swiftly improved. Abbot grew as proud of its neighboring
Academy as it was of the Theological Seminary, and the two schools
invited each other's students to lectures, concerts, religious services and

92 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

other special occasions throughout the Bancroft era. In Professor Wes-
ley Churchill's often quoted phrase, this was "the trinity of Andover
schools" whose influence on each other— subtle though it was— consti-
tuted a fact of life on the Hill.

Increasingly, Abbot became home to a stable corps of teachers, many
of whom stayed ten years or longer. Every year they were joined by
younger women, often favored recent graduates who would shine for
a year or two then marry, or by ambitious career teachers who would
soon leave for higher-paid posts. One of these was Mrs. Elizabeth
Mead, Abbot 1883-89, and president of Mt. Holyoke College 1889-
1900, years that spanned the Seminary's transition to college status.
Male professors from the Theological Seminary or from the New
England men's colleges would periodically offer a course of lectures in
subjects such as astronomy or ethics.

The McKeens' most enduring colleague was Professor Samuel Morse
Downs, who came to teach music the year after their arrival and taught
up to 71 pupils each year (with an average of about 40) in piano,
voice, and theory until 1907. Students were devoted to this small, quick
man whose "humor and courtesy" were "his only weapons of disci-
pline."17 His tenure coincided with the great age of American concert-
going, a time when the New York Festival of Classical Music with its
320 piece orchestra and chorus of 3500 could attract 18,000 listeners
two years in a row (1881 and '82). Boston area audiences were smaller
but no less discerning. An enthusiastic performer and composer also,
Downs divided his time after 1868 between Abbot, Bradford, and Bos-
ton's Old South Church, where he served as organist. In 1876, Downs
set up an Andover recital series of three concerts a year at his own
financial risk— and sometimes loss. Abbot students could hear groups
such as the Kniesel String Quartet and the Boston Symphony Wood-
wind Choir at one third the price they would have paid for tickets to
similar programs in Boston. When Downs retired, no one was surprised
that two teachers had to be hired to take his place.

Of course, Downs's success soon meant that Abbot must have more
pianos. By 1892 there were twelve, including two grand pianos. His-
torians maintain that the nineteenth-century family changed from a
producing unit to a consuming unit, with profound consequences for
family relationships. During the McKeen era the Abbot Family became
consumer extraordinaire. Botany required specimens: Miss McKeen,
Collector, encouraged the building of a herbarium, into which teachers
packed everything from dried wildflowers to a rare collection of Jap-
anese ferns from Kyoto. By 1880 the zoological cabinet contained
(among hundreds of other things) 81 Indian bird skins, and a number

ABBOTINTHEGOLDENAGE 93

of bright-hued African birds sent by a missionary father in lieu of his
daughter's tuition. A fine collection of shells bought at bargain price
from a young missionary meant that there must be a Conchology
course. Grandest of all was Abbot's telescope and observatory, a re-
source almost unique in schools for young women when it was first
acquired in 1875, anc^ one ^ne enough to be used by William M. Reed
of the Harvard Observatory for several months of astronomical ob-
servations in photometry.

How did Abbot gather all these goods? The telescope was the result
of a $1300 drive led by Latin- Astronomy teacher Mary Belcher among
the students, and later among the Trustees. (A student-teacher of gym-
nastics donated her entire $85.00 salary.) But Miss McKeen herself
was the most gifted of gift-seekers. An example: she had long yearned
to have a life-sized papier-mache model of a woman, with detachable
limbs and organs, to supplement the Physiology class's ancient skele-
ton.18 She mentioned this wish every time she dared, pointedly remind-
ing the Trustees that Bradford's Board "had lately presented their
school with just such a model,"19 and as a last resort used the fiftieth
anniversary History of Abbot Academy to declare the need in print.
Whether in shame or in amusement— we can't know— the Trustees fi-
nally ordered the model from Paris for $600.00.

Professor Park connived with Miss McKeen to gain one of her most
triumphant acquisitions. In 1877, she mentioned to him the need for a
statue to decorate the teachers' platform in the Academy Hall. Park
found a beautiful marble pedestal in Boston, and persuaded Trustee
George Ripley to donate it. "A pedestal suggests a statue," observed
Miss McKeen,20 and of course no one could disagree. The McKeens
asked Miss Emily Means, Abbot painting teacher on vacation in Paris,
to find a statue suitable both as decoration and as illustration for Miss
McKeen's ever-expanding Art History course. That year the students
sold 5of tickets to the Draper Reading exercises, creating as much
suspense as they could about the great unveiling. By the time the
bronze copy of Michelangelo's Lorenzo of Urbino had been revealed
to a packed audience, its whole cost ($240 in gold) had been returned
to the school.

Abbot had always promised order, but the McKeen sisters delivered
it in spades. They loved schedules. Up at 6:00, breakfast at 6:30, clean
your room— and perhaps a teacher's parlor as well. Though four Irish
maids also helped out at $1.98 a week, the McKeens considered house-
work part of education. As Lucy Larcom put it in her Neiv England
Girlhood, "changes of fortune come so abruptly that the millionaire's
daughter of to-day may be glad to earn her living by sewing or sweep-

94 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

ing to-morrow."21 Miss McKeen might ask a girl to help her change
guest beds, questioning her the while on Butler's Analogy. Between
8:00 and 9:00 a.m. older students often climbed the Hill for a Geology
lecture while younger ones did their daily calisthenics, but all must be
on hand for the Devotions that formally opened the school day. Be-
fore mid-day dinner everyone wore gym suits with pantaloons, and
skirts ten inches from the ground. Though bloomers were taboo at
Abbot (one critic had termed them "one of the many manifestations of
that wild spirit of socialism and agrarian radicalism which is ... so rife
in our land"),22 the gym suits were a crucial concession to comfort
where the afternoon alternative was whalebone corsets and hems be-
low the ankles. "I don't think I shall ever adopt bloomers," wrote an
alumna of 1871, "but if anything could bring me to it, it would be the
remembrance of how lightfooted and lighthearted I used to feel flitting
about mornings in my gymnastic suit. I keep it still, and use it for a
bathing dress."23

Recitations continued till 3:30, then came Recreation Hours, with
time for walking in pairs, studying, mending, croquet, or (after 1886)
tennis. Supper followed; the evening was an alternation of study hours,
"half-hours" for individual meditation (roommates took these in turns
so each girl could be alone once a day), and "quarters" for room-to-
room visiting. Evening Devotions might mean anything from a hymn
sing to a prayerful scolding. Bed at 10:00.

Like many other schools, Abbot had its Saturday "composition day,"
dreaded by some as "the hobgoblin that stares us in the face" each
week,24 welcomed by others as a chance to write their minds on sub-
jects like "Castles in the Air," "Kissing," or "Is it Best for a Lady with-
out Superior Musical Talents to Study Music?"25 Every student came
to Hall, heard other students present the week's news or read an in-
spiring selection, and took notes while a teacher or outside lecturer
presented a subject worthy of an hour essay. Tuesday evening one
could visit other dormitories. Wednesday was theoretically Recreation
Day, free for unsupervised walks and chaperoned trips out of town. It
was also, however, a rug-beating, mattress-turning clean-up day. One
corridor teacher inspected with such vehemence that students would
warn each other of her coming by a special five-fingered signal tap
on the door, giving the inmate time to arrange bureau drawers and
hide forbidden food.

After 1873 all this was commanded by electric bells, the McKeens'
pride and the students' bane. Mary Delight Twichell vented her feel-
ings in a five- verse poem, "The Bells." Verse 4:

ABBOT IN THE GOLDEN AGE

10. The first of seven student sketches of life at Abbot, six by Harriet
Chapell and one by Kate C. Geer. The one above is Harriet's sketch of
herself on clean-up, from her Journal, 2$ February 1874. The other five
sketches (Nos. 11-15) are between pages 96-108, below.

Hear the sharp stroke of the bell, —
The "tardy" bell!
What a hurrying of footsteps does its sound foretell!
What a scamper o'er the floors;
What a banging of the doors;
What a sighing o'er their fate,
By those who are too late!
Oh sudden tardy bell!
Oh cruel tardy bell!
Oh, bell, bell, bell, bell,
bell, bell, bell!
Why so quick with your click, tardy bell?26

Many of Abbot's offerings were not strictly scheduled. Periodically,
Mr. Downs's students presented their own musicales to the community.
A Townsman reporter of 1891 described "spirited and noble" rendi-
tions of difficult music.27 Favorites were Schubert symphonies arranged
for eight hands, and part songs sung by the choir or (after 1887) the
Fidelio Society. Romantic music dominated both student and profes-

SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

sional recitals— a professional whistler specialized in Verdi opera arias—
but on one occasion, Mr. Downs presented an extraordinary program
in the Town Hall called "Precursors of the Piano," including solos and
trio sonatas from J. S. Bach through Mozart and Beethoven to Paga-
nini, played by Mr. M. Steinert and others on the Steinert collection: a
clavichord, a 1630 spinet, a 1755 harpsichord, a bowed clavier, a ham-
merclavier, a Vertical Grand piano of 1779, an 1815 pianoforte, and
Abbot's contemporary Steinway Concert Grand.

Abbot's most exciting home-grown event was always the Draper
Reading, begun in 1868 with a thirty dollar donation by Irene Rowley
Draper, '43, a sum that was later increased to $40 each year. It started
as an elocution contest similar to the Prize Readings Mr. Warren
Draper had initiated at Phillips Academy, but the McKeen sisters and
Professor Wesley Churchill, Abbot's part-time elocution teacher, soon
decided there should be less competition and more instruction. After
this, sixteen or twenty readers were elected by the students for a run-
off reading, and half of them were chosen by both students and teach-
ers to receive private teaching from Seminary Professor Churchill in
preparation for the final Reading. The Draper Readings usually took
place at graduation ("Anniversary") time— grand occasions followed
always by a party for the readers and the Seniors in the Churchills'
home. Thus a close association with Professor Churchill was the real
prize. So widely known was Churchill's skill that Matthew Arnold
came to him for coaching before making a speaking tour of the United

mf ts

&*f fex>&Ls ^-^oO &&»-&<-*.

' r

11. Chapell Sketch: A Draper Reader with "Miss Phebe and teachers "Miss
McKeen and Professor Churchill watching, 27 May 1974.

ABBOTINTHEGOLDENAGE 97

States. A warm-hearted, urbane man, a lover of language whether in
the Bible or elsewhere, he encouraged Abbot students to select from
a wide— if safe— variety of readings. (A letter to the Andover Adver-
tiser of 23 February 1880 described a course of four lectures Churchill
gave in Baltimore, saying that "some Baltimorians seem dazed to find
so much fun coming out of staid New England.") In time Churchill
became Trustee as well as valued friend of Abbot.

Debates and tableaux also had their places in the occasional enter-
tainments given by student literary societies, or at the Anniversary it-
self, where in 1875 tne Seniors contended over the question whether
the sixteenth or the nineteenth century had contributed most to world
civilization. Gradually, a carefully rehearsed Exhibition took the place
of Abbot's summer oral examinations. After 1883 all serious academic
evaluation was done by teachers through written exams, and the Anni-
versary became Abbot's end-of-year celebration.

Visitors to Abbot or Andover were an important resource for both
students and teachers. Students would go to Town Hall "in a body" to
hear a comic lecture by John Gough or an exhortation on the "demon
of intemperance." (Miss McKeen, a fervent temperance advocate,
somehow arranged for the proceeds of this last to be donated to the
Abbot Art department.) They climbed to the Seminary for a lecture
on the relation of science to the Christian religion, or welcomed Pro-
fessor William W. Clapp to the Academy Hall for his winter series of
Shakespeare lectures, and were impressed by Clapp's "revelation of
Shylock in all his malice and cruelty as the natural outgrowth of years
of hatred and prejudice on the part of Christians."28 They were hosts
to Professor Charles A. Young of Princeton, who lived at Abbot for a
week in 1891 and gave interested girls an intensive course in Astrono-
my.29 They enjoyed frequent literary lectures by "Mrs. Professor
Downs" (Annie Sawyer Downs) with wondrous stereopticon views of
Southern English cathedrals and Lake District cottages; they heard
snowy-haired Bronson Alcott, "the venerable conversor of Concord,"
talk about his daughters.30 Especially, they were moved by Helen
Keller, who came at age 13 with her teacher for the first of several
overnight visits. Helen delighted in the vibrations she could feel from
the piano music played by her Senior hostesses, and in the shapes of
the art room's plaster cast collection, quite large by 1 890. Nero seemed
"Proud," she observed. "It is sorrow" she said, as she passed her hands
over Niobe's face. On hearing Helen's thank-you letter to the School,
one girl wept; another said, "Think of her being so grateful for what
she has, and see what a pig I am."31

Wednesday and Saturday afternoons were often used for special

98 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

trips to Boston's museums, to Concord with Annie Sawyer Downs,
who had grown up there with the Alcott children, to the ocean,
to Lawrence's Pacific Mills and its Cathedral, where— wrote Harriet
Chapell, '76— the confession boxes "looked like small barrooms to our
Protestant eyes." Harriet was "stirred way down deep" by a painting
in a Boston art gallery.32 The Cambridge Botanical Gardens made a
favorite destination, especially when a Harvard Professor of Botany
brought everyone to his house afterward for a talk about his own col-
lection. Several Physiology classes were invited to the lecture room of
a professor at the New England Female Medical College, where they
examined "preparations and models with the benefit of her instruc-
tions."33 One spring fifteen girls traveled by beachwagon to Dan vers
to visit the tomb of Rebecca Nourse, hanged witch (also progenitor of
two twentieth-century Abbot students), and to meet the poet Whit-
tier in his home.

Ordinarily only the wealthier students could take advantage of a
Boston Wagner festival or concert of Bach's Passion music, and theater
attendance was proscribed for everyone; but in 1890 Miss McKeen
unbent so much as to encourage the whole Senior class to attend Ham-
let, starring Edwin Booth. Their teacher had conducted an hour-long
"Hamlet Match" in Shakespeare class that week, reading first lines of
speeches to jog student recitations of the remaining lines, so they were
well prepared. It was a perfect day. The Phillips Glee Club sang all
the way in on the train; the play was relished as fully as were the ice
cream sodas afterward ("chocolate, of course"), and the girls returned
to a late tea that had been kept specially for them in Smith Hall.34

The town of Andover continued to be Abbot students' most im-
mediate off-campus resource. Teachers urged them to supplement the
small Abbot Library with books from the Theological Seminary col-
lection of 37,000 volumes, limited in scope though this was by the
strictures of the Calvinist Index Expurgatorius. Thus Abbot women
probably had access to more books than Princeton undergraduates of
the 1860's, whose 14,000 volume library was open exactly one hour
each week until 1868.35 After 1873 the E^s went often to the town's
Memorial Hall Library (with 7,000 volumes in 1880), to which Ab-
bot's public-spirited Trustee Peter Smith and his business partners had
given over $35,000. Andover's November Club for literary ladies met
in the Academy Hall, and Abbot students were regularly invited to
literary tableaux or charades in private homes and to conventions of
the American Missionary Society, the American Temperance Society,
and other Andover-based organizations. Far more than the other

ABBOTINTHEGOLDENAGE 99

schools on Andover Hill, wrote Susannah Jackson, Abbot made con-
stant use of the advantages offered by its home town.

The Community of Women

Abbot was no cloister then. It was a self-contained community of
women in many respects, however, with conscious and unconscious
borders which men might cross only upon invitation. The girls had
"the freedom of the streets and fields," as the McKeen sisters wrote,36
but their walks to Sunset Rock and their botanizing or nutting expedi-
tions on Indian Ridge were For Women Only. One can be sure this
rule was broken often enough by individuals (Abbot's most famous
sleigh ride had a Phillips boy along disguised as a girl).37 Still, it was
formally honored. Twenty-one nut-gatherers all dressed in gym suits
fled so fast when they spotted a theologue in the tree above them that
they never gathered a single chestnut, and lost their way in a swamp
in their rush to get back to Smith Hall.38

Abbot might be a Family, but women commanded it, keeping a use-
ful distance between themselves and the male Trustees or visiting teach-
ers. Particularly in New England, where women substantially outnum-
bered men, the unmarried teacher held an honorable role. Abbot's
women and girls could enjoy one another as persons without self-con-
sciousness or shame. One thinks of Victorian women as confined, and
so they were. They could not openly initiate friendship with boys or
men; they were expected to hide their interest in sex or to subsume it
within coquettish formulae, no matter how interested they really were.
Partly because of this relative isolation from men, however, loving,
lasting friendships between women could quietly thrive, modeled often
on the close mother-daughter or sister-sister relationships that existed
apart from men's affairs.39

Abbot's increasingly varied group of students offered a fair field
both for close and for casual friendships. Educational historian Patricia
Graham points out that this was an era when girls from upper-middle-
income families almost routinely spent a year or more in boarding
school.40 There was more money about for the education of fewer
children. The birth rate was falling steadily, especially in cities; by
the century's close, it would be 3.5 for each married woman, or just
half what it had been in 1 800.41 Even a short stay at Abbot was an im-
portant respite from domesticity for those who would marry at twenty-
two or twenty-three, the average age for marriage among women dur-

IOO SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, I 85 2- I 892

ing the last half of the century. True, Abbot could no longer draw
many students of small means, for tuition-boarding charges kept slow-
ly rising: they were never lowered after wartime inflation subsided;
they increased to $300 a year in 1876. Still, they remained lower than
Bradford's and Vassar's until 1890.42 Scholarship endowments (totaling
$6,000 in 1880 and $1 1,500 in 1890) made it possible to welcome a few
overseas missionaries' daughters and other desirable candidates for
whatever their parents could pay.

Andover was ideally situated between city and village to attract
students from both. Each decade more rising city businessmen, nostal-
gic about their rural childhoods and disturbed by the "overwhelming
dislocations of the giant cities"43 with their "frenzied commercial spirit
and . . . dazzling entertainments" sent Abbot their urban-raised daugh-
ters as though to free them from this "prime source of corrupting in-
fluences for the young."44 Yet the school did not suffer the fate of the
many small-town academies whose local constituencies were weaken-
ing or disappearing altogether. Once-proud Adams Academy just fif-
teen miles to the north was absorbed by the Derry public school sys-
tem soon after its fiftieth anniversary in 1872, partly because "many of
the old families which made Derry society famous had thinned out or
passed away."45 And Adams was only one of hundreds of dying acade-
mies. Meanwhile, Abbot's small Western contingent was growing along
with its urban one, the girls' parents undoubtedly aware that Boston
with its satellites had become unique for its "aristocratic culture" in a
nation where "distinction of manners and dress . . . dignity and repose"
had been replaced by a "bumptious restlessness, a straining for origi-
nality and individuality that exuded in a shoddy and meaningless gro-
tesque."46 Antoinette Louise Bancroft, '83, of Galesburg, Illinois, wrote
to her brother that "nearly half" of the students were from the West.
(This could only be accurate if Antoinette included western Massa-
chusetts and New York and Pennsylvania; only fourteen out of 115
girls came from Ohio, Illinois, or further west in 1882-83.) She could
"tell a Western girl" almost as soon as she saw her "by her dignity,"
while Eastern girls were "easy to get acquainted with," and "always
kissing each other." This Eastern sanctuary also had its boors, and An-
toinette said so in response to her brother's anxious warnings. "Do you
think I will be laughed at when there are girls around me who have to
be told that one should keep the mouth closed while eating?" she asked
her brother. "Now please don't tell me any more nonsense."47 So much
for his advice.

A few Southerners came, too. One of them, Harriet Elizabeth Gib-
son, wrote in 1879 that "a Southerner feels lonely here in New En-

ABBOT IN THE GOLDEN AGE IOI

gland, where she finds no friendly black faces ... no real plantation
'Ha! ha!' to disturb the busy buzz of New England air; no kind flat-
tering black auntie to attend to all her wants; no merry black uncle
to . . . interpret her dreams, and tell her fortune. Most of all she finds
no time for this dreaming. Everyone is in a hurry, and hurry is con-
tagious."48 Despite her complaints, Harriet Gibson stayed on, graduated
in 1 88 1, and accompanied her physician husband to Korea, where she
became the first woman missionary to that country. Not a single stu-
dent of recent immigrant stock can be found in the McKeens' Abbot
Academy, however. One graduate of 1887 felt she must explain to her
classmates that her great-grandfather was "an Irishman but a gentle-
man."49 The majority continued to come from New England in spite
of its growing numbers of public schools.50 "Our public schools give
us little real culture," an Abbot girl complained in 1884.51 Parents were
looking (one supposes) for smaller classes at a time when the ideal size
of a public school class was considered by the "experts" to be forty-
five or fifty students;52 they wanted their daughters to have special op-
portunities to learn a foreign language or a Christian's heritage, or, in
the case of the older students, a chance for a refined "higher educa-
tion" beyond public high school, with curriculum offerings similar to
those of most women's colleges before the founding of Bryn Mawr.53
One of an Abbot historian's most interesting and useful sources is
the journal of Harriet Chapell, '76, written from January 1874, the year
Harriet left her home in New London, Connecticut, through 18 No-
vember 1877, six weeks a^ter she married Frederick Newcomb. Spirited,
mischievous daughter of the vice-president of a New London Whaling
and Guano firm, she may have been sent to Abbot because she was
such a handful at home— at least her mother wrote her in April of her
first year a "dear, good letter," saying that "she thinks I have improved
a good deal."54 Whatever the reasons, we are lucky she came, and
luckier still that she left this 254-page illustrated record of a girl grow-
ing up in the community of women. She seldom mentions teachers or
lessons, though she spent much time in the painting studio and was
occasionally "taken by storm" by a visiting lecturer, such as Charles
Kingsley. When teachers do appear in Hattie's first-year record, they
are there to interfere with more important activities. Or they are mer-
cifully absent. "Miss McKeen was in Boston, so we had a jolly time at
our table."55 When she's home, "Philo" is always on the lookout. One
evening "in half-hour"— that is, during meditation time— "we were all
having a nice lively time in the music room, dancing— squarely— like
mad, when Miss McKeen opened the door and read us one little lec-
ture about the exercise— must be confined to the gym and the day time,

102

SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

etc. Louie Karr stood behind her as you see and made up all sorts of
faces and gestures. I do think she is just as jolly and splendid as she
can be, though I know she can be awfully cutting if she chooses.
Hattie Aiken too is full of the old cat if she wants to be. She looked
for all the world like Mr. Tyler this evening, as she was Helen Bart-
lett's gent (in the dancing). So we had a grand time all round."56

12. Chapell sketch: "Dancing squarely like mad" 7 April 1874.

Again, "Miss Palmer gave us all a little lecture at devotions tonight
about whistling . . . perfectly scathing— and you see everybody knew
who she meant . . . well, everybody thinks I am a reprobate, so I sup-
pose I am one, but . . . they can think what they like for all I care."57

Harriet's day is filled with conversations, walks downtown to buy
sweets, and parties to enjoy them (an eternal preoccupation of school-
girls, in spite of Miss McKeen's injunctions against "eatables" bought
in town or sent from home: "the effect is wholly evil"),58 throwing
snowballs, sliding in the trunk room, or sloshing through Andover's
famous spring mud— and dropping her hymnbook and stomping upon
it— on the way up the Hill to Professor Park's Sunday sermon.59

The Journal's major actors are Hattie's many girl-friends and her
few girl-enemies, richly described; the plots center on expeditions,
escapades,, and quarrels begun or made up. Tilly and Lizzie are her
first favorites, especially "dear little Lizzie" Abbott, who comes from
Andover but boards at the Academy. It is not in class, so far as Harriet
tells us, but with these friends that "lots of conversation on a number
of moral and metaphysical points" takes place. Harriet might make a
botch of the "topic" she has to give in "Hall," but she and Lizzie
"read considerable together," one sewing while the other reads aloud

ABBOT IN THE GOLDEN AGE

IO3

from the Pickwick Papers, or Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Prudence Pal-
frey. At supper table they take the parts of fictional characters (Hattie
is Prue) or after supper they give "a little musicale among them-
selves."60 Harriet begins her Abbot years in South Hall, rooming with
Mame Green "who is very lively and keeps us all in a roar most of the
time,"61 but by mid-winter, Hattie is "crazy to get over (to Smith
Hall) to live," where the "halls are full of girls and noise." Miss Mc-
Keen engineers the change, and she and Lizzie move into one of the
12' X 12' rooms together.

Lizzie is Hattie's "Darling girl,"62 a "motherless little soul . . . short
and fat, but not overgrown, with blue eyes and lovely golden hair"
which she lets fly every day but Sunday. Like nearly all Abbot board-
ers, the two girls shared a bed. Even before they roomed together,
they arranged with their teachers and with other girls to exchange
bedfellows, and "had a right warm, cosy time together."63 The re-
tiring bells meant practically nothing to friends determined to talk.
Often enough, Hattie, Tillie, Lizzie, and Mame spent much of the night
at it, on one occasion going back to bed just before breakfast to warm
each other up.

Lizzie proved to be "a perfect treasure of a roommate." The two
kept together all they could. They played ball, they collected wild-
flowers and copied epitaphs in the graveyard, they gave each other

13. Chapell sketch: Buying "comfits" downtown, 24 April 1874.

104

SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

UCc^i- PojJbJL:

"M&yUu^cUf ted*,

14. Geer sketch: Bedfellows, 1882, from Kate Geer's copybook.

their journals and letters to read. On a Sunday afternoon when there
was no church service, they "spent part of [their] time on the bed,
reading and snuggling up close to each other by turns."64

The physical closeness these two enjoyed in no way suggests any
serious or lasting homosexual interest. They had "endless things to talk
about" precisely because each one had "a somebody at home."65 Har-
riet often spent a happy Recreation Day walking in the woods with
her visiting Fred, then returned to her "cosy bed" and Lizzie at night.
When Lizzie did not come back in September, Harriet went through

ABBOT IN THE GOLDEN AGE IO5

a period of dreariness and longing; but by November she was making
new friends, and comforting herself with the thought that she and
Lizzie would always love one another, and would visit often in each
other's homes after they were married. Occasionally she went to Liz-
zie's house to enjoy some "real talk" and "real food," and have "a very
good time together, such as only girls can have."66

The second year, Hattie's Fred, a hometown boy several years older
than she, won her secret promise to marry him.67 Increasingly, her love
for Fred absorbed her feelings and "guided all [her] life."68 She began
to long for marriage, even though she felt "a kind of dread and regret
at leaving behind my happy girl life." As things turned out, she never
did leave behind her pleasure in other girls and women. A few weeks
after her marriage, she and Fred visited an old New London friend,
and while Fred talked with the husband, the two wives shared old and
new interests. When it was time to leave, Hattie wrote, "I could not
bear to go away from them, and Alice clung to me— she felt truly that
I understood her deep feeling as no one else save a woman could have
done."69 Harriet Chapell's daughter, Ruth Wetmore Newcomb, '10,
remembers her as the warmest of mothers and friends, strict enough
but "full of fun" to the end of her long life.70

Throughout Abbot's first half-century, one finds ample evidence of
friendships such as these between the girls who boarded at the Acade-
my. They were part of American life, open to discussion in print as
well as in private. A letter to the Yale Courant of 1873 reported that
"Vassar numbers her smashes by the score. [There are] bouquet-send-
ings interspersed with tinted notes, mysterious packages of 'Ridley
mixed candies,' locks of hair . . ."71 and M. Carey Thomas' mother
wrote her at Howland Institute, a Quaker boarding school, in response
to Carey's description of her most intense relationship: "I guess thy
feeling is quite natural. I used to have the same romantic love for my
friends. It is a real pleasure"72

Until educators and psychologists began to scrutinize these deep
same-sex friendships during the last quarter of the century, inspira-
tional tracts and religious fiction put them on holy ground. "Love is
with me a religion," wrote one young woman. Its nature precludes any
element that is "not absolutely pure and sacred." But this unfortunate
recorded her feelings too late in the century. Quoting her, psychologist
Havelock Ellis stated that such sentiments had come "under the ban
of society," numbered her "case #29," and wrote darkly of "sexual
inversion."73 The male psychologists' judgments would look like mere
Freudian prudery were not women beginning to make them too. A re-
search committee fielded by the Association of Collegiate Alumnae

Io6 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

(later the American Association of University Women) concluded that
"smashing" led to sleeplessness and emotional exhaustion; it advocated
expanded physical education programs to provide for "healthier" dis-
charge of physical and emotional energies.74 Thus toward the end of
the McKeen era there were a few Abbot adults who frowned on
friendships like Hattie's and Lizzie's, instead of smiling. Student letters,
journals, and the messages scrawled on yearbooks all suggest that the
friendships continued anyway. It took years for student realities to
catch up with the new adult anxieties.

Harriet Chapell might seldom mention them, but the resident teach-
ers were essential members of this community of women, drawing
strength from it as they gave themselves to it. They had not come to
Abbot solely to earn money. A few had incomes of their own, if elabo-
rate summer travel is any indicator of wealth. Occasionally one would
leave to teach in public school, where salaries were higher, or another
would importune the Trustees for a raise, as French teacher Maria
Stockbridge Merrill did in 1881: "I have felt this year that I can not
come back for the salary I am receiving now— $400— ,"75 What Abbot
did provide was a living, a place of dignity for an unmarried woman in
a large, bustling Family.

Under the no-nonsense McKeens, Abbot had its rules to regulate the
Family's life— a long list not shortened until late in the McKeen era.
Abbot was similar in this respect to the other female institutions of the
day, and more liberal than some. Mary Sharp College in Tennessee
and Wesleyan Female College in Cincinnati also forbade walking out
alone or using nicknames; but Abbot published no injunctions against
making purchases without permission as these colleges did, nor did it
share Elmira College's prohibitions against "light and trifling conversa-
tions," or "meeting in companies in each others' rooms for purposes of
festivity."76 Abbot Academy's aim continued to be "self-regulation,"
just as it had been in earlier decades. One means toward this goal was
"self -reporting," a much-vaunted honor system which asked the peni-
tent at each confession to consider whether her offense was "avoid-
able or unavoidable?" Supposed to preserve trust between students
and teachers, self-reporting actually seems to have created more guilt
and teacher-avoidance than anything else. Again and again one reads
the Abbot girl's lament: "You can't have any fun here, for if you do,
you have to go and report on yourselves."77 Naturally, a Stowe daugh-
ter would be the first to object. "Miss Phebe says it makes us truthful"
to give our self-reports every night, wrote one student. "Miss Georgie
Stowe expressed her mind quite freely," saying the reports were not

ABBOT IN THE GOLDEN AGE 107

much use, "probably because she makes so many of them herself."78

"Miss McKeen's lecture this afternoon was on eating, and it made us
mad," wrote one girl to her parents. It was terribly hard for some Ab-
bot girls to adjust to "the rigorous ordering of our ways."79 Surely
some never did. American children were known the world over for
their overindulged precociousness. "Democratic sucklings!" one En-
glishman sputtered— "the theory of the equality of man is rampant in
the nursery!"80 Lucy Larcom in her New England Girlhood tells how
she "clung to the child's inalienable privilege of running half-wild."
To her, "the transition from childhood to girlhood ... is practically
the toning down of a mild sort of barbarianism, and is often attended
by a painfully awkward self-consciousness."81 But Abbot teachers' af-
fection eased many girls through girlhood toward womanhood. "The
hearty welcome" from the McKeens that each student received in
September82 was always a good beginning. For every cross teacher
there seem to have been at least two kind ones. Miss Merrill— who
eventually got her raise and stayed on till 190783— bent the ten o'clock
curfew night after night. When the moon was full, she would take
her girls for walks in the silver dark. She loved to read aloud to them,
and they delighted each evening to hear her; they basked in her "gay
friendliness" and "loved her devotedly." Often enough, Miss Merrill
argued with these same students, "always disagreeing with us as equals"
instead of lecturing them to make her point, as one alumna recalled
years later.84 Naturally, many students stole their pleasures where they
could find them— but this was often done so blatantly that one can
only suppose teachers were looking the other way. Now and then, the
bell girl would provide her friends a welcome break from the tyran-
nous schedule by simply failing to ring the bell; thus Harriet and Liz-
zie had three quarters of an hour to chat on Lizzie's bed instead of a
rushed "quarter." After-hours parties were a subject of special pride to
the editors of '87's manuscript yearbook. Eight of the seventeen gradu-
ates had participated in twenty-nine "midnight revelries" altogether,
with "Emma T.," that "wicked but happy mortal," having attended
eight herself.85 It is interesting that this bold accounting was made
public before Commencement. In spite of Miss McKeen's warnings
that breaking rules was "taking poison,"86 everyone graduated. The
teachers cannot have been such terrible ogres after all. "Last evening
at tea," wrote Harriet Chapell after a unique Recreation Day,

we were joking and laughing, saying we guessed we would lie in
bed till noon today, when Miss Palmer astounded us all by telling
us we might stay in bed till noon, indeed, we need not have any

108 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

rules until dinner time, when we must appear. I suppose she
thought we boarding school girls would go through anything
rather than lose one meal, but we took her up, and not one of
us eight girls was down to breakfast. It was so cosy and warm to
cuddle down in bed with Mame, and hear Miss Palmer and Mrs.
Watson having their devotions all alone in the music room,— we
had hard work to keep from laughing out loud.

Of course they made their own breakfast later from the snack crackers
always available in the closet, and jelly, figs, nuts, and chocolate sent
from home. "We did just as we pleased all the long morning, entered
rooms, had lunch every few minutes and did all manner of outlandish
things."87

"Philo" herself created special occasions: an hours-long sleigh ride
one Washington's Birthday for everyone who was healthy enough to
stand the cold, a surprise "Orange Party" in Smith Hall for which she
and the teachers arranged into pyramids and patterns the hundreds of
oranges sent by a friend from Florida. On the night of October 2,
1875, there was a total eclipse of the moon. Miss McKeen had a student
ring the bell fifty times at 2 a.m., and all who wanted to watch it
brought pillows down to the back veranda. Harriet and her friends
"lay there an hour or so, looking all the time and having an easy time."88
Then, of course, there was that greatest occasion of Abbot's nine-
teenth century history, the Semicentennial celebration in June 1879.
Phillips Principal Bancroft assisted the McKeens with the preparations,
and the Phillips Glee Club gave a concert to raise money for the great
day. Invitations went out to every known alumna, to college presi-
dents throughout New England, to the Massachusetts Governor and
the United States President (who sent their polite regrets). Students
scoured the buildings to prepare for the Old Scholars, then decked
them with bunting. Two thousand guests lunched under a great pavil-
lion set up on the lawn near South Church.89 All of Phillips Academy
and the Theological Seminary arrived in time for the speeches, which
on paper look endless: fifty years was worth at least three hours' ora-
tory in those days, and after all, no ex-principal (so long as he was
male) or parent/college president or university professor could be left
out. Not a single woman spoke, but multitudes of young women must
have been glad of Trustee Egbert Smyth's final announcement to the
youths from the Hilltop:

The stern dame whom all her daughters love as Alma Mater has
said to me very privately— so that no one else heard the pleasant
tune of her voice, or saw the lambent flame in her eye— that, for

ABBOT IN THE GOLDEN AGE

IO9

Ml)

1 Jr.

1 ' -4-

1$. Chapell sketch: The eclipse, 17 October 1874.

all, to-day and to-morrouo are as TUESDAY evening; and, that .
till the shades of evening fall the second time, all her daughters
may be to you as your sisters, and your cousins, and your aunts.

That is, for once no special parent sanction was required for male
callers outside the girls' families.

Miss McKeen felt herself particularly responsible for the Smith Hall
girls' character and behavior. She was a less formal person in Smith
Hall, "her only home," than she was as an academic principal, remem-
bered one alumna. "This strong, serene head of our matriarchy to
whom we confessed our sins . . . had a remarkable opportunity to
know each one for what she really was. She certainly was very keen
to detect subterfuge or untruth, and equally just in commending hon-
esty." While students' individuality was less encouraged than was con-

HO SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

formity to "a standardized type . . . we were her family ... in whom
she was constantly striving to awaken and develop Christian woman-
liness."90

As in the early Abbot, religious conversion was still sometimes the
ultimate solution to conflict between an adult and a girl or young
woman, or a young woman's struggles with herself. Phebe McKeen's
novel of boarding life, Thornton Hall?1 accepted by her contempo-
raries as a barely disguised description of Abbot in the 1860's and 70's,
emphasizes the religious character of all social exchanges. While its
plot rambles along like some spinster soap opera, its complex charac-
ters with their intricate human tangles suggest Phebe's own powerful
sympathy and understanding as a resident teacher in Abbot's com-
munity of women. The community is wide and deep: it includes the
reserved Miss Atherton, inwardly hurt by the desertion of her "half-
ruined brother" and her "stolen sister"92 (probably Abbot's Tace
Wardwell, whom students held in "especial awe"),93 as well as the
open-hearted Miss Lincoln. Behind scenes stand parents, one father
virtuous but poor, another amoral and indulgent.

The Thornton Hall teachers leave girls alone to work trouble out
themselves until a real crisis looms. Virginia Raleigh "loved her few
friends with passionate intensity, and she demanded the same in re-
turn. No love seemed to her real which was not exclusive." She became
jealous of Kate Campbell's other friendships. As for "merry Kate,"
Virginia was to her "the desire of her eyes!" but "what right had she
to try to manage her so? She ought to be satisfied with what she well
knew was given her— dearest love."94

For several days, Virginia Raleigh went about with a kind of
marble hardness in her face, and passed her late friend, every-
where, without seeming to see her. Even the little acts of com-
mon courtesy which Kate offered, she ignored. The girls were
asking each other, "What has come over Kate Campbell?" "Had
a flare-up with Miss Raleigh— don't speak to each other," was a
sufficient answer.

Finally Miss Lincoln called Virginia to her room. "I know your soul
sets deep and strong towards the few you love," she tells Virginia,
"but . . . you cannot be Christlike while you are utterly indifferent to
all but your chosen few." . . .

Virginia's heart was touched by the blending of love and indig-
nant sorrow in the face of her friend. She threw her arms
around her saying, "But He is divine."

ABBOT IN THE GOLDEN AGE

I I I

CI! UMT.k Y.

( )R sc\ cral da) s, \
Raleigh went about with
a kind of marble hardi
in her [ace, and pass< d her
late friend, everywh
without seeming to
her. \.\ en the little a< ts
of common com i
which Kate- offered, she
ignored. The girls \\ ere
asking each other, " V
has c< >me over Kate ( 'a

,i 1 [ad a flare-up
with Mi^s Raleigh don't
speak t< i each i >thcr/' \\ as
a sufficient an

After things had b ; on in this way for

oil a week, Miss Lim i In senl for the two gii Is

1 6. "Kate and Virginia" of Thornton Hall, illustrator unknown. (Edward
O. Jenkins, "printer and stereotyper")

112 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

"Yes, dear, but we are His offspring, and He meant to teach
us how to love. It seems to me a dreadful waste, Virginia, for
one to carry a great warm heart like yours through life, wrapped
up in selfishness and pride." . . .

"But I can't be unselfish," groaned Virginia. "I love papa and
mamma, and you and Kate, and one other; and I want you all,
all, all, to myself."

"The only way for you, darling, is to give your heart to your
heavenly Father," said her friend, very tenderly. "Loving God,
you would come to love your brother also."

Virginia lifted her eyes, dewy with tears, kissed the lips that
had spoken so plain truth to her, and went silently away to her
room.95

Finally, Virginia was able to "love the Savior," even though her con-
version cost her the suit of a rakish sophomore from the neighboring
college for young men.

Phebe McKeen doubtless had her sister in mind when she created
Miss Douglass, the principal of Thornton Hall. Many a girl's headstrong
rebellion against rules or roommate ended in penitent weeping upon
Miss Douglass' lap, or in student and principal kneeling together to
pray. Abbot letters and diaries suggest that such encounters were com-
mon in the real-life Academy. Harriet Chapell's journal describes how
first Lizzie, then Harriet herself talks at length with Miss McKeen
when each is gathering courage to join the church and "become a
Christian."

As Harriet's Abbot years go on, adults gradually join the other
people who are helping her toward maturity. First and youngest of her
helpers is Lizzie, with her "loveliness that is born of a Christlike spirit,"
whom she cares for like a little mother during the frequent illnesses that
eventually keep Lizzie home from Abbot for good. Lizzie is "such a
darling, confiding little thing." She "helps me to be good more than
anyone can ever know." Her later friend Jessie Cole is an excellent
student, editor of Courant and "a jewel right through." Harriet re-
spects her, and tries hard to emulate her. Fred regularly holds long
talks with her about religion, and describes to her the Baptist revivals
at which he has been speaking back in New London. "I do want to be
better," Harriet writes in December of her second year, "more as Lizzie
and Fred believe me to be." With the passing of time, we read less and
less of Smith Hall shenanigans, more of her absorption in painting and
bible reading. Instead of being annoyed by confining weather, a day

ABBOT IN THE GOLDEN AGE 1 1 3

of rain increases her sense of "myselfness." Sundays are now "quiet and
solemn" times. She no longer naps during church sermons, but finds
the services beautiful and inspiring.96

Harriet's parents become dearer with distance. Deep into her first
Abbot spring, she writes, "Now that they miss me so much more than
usual, I feel that I ought to do everything I can for them." After her
"blessed father's" death over the summer of 1874, she thinks and won-
ders often about heaven. Her love for Fred increasingly seems to her
a holy thing, as does his for her. "Surely there never was a nobler,
tenderer lover," she writes after one of his visits to Abbot— prolonged
a day in spite of Miss McKeen's displeasure.97 Abbot does not so much
create Harriet's growth as it grudgingly or encouragingly gives it
room.

Students had always organized clubs and enjoyed rituals at Abbot.
During the stable McKeen years, student organizations and traditions,
once seeded, could evolve uninterrupted by administrative upheaval.
To be sure, some were short-lived: rival boat clubs (the Nereids and
the Undines) did not survive the graduation of their six members in
1874, and the Cecilia Society lasted just two years and several musical
soirees. The Sphinx had ten years to live up to its name, gained "from
the fact that the Sphinx (ancient) was the embodiment of feminine
wisdom and strength." The Sphinx was much like Phillips students'
Philomathean Society in form. "What do we do? Our program is
varied. At times debate arouses us to give more of a reason than the
woman's 'because.' "98 At other times the twenty to thirty members
would spend an evening reading aloud from a favorite book and acting
out characters and scenes (these activities at times must have verged
dangerously close to theater), or would mount their own minstrel
shows, or exchange extemporaneous speeches on historical or current
political issues.

Most important of organizations was Courant and its editorial
board. This enduring periodical was begun by students in 1873 and
warmly encouraged by the faculty. Alumnae remembered the ex-
citement that filled the school when it was founded, for few female
seminaries or colleges had published anything so ambitious. The Cou-
rant editors were the acknowledged intellectual leaders of the school.
Their meetings ranged wide: "Very dire were the discussions as to
why a girl's mind was not constructed to endure the strain of com-
petition," wrote Alice Merriam Moore, '74, who served on the first
editorial board, and soon after her graduation became co-editor with
her husband of a small Michigan newspaper.99 Early Courant writing

114 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, I 85 2- I 892

is particularly lively: a fashion column; "St. Selmo," a take-off of the
novel-melodrama St. Elmo; travel essays from Rome and Egypt; an
essay comparing the French poet Boileau with Horace; editorial "com-
miseration to the unfortunate Harvard freshman who was seized while
attempting to enter our Academy on Hallowe'en" (and later jailed
overnight);100 news of lectures or Draper Readings for alumnae ("the
old scholars will be glad to know . . ."); and feisty editorial comments
on practically everything. "It has been said that girls can write only
nonsense," wrote the first editors (among them Clara Hamlin, Senior
Editor for 1873).101 These editors expose the nonsense around them.
They freely criticize other school and college publications. They have
a wonderful time with a dead-serious poem called "Willie's Prize,"
which they have read in the Phillips boys' Philomathean Mirror. "It is
neither epic nor lyric in its character," they write. "Indeed, it seems to
usher in a new era in letters." In the poem Willie describes to "his
mamma" his sorrow at losing a prize competition. Finally, he sobs him-
self to sleep on her lap: "Under the tender lids a flow/of humid grief
came stealing." The Couranfs editors are merciless:

We appreciate, as never before, the grandeur of that self-
command which they [the Phillips students] preserve through-
out the trying ordeal of defeat, though their little hearts are
swelling well-nigh to bursting. We infer that Willie thought
that only a manly soul could endure this tremendous grief, for
he asks earnestly,

"Do women have ambition?"
Yes, Willie, they do.102

They even take on the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, who spoke on
"Education" in Town Hall. "To those who had listened to him before,
he seemed a faint suggestion of the great Beecher, he was so far below
his own mark. We hope that all who heard him as a lecturer may hear
the preacher; and we know they will wonder that he can put his
grand powers to such inferior uses."103

Courant had proudly begun as a periodical unread by faculty till
after publication, but rather quickly some of this life goes out of it.
The right of adult scrutiny was eventually asserted. Indeed, it is amaz-
ing that the faculty held off for six years, for censorship was taken for
granted in those times. The Knife and The Fork, rival class newspapers
for '71 and '72 had died under the McKeens' critical glare. Bradford
Academy's Lantern editors would print only one issue in 1887, and
even this was never sold because an editor had dared to criticize a
lecture given by a Trustee. Around 1879, the year Phebe McKeen re-

ABBOT IN THE GOLDEN AGE 115

signed as faculty adviser, the C our ant becomes tame: no more cutting
criticism of other school and college periodicals, no ironic comments
about Abbot's rules. The essays "are too prim and precise," complained
the Fhillipian in 1883, as if the writers feared "some dreadful punish-
ment" for using less conventional styles.104 By 1888 Miss McKeen her-
self is editing the "Driftwood" section— news for the Dear Old Girls.
In the June 1889 issue seven of the Driftwood's nine pages describe
religious occasions or speakers; one more whole page is devoted to the
cute sayings of "Abbot grandchildren." It is hard to tell who is con-
trolling the article content. A pious alumna argues in "Some Danger-
ous Tendencies" against elective courses, asserting that "the late labor
troubles" (probably the Chicago Haymarket riots) show how "un-
limited freedom is often abused."105 The editors of 1889-90 are agog
over a Coura?it writing contest for students and alumnae on the subject
of "clover."106 The winner's story begins, "Everything and everybody
loved little White Clover." All the poetry suffers from the genteel
tradition which, as Santayana pointed out, had long been a disease in
New England.

Still, there are some wonderful pieces in Courant: the best of student
course papers (on "the Ramayana" and "Chaucer's Women," Novem-
ber 1879); a graphic description of an Indian missionary station in
Montana run by an alumna and her mother ("The first thing to be
done was to give the children citizen's dress ... It was pitiful to see
the old people waiting outside the door to ask for their children's
hair.")107 An indignant Courant editor might rail against the degenera-
tion of written English among modern students, but Abbot's best writ-
ing was very good indeed. The experience young women gained in
organizations like the Sphinx and the Courant sharpened skills that
would undergird lifetimes of involvement in women's clubs, churches,
and reform groups. American girls might learn parliamentary proced-
ure almost in fun, but the suffrage, temperance, and settlement house
movements would use it in earnest, just as they drew strength from
the adult network of woman friends and kin which for most boarding
school alumnae was a continuation of the community of women they
had known in their student days.

Students' sense of identification with their own classes was much
strengthened during the McKeen period. This process was well begun
in the 1850's by Miss Hasseltine's precise classing of pupils, but it was
enhanced by the increasing tendency of all girls to stay at least one full
year instead of coming for a term or two, then leaving.108 Class parties,
class breakfasts at Sunset Rock, class sleigh rides, and class representa-
tives on Courant all raised class consciousness. The Seniors were special,

SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, I 852-I 892

i j. A Picnic, i

and knew it. Generally a small group of twelve, more or less, they felt
themselves to be women, not girls, and at age twenty to twenty-two
they usually were.109 The Class of '73 prided itself on being the first to
wear class pins, the first to "indulge in a class sleighride and form a
baseball nine."110 Every Senior class held special entertainments in Smith
Hall. Sometimes they dressed up as classical Greeks (or gypsies or
Japanese nobility), decorating their own Senior parlor accordingly, and
inviting the school to enjoy a period tableau, a Virginia reel, or a "con-
versation party" in which the contestants must hold a five-minute dis-
cussion on questions such as "Does the incubated chicken love its mo-
ther?" At other times, they invited their own special friends: favorite

ABBOT IN THE GOLDEN AGE 117

adults, nances from home, theologues from the Hilltop. In the fall of
1878 they transformed the Academy Hall into a drawing room and in-
vited 140 guests. On one occasion the Seniors danced ballroom figures
in boy-girl couples, but Miss McKeen came in, told everyone what she
thought of the new "positions," and responded to the few feeble pro-
tests by asking, "How would you feel if the music stopped?"111

Graduation ("Anniversary") time was the biggest class party of the
year, and the most solemn. It followed a flurry of preparations, during
which the old cramming for examinations was little in evidence, and
the "dissipations of closing weeks" were uppermost.112 "Study is highly
beneficial and quite interesting, but never less so than during the last
week of the term," one student wrote.113 The "Senior Exhibition" be-
gan Anniversary Day with music, a French or German or Latin ora-
tion, and essay reading in Hall. Then the whole school repaired to the
Grove, the landscaped wood behind Smith Hall, for the reading of a
Class History and the planting of the class vine or tree, with appropri-
ate "Oak Song" or this "Pale Ivy" vine song of 1876:

Symbol of our trust! When sorrow

Darkens on our shadowy way,
Be thou sign of bright to-morrow,—

Climb to where the sunbeams play.

(verse 1 of five verses)114

After the song and the "vine oration" came the presentation of the
Class Spade to the president of the Senior Middle class, a change into
white dresses, and the "charming procession . . . down the leafy path"
to South Church.15 There the school heard a Commencement address,
and President Park of the Trustees would deliver a short sermon and
present the diplomas. Traditionally, the Parting Hymn was sung by all
assembled,

Father, I know that all my life

Is portioned out to me.
The changes that will surely come

I do not fear to see.
I ask thee for a present mind

Intent on pleasing thee.116

and traditionally, everyone wept. Thus were Abbot's graduates sent off
with much the same advice that Maria Browne had given in 1857; ac-
cept what comes; subdue your own desires; be of service to others.

I 1 8 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

Class mottoes underline it: 1874's was "Set Free to Serve"; 1880's,
"Happy in my Lot."

The noon or evening farewell party was a grand levee, a bewildering
display (reported the Congregationalist)117 of "feminine grace, per-
sonal intelligence, and social culture." Finally, with a turn of the clock
hand, the year's community of women dissolved, its particular human
chemistry too intricate to be duplicated.

Progress of a Victorian School

Christ has established the soul-rights of women.
Rev. James Hoppin to Abbot, 1856

Even during its golden age, Abbot was not static. Its students and
teachers underwent private evolutions that mirrored the changes taking
place in the world beyond; Philena McKeen herself passed through
stages of personal crisis and fresh-won assurance during her thirty-
three year tenure. Some of Abbot's Victorian values grew stronger
than ever: thrift, punctuality, the systemization of daily life, the ex-
altation of the school "family"— they gradually became Abbot tradi-
tions whose venerability was justification enough. Other Victorian
ideas contained the seeds of their own destruction: if self-sufficiency,
will power, and controlled drive were admirable in men, why might
they not be so in women? As Abbot Academy developed its own re-
sources apart from the male-dominated Hilltop, Abbot girls learned to
be less submissive. Intersex relationships within the Abbot-Andover
community, religious practices, and the Abbot students' evolving self-
images reflected simultaneous tendencies to rigidity and change that
characterized Victorian America.

Male and Female

The girls Harriet Chapell knew "went for men" no matter how "silly
and conceited," "like sheep after salt."1 The McKeen sisters realized
this as fully as Harriet did, but took quite a different view of what to
do about it. There is no suggestion that they feared or hated men:
quite the contrary. "Many a love affair they sped on its way," remem-
bered Anna Dawes, '70.2 To be wife and mother was woman's sacred
calling— but the McKeens felt that far too many girls rushed into mar-
riage.3 Every young woman must have protection while she carefully
prepared and waited for the right man. To Phebe, speaking through
her novel Theodora, a girl's beloved brothers were the best models and

120 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

guides for her choice of a husband; it is her martyred brother's com-
rade-in-arms whom Theodora finally marries, after rejecting two ardent
suitors. To Philena a minister was the ideal husband for an Abbot grad-
uate, an orthodox parsonage the ideal home.4 She was backed in this
opinion by Professor Park, to whom "the great aim of Andover is to
train the minds of women so they will prefer an intelligent preacher
to a pretty one."5

The McKeens' immediate problem was to shelter the growing girl
from her own "ominous sexual awakening," as a twentieth-century his-
torian terms it.6 The elderly Catharine Beecher described female ado-
lescence more subtly as the "period when the young, especially the
highly gifted, find an outbursting of sensibilities that they have not
learned to control."7 This concern with the special stress of puberty
and sexual maturation was quite new to a society that had long con-
sidered youth fourteen to twenty-one years old capable of adult labor
in factory, farm or home, and of active participation in church affairs.
Abbot did its bit to help invent the concept of adolescence: the Mc-
Keen sisters erected a wall of rules to provide Abbot girls the needed
protection, cutting chinks only in those places they themselves ap-
proved. Chinks there were: calling hours Wednesdays and Saturdays—
any time outside of prayer or study hours— provided callers had first
been introduced to the girl's family. This was restrictive enough for
girls far from home: "It was very funny that you should write about
my behavior in society when I see no society at all," Antoinette Ban-
croft wrote her oversolicitous brother.8 Phillips boys' attendance at
every Abbot occasion, when not forbidden outright, was ordained
beforehand, and chief secret policeman Uncle Sam Taylor did his best
to help the McKeens keep control, with the assistance of student spies.
Phillips alumnus Nathaniel Niles described how the invisible wall func-
tioned.

One night there was to be a party at the Fern. Sem. Of course,
those boys who, through their sisters or cousins or aunts, were
to be guests were the envy of every boy in the school. Two boys
"not expected" at the entertainment conceived the idea that per-
haps it would be an evidence of gratitude to heave a cat through
one of the windows.

They started down the Hill, carrying the cat in their arms. They
barely avoided Dr. Taylor, who intercepted them and gave chase, but
"when they reached Abbot, they found the grounds so thoroughly
patrolled that they had to give up their plan."9

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL

121

18. Male and female at the boundary, Harriet Chape IV s Journal,
10 May 1814.

19. Behind the barrier between Abbot and Phillips Academy.

12 2 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, I 8 5 2 - I 8 9 2

Miss McKeen's "methods of government" "were often disagreeable,"
says a teacher colleague.10 She suspended one girl and expelled another
for "flirting." Harriet Chapell tells how "Philo" gathered the evidence
for conviction by commanding every girl in Hall to answer ten ques-
tions in writing about her own or others' doings with the Phillipians.11
Even when legitimate invitations were received from the Hill, (as for a
football game in the fall of 1878), a "higher power" might talk the girls
out of going.12 Gone were the days of coeducational boarding houses.
Miss McKeen wrote Cecil Bancroft twice in 1885 to insist that one
of the Phillips boarding-house keepers "not allow boys to occupy any
room upon our side of her house. It is a constant source of evil to you
and to me to have that post of observation occupied."

The effect of having young men, or man, there is pernicious
every moment, as it keeps the idea of boys in the thoughts of the
young ladies all the time: indeed, they can neither study, nor
dress, nor undress, nor walk, nor plav, nor sit still, except under
observation, usually of several pairs of eyes.13

Strong measures. They chiefly serve to suggest that their purpose
was impossible of achievement. Even the valued theologues could not
be trusted to escort Abbot girls the shortest way home from an eve-
ing lecture or a professor's levee. Miss McKeen could make a Com-
mencement usher out of a seemingly respectable Phillipian like Head-
master Bancroft's nephew, Alfred E.Stearns (himself Headmaster from
1903 to 1933), but she could not keep him from "raising cain"— as he
wrote his sister Mabel— with a lot of girls "in a room back of the
stage" while the essays wrere being read, or spending all afternoon of

Anniversary Day in the Grove with "Miss ,"14 Stearns had already

taken many a Fern Sem's measure from the back of South Church or
the Academy Hall at sermons and public recitals ("they looked too
smooth"— Stearns's supreme compliment).15 Where Phillipians habitu-
ally kept

the town in constant fright
By prowling round it half the night,16

peeking through Smith Hall blinds, or serenading their favorite girls,17
not even Philena McKeen could stem the tide. "Did you know," Stearns
asked his sister,

that the Fern. Sem. got a terrible blowing up for not coming
straight home after the Senior Party? Miss Hinkley got an es-
pecially bad one as Miss McKeen told her that she did not expect

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL 123

such things from her. Miss McKeen further told them that
fellows who would do such things would have no respect for
them and would make fun of them and talk lightly of them be-
hind their backs. As far as I have been able to learn, though, the
thought of such shameful treatment at the hands of the fellows
does not disturb the girls much. If Miss McK. had known that I
was one of the base mortals concerned, I fear that I would have
looked in vain for my invitation to usher.18

Abbot students' friendships with the "Lord's Annointed"19 from the
Theological Seminary were often serious business, and numerous mar-
riages resulted. Their relationship to the Phillips Academy students, or
"Cads," was usually more of a brother-sister affair, with teasing and
bickering to match. Indeed, there still were several actual sister-brother
pairs at the two schools each year, even though the number had greatly
diminished following the opening of Punchard High School.20 It was
easy for a nineteen- or twenty-year-old Abbot woman to look down
upon the "Cad," to answer a Mirror barb at Courant by noting that
"rudeness is easily pardoned in small boys," or to lecture a Cad cor-
respondent from the height of the Courant editor's throne: "Yes, mod-
esty is always commendable in the young. But don't be too humble.
Remember that in time the little acorn becomes the great oak, and
perhaps, if you are a good boy, and mind your book, you will grow
to be a theologue, and can call at the Fern. Sem."21 They quickly shed
their hauteur when there was fun to be had, however— a spelling match
between Phillips and Abbot, or a school-sanctioned expedition "in full
force" and fancy dress22 to a Philomathean Society declamation, or a
Seminary professor's party, or the Andover-Exeter baseball game. It
was probably in vain that the McKeens had their girls sing the hymn
"Calm me, my God, and Keep me Calm" at evening prayers before
one of these co-educational events "to keep them from getting upset
by the coming gaiety," a procedure that one alumna, a "staid minister's
wife," never forgot.23 "All of 'the Fern. Sems." watched one boxing
exhibition from the gallery, wrote young Stearns. "When a fellow
would get hit a pretty good crack in the face, there would be a
sympathetic O-W! rustle the whole length of the gallery, which
sounded verv funny and in some cases broke up the boxers for a
time."24

Better still were the surreptitious skating on Pomps Pond or the Cads'
makeshift rink and the coasting parties on School Street with snow
flying and the boys' cries of "Road!" ringing in the air.25 "Philo"
brought these to a halt each winter, of course, but not until mid-

124 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, I 85 2- I 892

February in at least two years, 1879 anc^ 1881. One wonders how she
could have missed them. Did she simply pretend not to notice? For
one way or another, Abbot girls and Hilltop students met and mingled.
The chronicler of 1887 added the total number of the seventeen Se-
niors' Hill acquaintances and got 376: 316 Phillips students and 60
theologues. Of these, only eleven Phillipians and six theologues had
formal permission to call at Abbot. And this was the count "before
the Senior party-" the writer exults.

Except for restrictions on his Fern Sem calls, the nineteenth-century
Phillips student had a freedom unthinkable a generation later: this was
a school where a fellow had to learn on his own to be a man, where
boys arranged their own revenges for unfair bullying, their own ath-
letic contests, their own free-time amusements. As soon as chapel ended
on a perfect winter day, there was a race for the bobsleds and a tearing
down the icy hill past Abbot right to the railroad station. The manliest
fellows would rather crash into a tree (and did now and then, with
consequent concussions) than refuse a challenge from a pal. This free-
dom can only have emphasized to Abbot students the restrictions under
which they lived. The "American girl" was considered "a very delicate
plant."26 If there was a heavy snowstorm, a day scholar's brother might
tramp through it to Abbot to tell his sister she was not to come home
for the night, but the girl herself could not venture out, no matter how
strong she felt. It was the boys who played heroes at the fire that
destroyed the Mansion House early one morning in 1887, while the
girls stayed in their beds, listening.

Still, there must also have been some comfort in Andover Hill's re-
gard for woman's delicacy. No Abbot girl had to stand fast before a
Samuel Taylor, who believed in "the doctrine of total depravity as
applied to boys,"27 or suffer the persecution of bullies with no hope of
a resident teacher's intervention.28 Further, many girls probably appre-
ciated the protective barriers more than they would admit. Even the
sociable Harriet Chapell, crammed into a chair under the pulpit of the
Seminary Chapel to hear Professor Park's famous sermon on Peter's
denial of Christ, thought it "just horrid to sit perched up in the face
of the Phillipians." The jokes and talks she exchanged with boys met
by chance (or by secret design) on the street would not be nearly so
much fun had they been permitted. Harriet cannot have suffered too
much from Abbot's rules. "Anyway," she wrote at the end of her first
year, "it's a splendid school."29

Off and on, a vague vision of coeducation tempted Abbot's nine-
teenth-century trustees or teachers; but Dr. Taylor's narrow Phillips
Academy seems to have been unappealing to the McKeens, and the

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL 125

advantages of what Edwards Park approvingly called "proximate edu-
cation" were too many to forgo lightly.30 Abbot was far more accessible
to boys and men than schools like Bradford, whose principal, Annie
Johnson, did not allow a single visit from a boys' school till 1888, when
the Phillips glee club gave a concert . In making final arrangements for
this event, Miss Johnson wrote to Bancroft:

Of course I should not suggest the theol. sem. men's coming. I do
not know that they are more safe than other men, as a class.31

There certainly was no doubt about the feeling of Phillips students for
the Fern Sems. They received Abbot's centennial gift of a hand-sewn
Phillips banner with "a sudden burst, as of thunder out of a clear sky,
of a round of cheers," lasting a full five minutes. "It is very much to be
doubted whether this art of speaking be consistent with the constitu-
tional foundations of the Academy . . . The Trustees should look into
it," chuckled the Congregationalist?2

The coeducation issue surfaced in Andover after Taylor died in 1871.
The success of several coeducational colleges and public high schools
was intriguing;33 so were the arguments sprinkled through the educa-
tional journals during the last quarter of the century. Henry Barnard
cited the advantages of coeducation in his American Pedagogy (1876):
economy of means and forces; convenience to patrons (brothers and
sisters can attend the same school, and "each is safer from the presence
of the other"); "wholesome incitements to study," along with the social
culture that females lend to males; and the opportunity for girls to re-
spond with womanly qualities to manly behavior.34 Four of the speak-
ers at Abbot's Semicentennial celebration felt called upon to address
the issue: three were for, one against. Much of Miss McKeen's enor-
mous correspondence is lost,35 and there is no way of knowing whether
this public airing of the coeducation question was preceded by serious
private negotiations between Abbot and Phillips. Philena McKeen was
delighted with Reverend Cecil F. P. Bancroft, who had taken over as
Phillips principal in 1873; s^e spoke repeatedly of her respect for his
scholarly interests, his kindness, and his concern for Christian charac-
ter. On December 28, 1878, she wrote him in response to some act or
letter of his now hidden to us:

My Dear Mr. Bancroft,

Your goodness is incomprehensible. I don't know but it would
be the best thing that could be done, to join Abbott to Phillips
& put you over all.36

That is all she says. If there was a genuine interest in merger, it seems

126 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

to have died. Miss McKeen did propose some joint science facilities,
suggesting that "the ideal arrangement" might be for "Phillips, Punch-
ard, and Abbot, to combine in building one detached laboratory for
common use, with one lecture-room and separate working-rooms,
bringing together their treasures, and committing the most perfect
appointments they could secure to the use of one professor, so fitted
and endowed as to give the finest possible instruction to all, either col-
lectively or severally or both."37 But Punchard's Goldsmith was pre-
occupied with his own constituency, and Bancroft had work enough
bringing together Phillips' Classical and English Departments to pre-
pare boys for newly broadened college entrance requirements. Once
Bancroft had raised his school's own funds for a new chemistry lab-
oratory (1882) and for Graves Hall (1892), Phillips laboratories were
for several years open to Abbot science classes; except for the helpful
Professor Graves, however, they were at such times empty of men.
Then, gradually, Abbot developed its own simpler labs in the basement
of the Academy Hall, and the two schools edged away from academic
cooperation.

Why did separate education win out? The arguments for it in An-
dover and throughout the United States were manifold and contradic-
tory. Some men needed only to repeat the old assertions of women's
intellectual inferiority. To others, females were worse than inferior:
they were a naked threat to orderly civilization, compelled by their
extravagant tastes and their sexual desires or social pretentions to grab
always for power over men. The Rumanian-Jewish visitor I. J. Ben-
jamin expressed one version of this harsh view:

America worships two idols. First is that deaf, dumb, blind
Mammon before whom the masses humbly bow in this land.
They kneel before him, setting their honor aside, day and night
thinking only of amassing wealth, of building palaces. The
second idol, on the contrary, sees, hears, walks, and talks, and is
above all full of life; it is the female sex. Both idols live together
in constant warfare. What one builds, the other tears down; what
one accumulates, the other scatters; what one makes good, the
other spoils.38

Many girls absorbed men's notions of women's weaknesses. "If a boy
is not trained to endure and to bear trouble," wrote an Abbot student
in her journal, "he will grow up like a girl; and a boy that is a girl
has all a girl's weakness without any of her regal qualities."39 Or, as a
popular lecturer put it, "Woman despises in man everything like her-

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL 12J

self except a tender heart. It is enough that she is effeminate and weak;
she does not want another like herself."40

At the other extreme, there were those who thought women so far
above men as to be vulnerable to corruption by their influence. Phebe
McKeen's Thornton Hall characters keep all males at arm's length, and
speak of girls as intellectually "equal, nay superior to boys."41 M.
Carey Thomas, supplementing graduate school tedium with study-
conversation meetings among her women friends, determined to face
squarely the role passion and sensuality played in men's lives, other-
wise "what can we do against them?" She and her friends studied fif-
teen of her father's medical books, and were horrified at what they
thought they had learned. "Religion, philanthropy, may as well cease;
Sense remains ... I am more thankful than ever to be a woman," for
"the time a man has to spend in struggling against his lower nature she
has to advance in."42 Miss Thomas' undergraduate career as one of
Cornell's first woman students convinced her that only in an all-female
institution could women achieve the serenity and sense of freedom
necessary for scholarly activity.

Some advocates of coeducation drew support from the widely held
assumption that woman's unique susceptibility to religion made her a
repository of purity and gave her special responsibility for developing
virtue in men. "There is no more powerful preacher of righteousness
for a young man from eighteen to twenty-five," wrote Phebe McKeen,
"than a lively, winning, warmhearted, right-minded girl, all whose
beauty and brightness is sacred to truth and purity."43 Therefore, as
"Marmee" told her Little Women, "let the boys be boys, the longer
the better, and let the young men sow their wild oats if they must; but
mothers, sisters and friends may help to make the crop a small one."44
The McKeens thought that love and marriage could elevate both part-
ners. Theodora's "love came upon [her fiance Vincent Rolf] like a holy
annointing, to set him apart to a nobler life."45 Philena wrote with
concern to one alumna about another, noting that Mary Tarbox, '71,

pleased me better than when I have seen her before for years. As
I told her, I have been expecting that the Lord would either let
her fall deeply in love, or let some great discipline come upon
her. I think the more agreeable method of development has over-
taken her, and it is working admirably.46

Certainly Harriet Chapell's experience confirmed the sisters' intuitions.
She wrote of Fred that she had "advanced years in knowing his
heart."47 Both sisters seem to have felt, however, that these happy re-

128 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

suits could only come about if the differences between women and
men were valued and preserved. Thornton HaWs principal implored
her girls to treasure their womanly qualities. Philena McKeen proudly
published in Courant a letter sent her by Dorothea Dix soon after this
pioneer reformer had spoken at Abbot: "Tell your girls to be women,
not men; to show what a true woman is, and how great a power she
has."48 After a speaker described to all Abbot his theory of women's
rights, Harriet Chapell recorded his conviction that "woman has her
best rights in her duty ... of guiding the heart and actions of man. . . .
Then he said we must all strive to be angels in our homes."49 Throngs
of female and male celebrants applauded Reverend A. P. Peabody's
Abbot Semicentennial speech describing the implications of this view
for education. Men and women have different aptitudes, not equal
ones, Harvard's Peabody said, thinking, no doubt, of Cambridge's new
experiment in "proximate education"— the Harvard Annex (later Rad-
clirTe):

His is the wider; hers the richer field. His is the strength of reason-
ing; hers the quicker intuition and clearer insight. His the more
easy mastery of abstract sciences; hers the far finer-seeing nature,
the keener sense of beauty in art and in literature, and the larger
capacity of culture in all that pertains to the beauty, charm, orna-
ment, and joy of home society. I would not have the same cul-
ture pursued by both, for I should dread to find always in the
parlor a duplicate of the counting-room or office.50

In return for the influence her special qualities commanded, Peabody
suggested, woman should gladly submit to man's formal, legal authori-
ty in the home and the state. Abbot seems to have agreed; certainly
there is no evidence that Philena or Phebe gave time to suffragist ac-
tivities.51 Yet this was not Maria J. B. Browne's retreat of the 1850's.
Abbot women had to prepare themselves for active, useful lives out-
side their homes in churches, schools, missionary stations, and temper-
ance societies. Their power in this "glorious work"52 and in their
families was sufficient without the vote. A true woman's cup was al-
ready full.

By 1892 a respectful distance had been established between Abbot
and the two Hill schools. The "medium course"53 created ambiguities,
but none that daunted the Principals. Miss McKeen wrote her friend
Bancroft with a request just before the Breakfast that was to honor her
at her retirement:

Dear Mr. Bancroft,
In your "Remarks" at the Breakfast, at the [Hotel] Vendome,

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL 1 29

would you throw a morsel to appease two classes of people: the
one, those who wonder at our carelessness in regard to the young
ladies, that we allow them to take their exercise unattended by a
teacher, and the second and larger class, who are constantly
scolding because we do not promise the freest intercourse pos-
sible between the two schools and invite all of the boys to spend
every evening in our parlors: Mrs. Prof. Hains and Mrs. Shirrell
are such groaners.

So I thought a word from you, quite incidentally dropped, of
course, might be a word in season: that is if you think as I'm sure
I do, that P.A. & A.A. have stood in right relations so far as the
administration of the schools is concerned.

Warmly yours,

P. McKeen Philena54

In the final decade of the McKeen era, then, Abbot determined on a
future of its own, laying the groundwork for a resistance to coeduca-
tion that would last another seventy-five years.

Religion in the Golden Age

The nearest a woman could come in 1859 to being a Protestant min-
ister was to be principal of a committed Protestant school.55 Minister-
ing to Abbot was a heady responsibility for Philena McKeen (her
father's daughter)— one that both awed and stimulated her. As the
Reverend Silas McKeen had met monthly for discussion with his fellow
ministers, Miss McKeen consorted with giants in her many meetings
and conversations with fellow minister-educators like Park, Churchill,
and Bancroft. Her friendship may have been as important to them as
was their support for her; it was especially sustaining to Professor
Park, who grieved to find one friend after another abandoning him as
the years went by. She and her school made up a concern the three
men could hold in common, though they were divided on many philo-
sophical issues. The kindly Churchill could not agree with Park that
"Immortal souls have been lost in consequence of a wrong definition."56
Park was a stubborn holdout for the old theology during the Theo-
logical Seminary "heresy trial" of 1886 and 87: from his semiretire-
ment he supported the prosecuting Visitors Committee in its effort to
remove the five "liberal" professor-editors of the Seminary's Andover
Review. Meanwhile, Miss McKeen's "precious friend"57 Churchill and
Abbot Trustee Egbert Smyth (Abbot Board 1870-89) were two of the
five defendants.58 It must have needed tolerance and tact to navigate

J3°

SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, I 8 5 2 - I 8 9 2

~~ r If I I

s' J

If) s^"^ ft Will v/A — -- »

7 &-

, -VYI

20. Professor Churchill and his son come to tea with the sisters, Harriet
ChapeWs Journal, 24 June 1875.

between these poles, especially considering Park's "rather feudal views
of women."59 Miss McKeen had both. She also had, said one of her
younger contemporaries, an "intellect of no common sort. It was mas-
culine in its strength and in its acquirements, and she easily held her
own in the great dialectic of Andover Hill,"60 a dialectic which sought
a synthesis of "the Theology of the Intellect and the Theology of the
Feelings,"61 even while the younger professors strove to construct a
theology of action, the grounds for a crusade against social inequities
and urban ills.

Smiling, Philena McKeen stepped into the middle of the fray.
Though she was, like Park, an evangelical whose greatest joy was a stu-
dent brought to Christ, she was too much immersed in the practical
challenges of day-to-day soul-shepherding within a varied student
flock to be fussy about doctrinal details, too worried about the effects
of card-playing and dancing to contemplate the nature of Purgatory.

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL 13

If her prayers are fair evidence, her God could do most anything. She
prayed that the Lord would send new students when Abbot's applica-
tions fell off. While raising money for the new main building, she
thought of Him as a kind of heavenly Contractor whom she was assist-
ing, and prayed Him "to use every dollar and every brick to His own
glory."63 To Philena McKeen, subjects such as her beloved art history
were "the handmaids of religion;"64 any true scholar or musician or
artist was a proof of God's goodness,65 while Christianity itself was
more concerned with service to others than with the intricacies of
salvation and afterlife which preoccupied men like Edwards Park.

If Park, Churchill, and Bancroft were Miss McKeen's chief minis-
terial colleagues and her teaching colleagues were her "vicars in the
school,"66 Trustee Warren Draper was her most important lay com-
municant, deacon, and keeper of the collection plate. Draper had come
to Phillips Academy an almost penniless farmboy in the early 1840's.
Working as a janitor at Abbot to pay his expenses, he met Irene
("Patience") Rowley (Abbot, '43), who was a student supervisor of
Abbot's short-lived Commons; after his graduation from Amherst,
they married. His dream had been the ministry, but ill health inter-
vened. Shortly after entering Andover Theological Seminary, he had
to give up his plans, involving as they did a grueling combination of
study and work-for-pay. Instead he took over management of An-
dover Hill's Bookstore and Press. Though he thought of himself as
tongue-tied, ineloquent, his new enterprise was the Seminary's propa-
ganda arm: "the catalogue of his books became a catalogue of Homer's
ships,"67 as he sent out to the ends of the earth all manner of religious
publications, including the Andover Review and Bibliotheca Sacra, the
latter considered by many "the most learned and important theological
review published in this country."68 His typesetters could work in
Hebrew, Greek, and Sanskrit. Much like Abbot's earlier Trustee Peter
Smith, the staunch and kindly Draper "linked 'commercial honor' and
'personal virtue,' " becoming part of that responsible aristocracy on
which— says historian Sklar— the nineteenth century American's sense
of social stability depended.69 He was "Mechanic, Merchant, Employer,
Reader, Editor, Traveller, Patriot,"70 running the Seminary's business—
and after 1866 his own— till profits filled his pockets, and stayed there.
He and Irene Draper lived frugally, childless, waiting for worthy
causes.

One of his causes was the preservation of Indian Ridge Forest for
public use, which he and others finally accomplished by Town Meet-
ing vote in 1897. Another was the temperance movement, which he
fought for in Town Meeting in spite of several arson attempts on his

I32 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, I 8 5 2 - I 8 9 2

office by the opposition. "Don't be surprised that mischief has been
done me," he wrote his father. "I am right, and the right will prevail
in the end."71 Here was an enthusiasm he could share with Miss Mc-
Keen, who was doing her part by holding WCTU chapter meetings in
the Abbot Grove, called "Temperance Woods" during this period. To
Draper all good causes were religious causes, and education was above
all a religious enterprise. Phillips Academy and Punchard High School
he assisted in many ways, but his deepest interest was Abbot Acade-
my. Drawn to the school by his old associations, and probably be-
cause he felt more at home a bit removed from the intellectual gym-
nastics of the Hilltop, he and the McKeens found common ground in
their mutual passion for temperance, among many other things.72 Phi-
lena gladly welcomed Draper to the Board as Trustee in 1868, and as
Treasurer in 1876. In doing so she welcomed his wife, too, for as Irene
Draper was her husband's partner in all his business affairs, she was his
chief consultant in all Abbot ones. The Drapers built their "homestead"
just opposite the Abbot gates so that there could be as much coming
and going as possible with the Abbot family.73 They invited girls to
taffy pulls; they joined the Smith Hall Thanksgiving feasts; they wel-
comed and cared for ill or homesick students; they made their home a
small dormitory when the school was overfull in 1882. Whenever a
sum needed for a specific purpose could not be found— as when the first
Courants required funding— Warren or Irene Draper managed to find
it somewhere. Before his death in 1901, Warren Draper was to give a
total of $80,000 to Abbot, and his long-lived wife would add still more.
Thus the Drapers joined the Parks, the Churchills, the Bancrofts,
and the McKeens in "that matrix of social institutions and web of per-
sonal interdependence" which was Victorian America74 and Victorian
Andover, a matrix to which religion was still central. If some of the
"exuberance and openness" of the early 1800's was gone, Andover did
not miss it.75 Exuberance in the young could be dangerous, as we have
already seen. Englishman Alexander Mackay, observing American girls'
tyrannous demands on their parents, had years ago complained that
American society was "under the absolute sway of young ladies in
their teens."76 Many Americans (especially men) believed that religious
training could efficiently tame women to their proper role. "Religion
is exactly what a woman needs, for it gives her that dignity that best
suits her dependence," wrote Caleb Atwater in The Ladies Reposi-
tory.77 Abbot's education for "Christian womanhood" convinced the
1 890 Courant editors that "to do the daily grind faithfully is the duty
of each one toward bringing about the coming of the kingdom."78
Religious training could fit women for their great tasks as mothers or

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL

*33

21. Warren Fates Draper, a Yankee benefactor. From Memorial to
W. F. Draper.

teachers of souls; it served alternately as ua kind of tranquilizer for the
many undefined longings which swept even the most pious young girl,
and about which it was better to pray than to think."79

Begin with the Lord's day. Abbot's Sabbath was (said the Catalogue)
to "be observed as in any other Christian family. Calls will neither be
made nor received on that day. Unless providentially called away, no
young lady will be absent from her home here a single Sabbath during
the term, as we consider excitement and change of scene opposed to

134 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, I 8 5 2 - I 8 9 2

that quiet thoughtfulness which belong to holy time."80 This was the
traditional compulsory New England Sabbath in which, complained a
visitor of 1858, "the rest of Sunday is the rest of the tomb."81 Harriet
Chapell heartily agreed at first:

Such horrid Sundays we have here— fish balls, brown bread, mus-
tard, and doughnuts for breakfast, then half-hours, and three
quarters to dress, go to Church, sit perked up in the gallery, home
to dinner, off immediately to service, then home to stay with
your room-mate till tea time; after that the visiting quarters,
half-hours, and solitude with the victimized roommate, then bed
ends the long day. Not a bit of home Sunday life, not one
minute of being all together for a good earnest talk.82

Hardest of all was "reporting the sermon" to Miss McKeen or a
teacher every Sunday, sometimes in writing; for Harriet so often slept
through sermons.

Eventually, Harriet learned how to survive Sundays. She laid in food
supplies each Saturday so that she and her friends could find comfort
in secret parties. She and Mame made so much noise during one half-
hour that "Miss Palmer comes tripping" to their door: " 'Aren't we
getting into a frolic?' Mame said 'Yes'm, thank you Miss Palmer' so
humbly that I was about convulsed with laughter." An hour or so
later: "We are in perfect agony now, for we have tried to laugh quiet-
ly to ourselves and it is such hard work."83

Even Christmas was just an extra Sabbath day on Zion's Hill until
the mid-1870's. At least the Abbot girls had no classes as Phillips stu-
dents did, but they probably went to hear Professor Park's hour-long
sermon on December 25 of the McKeen's first year, when Phillips stu-
dent Charles Phelps Taft wrote his father about it. "The chief thing he
seemed to be driving at was, that there was no end to eternity. I could
not make anything else out of it. This don't seem at all like Christmas."84

In addition to half-hours and daily "devotions," time was set aside
every Thursday evening for an evening prayer meeting and inspira-
tional talk; and on Saturday afternoon or evening all students gathered
to hear a lecture by one of the McKeens, or to receive special prepara-
tion by Dr. Bancroft or another minister for Communion Service.
There were special meetings for the fervent; a dozen Seniors habitually
crowded into the class president's Smith Hall room to pray for one
another. Many girls complained, but others thrived (or, like Harriet,
complained at first and thrived later). A student of 1861 wrote of
walking back to Abbot after an inspiring meeting on the Hill. "In the
calm light of the Sabbath sunset, my former indecision returned. Duty

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL 135

and inclination, the one cold and stern, the other fair and winning,
alternately presented their claims."85 Later entries suggest that duty
won out for this young woman. A student music teacher from the
McKeens' first year recalled to them in 1879 tnat

It was while I was at Abbott Academy that I gained the first
knowledge of my soul's wants . . . What I felt most and have
never forgotten was the ease and power with which you both
labored and prayed with the girls under your care for the salva-
tion of their souls.

She wrote with passion, for she felt that her own conversion at age
thirty-three and the religious change it impelled in her profligate hus-
band and five children had come only just in time to save her family.86

Yet Abbot was no longer obsessed by conversion, as Phillips occa-
sionally was under Taylor and as Mount Holyoke had been for dec-
ades to the distress of free spirits like Emily Dickinson. Phebe McKeen
expressed in Theodora her understanding of the ambiguities the con-
version process presented in a world of expanding scientific knowl-
edge.87 Like many boarding schools of the time, Abbot modeled itself
on the Christian home: both McKeens emphasized the school Family's
responsibility for orderly Christian nurture.88 We hear less of the inner
storms of conversion as the McKeen era progresses. Apparently this
Family was busy responding to the universal desire of middle class
Americans to protect their growing daughters "from the howling
storm outside."89

Abbot approached religion intellectually as well as ritually. Gradu-
ates remembered the theological professors who came down the Hill
to Abbot, Calvin Stowe to teach Biblical History, Trustee Park to
secure Abbot girls against Hellfire by reminding them that "an infinite
wrong against an Infinite Being deserves an infinite punishment."90
Meanwhile, Philena McKeen worked to perfect her course in Butler's
Analogy. This rite of passage was the crown (or was it the fetish?)91
of every Senior's career. Said an 1879 report in the Congregationalist,
young women are not supposed to excel in "metaphysical studies," but
"in Abbot Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, there is no examination
in which pupils shine more brilliantly than in that on Butler's Analogy""
In time she took over the Biblical and ecclesiastical history courses
from the men. Draper published her ambitious Church History syllabus
(it went from "Noah and the Flood, 2348 b.c" and "Abraham, 2247
b.c" through the mid-nineteenth century), and she filled it with her
own lesson plans and marginal scrawls. She notes that "Adam was put
in the garden to 'dress and keep it.' Employment, if not labor, was a

I36 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

condition of happiness in paradise." She found it important that an
Egyptologist had discovered inscriptions confirming the drought dur-
ing the "seven lean years," and had dated it at 1900 B.C. She mingled a
fuzzy knowledge of Darwin's theories with ancient Congregationalist
prejudices in her endorsement of a Michigan University professor,
who, she writes, had asserted that "the negro race is older than Adam.
His chief argument is derived from the lack of time between Adam
and Ham for the black race to deteriorate so much, as we see so little
change since men began to observe." She drew sounder lessons from
chemistry, noting that "64 original elements form all the earth," in-
cluding the humans who people it. Thus " 'Dust thou art and to dust
shalt thou return' is literally true."92 The course itself alternated dreary
sectarian controveries with stirring, detailed stories of Roman emperors
or Christian martyrs and extraordinarily clear explanations of compet-
ing philosophies. Supplementary reading consisted of scholarly works
like Stanley's History of the Jewish Church and articles from Biblio-
theca Sacra.

Miss McKeen's syllabus shows no sign of the interest Elizabeth Cady
Stanton had provoked among woman's rights activists in a new biblical
scholarship resentful of the almost total dominance of men in biblical
history and attentive to women's deserved place in Christian tradition.93
Perhaps nothing Mrs. Stanton proposed could move Philena McKeen,
uncomfortable as she seems to have been with the suffragist creed. She
did keep a clipping reporting a meeting where Lady Henry Somerset
criticised Protestant Christianity: "So long as the Virgin Mary could
not be recognized, so long would women not be recognized."94

Abbot students were continually reminded of the larger Christian
community connected with their school. Over and over again, mis-
sionaries or their Abbot alumna wives came to spend the Sabbath and
to speak. William Schauffler visited his old classrooms in 1880. A
Courant reporter was particularly interested in a talk by Rev. Dr.
Crumwell, black missionary in Liberia, who told the girls that "the
condition of morals under [American] slavery was far lower than
[under] paganism." The whole school went to South Church to hear
evening lectures by Professor Stowe, now living in Hartford, and
Phillips Brooks, friend of the Seminary's liberals; the older students
traveled to nearby towns on several occasions to attend convoca-
tions run by the American Board of Foreign Missions. (Miss Mc-
Keen once allowed fifty girls to spend the night on the floor of a
church in Lowell when teachers and students decided to stay on an
extra day. They used pew cushions for mattresses and slept under
quilts provided by a local merchant.95) Letters were regularly read in

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL I 37

Hall from Old Scholars describing their work "among the lowly" in
a city mission, in Hampton Institute, or in Turkey,96 and requesting
Christmas boxes of the linen or clothes that Abbot students often
sewed and packed for the needy. This was a more practical Christianity
than that traditionally emphasized on the Hilltop, where a professor
once scolded a theologue for spending his time helping poor families

in the Andover mill district: "That is wasting his Seminary course

in what he calls doing good."97 It was also a Christianity that brought
alien places close, involving Abbot students in Bulgarian or Japanese
political tangles as in a cosmic battle between the Heathen and the
Saved. Seminary professor John Phelps Taylor told the graduating
Class of 1 89 1 that each Senior would "take the diploma today as a
symbol of your union and communion with a shining host, the living
and the dead, graduates and friends of Abbot Academy, who long for
a clearer union and a more perfect ministry in the steps of Mary and
Mary's son."

With the waning of Abbot's golden age, one senses Philena McKeen
tiring of the constant effort needed to pit her beliefs against the
"destructive tendency of this age," as one Courant writer put it.98 The
scientific mentality was displacing the theological mentality to which
she had been raised; Miss McKeen could not hold back the wave alone.
For a while, her painful rheumatism and the school's day-to-day prob-
lems eroded her optimism and her faith. When her own and Abbot's
health improved during the summer of 1888, she wrote to Irene
Draper, chiding herself: "I am often obliged to turn upon myself as
distrust rises in regard to God's purposes toward the school and to my-
self, with 'O fool, and slow of heart to believel" So many girls were
now apathetic about Abbot's rigorous Christian routine that Miss Mc-
Keen retreated from the concept of an entire "community in Christ,"
and in 1891 encouraged the really devoted few (thirty or so at first)
to organize the "Christian Workers," a precursor of the Abbot Re-
ligious Association. In another area, disillusionment had a happier
result. The self-reporting system, which had rubbed consciences raw
for a generation, seemed now to be creating only cynicism and dis-
trust. It was abandoned by universal consent in 1 890, and its originator
found herself pleased to see it go.

Miss McKeen, so long tolerant of the Congregationalists' bias against
women's formal leadership in the church, gradually lost patience with
her own denomination. She wrote the Congregationalist in 1879 to ex_
press gratitude for the reinstitution of the "day of Prayer" for schools
and colleges, but asked why women's institutions could not be explicit-
ly included? "Is it because women are naturally good enough, or be-

138 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

cause they have no souls?" Her answer is a cynical one: men have
always supported all-male schools with financial gifts, therefore they
keep watch over the spiritual health of those institutions as though to
make certain of the worth of their investment. "Let money find its
way to girls' schools, and prayer would naturally follow."99 Though
the McKeens had come East in 1859 as educational missionaries to a
threadbare Abbot Acadmy, faith, hope, and love were no longer suf-
ficient for the now "celebrated school."100 Speaking for the Trust-
ees at Philena McKeen's last Commencement, Seminary professor
John Phelps Taylor might compare her thirty-three year "ministry" at
Abbot with "the Master's" span of life on earth, but the minister her-
self had by then lost her original fervor. Toward the end of her life,
Miss McKeen often attended services at Andover's Episcopal Church.
We cannot know whether she was looking for more of the Virgin
Mary or for a new social status, since so many of Andover's business
leaders were now Episcopalians.101 In any case, her discouragement,
along with the Theological Seminary's declining national influence and
the secular distractions of the late nineteenth century, combined to
weaken the confident, unifying Congregationalist orientation which
Abbot's founders had built into its constitution.102 It was the end of an
era for this "elder daughter of Christian Academies in New England."103

Self Images

Like young people anywhere, any time, Abbot students had their
worries and their dreams. Their lives had boundaries ours have not;
for them also, life's possibilities extended to places few of us ever visit
in our minds.

Death was a near boundary. Though most of women's physical
"weakness" was myth, many young people did sicken and die. One
tried to prepare for it. Rarely was dying hidden in hospitals; student
Julia Downs died in her South Hall room on 6 October 1873. Almost
every issue of Courant reports the death of at least one student or
young alumna.

Among those of that happy family in Smith Hall during the few-
years following 1870 is a name spoken always with love ... a
name which is now spoken with tears . . . Dear Minnie Lewis
is a saint in heaven. Our hearts are full; but remembering what
she was, we can ask no questions. She was the Lord's; is it not
lawful for Him to do what He will with His own?

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL I 39

Was it any real comfort for the dying to be "the Lord's"? Martha
Bailey, '71, had time to seek that solace, at least, and a death well pre-
pared for was valued. "I long to see my Father in Heaven ... Oh I
never thought it could be so beautiful to die." The horror expressed in
Commit of a student drowned reflects these young women's fear of
sudden death. It is most pronounced in the record of alumna Gertrude
Spalding Hayden's murder, though here we can also detect a crude
relish in the drama of it all.

It was the old story, too often told, of a young orphan heiress
infatuated by a worthless man, who loved her with a love more
cruel than the grave— a wilful, stolen marriage— a gay life for a
little while— then years of enduring all the indignities and wrongs
that the brutal selfishness of a drinking man can inflict upon a
timid young wife.

The husband soon got "in the habit of extorting her property from
her . . . with his pistol at her head." Gertie, no longer the "playful,
kittenlike creature" she had been at Abbot, finally "took refuge with
her sisters" in a Vermont border town, but her husband traveled 200
miles to force his way into her home (wounding her brother-in-law)
and shoot her. While she lingered a few hours, her husband sent from
prison to ask her forgiveness. She gave it, and died.104

Life's boundary crossed, afterlife waited. For many, heaven was real.
Alumna Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (Mrs. Ward) found the public much
preferred her two "Gates" novels about heaven to her book on the
evils of this industrializing world, The Silent Partner. The Gates Ajar
was the most popular of her fifty-two published books. Within these
pearly gates, men and women are equal and Christ protects woman
against male incursions whenever her worth is questioned. The Gates
Beyond describes a Heaven much like the decorous Old Andover of
Elizabeth's girlhood,— "everything in its place,"— with one improve-
ment: one's Heaven-husband was one's God-intended soulmate, not
necessarily one's husband-on-earth. (Mr. Ward had been a great dis-
appointment to Elizabeth Phelps.)105 For everyone, revered memory
could extend individual life. One would expect Phebe McKeen's death
at age forty-eight to absorb the whole Abbot community, but what is
striking is the sense of her continued presence into the 1890's as a kind
of local school saint. In spite of her intense intellectual energy, Phebe
had had "consumption" for years. Philena had greatly hoped that a
long European holiday would restore her; this the Trustees granted
the two sisters in 1875-76, but it did no permanent good. Phebe left
before Commencement in 1879 to tr7 to get weH- "Be my sister's coun-

I40 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

selor and comforter while I am gone," she wrote Headmaster Bancroft
soon after her leavetaking. For her graduating Seniors she sent a spe-
cial message.

I am more sorry than I will try to tell you to desert you so, and
not to be there to give you my parting blessing when you go
away. But my Heavenly Father lays his hand upon me saying
"Be still," and that is the end of it.

She gave them careful instructions for the oral examination.

I won't let anyone else examine you in Milton, [because] I can-
not give you the review you need. Instead, prepare to recite
Lycidas and Covms. Rehearse w7ell under Helen Page. And be
sure to read Paradise Lost some time within the next three years.
I shall love to hear from each of you, dear girls. With heart-
felt love,

Phebe McKeen.

Her instructions were followed to the letter, and the Senior Literature
course remained "Miss Phebe's class" throughout the next year, though
Phebe herself was convalescing with a friend in Baltimore. On the
night train back to Andover and the 1880 Commencement, she went to
sleep after speaking over the 121st Psalm (I will lift up mine eyes unto
the hills . . .) and she never woke up.

Death was no stranger to Philena AicKeen. Long before, her mother
had been killed in an accident; her father, her only brother, and three
of her sisters had died of tuberculosis. But Phebe had been her whole
family, her closest friend and colleague, for twenty-four years.
"Neither could be understood without the other," wrote Professor
Park. Phebe's "habitual gladness"106 was Philena's daily leaven, her
courage in illness Philena's inspiration. After Phebe died, Philena set
a portrait of her sister on an easel in her parlor. Emily Means had
lovingly painted it from photographs, and had caught Phebe's "kin-
dling eye." Ever afterward it was next to the portrait that Philena
knelt for her prayers; it was Phebe's spirit she consulted when a serious
decision was to be made. Lonely one night in 1890, she wrote Old
Scholar and teacher Mary Belcher:

I write tonight because I need to speak to someone who has
belonged to the same past as me. I have been speaking to Phebe's
portrait; she looks as if she heard me and felt with me, but I do
not hear her voice.107

It was years before Miss McKeen's memory of her sister ceased to

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL 14]

interfere with her enjoyment of the charades and games and puns in
which Phebe had delighted. But ultimately the tragedy left her stronger.
It brought her "still nearer to the unseen world," deepening her own
faith, Miss Merrill recalled later.108 Her gradual acceptance of Phebe's
death helped to create in her "a heart at leisure from itself to sympa-
thize with the experience of others," as a friend of her old age put it.109
Abbot teachers often conjured up Phebe's image as scholar, goad,
and Christian comforter. Students who had never actually known her
came to share in her memory. "Miss McKeen often called us by our
first names," one remembered, "but one of the new Smith Hall girls
was 'Phebe', and our principal could not say her name without tears
coming to her eyes."110 Mr. Downs set the 121st Psalm to music, and
it was sung for years at Commencement time, a hymn to Abbot's own
angelic symbol of the undying soul.

Women still could not vote or fully control their financial affairs or
enter many professions. Even Quaker-founded Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity would not accept a woman graduate student unless she agreed to
sit behind a screen in the classroom. Yet as Abbot's golden age pro-
gressed, most students apparently absorbed a wondrous optimism
about the future of women in particular and America in general. For
all the disturbing ideas introduced by Darwin, and by the gloomy
"Social Darwinists" who wrenched Darwin's theories to fit their eco-
nomic or political conservatism,111 for all the "struggle for existence"
that seemed actually to be taking place in cities or on the railway
workers' picket lines, Courant editors wrote repeatedly about "our
great Nineteenth Century."112 Two thousand Abbot students, Old
Scholars, and friends listened to Dr. Storrs's Semicentennial address, as
he spoke of society coming ever "nearer to God's plans . . . This pro-
gress is all the time going forward; and the current is as irresistible, as
irreversible, as the current of a mighty river, as the passage of stars
across the meridian."113 The students behaved as though "we, the
women of America"114 would soon have the same political rights men
had. They held mock elections of their own in every presidential elec-
tion from 1876 on; they attended their first political meeting in 1880;
they ran their own caucuses and conventions. The Democratic faction
of 1888 stuffed the ballot box as if in imitation of the male Democrats
of those days. (In spite of this perfidy, the Democrats lost seventy-two
to nine.) Even Miss McKeen was interested enough that year to write
Irene Draper and ask that "Mr. Edmund's article 'Why I am a Repub-
lican' " be sent to her. "I wish to be clear on my political creed," she
explained.

142 SOLID ACQUIREMENTS, 1852-1892

According to men's ideal images, "woman as a sex ought not to do
the hard work of the world, either social, intellectual, or moral,"115
and it seemed natural for Maggie of Thorton Hall to complain, "There
are so few things a girl can do."116 Actual employment statistics, how-
ever, showed an ever-increasing percentage of women in the labor
force. Though most were menial workers, more each year were college
professors, librarians, lawyers, and doctors— this in spite of protests
from such as A.M. A. President Dr. Alfred Stille ( 1 87 1 ) that woman is
"unfitted by nature to become a physician."117 Abbot's Trustees were
still all male, but women served widely as public school board mem-
bers. "The world is in need of women, not animated fashion plates,"
wrote the Courant editors of 1874-75.118 A delightful Courant story,
"About Us," describes the decision of two imaginary Abbot graduates
not to accept "that the whole duty of woman was to teach her Sunday
School class and take care of her house if she had one, and if not wait
until one (or the owner of one) came along." They become partners
in a rollicking grain business, two heroines as different as can be from
the vapid "Prue" in Thomas B. Aldrich's Prudence Palfrey.119 (Prue
idles at home through the entire book while her two suitors roam the
United States in exhausting adventures.)

"We were taught to be intellectual women," wrote Anna Dawes '70,
recalling her Abbot days.120 Courant editors of 1878 were excited by
reports from Smith College (founded in 1871) that college women
could succeed in the advanced studies expected of seniors at Harvard
or Yale. They acknowledged the argument that many women were
presently too weak for heavy study (Mary Belcher told her gymna-
stics classes— and anyone else who would listen— that "not one in five
[American women 1 are enjoying good health").121 They insisted, how-
ever, that such "destruction" was due not to "natural weakness," but
to "unceasing stuffing with candy," lack of exercise, "improper dress"
and other "imprudence." "Girls, why not let us who are now coming
into womanhood prove to the world that we can get an education
equal to that of boys . . . and still turn out strong, healthy women?"122
The 1883-84 editors decided Abbot women had improved, even
though "we [still] have too much mental and nervous force to match
our bodily development . . . One thing we know— that woman of the
future will be grander and nobler than the woman of to-day, and to
the intellect of the nineteenth century will join the perfect body
whose fair mould the Greeks have left us."123 By the close of the
McKeen era, Abbot girls, like girls throughout the country, enjoyed
many more active running sports than had been allowed at mid-
century. The "perfect bodv" might not be a delusion after all.

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL

22. Tennis, 1886.

Abbot students often dreamed of travel, whether or not they had
the means to undertake it. As "the rich capitalists of Boston look[ed]
. . . with a kind of piety on Old England" when the Pulsky brothers
observed them in 1852,124 so the Abbot community revered old world
culture. A yen for travel was in the Andover air, asserts Marion
Park. "All Andover took the $100 or the $200 that it had saved and
started for Europe every summer."125 One feels that no Abbot woman
was considered quite complete until she had made her pilgrimage
abroad, seen for herself the great cathedrals and paintings she had
studied, and tested her language skills. Students of the sixties told how
Henrietta and Susan Hamlin, traveling alone, had talked their way
into a German fortress at Verona by dazzling the guards with their
fluency in Deutsch. An alumna wrote Courant of her triumphant
passage through Europe, shepherding three non- Abbot friends— two of
them college graduates, all speechless in foreign tongues— with her
Abbot Academy French. Courant is filled with travel accounts by
alumnae and teachers. Mrs. Mead's "A Letter from Melrose" needs
no further identification: Melrose, Scotland, with its famous abbey,
would never be mistaken by the Courant audience for Melrose, Mas-
sachusetts, not far from Andover. The McKeens were delighted at
the prospect of their own pilgrimage. In her letter thanking the Trust-
ees for their generosity, Philena McKeen said that the thought of the
coming trip "makes me tingle with joy to the ends of my fingers."126

Abbot women went North, South, and West too: A.A.H, '89, wrote
of her trip to Alaska; Alice French, '68, explored Arkansas and wrote

144 SOLID ACQU I REMENTS, 1852-1892

(as "Octave Thanet") a dialect story for Courant; S.F.A., '81, shot the
Sault Sainte Marie rapids; E.S., '92, sailed twelve hours in an old
schooner to camp out on a California island; A.A., '92, became the first
American woman to climb to the Moon Temple above Kobe, Japan.
They brought their prejudices along. In a letter from Washington,
D.C., M.P.K., '84, described the "amusing" behavior of black families
in her mission class and in their own churches: "Some of the negroes
are educated and well-ofT; but our idea of the 'darkey' is a black, jolly
person, with thick lips, broad nose, white teeth, and a not very grace-
ful figure, and it is this class who are the most interesting."127 This
was handy confirmation of Miss AdcKeen's notes on the evolution of
the black race. Travel could narrow minds too.

In spite of adventurous dreams and deeds, the surest future for every
Abbot girl was still a home and family of her own. She had heard Miss
McKeen urging her to "rejoice in her womanhood";128 her school was
praised as one of the "safe-guards and beautifiers and purifiers" of the
American home.129 The "blessed work"130 of wife and mother con-
stantly beckoned, colliding with newer, broader aspirations. It is inter-
esting that by 191 3 only half of all Abbot alumnae had married. The
probable reasons for this are complex, and bear discussion in a later
chapter; but at the least, one can surmise that the school's lively spin-
ster teachers helped to make the single life an acceptable alternative.
Perhaps it is a tribute to the McKeens and their colleagues that Abbot
could contain as many dreams as it did, that the school did not insist
on a single pattern for adult life. The medals struck during Abbot's
golden age were of infinite variety.

Alumnae data show that bold self-images often shaped adult realities.
The very security students found within the Abbot Family apparently
gave many Abbot graduates the strength to live futures unforeseen
by Philena McKeen. This was a confirmation of Victorian educators'
hopes: the confusions of modern life were so great that it was better,
they reasoned, to isolate young people from temptation than to allow
them to test and temper themselves within the adult world of work
or marriage. Like all boarding seminaries and colleges for young wom-
en, Abbot early provided the carefully controlled environment that
would become the ideal for boys' preparatory schools and coeduca-
tional public high schools after about 1885.131 Victorian America "as-
sociated puberty with psychological turbulence and moral incapacity,"
and adults must step in.132 The McKeens and their teachers prescribed
dress, food, exercise, sleeping hours, intellectual labor, and religious
practice for an entire community of girls and young women; if all

PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL 145

did not go exactly as planned, it was not for lack of adult effort. As
Joseph Kett points out, teenaged girls from middle- and upper-income
families were the earliest adolescents, the group seen as most vulnerable
to the pressures of modern life, most in need of protection against
hasty marriage and the precocious assumption of adult status in an
uncertain world, as well as the one whose economic services were
least needed. Decades had passed since the Marland girls operated the
power looms in their father's Andover mill, mingling daily with farm-
ers' daughters. After the Civil War, only immigrants and poor people
sent their girls into factory work; the better sort arranged for their
daughters a moratorium between childhood and adulthood whose
purest expression was the boarding school.133 One result of this com-
bination of genuine parental concern and push for status was that
many American girls were better educated than their brothers. Eu-
ropean visitors remarked on the fact, and a society convinced that
women had a special talent for religious and cultural pursuits accepted
and welcomed it.134 Not until the 1890's would large numbers of par-
ents demand an equally thorough secondary education for their sons.
By that time, rapid industrialization had greatly expanded professional
and managerial opportunities for men, while the old apprenticeship
routes to vocational competence were being closed off.135

Developments in young men's education only confirmed the Abbot
adults' confidence in the path their school had chosen before the Civil
War. Miss Hasseltine had sketched it, and Miss McKeen traveled it
with her colleagues for over three decades. The McKeens created
their own cheering section along the route, as their students grad-
uated and sent encouragement back to the Family.136 Emily Means,
'69, remembered Miss Phebe moving always "in advance of her girls,"
with "a brilliant smile of approval" for those who "climbed the
heights" with her, "a scathing scorn if they fell behind." Meanwhile
Philena was at the rear "with a steady force pushing [them] on, like
the irresistible movement of a glacier. Between two such stimuli, how
could one help moving forward?"137 It was well that Abbot had gath-
ered its strength, for mountains lay ahead.

Ill

forth and Back, 1885-1912

The mid-i88o's found Abbot entered upon a period of enthusiastic
physical expansion and reluctant educational redefinition, a phase
which lasted through the final McKeen years, tried two more prin-
cipals, and ushered in Bertha Bailey, the first Abbot principal to have
prepared for her career in college. Buildings that had seemed luxurious
at midcentury looked inadequate by 1880, especially to Miss McKeen,
who longed to immortalize her pedagogical ideas in brick and stone.
Abbot had also to shift its academic ground just enough to find a
secure niche in an educational scene suddenly dominated by the new
women's colleges, without losing strengths built into the school during
earlier years. For only the strong could negotiate a way through the
mounting confusion over women's roles around the turn of the cen-
tury. Images of women's progress toward equality were fast becoming
realities, and the luxury of anticipation had to give way to disciplined,
practical efforts to deal with these realities. In spite of perplexity,
Abbot would do its best.

Expansion

In his Report for 1876 the U.S. Commissioner of Education listed Ab-
bot Academy among the "institutions for the superior instruction of
females," along with Vassar, Bradford, Mt. Holyoke Seminary, and
several mid-western colleges. The Commissioner acknowledged that
his office was baffled: many "colleges" were providing the barest
high school training, while the best "seminaries" matched the true
colleges in their curricular offerings and the age range and quality
of their students.1 Though Abbot could not touch Vassar's $400,000
founding endowment or Mt. Holyoke's library collection, its courses
almost exactly duplicated those offered by her sister institutions.

Ten years later, although all chartered "seminaries" like Abbot had
disappeared from the Commissioner's list, the confusion remained. The
U.S. Office could still give no clear answer to the vexing question,
"When is a 'college' or seminary truly a college?"2 By 1889 the Com-
missioner was lamenting the condition of the typical state-chartered
degree-granting female "college" running unendowed "like an engine
without a flywheel," owned or leased by a president who "makes out
of it what he can."3 The Commissioner was comfortable with only
about fifteen institutions of the 179 on the "college" list, among them
Wellesley, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Vassar, the new co-ordinate colleges,
Barnard and Radcliffe, and innovative, self-conscious Bryn Mawr.

Abbot had not changed; the educational world had changed. The
Abbot of the 1880's was in fact a thriving enterprise, rich for its time
in teaching equipment and well-equipped teachers. But this Abbot was
also uneasy, jealous of the new "instant institutions" endowed by mil-
lionaires, chafing at the limitations imposed by its frugal Trustees. As
early as 1877 the privations of Abbot life had begun to tell on both
McKeens. News that Bradford's Annie Johnson had been hired at
$3000 stimulated a proud plea from Philena to Trustee Chairman George
Ripley: "Are not we two worth as much to Abbot Academy?" she
asked. (Apparently the answer was "not quite," for the Trustees raised
the McKeens' combined salary from $1600 to just $2ooo.)4 The same
year, indignant Courant editors advertised Abbot's departmental and

152 FORTH AND BACK , 1885-IQI2

housing needs, and asked why girls' schools should so often want
for money. Student writers pointed out that "the current expense of
a student for one year at Harvard would pay the current expenses of
a four year's course at Welleslev; yet there are many girls who cannot
afford this whose brothers are at Harvard."5 Shortly after the Semi-
centennial orators had called for the expansion of Abbot, this "engine
of good,"6 Miss McKeen wrote the Trustees the first of many anxious
letters. Improved transportation and the proliferation of new institu-
tions had brought Abbot "into direct and sharp competition with other
prominent schools and colleges for girls," she told the Board.7 The
dormitories at Wheaton, Bradford, and Wellesley offered students
both bedrooms and parlors at little more cost than the Abbot student
paid to share an attic room in South Hall. Abbot salaries could not
obtain "a teacher who seems absolutely essential to the prosperity of
the school," one who might want to come but could not make the
$200 sacrifice below her present salary; $150,000 would provide a new
dormitory, a small endowment to tide the school over business panics,
and the teaching space needed to house the abundant equipment then
packed in boxes.8 Abbot's richly endowed "sister schools," Vassar and
Wellesley, most excited Miss McKeen's envy. But at a minimum,
"Shall not Abbot keep up with Bradford in its opportunities for study,
though it cannot in its buildings?"9

No response— at least none that we know of. For the next few years
the problem simmered in faculty sitting rooms and in gatherings of
the growing Alumnae Association. All Abbot watched the physical
changes being made on top of Andover Hill, where Dr. Bancroft's
Centennial drive had pulled Phillips Academy from penury to a con-
dition that allowed significant dormitory construction, even (eventual-
ly) the construction of bathrooms. Miss McKeen gradually became
convinced that physical improvements were the key to Abbot's future:
no legal application for college status such as Mt. Holyoke Seminary
was soon to make seemed called for when most Abbot students and
teachers— even those few teachers who were college graduates— were
so content with the original format, and she herself was so suspicious
of credentialism.

In private she worried about inferior lighting systems and double
beds. College administrators were anxious about the effects of "smash-
ing"; Victorian New England had finally confessed itself stung bv
criticisms like those of French visitor Moreau de Saint-Mery.

I am about to say something almost incredible. [America's
young women are not] strangers to the taste for the pleasures

EXPANSION 153

of a misguided imagination in a person of the same sex . . .
In the space of eight or ten years a girl may share her bed with
fifty or sixty different creatures, of whom no more may be
known than their names, who may be . . . infected with com-
municable diseases and with habits fatal to a young person.10

Harriet Chapell would have laughed at such fulminations; another
alumna of the seventies could recall her bedfellow with amusement
("I love her dearly, but I always said and I always will say that she
took three quarters of the bed").11 Yet Miss McKeen could not afford
to ignore the prevailing anxiety. The technology was at hand to alter
the custom that had kept so many bedfellows warm, happy, and
cramped for so long. None of the new colleges had double beds or
kerosene lamps; neither would Abbot Academy.

In public Miss McKeen pressed the Trustees to raise the needed
funds. By 1884 she was insistent: "Better accommodation'" is what we
need, she wrote the Trustees in January 1884. "You do not know the
deep feeling of Old Scholars in regard to this matter." Alumnae As-
sociation members had recently pledged $2000 to begin a building
drive. "I should be unwilling to attend another meeting of that As-
sociation, unless I could report the sympathy and efficient cooperation
of the Trustees." She reminded them that she would not be Principal
much longer, and that her "long experience would be of practical
worth" in helping plan new buildings.12

Perhaps it was her postscript that set them thinking: "P.S. It cannot
have escaped your notice that our numbers have fallen off during the
last two years; there is everv reason to fear that this decrease will go
on, unless we can compete with neighboring schools in the accom-
modations we offer for the same, or more, money." The decline had
been small, but the threat was palpable. In June she again asked for
action, and this time the men of the Board took the bait. Upon the
Drapers' dining room table one evening that fall, a grand plan emerged,
the sum of faculty suggestions, McKeen ambitions, and architects' con-
sultations with the Trustees' planning and building committees includ-
ing Professor Churchill, George Ripley, Mortimer Mason, and Warren
Draper. The architects' sketches envisioned an entirely new campus of
four large buildings, including an enormous "Administration Building"
with rooms for English course students, two language halls, and a new
Academy building, each built in "eleventh century Romanesque," a
style that all agreed would greatly surpass the outmoded simplicities
of Smith Hall and the original Academy building.

The company was delighted with the covered walkwavs and the

'54

FORTH AND BACK, 1885-IQI2

§ifc«

t*3

EXPANSION 155

plans for minimizing stair climbing, features designed to maintain the
delicate health of young women.13 They made plans to publicize the
school's absolute commitment to central heating and to single beds,
whether in single rooms or two-room suites. Full of optimism and of
what was later to seem to Miss McKeen an "almost pathetic" cour-
age,14 they set about organizing themselves to raise $150,000 from a
constituency that had never given more than $7,000 for any one proj-
ect, from alumnae who had repeatedly pleaded "reduced circum-
stances" or "father is bankrupt" during the Semicentennial drive five
years earlier.15

The Trustees expressed their "earnest desire" that Philena McKeen
should actively aid in the fund-raising, and promised to cover her ex-
penses.16 Miss McKeen had not expected this; always before, the men
had raised the building funds. Fearful of horses, terrified of traveling
by night,17 she was at first "overwhelmed" by the idea of herself con-
ducting "a campaign of begging," but she agreed in spite of her fears
to take the major responsibility— "I shall do it if it kills me," she said—
so long as the Board did not insist that she approach strangers who
knew nothing of Abbot.18 Here was a stipulation that Miss McKeen
could make with some confidence, for Abbot Academy had by now a
small but loyal Alumnae Association, begun by Phebe McKeen and
Susanna Jackson in 1871 and strengthened through the efforts of many
—most notably the Corresponding Secretaries, trustee daughters Char-
lotte Swift and Agnes Park, both Class of 1858. A $5.00 life member-
ship fee soon created funds sufficient to invest, the interest to be used
for needed gifts to the school— maps, books, microscopes for the
botany class, and more books. Most important, the 350 Association
members could be counted on to help with the new drive, as could
others of the more than 1000 alumnae who were not yet members
but had shown their interest by returning for the Old Scholars Day
at the Semicentennial Celebration or bv coming back at Commence-
ment time.19 With much help from the records that had been gathered
for the Semicentennial Celebration, Miss McKeen and a special secre-
tary mapped her routes and planned the central meetings of Abbot
alumnae and friends. All contributions were to be made conditional
upon $100,000 being subscribed on or before July 1st, 1886. She went
first to the Trustees, to the Alumnae Association and to Abbot's Hill
and Town neighbors; armed with their pledges, totaling about $34,000,
she and a companion set forth in January 1886 on her tour of prospec-
tive donors in five northeastern states.

It was a bold departure for an elderly lady. The two braved New
York snowstorms and New England floods, hoping for, and almost

156 FORTH AND BACK, I 8 8 5 — I 9 I 2

receiving, a welcome at each city or town in an alumna or parent
home. They set forth every day on calls to nearby alumnae, and wrote
pledge cards by night for people of! her route. There were "days and
days," Miss McKeen wrote later.20 At one house in Pottsville, Penn-
sylvania, she was given $600, in all of Springfield, Massachusetts, only
$70, in New York City, $5010.

She hated it; she loved it. "I dreaded the last call I made as much as
I had dreaded the first." Worst of all was her "unpleasant duty" to
"seek gentlemen in their place of business." But her reward was the
welcome her Dear Old Girls gave her in their own homes, which she
found "centres of refinement and intelligence and usefulness."21 Grad-
ually as she visited ever more alumnae, "the new buildings, which had
so long filled my vision, sank to less importance, and the school rose, a
beautiful temple, of which our (daughters) were as cornerstones,
polished after the similitude of a palace."22 Wrenching metaphor this,
but typically earnest sentiment.

The Trustees helped her mount receptions in Lowell, Boston, and
New York. At the Boston gathering, Rev. Phillips Brooks, distant
cousin of Sarah Abbot and "beloved friend" of her namesake school,
spoke movingly of Abbot's capacity for combining the old and the
new; Edwin Reed, Abbot husband, asserted that women's education
should be first to receive support, not last, for "Great men always
have great mothers." Reverend Cyrus Hamlin, now over eighty years
old and returned from Turkey, sent a message saying "Abbot has no
superior ... It cannot be spared." Hamlin also came to Lowell to
rejoice that his wife Henrietta and six of his daughters had been ed-
ucated at Abbot. In April, Philena McKeen came home with about
$55,000 in total pledges, exhausted but hopeful. Even the Smith Hall
cook and laundry girls handed back to her part of their wages that
spring. She felt that the remainder of the $100,000 might yet come in.
It did not. July approached, with the goal only half attained. The
Trustees wrote all those who had promised to give, asking that they
allow the school more time to reach its minimum goal. Most respon-
dents agreed, but some withdrew their pledges. It was a discouraging
time. The Trustees went ahead with more modest building plans: at
the least, they could break ground for the large central building. Re-
gretfully, they suppressed their Victorian-Romanesque vision, and re-
signed themselves to keeping Academy Hall, which could be moved
onto a new one-story foundation and thus provide barelv adequate
teaching space. In spite of this initiative, donations slowed to a trickle.
Miss McKeen took it hardest. Well over sixty now, rheumatic,

EXPANSION 157

and simply tired, she brooded. The fund drive seemed "hopelessly
rutted."23 Why could Abbot's friends not give more? While she was
begging for a dollar, ten dollars, the Bryn Mawr day school in Balti-
muxc nad been launched by a single heir of the B. & O. Railroad
fortune with gifts which would amount to over half a million dollars
by 1890. Abbot Academy had grown up in circles where an "ever-
lasting scorn of worldliness"24 made great wealth suspect. Was her
school now to run on soul alone? Finally, regretfully, in June of 1888,
she wrote the Trustees a letter of resignation, promising to continue
helping Abbot wherever she could do so "without seeming officious-
ness." This was too much for Abbot's old friend Warren Draper. On
July 3 he declared to the Trustees that he would add $22,000 to his
pledge of $3000, payable upon the receipts of $60,000 cash from all
other old pledges and new donations.

Everyone took heart. The Trustees had already asked Miss McKeen
to withdraw her resignation. She now did so. The Board then voted
to name the new building Draper Hall in honor of its most generous
and most determined donor. They asked Miss McKeen to go fund-
raising once more to meet Draper's condition, and she set out with
new energy, her rheumatism much diminished, again to delight in the
hospitality and piety of the many alumnae "who are honoring the
Master and the school which He founded in Andover."25 Though
cash receipts were still only $54,500 by the following June, construc-
tion had gone ahead, with Draper himself supervising the works. The
Academy building was jacked onto great rollers and drawn by oxen
to its present site, an operation accomplished so smoothly that a vase
accidentally left on its bracket was found whole and in place after the
move. Smith Hall had already been moved back toward the Grove;
now it was South Hall's turn. Patrick the custodian waved from his
South Hall window to Miss McKeen in her Smith Hall apartment
as the old house glided majestically by toward the Abbot Street site.
Finally the circular driveway could be staked out, and the shape of the
modern Abbot quadrangle discerned. With joy, Miss McKeen dug
out the first spadeful of earth for the Draper Hall excavation.

Ceremony over, chaos reigned for months: pits yawned, piles of
debris rose everywhere. To one visiting alumna, "it looked as if a very
orderly earthquake had visited the old place."26 A new student thought
she had reached "the land of modern mound-builders."27 Miss McKeen
wrote that "Our friends dreaded to enter the grounds; and horses
were frightened by new complications; Miss Merrill and her French
family at Davis Hall and we at Smith Hall were absolutely separated

158 FORTH AND BACK, 1885-1912

after nightfall. Telegrams were coming from fathers to daughters:
'Unless nuisances are immediately abated come home.' ,,2S The nuisances
remained, but so did the daughters. When Draper Hall was finished
in 1890, one great problem was still to be solved: the furnishing of
over one hundred student rooms, teacher apartments, music rooms, and
dining and receiving rooms. Many nights, Philena McKeen lay sleep-
less, "room after room pass[ingl in melancholy procession before
me."29

At last she committed the problem to the Lord, "—and He solved
it."30 One faithful Abbot friend after another came forth with furnish-
ings at $100 a student room— and well over $1000 for the profuselv
decorated Mason Drawing Room, named for its Trustee benefactor.
Trustee wives Mrs. George Smith and Mrs. John Phelps Taylor (An-
toinette Hall Taylor) provided for the guest rooms, one with "dainty
white furniture," the other in deep mahogany, "with portieres and lace
draperies, with rich toilet fancies."31 The November Club furnished
the main library, and many new books were given to fill empty shelves
in the Jackson Memorial Reading Room, the most exciting donation
being a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin sent by Mrs. Stowe and auto-
graphed especially for Miss McKeen. Professor and Mrs. Downs
donated two pianos for the music rooms. Harriet Chapell Newcomb
discovered that the guest entrance was bare and immediately joined
with her former art teacher, Emily Means, to design and oversee the
installation of wall friezes and coverings and to buy the furnishings
needed. The Phillips Academy teachers and students asked if they
might donate an English hall-clock to complete the furniture for the
entrance; a lecture on the Oberammergau Passion Play was given by
an old friend to raise funds for the carpeting. Miss McKeen's rooms
on the first floor front were done up with papering and wood carving
"in a quiet phase of the Byzantine Romanesque."32

Abbot moved into Draper Hall in September 1 890, but Miss McKeen
dreamed on, this time of a great housewarming. She mailed 1,000 in-
vitations, then asked Mr. Draper, would he kindly pay for the party?
Mr. Draper demurred. The building had cost $90,000, $11,000 more
than the sum raised. Was a celebration in order when Abbot was still
in debt for construction? Later the same day he changed his mind
(probably pushed by his wife to consider the advantage of thanking
donors and publicizing Abbot) and promised all the ice cream, fruit
juices, and fancy cakes that the celebrants could eat. Thus on January
21 a throng from Hill and Town and out-of-town gathered in grati-
tude and jubilation. Trustee George Davis, the donor of the first and

EXPANSION

J59

24. The "McKeen Rooms" with Phebe's portrait, decorated "in a quiet
phase of the Byzantine Romanesque" The Mason Drawing Room can be
seen through the door.

largest contribution before Mr. Draper's, gazed at the scene through
tears of joy, grieving not at all for the imminent retirement of his
earlier gift, Davis Hall, whose twenty-five student French family
would live one-to-a-room in Smith Hall while the English course stu-
dents and the "Teutonic population" took over sumptuous Draper
Hall. For while Abbot Academy was not the half-million dollar "Re-
naissance Palace" the B. & O. fortune had built for the new Bryn
Mawr School in Baltimore,33 it now resembled nothing so much as a
vast Victorian honeycomb, with only the Georgian Academy building
(now renamed Abbot Hall) to compromise its effusive elegance.

More buildings would be added, but none would surpass in their
bulk or in the drama of their construction this symbol of Abbot's
claim on a new and wealthier constituency— Draper Hall. Gone were
the days of "crushing economy" which had for so long been "one of
the conditions of life on Andover Hill."34 Miss McKeen and the
Trustees had convinced each other that many of those upper-class
girls who had been choosing Smith and Vassar would really prefer
Abbot once its accommodations were improved. An electric lighting
system, a heating plant that had cost $10,000 to install, then more to

i6o

FORTH AND BACK, I 8 8 5 — I 9 I 2

2$. The Abbot campus, 1890-1897. Davis Hall or "French Hall" is at
the right.

improve, better food at Miss McKeen's insistence (for she saw the
school "suffering from the bad reputation of its table")35— all were to
add further expense. The Board voted in 1890 to cover new costs by
raising tuition from $300 to $400 for the following year ($75.00 for
day scholars), a sum that was higher than Bradford's and Wellesley's
charges and double the $200 fee for Mt. Holyoke College and Semi-
nary. It was a daring move, and it set parents' boarding-tuition bill at
a level three times that of the year of the McKeen's arrival in 1859.

Now where were the applicants? Even before the raise, it had taken
all of Miss McKeen's leverage with her Lord to produce a near-full
school for the construction year of 1888-89. ^n midsummer she had
written Mrs. Draper that

to fill the three halls attics and all, we need twenty -seven more
pupils than have applied. / think it would not be wise to speak
of this, as there is nothing worse for a school than to have the
impression get abroad that it is running down. But I am constant-
ly praying, earnestly, that the Father above will turn the hearts
of parents toward us, and give us wisdom and grace to take
care of their daughters: ... I try to do it in faith and with
a single eye of His glory, although it is difficult to keep our own
honor, and that of the school out of mind in praying. Do help
me pray for pupils and such as may bring and receive a blessing.

The Father undoubtedly did His best, but enrollments had slipped

EXPANSION

161

by 1890 to sixty-nine pupils. Great must have been the relief when
they began rising again the following year, and held their own at
126-144 after Miss McKeen's retirement in 1892 through the serious
depression of 1893-97. After all, the rich still had money, some more
than ever after the dog days ended. Day-scholar enrollment increased
dramatically from 17 percent in 1891 to 44 percent in 1897; the Merri-
mack Valley was evidently impressed with Abbot's new quarters, and
perhaps more important, heartened by the welcome given its daugh-
ters under a new regime.

Philena McKeen had been "mother, sister, friend"36 to nearly two
thousand young women during her thirty-three years at Abbot
Academy. The Alumnae Association and Trustees gave her a magnifi-
cent send-off at a reception and noon-hour "Breakfast" in Boston's
Hotel Vendome. Abbot's closest friends were there— 350 in all— or
sent messages. Former Trustee Egbert Smyth's greeting from the
Theological Seminary was perhaps the most poignant, considering his
painful experience at the hands of Board President Park (sitting right
there on the platform in spite of his age and frailty) and other theo-
logical conservatives at the time of the heresy trial. "All the brethren
salute thee," he said to Miss McKeen with emphasis. Sisters and daugh-
ters from everywhere in Abbot's enormous Family did the same.
Philena McKeen retired to old South Hall— redecorated by the Trust-
ees for her use as a private home and renamed "Sunset Cottage" at
her request in honor of her declining years.

\6l FORTH AND BACK, 1885-IQI2

Briefly, a Heroine

Laura S. Watson, Abbot's next Principal, lasted only six years. She
was a woman of fine looks, "commanding intelligence" and "especial
delight in art."37 One feels she should have stayed for decades. Nobody
alive knows exactly why she left; but one can suspect she earned her
rest, for she "took the helm under circumstances demanding peculiar
tact and self-restraint"38 and she accomplished what Miss McKeen
and many of her teachers had been resisting: without compromising
Abbot's traditional strengths, she created a solid college preparatory
course for those young women who saw beyond Abbot to further
education.

There were Abbot students who had seen beyond Abbot for years.
Two went together to Oberlin in 1856. Soon afterward the tiny
library in the back of the Hall ended the Abbot career of another
girl, who read every book there; when she came to the English tran-
slation of Plato's Fhaedo (surely bowdlerized for young ladies' use),
she decided she must leave for college, where she could learn Greek.
Against much opposition, some state colleges and universities were
admitting women. The Vassar "family" had 353 students the spring
after its opening in 1865, and while Vassar's admissions standards did
not yet match those of the best men's colleges, Smith's founders prom-
ised to correct this. Rejoicing in these new departures, the 1875
Courant editors wrote:

We want to congratulate our sisters that their opportunities for
making themselves really highly educated women are so greatly
improved . . . Shall we be willing to give up eight or ten years
of our life to hard study? Statistics from the higher class of
boarding-schools show that not more than one half, often not
one third, of those who enter remain until they graduate . . .
Ought we, now that schools of a superior order are open to us,
to be content with this surface cultivation? Shall we be willing
to be mental pigmies all our lives?39

They urged their peers to use Abbot's excellent education to prepare
for college. Yet only twenty-six alumnae— .009 percent of the total-
had graduated from four-year colleges before Miss Watson came.40
It was much more common for both graduates and nongraduates to
take a year or two of further study in music, art, teaching, or nursing.
Abbot prepared students directly for such specific training; four grad-
uates went straight from Abbot to medical school and became physi-
cians. With strong support from the Trustees, Miss Watson changed

EXPANSION

163

26. Laura S. Watson, Principal, 1892-1898. Artist unknown. Portrait
currently hanging in Abbot Chapel.

all this, resurfacing the roadbed the McKeen sisters had laid without
altering the route which Abbot had traveled since 1853.

The Abbot Trustees brought Laura Watson to Andover at a salary
of $1200 from her position as preceptress at the school where she
had begun her education, St. Johnsbury Academy in Vermont.41 She
herself had no undergraduate college degree. She had gone from Mt.
Holyoke Seminary to teach at Lawrence Academy in Groton, Mas-
sachusetts, then became principal of Albert Lea College for women in
Minnesota. While she was teaching in the Midwest, she studied for
and received the Ph.B. and M.A. degrees from Wesleyan University
in Bloomington, Illinois. Contemporaries describe her as "a lady of
power."42 She would need it. She began her Abbot work at a time
of general soul-searching on the part of secondary-school educators.
The college admissions standards for graduating high-school students

1 64 FORTH AND BACK, I 8 8 5 - I 9 I 2

had become badly confused, some colleges requiring broad scientific
and liberal arts preparation, others still satisfied by the old classics-and-
minimal-mathematics combination in which Phillips Academy had
specialized before 1871. Proliferating public high schools compounded
the problem while trying to solve it. The American public had begun
to demand clarity. The older female seminaries, which had always
offered both secondary and college level subjects, must define them-
selves or go under.

Essentially, the opening of the century's final decade presented
Abbot's Trustees and Principal with four choices:

1. To follow Miss Watson's own alma mater, Mt. Holyoke, and
become a four-year college, keeping a small preparatory de-
partment.

2. To become a "fitting school" and concentrate all resources
on college preparation.

3. To cling to the status quo and hope, counting on the strengths
and challenges of the traditional course— so much of which
overlapped with the usual college work— to attract good students.

4. To create a college preparatory course within the traditional
school so that all who wished to elect college preparation
could do so.

The first choice was tempting, but it would be terribly difficult to
undertake. Long since, Abbot had tried and failed to endow a "Phebe
McKeen Professorship of Literature and Belle Lettres." Wellesley was
paying its professors (all of them women) liberally and providing
superior research facilities; Vassar offered full professors $2500 plus
board, and built for renowned astronomer Maria Mitchell an observa-
tory that far surpassed Abbot's once-unique telescopic equipment.
Even Mt. Holyoke Seminary had boasted endowed teaching chairs
and ample scholarships long before its formal conversion to college
status.43 Abbot's latest fund-raising experience did not suggest ready
success for this course of action.

The second choice— a college preparatory school— would be most
economical, and prestigious to boot. Children of the newly rich were
flocking to new Northeastern preparatory schools for the polish
that Smith and Bryn Mawr required of their applicants.44 A college
degree was valuable coin for young women aspiring to be teachers or
other professionals (30 percent of female high school teachers now had
Bachelor's degrees). Was it not time to bow to the inevitable? But the
inevitable alone was seldom persuasive at proud Abbot Academy. To

EXPANSION 165

settle for the simple college preparatory alternative would be to fly in
the face of Abbot tradition, early articulated by alumna Anna Dawes,
'70, who saw American society "hurrying on both blindly and too
fast" to make college and "the higher branches compulsory" for girls.
"I protest," said Miss Dawes. "Excellent" young women have been
educated in the seminaries of New England, schools "now fast pushed
out of sight by the rage for a collegiate education, or passed over in
the search for fashionable polish."45 Abbot as a mere college prepara-
tory school would quickly lose its character as a school for life.

The third choice, both the Trustees and the new Principal were
convinced, was merely wishful thinking. Bradford might indulge itself
thus (and did through the turn of the century); Abbot would not.46

The Trustees, Miss Watson, and most of Abbot's teachers therefore
committed themselves to the fourth choice. The Trustees promised in
the 1892-93 catalogue to make Abbot "no less famous a fitting school
that it has been and will continue to be as a finishing school." Immedi-
ately upon her arrival, the new Principal began plans to institute a
College Preparatory ("C.P.") course, adding the instruction in Greek,
modern literature, science, and mathematics that would be necessary
for college entrance. Fifteen students signed up for the C.P. course in
its very first year. During Miss Watson's six-year tenure, forty-five
students went on to colleges, and twenty of these received Bachelors
degrees; in the last six years of Miss McKeen's tenure when college
opportunities for women had been equally plentiful, the numbers of
college entrants were nineteen, of college graduates, seven. In Miss
Watson's two final years, twenty of the sixty-eight Seniors were taking
the C.P. course, while those in the traditional Academic course could
select from three other groups of studies, one emphasizing science and
art, a second emphasizing modern languages and literature, a third
concentrating in classics, with three years of Latin and Greek. Every
student was required to study Bible, English composition, and elocution.

Throughout Miss Watson's tenure, Abbot seems to have drawn both
inspiration and support from the work of a group of highly influential
educators who were studying the articulation of curriculum between
school and college. Philena McKeen and Abbot alumna Anna Dawes
were not the only people who found many college admissions require-
ments "tyrannical" and "petty," as Columbia professor Nicholas Mur-
ray Butler put it in 1892.47 In 1890 Harvard's President Charles
W. Eliot had complained before the National Education Association
(N.E.A.) that hasty Massachusetts legislators had created "a large num-
ber of low-grade high schools without really expecting them to effect
any junction with colleges."48 The N.E.A. quickly determined that the

1 66 FORTH AND BACK, 1885-1912

chaos in college admissions was a national problem, and appointed a
national "Committee of Ten" headed by President Eliot to clear the
tangle. Five other college presidents joined Eliot, as did the brilliant
U.S. Commissioner of Education, William T. Harris, and three second-
ary school principals. All were men; all were hopeful that their recom-
mendations might set new standards for high school curricula through-
out the country.

Private educators eagerly read the Committee's interim reports,
which suggested a bias away from practical courses and toward the
traditional curriculum most of them had boasted for decades. As it
was, privately operated schools were preparing two thirds of the na-
tion's college entrants for college-level work.49 They hoped to hold on
to this role in spite of the dramatic increase in public high school en-
rollment then under way. Eliot's final report of 1893— distributed free
by the U.S. Department of Interior to 30,000 principals, superinten-
dents, and school board members— did indeed stress that "mental dis-
cipline" that had been a pedagogical watchword since the 1820's, but
it gave its blessing equally to the traditional classic subjects and to the
"moderns" (English, modern languages, social sciences, and natural
sciences). Not surprisingly, given the make-up of the Committee, the
report recommended that the high school curriculum be constituted
in such a way that college entrance would be available to every stu-
dent, even though only a fraction would actually go; thus it offered
support to Laura Watson if she wished to take it, and provided clear
guidelines for the reconstruction of the Abbot curriculum.

It is impossible to tell whether Miss Watson or the Faculty and
Trustees actually read the Committee of Ten Report. Abbot's four
new courses of study roughly matched the four alternatives recom-
mended by the Committee; its classics and literature texts were in line
with those proposed by the subject area "conferences" which the
Committee organized to inform its deliberations.50 Advanced offerings
in mathematics at Abbot were slimmer than those the Committee had
suggested, however, and one may wonder how Latin fared after Phebe
McKeen's death, given that at least one Punchard High School gradu-
ate of 1898 remembers choosing the public school over Abbot because
its Latin instruction was so far superior.51 The Abbot science and his-
tory courses suggest that the Academy paid scant attention to the
Committee's injunction that each subject be taught for long enough
"to win from it the kind of mental training it is fitted to supply."52
Students took but half a year of physics and chemistry; Seniors got
one bite apiece of astronomy (fall), political science or American his-
tory (winter), and geology (spring).

EXPANSION 167

Miss Watson eventually took care of Abbot's own college admis-
sions problem by persuading most of the Northeastern women's col-
leges to accept her graduates on certificate of recommendation from
the faculty and by including in the C.P. course all preparation required
for entrance examinations to Bryn Mawr, RadclifTe and the state uni-
versities. The most important effect of the Committee of Ten was on
Abbot's potential constituency. Well before the Committee had com-
pleted its study, Abbot was responding to the problems that had stimu-
lated the Committee's formation, and was making ready to enrich its
traditional offerings with courses similar to those the Committee was
to recommend for all students. Rising applications soon testified to the
Trustees' foresight, while the overwhelming success of graduates in
winning college admission for the next two decades suggested that
Abbot's new College Preparatory course served its purpose well.

None of these curricular gymnastics guaranteed good teaching, of
course. Alumnae of the Watson years later recalled the enthusiasm of
the several new college graduate teachers Miss Watson hired, but
Eleanor Thomson Castle, '96, found her classes dull. She best remem-
bers (1) her friends (female) and (2) their friends (male, Phillips
Academy).53 Abbot teaching did not need to be very strong to be
better than the ordinary, for the standard pedagogy of the day still
depended on the memorization and recitation of textbook pages, in
spite of criticism leveled at this practice by leading educators.54 It was
satisfying that Abbot could now boast a 5, 000- volume library with a
growing collection of periodicals and primary sources; a highly capa-
ble part-time librarian; and teachers like Mabel Bacon, Miss Merrill,
and Fraulein Schiefferdecker, who welcomed give-and-take within rela-
tively small classes. Miss Watson's own lively mind provided still more.
We have evidence of it in a Courant editor's account of her "as toast-
master" for her first Abbot Thanksgiving.55 She "never allowed the
fun to flag, and her opening address, delivered with all the gravity of a
judge and the inscrutable calmness of a sphinx, was condensed merri-
ment throughout. Allusion was made to the patriotic sentiments of a
certain history class who rejoiced that Columbus landed at Plymouth
Rock and that Jason came over in the Mayflower."

Abbot's daily schedule and its social traditions Miss Watson left in-
tact.56 The parties and the trips were held as always, but the limits re-
mained clear. Dr. Bancroft received from her a stiff note protesting the
behavior of Phillips boys in a nearby house, who made a habit of using
their shaving mirrors to beam sunlight into the eyes of the Seniors re-
citing psychology with her on the top floors of Abbot Hall. The
officially sanctioned visiting of the "Cads" went on, as did the semi-

l68 FORTH AN D BACK, 1885-IOI2

legal evening serenades and, above all, the celebrations following foot-
ball victories over Exeter Academy, when hundreds of pajama-clad
boys shot off Roman candles and yelled their "well known yells" as
they followed their teams around the Abbot Circle.57 The Circle al-
ways emptied on cue when the Hilltop bonfire was ready for lighting;
the Draper windows closed and the girls went back to their studying
or prayers. All this provided a sense of continuity for the alumnae and
the older teachers. Meanwhile, with no weakening of such traditional
courses as art history and church history, the academic program was
enriched. Abbot's Principal encouraged clearer departmental division,
much as Phillips' Principal was doing on the Hilltop. A two-year
course in music theory, practice, and history provided one point for
college entrance. Miss Nellie Mason, teacher from 1892 to 1932, who
had studied science at both Wellesley and RadclifTe, used wisely the
funds provided by the Trustees to modernize physics and chemistry
equipment and make possible the "training in scientific method" which
Miss Watson valued so much.58 Laboratory science requirements were
increased for C.P. and "General" students, while girls from other
courses benefited from being able to elect the strengthened science
courses. Similarly, a three-year course in Greek was a costly addition,
but it, too, widened the choices open to Academic Course students.
Abbot had far more electives than most high schools until the turn of
the century, when public high schools began to copy Harvard's touted
elective system. Applications for both Academic and C.P. courses in-
creased. A thirty-year-old married woman already equipped with
undergraduate college training spent a year as a day scholar filling gaps
in her preparation for RadclirTe Graduate School. The "brilliant" Miss
Ingalls, class of '82, added Anglo-Saxon and Italian Renaissance litera-
ture to the Literature sequence in order to accommodate such ad-
vanced students.

Miss Watson did not neglect the non-college Academic students.
Abbot's challenging Senior course had been its pride for decades. Miss
Watson put Butler's Analogy away at last, and replaced it with Wil-
liam James's equally difficult but less stupefying Psychology.59 Here
was a basic change in the Abbot ethos. At the outset of his book James
warns that "Psychology is to be treated as a natural science." "Mental
facts cannot be properly studied apart from the physical environment
of which they take cognizance."60 He then plunges into detailed dis-
cussion of the occipital lobes, epithelial cells, afferent nerves, and
motor and sensory aphasia. He reports on the experimental removal of
parts of the pigeon's brain, and its effect upon sexual function.

Nevertheless, Wayland's and Butler's concerns whisper at the door.

EXPANSION 169

James describes a hierarchy of "selfs," the bodily (material) self, the
social self, and finally the "supremely precious" spiritual self.61 He ad-
mits in his conclusion that his discipline is a science "peculiarly fragile,
into which the waters of metaphysical criticism leak at every joint."62
Abbot students alternately gloried in and moaned over their work in
psychology. There was plenty of contrary emotion vented in this
Class Book poem by the Seniors of 1901.

Ah when we were Senior Middlers
We were frisky and fresh as you,
But one day last September
We all turned prussian blue.

They dragged us into a classroom,
They set us round in a row.
They opened those grim brown covers,
And said, "How much do you know?"

They hauled us through those pages,
(The process was very slow)
Til we wished that the cerebellum
Would put on its hat and go.

They steeped us in Sensation,
Habit, Attention, Will.
Of Memorable Emotion
Each victim had her fill.

They smiled at our hopeless confusion,
They choked us with horrible names,
And whenever we pleaded, reproachful,
They said, "You must blame Mr. James."

Enrollment during the Watson years averaged 133 students each
year in spite of the depression of the 1890's, which played havoc with
many private schools.63 Abbot's friends and alumnae remained loyal-
giving, pledging, or bequeathing $65,000 in new funds (including
$40,000 from the Drapers) for scholarships, lectureships, the beginning
of a new building fund, and improvements for Abbot Hall. The Trust-
ees and Miss Watson together struggled to make Draper Hall a work-
able building. The frugality with which it was first constructed had
left it short on radiators and electric fixtures, and its fire protection
and hot water systems were entirely inadequate.64 To help the Prin-
cipal salvage Draper Hall, Warren Draper himself came back from re-
tirement as Trustee Building Superintendent in 1897, after a series of

170 FORTH AND BACK, 1885-IQI2

inept professionals had been tried and dismissed.65 From her first year
at the Academy, Miss Watson gently pushed the Trustees for a new
classroom building equipped to accommodate modern teaching meth-
ods,66 and her students began raising money for the new structure.
These spirited young women also became secretly proud of Abbot
Hall's age and simple dignity; they helped teachers feature it in a
prize-winning exhibit at the 1893 World's Fair and Exposition in Chi-
cago. Meantime a gradual stabilizing of the ratio between boarders and
day scholars allowed the Trustees finally to close Smith Hall in 1897,
eliminating the now shabby, unfashionable dormitory without loss of
income for the school.67

Still, there could be no smooth sailing through such a changeful
period. Almost everyone assures us that Philena McKeen retired with
perfect humility to Sunset Lodge. Certainly much of her energy went
into old and new Andover friendships and expanded civic work for
the November Club and the Andover Village Improvement Society.
Esther Parker Lovett, '08, one of the few living graduates who knew
Miss McKeen, remembers, for instance, how serene the old lady
seemed, under her beautiful white curls, when she stayed with the
Parker family. She ate her morning oatmeal Scottish fashion, dipping
her spoon alternately into a bowl of porridge and a bowl of cream,
and laughed when one of Esther's brothers sang her a slightly ribald
railroad song popular in the mid-nineties.68 She continued to fear, how-
ever, that her Academy would "sink to the level of a [college] pre-
paratory school," and to believe that Abbot's own Academic Course
should have "the place of honor"; she said so often and in public.69
She was always near at hand, substituting for a convalescent teacher of
church history through the winter of 1 896, being invited to lecture on
Saturday afternoons. Laura Watson's "task was made no easier by Miss
McKeen's presence at Sunset Lodge," said former teacher Mabel Bacon
Ripley from the safe distance of the year 1941.70 Nor could veteran
teachers like Katherine Kelsey hide their nostalgia for the time when
girls read "Livy and Horace . . . because they wished to do it, and not
because the reading was prescribed by any college for admission to
its doors," as Miss Kelsey put it in later years.71 In her search for
college-trained teachers, Miss Watson broke Miss McKeen's tradition
of hiring the standout graduates of almost every Senior class; even the
presence of teacher-alumna Henrietta Learoyd Sperry on the Board of
Trustees did not assuage all alumna grumbling.72 Both older teachers
and alumnae may well have complained with education journalist
Frank Kasson that President Eliot's male-dominated study-pressure
group was trying to "capture" the American high school "and recon-

EXPANSION 171

struct it in the interest of the university."73 Abbot's freedom from the
rigidity and pretentiousness that characterized many institutions was a
precious commodity; Laura Watson was a singularly independent soul
herself, but she had to modernize Abbot's curriculum amid punishing
cross-pressures from her strong-minded constituency.

For all Miss Watson's courage, she was shy with most students and
difficult to know. Those who knew her well loved her well, but the
countless others who were more distant realized the importance of her
quiet, transforming work for Abbot Academy too late to reassure her
when she most needed support. Miss Watson "gave it up," supposedly
for reasons of health, in June 1898. Almost immediately she left for
Europe and a period of extended study. Perhaps it had all been just
too much. Or possibly she had resigned for the good of the school,
realizing that someone new could more easily consolidate the curricu-
lar innovations she had wrought. If so, the Trustees' choice of a new
principal was ironic, for they elected Emily A. Means, an Abbot gradu-
ate of 1869 from a respected Abbot-Andover family, who had been
part of school life for much of the McKeen era, having left only when
Miss McKeen retired. Following years of art study in Boston and
Paris, Miss Means had taken charge of the Abbot Art Department
for fifteen years— a part-time job, to be sure, but one which involved
her increasingly in the life of the school as she took over some
of Miss McKeen's teaching and dormitory duties during those last
busy years. The Class of '87, having had her as teacher in both art his-
tory and painting, unanimously voted art "their favorite study."74 She
was the active President of the Abbot Academy Alumnae Association
from 1890 to 1898, serving six of those years from her brother's home
in Summit, New Jersey, where she painted, wrote, and gave art les-
sons. Those who knew her best were most surprised when she accepted
the principalship, for she was trading the freedom of a creative, lei-
sured artist for the merciless demands sure to be made upon the chief
administrator of a boarding academy. They guessed that her love of
Abbot had moved her, along with the Trustees' assurance of Miss Mc-
Keen's continued presence and advice.

Then, unexpectedly, Philena McKeen died. It was May of 1 898 and
Emily Means had not yet arrived in Andover. Bereft, but far too
proud to back down now, Miss Means came on to make all she could
of the new-old school Miss Watson had left her, stiffening herself
against the winds that were already ushering in the twentieth century.

Futures

The disquiet of women . . . is part of the general disturbance.
Edward Sandford Martin, 191 2

You, alumnae . . . by you Abbot is judged.
Bertha Bailey, 191 2

The girls and women living through change within Abbot Academy
could see much greater changes without, were they willing to look-
transformations that affected their Abbot careers and shaped all gradu-
ates' futures. As Henry Steele Commager has written of the i89o's,
"The new America came in as on a floodtide."1 A national population
once overwhelmingly rural was now 40 percent urban. Per capita wealth
had nearly doubled in the last two decades of the century— and the gap
between rich and poor was astonishing. At a time when the disappear-
ance of free or cheap western lands was narrowing economic oppor-
tunity, Darwin's theories lent these disparities a new seriousness: for
the wealthy and "fit," they brought self- justification, for the poor and
their sympathizers, an erosion of Victorian optimism. "The survival of
the fittest" at first buttressed the missionary enthusiasm that had been
central to Abbot's values. A Courant writer cheered the Protestant mis-
sionaries' conversion of the "ignorant and degraded" Hawaiians;2 she
failed to record that the sons of these same missionaries quietly took
over the best of the Hawaiians' land for pineapple and sugar planta-
tions. As religious concerns waned, semi-secular enthusiasms filled the
vacuum. Americans were wild with excitement at the triumph in Cuba
of their freedom fighters over the cruel Catholic Spaniards in 1898.
Abbot's Emily Means wrote a friend that her mind was so absorbed by
the "Cuba affair" that she could think of nothing else.3 A United States
just staggering out from a frightening period of depression, rural de-
spair and labor strife had needed that swift proof of its fitness and
virtue. Few of the patriots knew or cared that the Spanish-American
War ended three years later in a remote Pacific archipelago after the
slaughter of 300,000 Philippino "pagans" and "rebels" by American
soldiers.

FUTURES 173

By 1900 the "New American" Progressives, both male and female,
had pushed messy overseas crusades aside and were organizing to attack
domestic disparities of wealth and power. A growing coalition pushed
for wider suffrage, for better jobs and working conditions, for im-
proved schooling. On the women's rights front, the pioneers fought on,
but there have always been pioneers. More impressive is the number of
women who now accepted once-radical rhetoric or who were goaded
to join an antisuffrage opposition just as loud, active, and unladylike.
The question Abbot's founders had asked in the 1820's was now more
insistent than ever: For what futures should young women prepare?

The founders' answers had been provoking enough when it was still
assumed by many that study of mathematics and Greek would shrivel
up the generative organs, and grade-school teaching was the only non-
manual occupation widely open to women "of the better sort."4 Now
work opportunities had mushroomed. Although the actual number of
women in the nonteaching professions was small (they made 6 percent
of all physicians in 19 10), 20 percent of all women were bringing
money home, or keeping it and living with a new sense of indepen-
dence from men.5 Their husbands' increasing income did its part too,
freeing large numbers of middle and upper class women to immerse
themselves in volunteer social service, club activities, or suffrage cam-
paigns. "What chiefly makes the disturbance" women feel, Edward
Martin pontificated, "is enlargement of opportunity."6 By 1909 the
word "obey" had disappeared from civil marriage vows. In vain did
the influential Ladies Home Journal remind its readers that "what men
liked most in women was milk."7

Within Abbot and without, faith in education as a means to national
progress had never been stronger: as Lawrence Cremin has written
of this new reformist generation, "the Progressive mind was ulti-
mately an educator's mind."8 And for wealthier women, at least, equal
educational opportunities were at last a reality. Bryn Mawr College
had let the world know it would accept only students who could
qualify for the best men's colleges, and would award its diploma only
to those who had met graduate-school admissions standards. All-female
governing boards in a few new private schools proved that women
could found and run educational institutions without men's help. The
Trustees of the new and excellent Johns Hopkins Medical School had
reluctantly accepted their largest founding donation from a group of
women who made their gift conditional on the school's accepting qual-
ified women students on the same basis as men.9

Not everyone cheered. Truth seemed to be catching up with the
predictions of Cassandras that independence for women would lead to

174 FORTH AND BACK, 1885-I9U

decline of the Anglo-Saxon race. Americans were alarmed to find in
19 10 that only half of all women college graduates (and little more
than one quarter of Bryn Mawr graduates of 1890) were married. The
national birth rate was falling fast, and that for educated women even
faster. The average number of children for each woman of child-bear-
ing age went from 5.2 in i860 to 3.4 in 19 10; for Abbot alumnae it
was 0.9. The Commissioner of Education himself worried about the
problem, quoting male observers who bemoaned the "calamity" of
educated women's refusal to marry. College was an "artificial world,"
insisted one of them, a theater stage with "its Bengal lights and its self-
centered interests." No wonder marriage looked dim; it suggested
"narrowness and social limitation" to the pampered college girl.10 Even
women's dress was changing. Abbot students of the 90's were amused
and almost convinced by an alumna lecture on bloomers and other
liberating clothes. The college girl's mother might have worn her cor-
set only under protest, but many a college girl refused to wear it at all.

The reaction of women to these developments was often as confused
as that of men. By about 1900, for example, the original unity of the
suffrage movement had disappeared. It was easy enough to go to war
on the principle that women should vote, but when opportunities for
specific battles presented themselves, strategists flew in all directions.
Should the suffragists go all out for a federal amendment, work state
by state, or make common cause with the usually moderate WCTU to
get a foot in the door through local liquor-license referenda? Should
women insist on full occupational equality, or support the "special
legislation" now being pushed by Progressive politicians, which prom-
ised better working conditions for women and children? The stances
taken by individual women— including the women of Abbot Acade-
my—usually depended on their ambition to join the world that men
had made.

To educators and to many of their pupils, M. Carey Thomas, first
dean and first woman president of Bryn Mawr College, was perhaps
the most striking model for those seeking full and immediate equality
in a man's world. From her girlhood as oldest child in a large Quaker
family, she had determined on it for herself. When she was fourteen,
she heard a lecturer draw disparaging conclusions from the "fact" that
women's brains weigh less than men. She decided then that "by the
time I die my brain shall weigh as much as any man's, if study and
learning can make it so." Loving furious physical activity, she raged in
her diary against the confinement of girls to quiet play and house-
work: "Oh my how terrible how fearfully unjust. A girl can certainly

FUTURES I75

do what she chooses as well as a boy. When I grow up— we'll see what
will happen."11 What happened was that she became a member of
Cornell University's first coeducational class, having "spurned Vassar
as an advanced female seminary";12 sampled but refused to tolerate the
restrictions set on women graduate students at Johns Hopkins; and
pursued graduate study in Germany in spite of the shock expressed by
her parents' Quaker friends, who either spoke to her mother as though
Carey had become a Fallen Woman or refused even to mention her
name. She won her Doctorate in Philology summa cum laude from
the University of Zurich, an accomplishment rare for men and un-
precedented for women. At age thirty-six she was elected President of
Bryn Mawr, temporarily satisfying what she called her "troublesome
desire to get to the bottom and the top of everything,"13 though years
later she would sigh regretfully to a friend over her frustration that
she should be "only the President of Bryn Mawr College."14

But Carey Thomas' ambition created more than an ornamental
model of women's scholarly and administrative competence; indeed she
had her full share of human quirks, all played out in large scale. She
aimed to make her college and all the women's political and educa-
tional organizations which she also led engines of sexual equality, truly
useful to everyone from the upper-class women who flocked to Bryn
Mawr College and Graduate School to the women factory hands and
union organizers who studied at the Bryn Mawr Summer School for
Women Workers. She was as much a publicist for women's equality
as she was an educator. Just as the trainees from the Summer School
fanned out all over the country, speaking several times to appreciative
Abbot audiences to raise money for their School, Carey Thomas wrote
and spoke everywhere. She railed against fashionable male physicians
such as Dr. Edward Clarke, who had insisted that women were too
delicate for college study, and had scolded secondary schools for ex-
pecting sustained intellectual effort of girls every day of the month,
thus "ignor(ing) the periodical tide," and forcing their bodies to "di-
vert blood from the reproductive apparatus to the head."15 She con-
tested the august judgments of such as Harvard's President Eliot, who
in 1899 declared at Wellesley that women's colleges should not shape
themselves by the old scholarly traditions: after all, said Eliot, women
had had no part in creating these traditions, and furthermore their
bodies were so different from men's that their intellects must be also.
It was national news when President Thomas rebuked Eliot for having
"sun spots" on his brain.16 Thus it was not only the Titans who squared
off. This new debate over the purposes of women's education echoed

176 FORTH AND BACK, 1885-IQI2

at Abbot Academy's dining tables, in its faculty room, on the pages of
Courant, and, doubtless, around many an Abbot alumna's sewing circle
as well.

President Eliot might be a tempting target for women seeking un-
questioned equality with men, but many women, at Abbot and else-
where, found they agreed with him. They wondered why Carey
Thomas and her ilk should be "fighting to get an education just as bad
as the boys'," as Diana Trilling has put it. Had not Godey's Lady's
Book long ago scolded Vassar for trying to copy the "semi-obselete"
curricula of Harvard and Yale?17 These careful skeptics saw the lee-
way that had been so beneficial to schools like Abbot disappearing as
America began to take women scholars seriously, and to demand that
they and their schools prove themselves against male competition.

Well might graduating seniors and their parents ask, "After College,
What?" as a popular pamphlet put it. Many of these young women
were "all dressed up with no place to go."18 In spite of new oppor-
tunities, the professions could not or would not absorb the majority of
new graduates looking for work that matched their educational status.
Had all that tuition money bought nothing but frustration? A Bac-
calaureate speaker (male, as always) provided an easy answer for the
Abbot Seniors of 1905: "do well the little things next door instead of
longing for a career."19 In Andover's upper-income circles alumna
Eleanor Thomson Castle (Abbot, '92- '96) remembers from her child-
hood that to take a job was to insult your father or husband and to
deprive a poorer woman of her rightful work. She herself knew no
woman who had a job, except the family servants. (It should be said
that several of Mrs. Castle's Abbot contemporaries vehemently ex-
pressed their disagreement in Courant editorials.)20 It was easy to be
flattered when male anti-suffragists asserted that woman

has not incorporated in her nature those qualities as mystical and
holy as the life which she transmits to the world; she has not
become . . . the very savior of our life, in order that she may
turn traitor to herself and her ideal for a paltry bit of paper, and
boast that, from being man's superior, she has now become his
equal.21

Many young women sincerely believed with "Mrs. George of Brook-
line," who came twice to speak to Abbot students under Miss Means,
that women could accomplish more to improve society if they refused
the vote, for the disenfranchised "are not hindered by political scru-
ples and can act unbiased by party opinions."22 The audience liked it.
Mary Byers Smith, '04, remembers few feminists in Miss Means' Abbot.23

FUTURES 177

Curiously, the mass of traditionalists found themselves on the same
side of the suffrage issue as angry social critics like Emma Goldman,
who rejected the whole corrupt political system, along with capitalism
and traditional, male-dominated marriage. These radicals saw little
worth voting about in American society. They found it ridiculous
that colleges like Bryn Mawr should set faculty hiring standards which
very few women could meet. They added an alluring, man-threaten-
ing voice to the debate over women's roles— and Abbot students' futures.

The Dear Old Girls

For Abbot alumnae, the future was here. The alumnae group was now
so large, and so many Old Scholars kept in touch with their school,
that their lives and doings became for the students of the Watson-
Means era a part of Abbot education. Though alumnae statistics usual-
ly tell less about a school than they do about the families who sent
their daughters there and the opportunities open to women, they do
say something about a private school's attractive powers, its general
ethos, and its capacity for skill training. This last may be discounted
by the alumnae themselves, especially those thousands who achieve no
great eminence in later life. One early Abbot graduate, Ellen Bartlett
Hodgdon, '69, put it frankly in her message to the Semicentennial, a
letter which (to Abbot's credit) was read aloud at the Old Scholars
celebration: "My prevailing feeling is dissatisfaction that I labored so
hard to learn many things that after all I have not particularly needed."
But Mrs. Hodgdon went on to show how a school— especially a board-
ing school— may impart its values and its human spirit, for better or
worse. "The education was being with women like Miss McKeen, Miss
Phebe and all the teachers," she finished. These influences are difficult
for scholars to quantify.

Most Abbot alumnae before 1900, married and unmarried, stayed
close to home with their 0.9 children (married alumnae had an aver-
age of two), their church work, their painting or music, and, toward
the end of the century, their social service and women's club work.
Numbers of these taught briefly before marriage, joining the 10 per-
cent of all Abbot graduates who made education a career. On the
roster of the earliest Abbot alumnae there is a principal of Mt. Hol-
yoke Seminary, another principal of Bradford, one of an urban girls'
high school (fourteen years), of a city grammar school (thirty years),
of a A4assachusetts coeducational academy, and a founder-principal of
a small Boston school (ten years). After 1840, however, Abbot was not

178 FORTH AND BACK, 1885-IQI2

especially known for training teachers, as were Ipswich and Mt. Hol-
yoke.24 Of the fraction who had careers outside of teaching, several
were musicians, artists, authors, accountants, or nurses; twenty-four
were foreign missionaries, and as many more worked full time in home
missions to the Indians, the freed blacks, or city slum-dwellers. In the
nineteenth century secretaries, accountants, and librarians were usually
men, as were physicians, but Abbot gave the world a few such any-
way, including Caroline Jackson, '51, who ably assisted her father,
Samuel, in his job as Massachusetts' Assistant Secretary of Education.
Mary Graves, '58, became an ordained Unitarian minister, active and
successful in her work.

Alumnae of the years before Philena McKeen retired, whether mar-
ried or not, were much less likely to have a full-time job during their
lives (about 16 percent) than were alumnae of the Watson-Means era
(about 25 percent, with 30 percent for the final decade of this
period).25 Married alumnae of the later period chose handsomely, near-
ly all of them marrying college-educated men of the business-profes-
sional class (two thirds of whom were graduates of prominent Ivy
League level Northeastern colleges), with about 40 percent marrying
businessmen or bankers, 30 percent professionals such as lawyers, pro-
fessors, or physicians, and 15 percent marrying ministers. The last fig-
ure is interesting in the light of earlier statistics, for a quarter of all
wedded alumnae before 1870 married ministers or missionaries, and the
Congregationalist reported of Abbot alumnae: "Some have said that
they make the best wives in the whole country for ministers."26 Only
a few alumnae of the Watson-Means era were happy (or unhappy)
with farmers, musician-composers, news reporters, and baggage-masters.

The working alumnae chose some intriguing jobs. Mary R. Kimball,
'43, traveled south to Roanoke, N.C., as soon as the Union troups had
pacified the island, and taught the "freed people, very earnest to learn"
for ten years.27 Rebecca Bacon, '37, helped to launch Hampton Insti-
tute; in fact she had entire charge of the school during two of its early
years, though, typically, the titular head was a man. Elizabeth Richard-
son, '99, trained to become a nurse for the Grenfell mission in Lab-
rador. Cora Brown Campbell, '91, was a builder-contractor, Annie
Edwards, '55, the first postmistress in the nation. Mary C. Wheeler,
'66, skilled artist and teacher, became so dissatisfied with the schools
she taught in after Abbot that she founded one of her own, the still-
existing Wheeler School in Providence, Rhode Island. Sarah Jenness,
'64, went to the Boston University School of Medicine soon after it
was opened to women in the 1880's and became a physician to the
poor— first in Boston, then in rural New Hampshire. Abbie Hamlin,
'66, Henrietta's youngest daughter, and her half-sister, Clara Hamlin,

FUTURES 179

'73, taught at Vassar and at Skutari, Turkey, respectively, before mar-
rying missionaries and taking up their parents' work. Helen Bartlett,
'74, B.A. and Ph.D. Bryn Mawr, and Alice Hamlin, '87, Ph.D. Cornell,
became college professors, though Alice Hamlin Hinman gave up paid
teaching while her children needed her care, and devoted much of her
time to organizing midwestern church support for the Turkish missions.

Emily Skilton, '84, entered "Woman Rescue Work"28 as a Florence
Crittenton League volunteer, became a city missionary and prominent
figure in the Lowell, Massachusetts, police court as advocate and friend
of wayward girls, then enrolled in the Boston School for Social Work,
qualifying to become probation officer and, finally, Lowell's first
policewoman. She lived happily with other single women at the
Lowell YWCA, an organization powerfully supported by Abbot's
alumnae, especially those of the several years during the Watson-
Means era when the "Abbot Christian Workers" functioned as a
YWCA club. Unusual as policewomen were at the time, Emily Skil-
ton's career followed a common pattern for ambitious Abbot gradu-
ates and women professionals generally: they began by doing volunteer
work that had become accepted as "woman's work" with children or
church, took professional training, then became fully paid career
workers in fields that had once been dominated by men. Jane Greeley,
'84, Abbot teacher 1886-93, M.D. '97, then practitioner, did exactly
this; so did her medical colleague Sarah Jenness, '64. Others began
and ended with the world of children. Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin, an
early Courant editor, was known in her time as much for her organi-
zation of kindergartens in the poorer districts of San Francisco as for
her best-selling children's books.29

Only the thinnest of lines could be drawn between the alumna
career-woman and the unmarried alumna volunteer, who subsisted on
an independent income and made an unpaid career of social service in
city slum or windswept prairie mission. Clearly there was great work
to be done for which the market would not pay; since so many men
exhausted themselves in their search for riches, women must do that
higher work. Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, and other women of means
had become heroines among some Abbot students; all heard many
lectures each year from lesser but equally devoted figures in the settle-
ment house or Consumer's League Movement. Like many spinsters,
Caroline Jackson, '51, was alternately teacher, secretary, and com-
munity volunteer. With Philena McKeen she organized Andover's
local WCTU, then led the victorious no-license campaign of 1905.
Mrs. Charlotte Emerson Brown, '51, married but childless, drew on her
early experience in teaching and administration eventually to found
several women's organizations and to carry out her demanding duties

l8o FORTH AND BACK, I 8 8 5 — I 9 I 2

as first president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, founded
in 1890, with a membership of 185 clubs in twenty-nine states.30 Mar-
ried alumnae often became full-time volunteers once their children
were grown. However, Emily Reed, '67, didn't let twelve children
prevent her from working indefatigably for suffrage. She and Agnes
Park went to the State House repeatedly to push for the 1895 suffrage
referendum. "These two women stood alone in conservative Andover
for the progress of women," a League of Women Voters bulletin re-
ported in 193 1.

Many Abbot alumnae married late, as did most graduates of the
newer women's colleges, after a season of paid work;31 their experience
as newspaper reporters or school administrators was invaluable to the
women's literary clubs or service organizations they soon joined. If
they had had a job or been to college, their daughters were very likely
to become college graduates.32 One minister's wife (Sarah Rockwell
Leete, '81) had three daughters, all college graduates, and three sons,
two of them distinguished businessmen and the third a missionary to
China. Alice Purington Holt, '95, marvelously exemplified Abbot's
nineteenth-century ideal. She needed no further education to teach
history, literature, and music at Gould Academy, Maine, for six years,
nor to find a "solid citizen" and highly respected businessman from
one of Andover's oldest families as husband in 1901.33 Her two chil-
dren were born several years apart, and the mother had ample time to
be president of the November Club, to lead the Women's Missionary
Committee at South Church, and to work for the Abbot Alumnae
Association. She eventually became a chief organizer and president of
the Massachusetts Congregationalist Women's Association Conference
and of the Inter-Church Missionary Rally. With her powerful energy
and executive ability, she could easily have commanded a salary some-
where, but she worked for love— and, doubtless, for the excitement and
prestige of it all.

Numbers of alumnae became writers. Two of those most widely
read by Abbot students— and by the public— were Anna Fuller, '72,
and Octave Thanet (Alice French, '68) ;34 the lives and writings of
these two presented images of outside-Abbot realities as contradictory
as the world itself appeared from inside Abbot's walls. Nearly all Anna
Fuller's heroines are fresh young things of sixteen to twenty-three,
lovely to look at, inventive and high-spirited, but ultrafeminine. They
never go to college, though they may be at art school. They come
either from fashionable families or from poor-but-virtuous families
whom they by their luck and pluck manage to elevate into the rich-
but-virtuous category. In "Blythe Hallidav's Voyage," the heroine is

FUTURES l8l

crossing the Atlantic with her "Mumsey" and a select group of fellow
first-class passengers, including a handsome (safely married) poet and
an old Italian count. By chance she discovers a pale Italian waif in
steerage whose fine eyes betray her aristocratic ancestry and who is
reunited with her long lost grandfather (the Italian count, of course)
by the compassionate detective work of Blythe and her platonic poet-
friend. "Oh Mumsey!" she concludes, "How beautiful the world is
with you and me right in the very middle of it!"35

Meanwhile, Octave Thanet continued her frenetic explorations of
places and ideas, flitting through Andover for some "delicious repar-
tee" with Abbot students,36 settling down only in summertime at the
deserted Cape Cod mill which she rented at $3.00 a summer for her
writing and photography work. Born in 1850 in the Double Brick
house on Andover Hill, she had gone West as a small child when her
father determined that Davenport, Iowa, offered him a scope for his
financial ambitions that old Andover could never provide. Alice found
as much to learn from the polyglot Mississippi River town as from its
public high school, but when it was time to complete her education,
only Vassar would do for this oldest, only girl of the French family.
Yet once she got there, Vassar seemed to her narrowly snobbish, a
place where the pretentious daughters of the Civil War rich certified
their new status, and she left after a term, entering Abbot Academy
in 1867 for her Senior year. There on Andover Hill, the meld of intel-
lectual elitism and protestant virtue was so firmly ensconced that it re-
quired no proofs. Alice French reveled in a rich mix of friends, and in
the thorough training in writing and English literature given the Smith
Hall contingent. Her biographer writes that "the school's reflection of
a stable and ordered society shaped her virtues and heightened her de-
lusions."37 When she graduated, she was not at all sure she was ready
for her future. As she wrote her classmate Anna Dawes,

I'm sorry and I'm glad and I'm a little frightened. The world is
so large and a woman's future is so uncertain. Life is getting to
look remarkably queer and earnest.38

In spite of uncertainty, Alice French-Octave Thanet remained inde-
pendent of men. She was a saleswoman for her own books (one of the
first woman writers to do this), an avid supporter of striking workers
in her youth, later a foe of woman suffrage and a friend of Teddy
Roosevelt. She specialized in dialect studies of families from Quebec
or the bottom lands of Arkansas, but she admired Tolstoi, and one of
her most urgent concerns was the plight of the sharecropper and the
urban factory worker. For a while her thinking assumed a Marxist

l82 FORTH AND BACK, I 8 8 5 — I 9 I 2

cast. She gave up fellow alumna Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' hope for
"justice" in the mills "based on understanding and Christian kindli-
ness."39 A reviewer of one of her early articles, "The English Work-
ingmen and Commercial Crises" praised "Mr. Thanet's" insight into
the history of labor struggles and their relationship to technological
change.40 Thanet predicted in this article the beginning of a "class
contest"; she elaborated on the capital-labor conflict in The Lion's
Share; than finally, in her voluminous novel The Man of the Hour
(1905), she found a synthesis between her youthful enthusiasm for
European socialist thought and her admiration of the American entre-
preneur. It takes her 465 pages to bring John Ivan Winslow from lisp-
ing boyhood in a Missouri river town, through impetuous socialist
youth (during which he travels to Russia to visit the new grave of
his beautiful Nihilist-aristocrat mother), to manhood as a benevolent
capitalist of "stainless life," a manhood well schooled by his earlier
strivings as an anonymous trade-union organizer through the great and
futile Pullman Strike. One is impatient with the length and com-
plexity of the tale until one suddenly realizes that this is a Russian
novel written in English! And sure enough, on page 323 John-Ivan's
difficulty and promise are at once made clear: "He had a Puritan con-
science and a Russian imagination." The same might be said for Octave
Thanet. Together, hero and author recognize that the tyranny of labor
can be as ruinous as the tyranny of capital, and praise the tenacity of
the Anglo-Saxon spirit, which "always demands the works without
which faith is dead."41 It is a brave if undisciplined book; one doubts it
would ever have found a place in the Abbot library next to the works
of Longfellow and Stevenson had Octave Thanet-Alice French not
been one of Abbot's own.

Again, Anna Fuller and Alice French, along with many other alum-
nae, testify to the variety of fledglings that Abbot could hatch. Unlike
Bryn Mawr students, Abbot students do not seem to have been gradu-
ated with the insistence they do something Grand, nor were they easy
prey to the guilt that later attaches to unrealized aspirations. Life in
the ordinary muddled world was challenge enough for many: if most
alumnae added little to the public record of these turn-of-the century
years, each one must cope in her own way with their confusion and
their promise, drawing for help on whatever resources Abbot Acade-
my had provided them.

'A New England Aristocrat"

Earth's noblest thing— a woman perfected
James Russell Lowell

Emily Means, '69, appeared unintimidated by the catches and changes
of life within Abbot and beyond. Short in stature but as straight as
those lines she made her beginning art pupils endlessly draw, she was
"a lady of the old school"1 in every sense of the word. She dressed
much as she had done in the McKeen years, with a high-boned collar
and a rich satin train that swished slowly as she walked.2 In her photo-
graphs she has a dignified beauty, but her contemporaries say no, she
was not beautiful; she was impressive, rather— erect and severe with a
set mouth, a person of few words and powerful opinions.

One of her opinions was that college was not necessary to a lady's
future. Indeed, Miss Means seems to have felt that there was some
social taint attached to college attendance, ironic in view of the fact
that most of the students in women's colleges clearly came from upper
income (if not upper class) groups, and Abbot's own College Pre-
paratory scholars "felt contemptuous of the finishing school idea" as
embodied in the Academic Course.3 Emily Means herself had not re-
quired college training to become a sophisticated artist and linguist.
She had traveled extensively and was literate in three foreign lan-
guages; her library shelves were heavy with French, Italian, and
German works. Her intellectual mother and minister father had pre-
pared her so well for Abbot that she taught French instead of studying
it when she first entered the school in 1867. A profoundly independent
person, she saw no reason for most young women to continue to de-
pend upon formal institutions or the credentials they conferred: Abbot
Academy should be sufficient.4

But Miss Means was dutiful as well. If the Trustees had ordained a
C.P. Program, she would continue it, adjusting it here to the needs of
Abbot's C.P. students, there to the standards of the new College En-
trance Examination Board, well enough organized by 1901 to supply
uniform entrance exams for most colleges in the Middle Atlantic
states.5 Some colleges could be trusted more than others. Had not

1 84 FORTH AND BACK, 1885-1912

2j. Emily A. Means, Principal, 1898-1912. The picture was taken when she
was an art instructor at Abbot.

Smith been founded for the young woman "to preserve her woman-
liness," in the words of Clark Seelye, Smith's first President and Ab-
bot's friend?6 Though Bryn Mawr and Radcliffe continued to insist on
their own entrance exams, Abbot had by this time obtained "certificate
privileges" at Smith, Vassar, Simmons, Mt. Holyoke, and Wellesley,
the colleges attended by most of Abbot's C.P. students since 1892. The
numbers of C.P. students would decline under Miss Means to fewer
than half those of Laura Watson's final years (there were two C.P.
Seniors in 1903), but Abbot's academic standing would remain high.
Miss Means did not actively discourage even the Academic Course
graduates from going on to further training and a few gained advanced
standing in four-year colleges on the basis of the Abbot Academic
diploma.7 Bowing to student and parent complaints, she hid her opin-
ion that graduating C.P. Seniors "were leaving before they were
done,"8 and acceeded to the Trustees' injunction that they be allowed
to receive diplomas and to march to Commencement behind the Aca-
demic Seniors near the head of the line, no longer behind the Prep
class at its very tail.9 She asked the Trustees to strengthen science and
history courses to meet the colleges' standards. To her credit, some of
those who most admired Miss Means' independence and learning were
C.P. students.10

There was much else to admire— and much to criticize. "Her great
quality, inspiring to some, to others rather terrifying, was her power

4 4

A NEW ENGLAND ARISTOCRAT" 185

to discern the best in people; and to tolerate nothing less," wrote
Mabel Bacon Ripley, who had known Miss Means as one of her vulner-
able beginning teachers.11 "The best" had some prerequisites. Miss
Means believed in aristocracies, both natural and established. In seek-
ing both teachers and students, she looked for long family lines. "Blood
tells, blood counts, doesn't it?" she rhetorically asked Trustee Burton
Flagg in discussing a would-be teacher.12 Without formal entrance
examinations (they had been dropped when applications fell during
the final McKeen decade), Abbot got some blooded students who
found languages or mathematics almost impossible; it seems to still-
living alumnae that a few wealthy parents simply dumped their daugh-
ters there, and were disappointed when they failed to graduate. For
the faculty did not shrink from denying diplomas. After all, Abbot's
academic standards remained uppermost: the Academy was not con-
sidered a "social school" like Farmington. Genuine academic effort
was rewarded, even for the feeble, says Constance Parker Chipman, '06:
"I think they were quite compassionate, that is, when they knew it
was hopeless." But the indolent were dropped.

Abbot students heard Saturday lectures about Jewish immigrants and
the Irish communities in Boston, but neither Jew nor Catholic was
allowed anywhere near the Academy itself. This was not unusual at
the time: the wealthiest Jewish families could no more get their daugh-
ters into the typical girls' private school than they could join the sub-
urban country clubs or take the waters at Saratoga Springs.13 Yet most
colleges were becoming nonsectarian, and the pioneering Bryn Mawr
School had long admitted girls of any race or religion who would be
"suitable companions" to those already in the school,14 thereby attract-
ing a wealthy and daring Jewish clientele. Miss Means's social adven-
turousness took another direction. Years before, she had demonstrated
it in her free evening school for twenty working men and boys, who
came every Tuesday night for two years to study drawing and design
in the Andover Town Hall. Uninterested in the commonplace, she
cared deeply about the unpromising girl who showed some small
streak of talent or worth. She accepted one little farm girl from
Maine, "an absolute aborigine," remembers a friend of Emily Means,
who eventually graduated and brought a wealth of intellectual and
artistic interests from Abbot to enrich the life of her home town. This
search for pearls had its drawbacks, however. Students sometimes felt
that Miss Means had far less concern for the average girl than for the
unruly one: "she liked the naughty girls who weren't afraid of her,"
and she spent much time and kindness upon them,15 while an ordinary
student in trouble would be harshly scolded, often enough reduced to

1 86 FORTH AND BACK, 1885-I912

tears, and then dismissed from her mind— sometimes from the school
itself.

To Miss Means decorum and civilization were synonymous. She was
not amused when day scholars Eleanor Thomson and her sister came
to Chapel with black armbands, mourning the death of their beloved
dog. With the Principal's encouragement, the elocution and posture
teacher barked at the students in her classes ("Lift your torso!") and
at the practice "tea parties" in the library ("Straighten up" or "Don't
make a meal of your tea!").16 Though the food was delicious, especial-
ly following the tuition raise in 1903, dining-room decorum made it
hard to enjoy one's meal, and still harder for mediocre language stu-
dents, who had to eat in French or German.17 Neither gossip nor shop
talk about academies was allowed in any language at any table; at Miss
Means's table one dared not even ask for a second helping. Young
Mabel Bacon loved to laugh with her students and tell jokes; despite
the supposed formality, her entire table was "in roars of laughter" at
many a meal, says Mary Byers Smith, '04. Too many. Miss Means ar-
ranged for this "youngish, gay individual" to eat at the table right
next to hers. The punchline one night was an imitation of a parrot that
had learned to say "to hell with yale." The Principal stopped what
she was saying in midsentence and glared over at Miss Bacon with
such force that the raconteur fainted.18

A few students became bitter about Miss Means's behavior toward
both teachers and students. They suspected she enjoyed making girls
cry. An outsider remarked, "She carries herself as if you were a bad
odor," while one of her oldest Andover friends, Alice Buck, '57, shook
her head and said, "I don't know why Emily acts the way she does
since she came back."19 Neither do we who look backward in time;
yet one can surmise. Miss Means, essentially a private person, had a
passion for order. She bore heavily her responsibility for keeping a
various community in close array when the world outside offered so
many unfamiliar alternatives to the old- Abbot and old-Andover tradi-
tions within which she had grown to womanhood. Someone had to
stand strong for the right, someone who still knew what right was.
When she relaxed her guard, as at her summer island in Maine, or even
at Abbot— when she encountered a bright, hardworking student like
Mary Byers Smith who "would walk right up to the lion" and say her
piece for the other day scholars or C.P. students20— she showed her
sympathetic side and her marvelous, dry sense of humor. To a few of
her students she became a lifelong friend, with whom she shared her
wit, her literary interests, and her island in Maine.21 Even those who
did not like her found her "always interesting." Thev were stimulated

4 4

A NEW ENGLAND ARISTOCRAT" 1 87

not only by her reverent teaching of Henry James, but by the "strain
in the air": the three-way tension between Miss Means's almost fanatic
defense of traditional behavior against "modernistic" incursions, their
own modern aspirations, and the example their Principal presented of
a resourceful individual who had created her own life plan.22

A school, of course, is much more than its principal. Miss Means's
Abbot had inherited some fine teachers from Miss Watson, and she
chose new teachers with scrupulous care. Foremost, perhaps, was Re-
bekah Chickering, one of Miss Watson's last gifts to Abbot. Fresh from
Bryn Mawr College, where she had excelled in literature, history, and
basketball, she never staled during the entire thirty-nine years of her
stay. She had come to teach the College English and Church History
sections, but she was passionately interested in current events. This
passion generated student extracurricular debates, then a current events
elective; it stimulated discussion of complex foreign policy questions
in the Modern European History course. A suffragist, she also chaired
the Social Science Department of the November Club. She delighted
in some of the modern novels that found no place on College Prepa-
ratory reading lists. Throughout her life, her Bryn Mawr classmates
and her Abbot students came to her for advice on what to read.
Though seemingly shy at first, she was warm-hearted, quick with a
joke, and marvelously absent-minded. Students loved to come upon her
talking to herself in the library; at table they watched spellbound
while she served meat from the platter, passed filled plates to the right,
then received the plates from the left and unloaded the meat once
more onto the platter, talking graciously all the time. For Miss Chick-
ering herself, her dream world seems to have been an always ready
source of self-renewal. She coached the basketball players as ably as
the actors in Shakespeare plays. Miss Means had returned to Abbot
ambitious to bring its history and French offerings up to the best of
the McKeen years, for she felt Miss Watson, with her too-many-irons-
in-the-fire, had let them slide. Miss Chickering would be the inspira-
tion of a parade of younger history teachers for decades to come. In
her hands even the dreaded senior Church History became an experi-
ence to treasure; her keen scholarship and her B.A. degree made her a
special model for the C.P. students.23

Miss Chickering was only one of several young college-trained teach-
ers, women who had often overcome family objections and local sus-
picion to win their education. They brought a sense of fun along with
their skills. Barbara Moore Pease, 'n, initially found Latin alien and
difficult. Latin teacher Olive Runner won her devotion first to teacher
and then to subject by inviting her to read poetry aloud with her on

i88

FORTH AND BACK, I 8 8 5 - I 9 I 2

rainy afternoons, and by "borrowing" tin trays from the dining room
so the two could zoom screaming down the hill behind Abbot Hall
when the snowcrust was right and the moon was full. Apparently,
older teachers warmly welcomed the new: Nellie Mason was outward-
ly severe in her inevitable black dress, but she was grateful for the
younger teachers' help in radically improving the laboratory science
program; round-faced Frau Schiefferdecker was as jolly and friendly
outside of German class as she was firm within it (her favorite tray-
sliding place was the orchard hill). "Kit" Kelsey might strike some as
a feeble mathematics teacher, but she was kindness itself to new teach-
ers, and they admired her energetic organization of geology field trips
and other school events.24 Complex and reluctant though it sometimes
was, the process by which Abbot incorporated the new with the old
had by now become fairly well systematized. The number of years
teachers stayed at the school indicates growing academic continuity.

Table

Number of Teachers

Arriving during Abbot's

Arriving during the

Number of

First Forty Years,

Second Forty Years

Years Tenure

(1829-69)

(1869-1909)

1-2

63 teachers

3-10

36 teachers

10-20

8 teachers

20+

9 teachers

*The five long-tenured teachers of the early period all arrived during the
first McKeen decade, 1859-69, and included both McKeen sisters and Mr.
Downs, a part-time teacher.

The alumnae had also become a powerful force for institutional
stability and growth. They had been contributing toward lecture or
concert series and scholarships for years; now they endowed them. As
soon as they had finished helping to build and furnish Draper Hall,
they began a new building fund. After Miss McKeen's death, this be-
came seed money for McKeen Memorial Hall to which they would
add generously before its erection in 1904. The active Boston and New
York Abbot clubs (founded in 1892 and 1898) supplemented the or-
ganizational efforts of the Alumnae Association, ably run from An-
dover by secretary-treasurer Agnes Park. This "tall and plain" daughter
of Professor Park was "vigorously intellectual and staunch in devotion
to people and causes."25 She had long since declared her independence

A NEW ENGLAND ARISTOCRAT' 1 89

from all that was fossilized on Andover Hill, and she was "the main-
spring" of Abbot's Alumnae Association for forty-two years. After
1909 she had much help from Jane Carpenter, '92, B.A. Mt. Holyoke,
M.A. Teachers College, Columbia, and Record Keeper Extraordinary.
For Jane Carpenter, alumnae history was paid vocation and heart-
whole avocation in one. It was Abbot's next door neighbor and new
Trustee, Burton Flagg, who had the foresight to urge creation of the
salaried alumnae post. Trustees and alumnae knew by now that they
needed one another.

By chance the first decade of the new century brought in an almost
wholly new Board. Professors Park and Churchill both died in 1900,
having served forty and twenty-one years respectively. Of twelve
Trustees, only three of the older men spanned the new decade, among
them the Reverend Professor John Phelps Taylor, D.D., Abbot's final
link with the Theological Seminary, famous among alumnae for his
profuse and garbled rhetoric (at one Commencement he prayed fer-
vently that "these young girls would become streams of living water
on their hearth fires").26 Mrs. John Harlow, one of the first two
woman Trustees, and the aging Draper and Ripley stayed a few years
into the century; but once they had departed, the group was fresh,
attuned to modern business principles, aware of the great progress be-
ing made by the private educational institutions that were Abbot's
contemporaries and competitors. Colonel George Ripley had already
laid away Draper's almost undecipherable account books and improved
the Treasurer's bookkeeping and reporting system. The Trustees voted
to move the securities from the secret compartment Draper had built
into his chimney to a safety deposit box in Andover or Boston.27 Rev-
erend Daniel Merriman, Board President from 1900 to 191 2, encouraged
Burton Flagg, then a young insurance executive, to polish Ripley's ac-
counting method to a sheen that would last throughout Flagg's fifty-
nine-year term as Treasurer. Finally, Mary Donald Churchill, '63, Pro-
fessor Churchill's widow, took to her Trustee duties (they were to
last three decades) with an energy and a forward look which belied
her years. Together, Trustees, alumnae, and Principal set out to com-
plete the buildings Abbot seemed to need for its ideal enrollment,
about no by Miss Means's reckoning.

Bricks

Planning for a new classroom building had already begun. In the
spring of her first year, Miss Watson had received $200 from the stu-

I90 FORTH AND BACK, I 8 8 5- I 9 I 2

dents for such a hall, and Seniors had been given permission to appeal
for more funds to the Boston Abbot Club. Throughout the Watson
years, students and alumnae worked at the project, holding benefits
and festivals. After Miss McKeen's death in 1898, an active memorial
campaign completed the raising of $24,000 to start the building; this
included the proceeds of three Senior plays and a dramatic entertain-
ment jointly presented by faculty members from Abbot, Phillips, the
Theological Seminary, and several Phillips alumnae. Warren Draper
offered $7,500 more on condition the building be completed by Ab-
bot's seventy- fifth anniversary,28 and Miss Means herself lent $10,000
so that construction could be started in time to meet Draper's stipu-
lations. Shortly after the ground breaking, George G. Davis donated a
further $10,000 in honor of his Trustee father to build on an assembly
hall-gymnasium. The Abbot faculty produced a play to raise money
for a stage curtain. Still more donors gave furniture; to their earlier
gifts of plaster casts, Reverend and Mrs. Merriman added a cast of the
Parthenon frieze fully as fine as the one at the Bryn Mawr School,
which seems to have begun this fashion.

McKeen Hall was ready for use in the fall of 1904, and the attached
"Davis Hall" was finished in time for a December lecture by Booker
T. Washington. All Andover was invited, and most of Andover came,
Miss Kelsey reports. Abbot stretched its limbs and moved equipment
from the old academy building; shortly afterward, alumnae gifts and
bequests made it possible to refurbish Abbot Hall's first two floors for
expanded science laboratories, with advice on design from Trustee-
chemist John Alden.

In the Abbot Hall renovations, as in other building projects, Miss
Means's alumnae connections were proving invaluable. With a $40,000
bequest from Esther Smith Byers, '56, an entire are gallery was built
against the east wall of Abbot Hall to house the collection that John
and Esther Byers had gathered in their New York home. Miss Means
had given practical counsel in the design of all the new construction,
but this project especially intrigued her. The fireproof second floor
invited other art donations, and the workrooms and sculpture exhibi-
tion hall on the first floor added valuable space for the art program,
which used the new John-Esther gallery constantly. The public was
invited in every Saturday. v

Harvard's President Eliot spoke at the dedication of the John-Esther
Gallery, addressing his audience on the "higher education" of girls
and young women with more humility than he had displayed in the
Wellesley speech that had so annoyed M. Carey Thomas. He confessed
that he was "singularly uninformed about the education of girls"; al-

A NEW ENGLAND ARISTOCRAT" IQI

though he described the woman's body and "the woman's heart" as
having "larger elements of delicacy, tenderness, and deftness" than the
man's, he went on to defend training in self-control, courage, and in-
tellectual and aesthetic excellence as appropriate both to young men
and young women. "The home which [woman] creates, illumines and
blesses" benefits as much from this education as does the work of the
world which men must do.29 It was a welcome concession, however
timid, from the nation's chief spokesman for liberal education, and
Abbot was grateful.

Across from Abbot Hall on School Street, the old Judge Morton
House also came into Abbot's hands, bought by gifts from Mrs. Draper
and four others. Doubtless its acquisition was a relief to the Abbot
administration, which had long bridled at Phillips student-boarders
who trained their binoculars on Smith or Draper Hall, and later, at the
number of boys the large Morton family contained. John Phelps
Taylor contributed $5000 to outbid "the menace" on another house
adjacent to Abbot: the competitor was threatening to convert it to
apartments. "Miss Means is aghast at the prospect," he wrote Mrs.
Draper, from whom he subtly requested a contribution:

Instead of a home for a quiet family . . . we should have the
blotch of a more extended tenement-district with the battering
ram of its head fronting the fairest temple of knowledge in An-
dover. Now in this peril is an opportunity . . .30

Finally, Smith Hall, empty of students since 1 897, was demolished, too
outdated by Draper Hall's superior heating and lighting arrangements
for anyone but alumnae to mourn its loss. Abbot was above such
primitive accommodations now; a clientele paying $500 per daughter
cared not at all for those gas lamps and those 12' X 12' rooms which
had seemed splendid to so many pairs of girls in simpler times. The
empty site stood waiting for an infirmary to replace the makeshift
arrangements in Draper Hall— a few rooms on the top floor separated
from the rest by a sheet soaked in carbolic acid. So confident were the
Trustees that donors for an infirmary would materialize that they had
begun weaving plans in their heads well before Miss Means's retire-
ment. For there was money about, especially in that upper fifth of
the turn-of-the-century population that owned most of the nation's
wealth. The building of Draper Hall had inspired a confidence in
Abbot's future— a confidence mere people do not generate— and it was
soon vindicated by the major building additions and renovations of the
Means era. Given this enormous outlay for real estate, it is surprising to
read enrollment and budget figures for the first five years of Miss

192 FORTH AND BACK , 1885-IQI2

Means's tenure. Enrollment dropped steadily after Miss Watson left,
to a low of seventy-seven in 1903-04, the year McKeen Hall was con-
structed, before leveling off at about 100 after 1907. Neither the di-
minished student roster nor the "shortages" of $5,000 to $7,000 each
year apparently shook the faith of Principal or Trustees.31 People might
come and go; those bulky brick sentinels with their fashionably ap-
pointed insides assured the world that Abbot Academy would endure.

Beyond Bricks

Meanwhile, within and around the buildings, student life continued.
Almost imperceptibly, it had grown more Abbot-centered since Miss
McKeen's retirement. Many students still came as much for Andover
as for Abbot— an Andover "lovely in trees, fine architecture and old
homes and gardens," remembers Ruth Newcomb. Members of the
Abbot Christian Association might still go to a Theological Seminary
lecture now and then; forty or fifty students would enjoy the annual
May Day Breakfast at Town Hall; but the sharing grew less each year.
The Theological Seminary's extraordinary power over regional— and
national— cultural life was now much dimmed by secular forces. The
number of theologues had dwindled by two thirds since the heresy
trial— to the point where there were more professors than Seniors.32
Abbot day-student enrollment dropped again under Miss Means. Not
since the McKeens arrived had this "school-home" equipped for board-
ers paid much attention to day scholars (and if behavior follows the
dollar, perhaps this is no wonder, since they paid only one fifth of the
boarders' total fee). Now they were "the scum of the earth," says
a day scholar who graduated in 1904. Even the brightest and most
active rarely led school organizations, belonged to many clubs, or took
part in informal recreation-day activities. It was not until Mary Byers
Smith reminded Miss Means that the day scholars had to complete
their bag lunches by wiping their hands on their slips that towels ap-
peared in the day scholars' basement dressing room.

This was a chicken-egg affair. Students needed less of "down-town"
because their Academy created more diversion. Partly as a result of
student pressure, organized sports played an ever greater role in school
life. Girls expected to be more active than their mothers had been.
Running sports were now popular in women's colleges; tennis and
bicycling had killed no one at Abbot. Despite the insistence of many
male physicians that menstruating girls were weak and vulnerable to
disease (the eminent Dr. John Thornton said that "they should adjust

A NEW ENGLAND ARISTOCRAT

*93

28. A Grecian phase, circa 1900: "Night and the Fates"

194 FORTH AND BACK, I 8 8 5 — I 9 I 2

themselves to the law of nature and lie fallow about a quarter of the
time"),33 "women's delicacy" was gradually going out of date. On
two afternoons a week in 1 898-99 most of Abbot cheered at the base-
ball contests between three rotating teams. The same year, four basket-
ball teams were organized under Rebekah Chickering's enthusiastic di-
rection. Horrified when she came to find the contenders tripping over
their long skirts, she won them the right to wear black stockings and
bloomers (to be sure, the bloomers were made with yards and yards
of cloth). Academic Seniors competed heartily with the Senior-Mid
(eleventh grade) teams that spring at Abbot's first Field Day, which
was much enlivened by a group of Phillips boys who crept into the
Grove and formed a waiting block just beyond the finish tape: the
Abbot racers who broke the tape flung themselves willy-nilly into
many open arms. Young faculty brought field hockey from the colleges
by 1902, and soon Abbot was playing Bradford in both hockey and
baseball. Miss Means's anticollege bias extended to the athletic field:
the C.P. baseball nine was never allowed to play in outside games or
on Field Day. Fortunately, Field Day was more than baseball. Within
a few years it had become an all-school festival, with the two upper
classes striving to outdo each other in their costumes, songs, and antics
in an atmosphere of general jubilation that gave a special shine to the
games, the track and field contests, and the tennis matches on the new
dirt courts. The growing emphasis on athletics at Abbot reflected a
general trend toward secondary and college students' absorption in
school as a community-in-itself. Discouraged by labor unions and so-
cial pressures from taking jobs, youth made the extracurriculum "a
substitute for attendance at comparable activities in the world out-
side."34 Sports helped make Abbot more of a school-world than the
school-home it had been since 1854.

No one was obliged to be sporty, however; even Phillips up the Hill
had no required athletics until 1906. There were also walking and
croquet clubs, mandolin and glee clubs. There was Odeon, a literary
society where students could read aloud and discuss the contemporary
plays or novels that were excluded from English classes— and even
from library shelves— in favor of Tennyson and Longfellow. Finally,
there were those clubbiest of clubs, the three sororities. Miss Means
had given official blessing to these once secret societies when she ar-
rived, feeling they would contribute more to Abbot as recognized
groups, however exclusive (there were eight to ten members in each
sorority, usually the "big wheels" of the school). In turn, each sorority
made her an honorary member. The sisters also sponsored certain re-
ceptions or fund-raising events during the year, and enjoyed looking

A NEW ENGLAND ARISTOCRAT

195

29. The Senior Nine, 1902.

down their noses at the thirty or forty Seniors and Senior-Mids who
were not members.

The Abbot sorority girls were not alone: such groups were char-
acteristic of secondary schools and colleges of the time, in spite of the
opposition of the National Education Association, which had judged
them "Undemocratic . . . and subversive of discipline."35 Phillips
Academy's example in this area— as in organized sports— was stimu-
lating, sometimes pleasantly intrusive. The captain of the track team,
in love with a certain "Becca" (and she with him), ordered one of his
fraternity's new initiates to send her some flowers. The youngster
thought it would be funnier to send her a funeral wreath. It arrived
in Miss Means's rooms, stiff with lacquer and reeking of embalming
fluid, and Becca, summoned, arrived soon afterward. Miss Means stood
nose uplifted, asking "What does this mean?" The girl didn't know,
but promising to discuss it later, she staggered up to her room with it
and (naturally) hung it out the window so the fast-gathering Phil-
lipians could see it. The corridor teacher, alarmed, came in and threw

196 FORTH AND BACK, 1885-1912

a sheet over it, which made it all the easier to spot from the Hill.
Enough was enough. Principal ordered girl and wreath back to her
room, and told her to throw it in the fire. The lacquered flowers ex-
ploded into flames when they hit the coals, setting fire to the chimney
so that the fire department had to come and put it out. By the time
the fire engine was well into its work, long lines of Phillips boys were
snake dancing on the Circle, jumping hoses and singing, and every girl
at Abbot was hanging out the Draper Hall windows.36

The sororities added to the cliquishness typical of all girls' schools.
New girls like Mildred Bryant Kussmaul, '13, longed to join, but the
sorority women refused to come to her creamed-chicken room supper.
C.P. and day scholars were rarely invited in. The C.P. girls were used
to this, of course; if they were allowed in the Senior Shakespeare play
at all, it was usually as servants or outlaws.37 "To be a College Senior,
was to be almost a worm," remarked one of them much later.38 Part of
this snubbery was a function of age. Most C.P.'s were one to two
years younger than the Academic Seniors, who were now twenty
years old, on the average, at graduation; this was one reason why Miss
Watson had established separate courses for C.P. students. They had
their own class officers, their own class flower, their own Senior ban-
quet. Apparently they were thought essential to the Courant Board,
however. Courant applauded the first awarding of diplomas to C.P.
Seniors in 1904, noting that "they also have worked earnestly for their
standing."39 The editors invited alumna college freshmen to describe
Bryn Mawr or Mt. Holyoke for present students in letters-to-the-
editors. The magazine generally served as C.P. advocate so far as pos-
sible, given the Means era publication code, which seems to have ruled
out all serious criticism of the school itself and reduced the editors to
preaching at their peers for their overdone hair styles, their raucous
laughs, their floppy ribbons, or their flabby handshakes.

No difference between day scholar and boarder could be discerned
in students' dress, which was uniformly ridiculous, as Mary Byers
Smith recalled in a speech to alumnae on Abbot's Centennial:

Our skirts trailed on the ground. Our boned collars dug into our
necks. The wearer of a Ferris waist was too conspicuous. Any-
one's pompadour might have concealed a pair of stockings, and a
really stylish pair of gloves besides, and an orange. Can't some
of you old ladies feel your hair tugging at its roots as you re-
member tacking across the street in a gale of wind, with an im-
mense picture hat pinned on the back of your head?

Many of the entertainments of this time were equally sumptuous. Ab-

A NEW ENGLAND ARISTOCRAT" 197

bot boarders continued to enjoy the traditional festive occasions, and
added a few new ones. At "corridor parties" one corridor hosted the
whole school costumed according to its chosen theme— Mother Goose
characters, or cupids (for Valentine's Day), or babies. Hallowe'en was
now a huge costume dinner party. Thanksgiving for all Abbot and
Phillips boarders left behind was a jolly, informal reception at the
house of Phillips' new Principal, Alfred E. Stearns, who had assumed
his position after Bancroft's untimely death in iqoi with a serious-
ness one would hardly have thought could belong to the waggish Com-
mencement usher of 1890. Frau SchiefTerdecker made two young Ger-
man teachers from Phillips her frequent guests at the German table,
and even arranged a few joint German entertainments for audiences
from both schools. The Phillips Senior prom was now an annual
event. Abbot held its first prom soon after Davis Hall was opened.
One could now go (chaperoned) on a legal Phillips- Abbot hay ride,
or (unchaperoned) with an Abbot friend to Boston, perhaps to take
one's turn with the two symphony tickets Miss Means used to reserve.

Phillips-Abbot cooperation had its somber side. Those who attended
the memorial service for Warren Draper in 1905 remember the singing
of the joint Abbot-Phillips-Theological Seminary Choir as the most
poignant moment in the ceremony.40 The chapel services up and down
the Hill occasionally sounded common themes. When Helen Abbott
and her roommate discovered the joys of dropping light bulbs onto
the Draper Hall driveway from their third floor window, both Miss
Means and the Phillips minister on the Hilltop prayed for them the
following Sunday, Miss Means begging God's forgiveness for Helen's
"temporary aberration of the mind."41

As of old, what adults had not arranged was often most memorable.
Day scholars were a marvelous resource here: Miss Means trusted the
Thomson family on Central Street, and it was a safe place to go to
meet a Phillips boy. Officially "we weren't allowed to see the boys,"
Miss Smith remembers, "but we knew them." They managed to find
each other in spite of limits carefully set for girls' walks or for social-
izing time following Mr. Stearns's new Sunday Vesper services or the
occasional Phillips-Abbot choral service. One Phillips student asked his
girl to go canoeing on the Shawsheen; unfortunately they passed under
the railroad bridge just as Miss Means was returning from Boston on
the 5:14. The girl was given a blistering lecture that very evening. A
Phillips boy was dismissed for riding to Lawrence with an Abbot
Senior, another for walking with his girl during church time.42 Miss
Means expelled an Abbot girl just about to graduate for meeting a
theologue behind one of the Hilltop buildings.43 Yet for each tryst

I98 FORTH AND BACK, 1885-I912

confounded, hundreds were held in peace down by the old Andover-
Wilmington railroad bed, or out in the country when you had been
"punging"— hitching a secret ride on the back runners of a delivery
sleigh, traveling sometimes for miles in the hope that you could beg
a ride back, but not too soon. The students were marched to church in
pairs, a teacher walking watchful at the end of the line, but no one
could stop the younger Cads from taunting them on their way:

There she goes
There she goes
All dressed up in Sunday clothes!

Who knows
Who knows
What she's got on for underclothes?44

Nor were all of the "corridor stunts" approved by the school. The
Class of 1900 described in Abbot's first published Yearbook the early
months of its organization as a class:

'99 soon found that her younger sister was not to be imposed
upon, and began to respect the spirit which resented our being
tied into our rooms, considering herself fortunate to escape the
pitcher of water which [unluckily] fell upon one higher in
authority.

The higher authority did not record her reaction to the water.

One of the C.P. students, Marion Brown, 'n, kept a scrapbook rec-
ord of her five years at Abbot which shows how much fun— legal and
illegal— the Academy could afford a lively girl.45 Her father's darling,
Marion seems to have thought she could do no wrong.46 "She's a great
favorite with Emily Means," her friends jibed, recounting the number
of "summons" she received each month. Miss Means had her hands full
persuading Marion's indulgent family (altogether too close in Law-
rence) to keep her from going to the vaudeville theatre every Wednes-
day—and if she must go, to provide proper chaperonage for their
boarder-daughter.47 The parents did comply, but Marion felt free to
speak her mind about it afterward:

"Don't go to the theatre without a chap'ne" Did we? well I
should say not. She looks as though she were playing hookey
from a grave yard and she sings as though her feet hurt her.48

Marion was a fair scholar at first, a fine one by graduation. She must
have done some studying, for she has left us her Senior-Mid schedule.

A NEW ENGLAND ARISTOCRAT

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Much of her energy, however, went into extracurricular enthusiasms.
She kept letters from her boy and men friends (her older brother
Needham apparently introduced her to this one of many, a military
academy student);

I know how it is to feel like raising H — , for we feel that way
often here. [5 October 1906]

Darling, as I sat here all alone trying to study . . . [undated]

I can even now see your hair glittering in the gas light . . .
[21 January 1907I

From her girl friends:

How I missed you tonight at dinner! . . . Would that you and I
could always sit by each other. Yes dear I care a lot for you, tell
me dear that you care just a little for me? Dearest my eyes were
so blinded with tears [at dinner time] that I did not hear Miss
Means speak to me, dearest I cannot stand many such things— she
looked at me and in the coldest way asked if I would have
more meat. . . .

(On the envelope M.B. has written "Put on your rubbers. You will
need them to go through this slush.")49

Even from her kid brother (and the family dog). [15 January 1907]

My Dear Sister How are you getting along up to school Have
you good manners up to school . . . Do you know My Mother
has bought an Automobile . . . Do the boys have Double Runners
up to school? Good Bye Write

I send Buster's Dog Kisses X X X X
From your Dear Brother Joseph C. Brown

The daily goofiness of younger Abbot students produced a docu-
ment we can only hope Miss Means never saw:

We therefore agree to a bet that if Marion keeps on the under-
clothing she has on this day, November twelfth nineteen hundred
and six until the first day of May nineteen hundred and seven,
I will owe her a bag of Campions potato chips which will be
bought at the price of ten cents.

Signed

Helen Chaffee
I swear to keep this bet

Marion Brown

"A NEW ENGLAND ARISTOCRAT" 201

Marion yawned at some of the entertainment Abbot provided.
About the Faculty Reception of 1906 for Andover townspeople, she
wrote, "No one under forty invited. Nobody under sixty came." But
Phillips events were next to vaudeville among her pleasures. She en-
joyed P.A. intramural games, P.A.-Exeter games, P.A. football heroes—
and simply P.A. Though a rendezvous took some forethought, Marion
and one J. Wallace Scott arranged them with ease through the under-
ground mail:50

Miss Marion Brown [from J. Wallace Scott, 21 January 1907]

Kindness of Miss Cole
My friend Mr. Tree would like to know if it will be convenient
for you and your delightful friend to meet us on Wednesday
afternoon say about 3:30. Will you kindly answer and state the
place as I do not know where it would be safe.

Miss Marion Brown [from JWS]

Kindness of Miss Lee
My dear Marion.

That letter of yours was pretty strong for the first one. I had to
hold Tree in a chair . . . Do you really want to meet us? We do.
We have been thinking it over and we think that down by the
railroad bridge would be the safest. There is nothing like being
too safe when Miss Means is in existence . . . Did you get Doc's
note for Gladys that other crazy acting girl?

Yours forever lovingly, JWS

So did "Peaches and Pinkie," whoever they may have been:

Come on down to the Grove.
What do you care if EM is looking?

The task of bringing up such as Marion Brown to polite society and
scholarly accomplishment seems almost beyond possibility, but this
task Abbot struggled with anyway, year after year. And Marion her-
self went on to Wellesley, later earning her Master's degree at Boston
University and studying at the University of Toulouse, Columbia, and
Harvard. Despite her early loves, she never married. Instead she taught
French and Latin nearly all her life in both college and secondary
school, serving briefly as Preceptress of Montpelier Seminary in Ver-
mont and for many years as Dean of Girls and head of the Language
Department at Lawrence High School next door to Andover. Miss
Means would have been happy to know that Dean Brown shared her
talent for dealing with the mischevious and the difficult. One Law-

202 FORTH AND BACK, I 8 8 5 - I 9 I 2

rence graduate remembers her well: "Very nice she was— a stern hand
with plenty of humor and kindness."55

By the spring of 1909, Emily Means felt she must have rest. The
Trustees hoped a year away with half-salary would restore her. Leav-
ing Abbot in Miss Kelsey's care, she went first to her Maine retreat,
then to her old haunts in Europe. She did return to Abbot for the year
1910-11, but resigned permanently after that, saying that there were
many activities of her own she wished to undertake. When she wrote
back to her Abbot friends of the thrill of camping under the stars on
the Libyan desert and told them her intricate plans for a new house on
her island, they knew she had done the right thing.

Katherine Kelsey was a competent interim head. True, she so often
met student initiatives with the calm rejoinder, "it never has been
done" and their protests with "it always has been done" that girls
found themselves nostalgic for Miss Means' brusk reasons. But Miss
Kelsey eventually proved responsive. Rules had multiplied once again
under Miss Means: Do not be seen buttoning your gloves while leaving
your room; stay in your room after 8:00 whether studying or not;
cover your elbows at dinner time. If you weren't wearing a long-
sleeved dress, you were handed a pair of elbow cuffs to wear in the
dining room. "We were treated like children, and we acted according-
ly," writes Barbara Moore Pease, 'n, recalling the guilty fun she and
her roommate enjoyed filling their corridor teacher's water pitcher
with June bugs or bullheads, depending on the season. With her teach-
ing colleagues, Miss Kelsey instituted a Student Council of elected
representatives, whose purpose, said the Courant editors, was "to pre-
vent . . . any injury to the reputation of the school, and at the same
time to make a closer sympathy and unity between the faculty and
the girls."52 An echo of the enthusiasm for student government in
many women's colleges, this was nothing like the Bryn Mawr Ex-
ecutive Committee, which was directly responsible to the trustees for
all student behavior and whose recommendations for dismissal were
"equivalent to a sentence."53 But it was a beginning.

The Trustees went about the search for a new principal with great
deliberation. They were seeking a Lady, for Emily Means was a
powerful after-image in their minds, but they also wanted a person of
recognized academic experience who would strengthen the College
Preparatory course, for it had not thrived under Miss Means's half-
hearted guidance. Seemingly, the Lady came first. Miriam Titcomb, a
highly gifted teacher and administrator who knew Abbot well (she
taught mathematics there from 1906 to 1908) seems not to have mea-

A NEW ENGLAND ARISTOCRAT" 203

sured up to the selection committee's standards for dress and bearing,
yet went on to become principal of the prestigious Bancroft School in
Worcester and to found the Hillsdale School in Cincinnati. The Trust-
ees heard about a Bertha Bailey, B.S. Wellesley, who was coprincipal
and co-owner of the new Taconic School in Connecticut. This posi-
tion—not unlike Asa Farwell's at the early Abbot— demanded business
sense as well as academic leadership, and Taconic was doing well. Here
was a woman of "good inheritance and fine breeding"54 who had—
so it seemed— taught almost everything (science, mathematics, and
history from the Greeks to the present) almost everywhere in the
Northeast. She had done voluntary social work among Bohemian im-
migrants in Cleveland and the West Side poor in New York City.
What was she like as a person? Trustee Markham Stackpole asked her
present and former colleagues. "Daughter of a Presbyterian clergy-
man," "a lady of ideas and ideals," they answered.55 "A woman of
remarkable ability and of beautiful character," wrote the wife of her
first employer.56 "Vigorous," wrote Taconic again when questioned
more closely (could Stackpole have been worried about the implica-
tions for Miss Bailey's health of her size and weight?), "exceedingly
efficient" in administration and discipline, "something of a martinette
. . . she is very firm." She was hired.

Miss Bailey visited Abbot and was pleased to find herself in agree-
ment with the "progressive spirit" of the Trustees. She accepted the
offered salary of $2000, "for the present. Should my value to the
school increase, as I trust it may, I am sure the Trustees would recog-
nize the fact."57 A business sense indeed!

It was Bertha Bailey's suggestion that an inauguration be held. On
19 October 191 2 the whole school gathered together with neighbors
and faraway friends, former faculty and Trustees, and a procession of
Old Scholars from 1845 on. A greeting was read from Miss Mary
Cornelius, '36, who had entered Abbot on its opening day in 1829.
Bands of yellow ribbon distinguished the present students whose
mothers, aunts, grandmothers, great-aunts or great-grandmothers had
been Abbot girls before them. It was a grand occasion. It was, in fact,
the first grand Abbot occasion on which women made major speeches:
Wellesley's President Pendleton and Bradford's Principal Knott elo-
quently greeted their new colleague. The tone of Miss Bailey's own
speech made clear to the skeptics that the gathering was a celebration
of Abbot Academy far more than of Bertha Bailey. Again, the leader
of a new era set herself firmly and deliberately upon an old foundation.

Against the Tide, 1912-1954

During the Means years, Abbot had walked backward into the future.
With the change in administration, it was time to take stock, a task for
which Bertha Bailey, outsider, was well qualified.

Times had changed; they kept on changing. High school enrollment
throughout the country had multiplied: nearly 60 percent of all young
people 14 to 17 years of age were in school by 191 2, compared with
8 percent in 1890. Increasingly a high school diploma or bachelor's
degree was the prerequisite for skilled or professional occupations. The
new Progressive educators were making powerful efforts to expand
the schools beyond "mental discipline" in ways that truly met the vo-
cational and personal needs of youth in an industrializing society, now
that the educative influences of the old agrarian community had been
so much weakened. As a contemporary social theorist put it, "The
modern community is not real enough, not sufficiently organized to
provide the old time social integrations as a matter of course."1 The
Church, the Grange, the informal apprenticeships under one's farmer
or farm-wife mother or under a local master craftsman— these were
either unavailable or unappealing. John Dewey proposed that educa-
tors reject the "blatantly aristocratic" view of culture too common in
college preparatory high schools, and instead create "embryonic com-
munities" which would foster social responsibility and experienced per-
sonal competence within a protective, democratic setting.2 The junior
college movement was raising an infant cry for attention, its propo-
nents hoping to persuade a larger proportion of eighteen-year-olds to
stay in secondary school or come to college for two years of advanced
or vocational training.

Abbot Academy had to ask again the question often before asked
and answered: what special benefits could Abbot offer to young
women in this changing educational world? The Academy was now
competing against the public high schools of the whole country in-
stead of little Punchard High of Andover, to say nothing of the
women's colleges, which were still the measure of the older students'
Academic Course. Board and tuition together were $600; they would

208 AGAINST THE TIDE, 1912-1954

gradually rise to $1400 by 1926, an escalation that would outpace the
cost of living by 33 percent.3

On the other hand, Abbot had its advantages. The school had
nearly a century of experience in an academic program similar to that
which President Eliot still advocated for all high schools, though with
ever less success. College entrants found that their English, history, and
language work at Abbot had given them superior training for college,
even though the same could not be said for mathematics or science. A
few Academic Course graduates who changed their minds about col-
lege gained admission to the second or third year in reputable univer-
sities. More important, the whole nation was now experiencing the
"unrest of women," those social growing pains that had so perturbed
Miss Means. Public high school teachers "complain [ed] of the distrac-
tions of parties, theatres, bazaars, and amusements generally, which
exhaust the strength of the girls in particular," a visiting British school-
mistress observed.4 Especially after the War, worried adults thought
they saw the automobile, the radio, and the moving pictures destroying
traditional definitions and limitations in favor of a plastic world within
which youth wandered, posing and strutting to hide its confusion.5 An
orderly, close-knit boarding school was one solution.

Finally, with rapid growth, a public secondary school bureaucracy
(largely male) was enforcing arbitrary departmental divisions, and
weakening what authority teachers had had over their large classes by
demanding entire submissiveness to system-wide curricula. What in-
fluence teachers had left was often exercised in desperate attempts to
maintain appearances ("How can you learn anything with your knees
and toes out of order?!" barked one teacher to a cowed pupil),6 while
Abbot teachers specialized in authority as of old, yet continued to
offer electives to almost any group larger than two which asked for
them. Faced with an eager clutch of advanced French students, for
example, two teachers might assign he Chanson de Roland to coincide
with a study of fourteenth-century art through museum trips and
studio work.7 The student-teacher ratio was about 10:1 when Bertha
Bailey arrived, better even than Phillips Academy's at 17 to 1.

Abbot also had snob appeal. To be sure the Academy was more like-
ly to interest the intellectual elite than the purely "social" families, but
day scholar alumna Eleanor Thomson Castle, '98, remembers how
much more "classy" Abbot seemed to her "set" than the perfectly
good Andover public high school. The Hill intellectuals and all who
admired them "were entirely separate from the man who owned the
grocery store."8 Along with the still-dignified town of Andover, Ab-
bot offered an escape from "the great mass of people," rich and poor,

AGAINST THE TIDE, 1912-1954 209

with their "identical mental life," and from the typical American's
"disdain of delicacy," his love of "enormities, giganticism, excess."9
The more young Americans attended public high school, the more
distinctive an Abbot education became.

Abbot was resolved upon distinction, then. There would be no com-
promises with a society that seemed increasingly bent on self-indul-
gence, increasingly obsessed with a mass youth "culture" born in the
colleges and popularized by the advertisers of all material goods de-
signed to sustain it. Though students might chafe at Victorian restric-
tions, enough parents applauded Abbot's stance to keep the school
filled throughout the decade of the twenties. The early thirties were
another matter. The tide that then threatened to engulf Abbot Acade-
my brought wave after wave of financial disaster. It would take more
than moral certainty to keep from going under.

The Ladies Stand Fast

You are Abbot . . .
letter from a parent to Bertha Bailey, 19 14

Everything about the young . . . threatened the traditionalist

Paula S. Fass, 1977

The Trustees hoped Bertha Bailey would carry forward the best of
Abbot's traditions, adding her own strengths to those of the school. As
if to underline the Board's commitment, the school's loving neighbor
Irene Rowley Draper, now in her eighties, welcomed Miss Bailey as
warmly as she had Miss Watson and Miss Means, with a present for
the McKeen Rooms of a grandfather clock and a promise of close
friendship.1 This promise was soon fulfilled, as were many others in
the Bailey era. Indeed, Miss Bailey during her 23 years at Abbot com-
bined in her own way the high social standards of Emily Means, the
devotion to college preparation of Laura Watson and the missionary
zeal of Philena McKeen. Her Abbot was in many respects the old
Abbot, only more so.

Bertha Bailey herself was more so in several ways. Her ample figure
soon made her Big Bertha to almost everyone out of earshot. It was a
nickname used as much in affection as in fun: no alumna whom she
ever either disciplined or embraced forgot her bosom, which shook
with anger at blatant offenders as impressively as it offered comfort to
the distressed or welcome to returning alumnae. She had left her co-
principalship at Taconic School partly because Taconic was, as she put
it, "not big enough for two."2 She wanted, needed, a larger stage on
which to exercise her capacity for usefulness. Schooled by her father's
example, she was a "splendid speaker,"3 but she spoke and preached as
a true missionary: to uplift her audience, not herself. Far from being
self-aggrandizing,4 she was rather shy, especially with men, who often
took her grim formality for disdain. Her warmth and generosity only
emerged with friends she knew well, or with students she could trust.

It was not easy for the students who most admired Miss Means to
accept her successor. Mary Byers Smith remembers that Miss Bailey

THE LADIES STAND FAST 211

seemed "pillowy, soft" by comparison when she first met her, and
thought it "quite a comedown" that her books (all in English, some
unread) filled only a third of the shelves Miss Means had required.
Though Miss Bailey later extended the school's hospitality whenever
Miss Smith returned to visit or help, the distance remained. One cor-
respondent wrote Trustee Stackpole that Bertha Bailey stood "for high
and noble things," but, in fairness, added a short list of her "failings":
"she is apt to be better in handling a group of girls than in dealing
with one alone."5 She could hardly have been called "soft" with indi-
vidual students who had transgressed. Mildred Bryant Kussmaul, '13,
remembers— and still resents— being summoned to her office, set down
under a strong light, and interrogated. "Bertha B., she shined that light
on me. She was watching my face all the time, trying to look inside
my conscience." Early students thought she had an "all-seeing eye,"6
which was good or distressing, depending on how you were behaving.
Indeed, Miss Bailey herself underlined this impression with a well-
remembered Chapel talk on the text "As he thinketh in his heart, so is
he" (Proverbs 23:7).

The most secret and private thoughts of each one of us work
out day by day to the light. They show in our faces, they speak
in our words ... we are what they have made us. . . . What is
in your mind when you are alone? Do you think it does not
matter?7

Though she relaxed a bit with time, "growing in her job," as Mabel
Bacon Ripley put it, Abbot never knew a more thorough enforcer of
its many rules than Bertha Bailey.8

Miss Bailey had attended Wellesley in its first decade, when college
students were pioneers and Wellesley in particular impressed such
searching critics as M. Carey Thomas with its all-female faculty and its
efficient use of small means.9 Thoroughly committed to college educa-
tion for women, Bertha Bailey nevertheless respected Trustee and
alumna support of the Academic Course. Her first catalogue (191 3)
described it with pardonable pride (and perhaps some exaggeration)
as the equivalent of the first two years of college.

In 192 1, the Trustees charged a faculty committee to study the
desirability of Abbot's concentrating its resources on one course of
study instead of two. The group decided "after considerable discus-
sion" that it was "distinctly advantageous" to keep both the Academic
and the College Preparatory departments. "Each contributes directly
to the success of the other," they concluded, the Academic Course
offering a greater variety of subjects and the C.P. course keeping

212

AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 — I 9 5 4

50. Bertha Bailey, photograph jrom 1913 Class Book.

scholastic standards high.10 There was no danger of teachers' energies
being spread too thin; students shared most classes anyway in the first
three years, and there were so many candidates for the final two years'
classes that the sections would never be too small for efficient teaching.
Until the early thirties, the C.P. and Academic group were quite even-
ly balanced in numbers if not in academic ability. (Although there
were a few very able Academic students, nearly all of the 50 highest
scorers on the 192 1 IQ tests were C.P. students.)11 Alumnae from each
still insist that theirs was the superior course of study. There is no
doubt that Academic students immeasurably enriched the culture of
the school with their varied interests and talents. And just as Miss
Watson had predicted, the College course attracted new families to
Abbot, once Abbot's principal was championing it again. Enrollment

THE LADIES STAND FAST 213

climbed steadily from the 95 a year average of the Means era; once the
postwar depression had passed, it reached and exceeded the level of the
Watson years, peaking at 189 in 1927. Money-conscious Trustees might
have shared a bit of Bertha Bailey's gratitude to her minister father,
who taught her, she said, "to see, to think, to help myself, and never
to sav 'I can't.' "12

War Time

Not two years after Miss Bailey's arrival, war broke out in Europe.
Her leadership during the next five years set the tone for her whole
administration. In a sense, the western world's tragedy was Andover
Hill's tonic: the missionary spirit that had sustained all three Hill in-
stitutions during the nineteenth century was reborn as Christian patri-
otism at both Abbot and Phillips academies.

To Bertha Bailey teaching at any time was "an expression of love of
country, of desire to serve humanity."13 From the Davis Hall pulpit at
Christmas Vespers, 19 14, she saw in this "colossal struggle . . . this
agony and suffering and woe" the failure of Christians everywhere to
live the teachings of Christ. Americans were not exempt from the "dis-
integrating forces."

We have shut Him out of our politics . . . our society . . . Even
we women who should have kept our vision clear and our hearts
true, have been caught in a whirl of fashion and luxury, of ex-
travagance and social competition . . . Against the background
of a Cross of light ... is thrown up a black iron cross, dripping
with blood ... It is hate thrown up against Love; greed against
self-sacrifice; destruction against redemption. Which cross is
yours?

"The war is tearing the scales from our eyes," she went on; now we
can see that "the world is one. The roar of artillery in Belgium means
suffering women and children in Lawrence [and] persecutions in
Turkey." All Americans, all Abbot girls must "take up our cross," and
"share to the point of suffering" to recreate "the brotherhood of man."14
Many a school and youth organization resounded with a similar
"drum-and-trumpet Christianity,"15 but the Abbot version did beat all
for earnestness. Miss Bailey gave her Christmas sermon two and a half
years before the United States' entry into the War, years during which
Abbot prepared for the Lord's "great work waiting to be done."16
Rebekah Chickering had a Saturday afternoon lecture on Balkan prob-

214 AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 — I 9 5 4

lems ready when war first broke out; she followed it up with a map
talk the next fall on "Fundamental Causes of the European War." She
and other teachers offered a new Current Events elective and volun-
tary out-of-hours classes in Principles of Democracy and Civic Prob-
lems. In the Fall of 19 17 students of French staged a "The Chantant"
complete with cafe tables and singing "peasant" waitresses, for the
benefit of the wounded French soldiers; soon 40 French orphans were
"adopted" by students and faculty together. That same term the Stu-
dent Government Association held an all-school meeting to found the
Patriotic League. Nearly all students and faculty signed its Constitu-
tion, pledging themselves to

( 1 ) personal efficiency, including attention to hygiene, posture
thrift, alertness; and

(2) service, including, in addition to excellence in studies,
sports, voluntary training classes, and military drill, self-denying
contributions of time, work, and money for extra needs caused
by the war.17

They promised further "to stand for the sincerity, honor and purity of
American girlhood, and in our friendship with boys to uplift and not
lower their ideals of womanhood."18 Looking back on her wartime
Abbot days, one student expressed the students' sense of these two
fervent years as a "glorious height, where stood the hope of a world
ruled by practical Christianity." "Our lives would be productive, effi-
cient for the good of others," said another. "We were the hope of the
world."19 Working with the Student Council, Miss Bailey divided the
school into groups of ten, both students and faculty; they made 4,500
surgical dressings, knit soldiers' socks, and worked in the war vege-
table garden or on the grounds. Two rival companies of the "Abbot
Battalion" (150 students and faculty in all) carried on military drill
for two years under the Phillips military instructor. Even the slackers
must go without butter and sugar when the majority did the same.
American students are "begging for training," Miss Bailey exulted in a
19 1 8 speech to the New England Association of Colleges and Second-
ary Schools. "They recognize that they are destined to take a hand in
framing a new world."

Meanwhile, the larger Abbot family was hard at work, one alumna
directing thirty regional Red Cross Workshops in the Middle West,
another nursing tubercular patients and organizing ambulance service
during the Paris bombardment, a third taking over medical work for
physicians called abroad, thousands of others doing their part. As

THE LADIES STAND FAST 215

many as 2,500 alumnae later reported war-time service of one kind or
another. Some were promoted to the jobs men left behind. Sara Pat-
rick, '98, after the War an instructor in Industrial Arts at Teachers
College, Columbia, would write that the First World War challenged
her "to reconstruct my experience, to recognize my colossal ignorance
on many important questions and ... to think for myself regardless of
what my group believed. Out of that ordeal, I came ... to a sense of
belonging to a world society with responsibility for its welfare."20
Countless American women had similar experiences. Bertha Bailey ex-
pressed their new seriousness in her speech "War and the Schools,"
saying that "the biggest job on earth at this moment is not fighting
Germany, but making the women of the world equal to the task of
saving humanity."21 Make girls "good mothers," she implored fellow
educators, "and they will be good workers and good citizens." "Apply
motherhood to civic problems ... to regulation of child labor and
other conditions of industrial activity . . . now soon perhaps to state-
craft . . . that human values in every problem [may] be considered."22
Back in Davis Hall, she urged all Abbot girls to prove themselves "as
truly women" as their "boy friends" are "proving themselves men."

If you do not draw the line where you should, in speech, in
laughter, in easy intimacy, they know, and in their hearts con-
demn you. You have lowered an ideal . . . Strengthen their ideals
. . . hold up to them something worth suffering and dying for . . .
That is your part of service now and always."23

Abbot Academy did not intend to share in the "collapse of noble
womanhood" which vitiated a society retreating step by step from
Victorian norms.24

For a while after the War's end, the task of "framing a new world"
according to a "new vision of God"25 absorbed Abbot. Students had
already earned thousands of dollars for Y.M.C.A. and Red Cross work
at the Front: now students and faculty raised $3,000 more for refugee
relief, bringing the total of war-related contributions to about $10,000.
For several more years, the Principal proposed, and students voted to
hold, "Hoover Dinners" or "Golden Rule Dinners"— simple food by
the light of a single candle which saved $60.00 on each occasion, to be
spent for some worthy cause.26 Odeon short stories continued to de-
pict the heroics of soldiers and the heart-rendings of their women left
at home. Miss Bailey's sermons described how the ideal young woman
must build on her traditional role to create a new society on the Pro-
gressive model. "She looketh well to the ways of her household," said
Miss Bailey, quoting her biblical text as always. "But how can she look

2 1 6 AGAINST THE TIDE, 191 2-1954

well to the ways of her household unless she inspects the bakeries, and
cleans the canneries, and watches the stockyards, and guards the fac-
tories, and sweeps the streets . . . and elects the President?"27

Yet the wartime pace could not be sustained forever, and the mis-
sionary fervor gradually died. The Patriotic League was disbanded. A
crisis that would once have been close to Abbot's heart— the Turkish
slaughter of the Armenian Christians while U.S. officials and even some
missionaries merely looked on, hoping not to offend a new ally— passed
unnoticed in Courant and in school lecture programs, with only indi-
viduals like Alice Hamlin Hinman, '87, working sadly for survivor
relief.

Abbot's relaxation was minimal, however, compared with America's
general exhaustion. Women war workers were disillusioned to find
that their proven competence went unrecognized by the returning
men, who took to the streets if necessary to win back their jobs. With
the national surge back to normalcy, pay scales returned to their dis-
criminatory prewar levels; even in federal government work, women
were either paid less for doing the same jobs as men or, in some depart-
ments, were not hired at all. Two thirds of the civil service examina-
tions for professional posts were closed to women. Woman suffrage,
so long fought for and finally achieved in 1920, proved not to be "a
biscuit thrown to a whale,"28 as male detractors had feared: most
women demanded no further rights, being perfectly content to vote
as their husbands voted (or not to vote at all) and to watch the broad
women's rights coalition— two million strong in 19 19— disintegrate into
small, often futile successor organizations. Prohibition, pride of the
"conservative Progressives" and considered by many to be women's
supreme political accomplishment, was no panacea after all, only a
messy failure. It was a time of "surging . . . disillusion," more dis-
couraging to such as Vida Scudder, reformer and Wellesley professor,
than any other time of her life. Another observer wrote, "Feminism
has become a term of opprobrium."29 Back in Andover, an era seemed
to have ended when Agnes Park died in 1922; a special brand of
toughness, generosity, and humor had gone out of the world. "She was
unique in her generation," wrote the Abbot Trustees. "How much
more did she stand out against the stereotyped society of the present
day."30

Ironically, many of the "new" women convinced themselves that
their liberation was complete. They smoked and drank at "petting"
parties, they danced cheek to cheek with men, they reveled in the
freedom to enjoy the "vamp" movies and the novels of James Joyce
(censored, but widely available). The divorce rate soared.31 Illegal

THE LADIES STAND FAST 21 J

birth control devices could be found, given money enough. Psycho-
analysts had put their blessing on women's sexual pleasure. A careful
study conducted after the twenties had run their course revealed that
while 74 percent of middle-income women born between 1890 and
1900 had remained virgins before marriage, only 32 percent born after
191 o made the same claim.32 As early as 191 5, socialite-intellectual
Mabel Dodge Luhan had emerged from her own psychoanalysis to
intone: "The sex act is the cornerstone of any life, and its chief
reality." What more could an independent woman want?33 Though
this rebellious pleasure-seeking was not nearly so widespread as the
conventional picture of the twenties suggests, it permeated the college
student culture that beckoned to young people nearing graduation
from secondary school and thus presented a palpable threat to Miss
Bailey's Abbot Academy.34 With the vocal support of older faculty
like Miss Kelsey and Miss Mason and the passive assent of the rest, the
Principal set out to provide against the assault on Abbot ways.

Building the Walls

Walls of various kinds had protected Abbot from its earliest years, but
Bertha Bailey was one of the school's more resourceful engineers. As
soon as she arrived, she made clear how high and how detailed were
her expectations. She intercepted all food packages at the mailroom,
then either confiscated them or commanded each recipient to share the
entire contents with corridor or tablemates.35 To warn girls to "dress
simply" allowed of too many interpretations. Miss Bailey made clear in
the 191 3 catalogue that "elaborate lingerie waists, decollete gowns,
trains and expensive jewelry" would not be tolerated. Then as later,
the Principal proved to her school that her warnings were no mere
empty words. In order to make certain that the older students would
heed them at prom time, Miss Bailey deputized Katherine Kelsey to
stand on a chair (boy-height) while the girls paraded by, offering
their necklines for inspection and their bosoms— if too evident— for
censure.36 Walking shoes were the daily wear, and high button shoes
were required after November 1st, "one of the theories being that if
we did not wear them our ankles would become large and our hus-
bands would not love us" as a Coiirant cynic of after years quipped.37
Time passed, and injunctions against sleeveless dresses, flapper skirts,
and three kinds of heels had to be added. After 19 17 only Stearns of
Boston carried the black lisle stockings Abbot required. In 191 8 silk
ones were finally allowed for ordinary wear, but black or blue cotton

2l8 AGAINST THE TIDE, 191 2-1954

remained the rule with gym bloomers. Alumnae parents asked Con-
stance Chipman, '06, Trustee and Alumnae Field Secretary in the early
thirties, to persuade Miss Bailey to abandon black cotton, but in vain.
"Constance," the Principal replied, "I don't like legs."38

Even the Abbot Seal embarrassed Miss Bailey. "Truth" with her
burning torch had been designed by Emily Means in the 1880's for a
school taught to reverence classical sculpture. Miss Watson had had
her drapery expanded to cover the bared breast. Miss Bailey put up
with Truth's shoulder and elbows until 1929, when she finally asked
the Trustees to find another design. Just in time for the Centennial
Issue of Courafit, the Abbot family coat of arms was adopted, and
"Truth" became history.

Miss Bailey moved fast to block the routes out into the countryside
or down the road to the Orchard Street ice cream parlor (where one
could always find Phillips boys in Miss Means' day) by mapping first
fifteen, then twenty-three "approved walks," the shorter ones to be
taken with a companion dictated by the master schedule, those longer
than four or five miles to be chaperoned. Mr. Stackpole, who loved
solitary hiking and had understood when he and his fellow Trustees
hired her that Miss Bailey also enjoyed it, was horrified by the "walk-
ing squads," but kept his counsel.39 Andover tea rooms were off
bounds each year as soon as townsfolk reported unladylike deport-
ment, once after girls piled all their dishes in a pyramid before leaving.
"Not easy," an alumna of 19 16 remembers, "and far too hilarious."40
The two Boston Symphony tickets became three, one for a chaperone
paid by the two student ticket holders, when an alert Andover neigh-
bor reported the two Abbot seats empty one afternoon. Questioning
back in the Principal's office revealed that once in Boston, the two mis-
creants had decided a vaudeville show would be more fun.41 Seldom
after this were girls allowed to go unchaperoned on shopping or con-
cert expeditions to Boston.

These restrictions were not the Principal's whims. Miss Bailey had
read her William James Psychology; she truly believed that right ac-
tion becomes habitual, and that useful habits free the individual to use
her "consciousness," her "higher" mental powers. "Truth" said James
in Pragmatism, "is made true by events."42 Increasingly, Bertha Bailey
preached "habit" and "manners" from the chapel pulpit. Each Sep-
tember she took three or four Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening
hours to speak on Rules, on "The forming of a Christ-like life," on
Personality, before letting other speakers have their say. As the twenties
progressed and she watched the "exceptional fathers and mothers and
teachers . . . struggle against the rising tide," she invoked all her gods

THE LADIES STAND FAST

219

31. (a) from Courant, 1886 (b) From Courant, 1896 (c) From Courant,
Centennial Number 1929.

220 AGAINST THE TIDE, I912-I954

against young people's tendency to "go the limit." Good manners both
create and express "fineness of spirit, beauty of soul," and, most im-
portant, "social power," that combination of self-restraint and gener-
osity that is essential to "good breeding."43

Aware of James or not, students seemed not to mind too much. Says
Frances Flagg Sanborn, "We never thought of rebelling." Jane Bald-
win, '22, remembers that she "had received much discipline at home,
and expected the same at school." Most girls' schools were nearly as
strict as Abbot, and, indeed, Abbot's rules coincided with the stan-
dards enforced by many parents at this time. Mildred Bryant Kuss-
maul's father told his daughter exactly where he stood in a letter
of 1913:

Your letter received, and now forget it as concerns the theatre.
When boys ask your mother for permission to take you to the
theatre with a chaperone it is time enough to talk it over.

Girls who are not "chumps" don't buy tickets to take boys to
the theatre.

No! is the answer . . . It's a cheap crowd at night and not
suitable for you or your young ladies.

Love from Pa

"We never minded the lisle stockings," says another alumna. Or
(writes a fourth), "we moaned and complained, thinking it was utter
nonsense to ban silk stockings . . . but if it hadn't been about silk
stockings it might well have been about something more funda-
mental."44 What caprice could not be expressed in fashionable clothes
was lavishly expended in hair styles: a "hair bobbing epidemic" in
April 1920, a hair-growing one at the end of the decade, with every
imaginable hot-wave and curlicue in between. Not even Miss Bailey
could detect every midnight "spread," with "all the gooey things that
could be assembled."45 Saturday lectures by such moralizers as Mrs.
Augustus Trowbridge on "evils of modern dancing," "the reasons for
chaperoning," and so forth46 were just talk to the older or more self-
sufficient students; they did no harm, they made the teachers feel
better, and they probably protected a few of the weaker girls.

The Hilltop presented special problems, for Bertha Bailey appears to
have shared with many of her contemporaries a "frantic fear of sexual
promiscuity" which colored her every action.47 Before she made up
her mind to come to Abbot, Miss Bailey had asked the Trustees, "to
what extent would the life of the household be complicated by the
proximity of Phillips Academy?"48 Her answer after her arrival seemed
to be a hopeful "not a bit, provided all Abbot ignores all Phillips ex-

THE LADIES STAND FAST 221

cept on rare special occasions and heavily chaperoned Friday calling
hours." Alumnae remember almost no other legal communication with
Phillips Academy. Even telephone calls were chaperoned. Miss Bailey
made sure that Stearns' joint Vesper services were never resumed after
he returned from Sabbatical leave in 191 3. Faculty receptions ended on
both sides; so did the lightly chaperoned sleighrides and picnics that
Helen Abbott Allen remembered from earlier days.

Was Miss Bailey responsible for the change? "Yes, indeed, that was
Big Bertha, whom I adored," says Helen Abbott's daughter, Helen
Allen Henry, '32. As a day scholar, she could not speak with her
own brothers because they were Phillips boarding students.49 If a
young Phillips teacher wished to visit a sister or sister-in-law at Abbot,
Big Bertha provided a chaperone to supervise.50 To sit with your sister
or your girl at a football game was out of the question. Two girls
came home from a midnight walk with their Phillips' beaux to find
Miss Bailey waiting for them in their suite. They were dismissed the
following morning. "There is ordinarily no communication between
the students of the two schools," wrote Bertha Bailey with conviction.51

All this might have been understandable to students in the mid-
nineteenth century or even to the younger bodies in the early Bailey
era, when the average age of menarche was 14 years;52 it became less
so to Abbot's older students during the 1920's when college women of
the same age (with the conspicuous exception of Wellesley, Miss
Bailey's alma mater) often had no restrictions beyond a 10:00 p.m. sign-
in. Rather suddenly, Abbot's social rules assumed an antediluvian cast.

Yet there was more to Abbot's defensiveness than Abbot: Phillips
Academy was in its own way widening the chasm between the two
schools. As Phillips prospered under Alfred E. Stearns, as it gave heroes
and martyrs to the War for Democracy, it became ever more self-
consciously masculine. Athletic contests now replicated those battles
only a few Phillips students had actually had a chance to fight. Girls
could never experience "the hour of glorious conflict, when the blood
leaps, and the muscles rally for mastery, the decent manly pride in
taking one's punishment ... as long as one can stand and see," as J.
Adams Puffer put it in The Boy and His Gang,53 but the Hilltop boys
could do just this on Brothers football field. Teacher- housemasters ac-
tually enforced dormitory rules. They backed Stearns in his decision
to suspend the winter prom for two successive years when "the ex-
travagances" and "dangers involved" in modern dancing appeared un-
manageable.54 It took an aggressive faculty to dispel the image of
teaching as a "feminized" profession; many of them doubtless agreed
with F. E. Chadwick, who told the world in 19 14 that the "woman

222 AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 - I 9 5 4

peril" in the public schools was producing "a feminized manhood,
emotional, illogical, non-combative against public evils."55 On the play-
ing fields, in the rough-and-tumble dormitory life, the masters did all
they could to wean boys away from their overprotective mothers.56 In
the meantime, a Hilltop building boom underlined the material power
behind male aspirations, most dramatically in the construction of the
War Memorial bell tower and the Cochran Chapel with its soaring
steeple. If Freud had known, he would have smiled.

Alfred Stearns grew to be as wary as Miss Bailey of "the softening
influences of modern social life," of unrestrained auto rides and un-
chaperoned dances, and called in his Challenge of Youth for family,
church, and school to renew the "eternal fight for virile and self-con-
trolled manhood and womanhood" (sic), that Christian civilization
might be saved.57 In Stearns's view as in Miss Bailey's, this was best
accomplished in single sex schools. Although Stearns had nothing but
scorn for the "self expression and self realization" advocated by mod-
ern psychology ("they all spell selfishness" he wrote),58 he agreed
with G. Stanley Hall, the child-study guru, that coeducation could be
disastrous for adolescent boys. Convinced that females were made for
mature men to cherish, not for boys to play with, impatient with
"woman" and her "shouts for 'rights,' " Stearns thought it best to keep
Abbot at a distance,59

Besides, he did not care for Bertha Bailey. He advised an inquiring
friend, President Ernest Hopkins of Dartmouth, to send his daughter
elsewhere. "When it comes to scholarship, etc., I feel pretty safe in
saying that the school ranks very high," but Miss Bailey is "terribly
austere and reserved," her regime "overstrict" and "a bit old fash-
ioned."60 Even the more open-minded of Phillips instructors "thought
the Abbot rules were so absurd that nothing else about Abbot could
be any good at all," Alan Blackmer remembered in 1975. Blackmer and
his friends, most of them graduates of boys' schools and men's colleges,
found girls' schools in general "simply irrelevant," and felt "only con-
descension" toward Abbot in particular. As Blackmer was glad to
admit 45 years later, "This was male chauvinism in its purest form.''

In spite of everything, Phillips-Abbot connections could not be
wholly severed. Friday night meant "fish, ice cream and callers" at
Abbot; dedicated couples made the best of calling hours, the boys lin-
ing up sometimes for an hour ahead of time to secure seats as far from
the chaperone-on-duty as possible.61 Two "married couples" once
linked arms on a bet and skipped around the Circle, running smack
into Miss Bailey next to Draper Hall. (In her surprise, she laughed!)62
Numbers of Abbot alumnae had married Phillips teachers, including

THE LADIES STAND FAST 223

Bessie Goodhue, wife of Claude Fuess, who would soon be Phillips'
Headmaster. Abbot's Fidelio Society occasionally sang with the Phil-
lips Glee Club; a Phillips band played music for the Maypole dance
one bright spring; Abbot girls and their chaperones attended many a
football game; and, best of all, a victory over Exeter brought swarms
of cheering Phillips students to the Circle, waving their torches and
shouting "Bertha! Bertha! Bertha!" until Miss Bailey appeared to wave
at them.

Still the walls remained. In the Principal's anxious mind, those 500
males on the Hill threatened chaos at the least, if not rapine, and the
near-nightmare came true just often enough to perpetuate her fearful
images. One May morning long after Miss Bailey had forbidden all
Abbot to go near the town's annual May Breakfast, a gang of rowdy
Cads celebrated that festive occasion by hurling buns at each other and
being bounced out of the Town Hall. They jumped on the traffic
light triggers till they broke, streamed into the snarled streets gather-
ing reinforcements as they ran, and headed for the Abbot gates,
hundreds strong and roaring. Miss Bailey's indignant scoldings from
her apartment window accomplished absolutely nothing. The girls
were thrilled. Al Stearns chugged through the gate in his coupe just
in time to save Abbot from who knows what fate— but by the time he
and Bertha Bailey met at the Draper Doors, there was not a boy to be
seen, and every bush and hedge was quivering, every tree trunk alive
with suppressed laughter.63

It is interesting that the only structures other than the Taylor infir-
mary that were built under Miss Bailey were gates that could be
closed at sundown and all day Sunday: the Merrill Gate in honor of
Maria Stockbridge Merrill and the George G. Davis entranceway. The
gates completed the privet hedge wall that soon concealed much of
Abbot from the view of passersby.

Behind the Walls

It was not a nunnery. It was just that the world outside had to be held
off, its stimulations and confusions filtered through the privet hedge.
Even the ancient town held who knows what dangers, now that Law-
rence pulsed and smoked to the north, now that automobiles could
go anywhere. True to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's prediction, "the An-
dover of New England theology— the Andover of a peculiar people,
the Andover that held herself apart from the world and all that was
therein—" had become "an interesting wraith."64 The town still had its

224 AGAINST THE TIDE, 1912-1954

special beauties, but Abbot could no longer count on its perfect
discretion.

Abbot's student body was, if anything, more homogenous now than
in Miss Means's day, even though the geographical spread was greater
than ever before.65 "We were more or less all alike, I think," says
an alumna of the mid-1920's. "The girls from Duluth hadn't had
our advantages, we knew, but we didn't look down on them. They
were darlings." Abby Castle Kemper, '31, on the other hand, feels that
she and the other Midwesterners had had as many advantages as the
others. Mrs. Kemper does remember the practical problems that the
twelve to fifteen scholarship girls and missionary daughters con-
fronted—finding time to do one's own laundry, for example, or amass-
ing money enough to join the expeditions down town— but "Abbot
was far from fashionable, far from wealthy." There was none of the
social exclusion so often found in girls' boarding schools.66

Miss Bailey did not take chances on "aborigines" from Maine, and
new entrance requirements kept out the interesting academic cripples.
To be sure, Abbot still felt responsible to the constituency it regularly
attracted in simpler days, and the Principal pitched her scholarship
appeals accordingly:

How many ministers and missionaries and farmers and professors
can afford to pay a thousand dollars a year to educate their
daughters at Abbot Academy? Yet these are the girls who most
value the opportunity here, and who work hardest to use it to
advantage . . . the girls we particularly desire. [19 19]

Bertha Bailey brought in a handful of Chinese and Japanese girls. One
of them, Tsing Lien Li, '16, a brilliant scholar, paid her tuition from
the U.S. indemnity funds negotiated at the time of the Boxer Rebel-
lion—and returned to Abbot as a young physician to be married in the
Chapel. Miss Bailey constructed the traditional bridal arch herself, and
gave the bride away. A Greek student and a Serbian refugee were also
exotic companions; a few more day scholars of Irish descent followed
the four Sweeney sisters, and the Trustees added ten small competi-
tive scholarships to the twenty-three existing in 1927. But Abbot was
a bit bland considering that New York City's population in the early
1920's was about equally divided between Catholics, Jews, and Protes-
tants, and in nearby Lawrence, 80 percent of the population were
either immigrants or the children of immigrants.67 A Southern student,
Class of 1922, found that she and another deep South girl were the
only two Democrats in the school. There was not a single Jew at
Abbot until 1930, though stereotypes abounded.68 One alumna social

THE LADIES STAND FAST 225

worker wrote of her astonished delight at finding bearded Jews reading
Tolstoi in their tenements, as though she had assumed that this strange
race could not possibly be literate. "You learn," she said, "that the
chief interest of the Jewish father is not money, but his family."69 Did
she not learn such things at Abbot?

Still, the school's talent for fostering the various in its chosen
students remained undiminished. By encouraging Academic and C.P.
students to combine in most out-of-class activities, Miss Bailey con-
tributed much to each group's social experience; the faculty also
welcomed an ever-increasing group of one-year special C.P. students,
who brought a piece of the world in with them.70 In her first winter
at Abbot, Miss Bailey invited all the Seniors on an after-exams winter
sports expedition to Intervale, New Hampshire. By the time she and
the students had snowshoed, coasted, and cooked hot dogs together
for three days, the girls felt more like Seniors than C.P.'s or A.C.'s,
and all felt a new warmth for their awesome Principal, whose keen
sense of humor and love of nature blossomed in that relaxed setting.
The trip was so much fun that Miss Bailey repeated it every year. In
19 14 the Seniors voted to have one set of class officers; all other classes
followed their example. Most class plays were still dominated by
Academic students, but then, C.P.'s held as many offices as Academic
students; alumnae remember many close friendships that crossed the
C.P.-Academic line.71 Day scholars too were well represented. Field
Day events were open to all. It helped that a few Academic students
proved to be top scholars: Louise M. Greenough and Constance Ling
won third-year status at the University of Michigan following their
graduation in 1920. It is interesting to contrast Abbot's way of re-
sponding to differences in student interest and abilities with Bradford's
design. Bradford Academy tried to add junior college work to a sec-
ondary-level preparatory department, but the older students tipped
the balance: tension over differences in rules along with other prob-
lems upset the combination. Bradford finally was rechartered as a
junior college in 1932. Abbot was, as always, more pragmatic, even if
no more successful, than its sister school, and most everyone seems
to have benefited.

The faculty helped immeasurably to sustain both variety and com-
munity. The old hands had their niches; Miss Chickering— or "Mother
Chick," since she gave students so much extra help— remained for
many "the best teacher I ever had";72 but young Ruth Baker with her
passion for German was also "best" for some, and the fortunate few
who took English with Alice Sweeney, '14, shortly after she grad-
uated from Vassar found her classes unforgettable. Miss Sweeney

2 26 AGAINST THE TIDE, 19 I 2- I 954

would return near the close of the Bailey years and become a key
figure in Abbot's future. The Academy created both refuge and op-
portunity for women who had won their independence through
scholarly success, but who scorned, feared— or simply had no interest
in— the uses many college women made of their freedom. For much
of what passed for opportunity in the twenties actually channeled
young women into constricted roles. The new emphasis on women's
sexual enjoyment might liberate and deepen one's emotions, but ordi-
narily one had to depend on a man to express them. It was exciting to
read Proust and Stein, but as the cry for self-fulfillment drowned out
the voices of those still passionately committed to social reform,
women were ever less likely to consider political or social service
their special mission. Few7 men were willing to have their wives
continue careers: only 12 percent of professional women were mar-
ried in 1920. Thus society's expectations of women stagnated even
though legal barriers to their progress had diminished. Graduate
school attendance leveled off. Except in clerical work, occupational
opportunities ceased to expand.

Women teaching in public high schools found that men were
awarded nearly all the department chairmanships and administrative
posts. At least Abbot faculty members could run their own show.
This took both resourcefulness and the courage to defy still-dominant
concepts of woman's place, now enshrined in scientific terms by such
as G. Stanley Hall in his influential Adolescence. Woman "works by
intuition and feeling," Hall told his large and eager audience. "Her
sympathetic and ganglionic system is relatively to the cerebro-spinal
more dominant." "If she abandons her natural naivete and takes up
the burden of guiding and accounting for her life by consciousness,
she is likely to lose more than she gains." "Woman's body and soul
are made for maternity, and she can never find repose for either
without it." A "bachelor woman," especially one given to intensive
intellectual pursuits, first loses mammary function, then becomes
sterile. "The apotheothis of selfishness," she "has overdrawn her ac-
count with heredity." So much for the single teacher.73

Abbot's long if muted tradition of respect for women's competence
armored its faculty against such nonsensical expressions of old prej-
udices, while the closed community created a sphere within which
unmarried women could do self-respecting, useful work. If "Abbot
was Victorian in those days,"74 so be it. The righteous work for
worthy causes in which the Victorians specialized was as much needed
as ever, and the Victorian spirit continued to energize the Abbot
faculty, many of whom felt with Miss Bailey that they were teach-

THE LADIES STAND FAST 227

ing "to serve humanity."75 Safe behind the walls, they carried on their
generous and intricate art, selecting from the array of Progressive
ideas whatever seemed best to suit them and their school.

In spite of his forays into pseudo-science, G. Stanley Hall had con-
tributed to the field of education his powerful conviction that the
understanding of adolescent development could be strengthened by
scientific investigation. His students, Arnold Gesell and Lewis Ter-
man, more cautious than their mentor, set out to develop further the
tests for mental development that Binet had pioneered in France.
Phillips English teacher Claude Fuess came down to Abbot in 1920
to administer the first so-called intelligence tests, which teachers
found helpful— though never in themselves decisive— for placing stu-
dents in appropriate classes.76 The seeming success of the "mental
ability" and "achievement" testing movement along with work of
E. L. Thorndike and other learning psychologists helped convince
educators that theirs was a true profession with its own body of
technique, as well as an art and a moral commitment. By the twenties
professional associations had been founded for almost every teaching
field, and Abbot teachers took advantage of many of their gatherings
to gain fresh ideas. Dorothy Hopkins, Abbot's first professional librar-
ian, and the enduring Mary Carpenter, first full-time director of phy-
sical education, participated in or led a professional conference every
year;77 other teachers joined the Modern Language Association, the
Classical Association, or the School and College Conference on En-
glish. Several studied for advanced degrees in Education at Harvard or
Cornell. Some of the faculty's professional training was directly spon-
sored by the Academy. In 1929-30 the Trustees expressed their ad-
miration of History teacher Helen Bean (Abbot 1920-39; "very strict
but very good" says Abby Castle Kemper) by supporting her during
a year of study at Oxford. Principal and teachers together organized
a six-year series of in-house faculty discussions to explore various
phases of educational theory and practice: "the Adolescent Girl," "the
Library as Laboratory," and "Science and Modern Life" were a few
of the many topics covered. The Trustees also supplied tuition and
board to two or three teachers a year for summer study after 1934.
Miss Bailey joined the Progressive Education Association upon its
founding in 19 19, was the hard-working Treasurer of the Head-
mistresses Association, a member of the National Association of School
Principals, and an Alumna Trustee of Wellesley. She urged teachers
to visit innovative schools, and invited known (but safe) Progressive
principals like Katherine Lord of Winsor to speak to the faculty. Im-
plicit in many of her speeches and Chapel talks is the Progressive ed-

228

AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 - I 9 5 4

32. Homemaking laboratory in the basement of Abbot Hall, circa 1917.

ucator's central question, which casts aside traditional emphases on
what should be taught and asks instead: how does the inner person
change?78 Thus did Abbot stay current with the new while it treasured
the old.

In addition to this pride of profession, attention to the sciences
and arts was central to the Progressive spirit. John Dewey himself
had wanted to bring the work of the world into the school in forms
manageable and comprehensible to the young person, and the "Domes-
tic Science" course was Abbot's response. It was instituted, according
to the 191 3-14 catalogue, "to help girls realize the importance of the
home as a unit of national life and the influence of a scientifically
conducted house on the welfare of the state." This was small but seri-
ous business. Only Academic Senior-Mids or Seniors who had taken
(or were taking) chemistry were allowed into the laboratory kitchen
in the basement of Abbot Hall. The student cooks contributed pickles
and cakes to the main dining room, sometimes using materials from
the school's vegetable garden. The prerequisites themselves seem to
have been less exciting: seemingly after 1894, Abbot rarely did more
than meet colleges' minimum demands in the laboratory sciences. The
school added a short business course in 1934, and throughout the
Bailey era brought in speakers to describe the vocations most hos-
pitable to young women— medicine, nursing, social work, library and
clerical work, education, psychology, and homemaking. One business-
like lecturer, Dr. Mary W. Calkins of Wellesley, who had written
the psychology text which Abbot Seniors used after 191 8 in place
of James's Shorter Psychology, spoke on "Efficiency in the Manage-
ment of Ourselves." As a Courant reviewer dutifully repeated, this ef-
ficiency was similar to the efficiency needed in business management.
"Because of her limited time, Dr. Calkins gave her talk in outline
form."79 Indeed, Abbot's attention to all the sciences was somewhat ab-
breviated. Nellie Mason, the Department Chairman, acquired little new
laboratory equipment after the Watson-Means years. Though the

THE LADIES STAND FAST 229

Senior Class president spoke at Miss Mason's retirement in 1932 of
"the clear flame of her intellect" and her "great power of person-
ality";80 though she was deeply kind to unhappy students; many
alumnae remember Miss Mason as "dry, quiet, and unstimulating" in
the classroom. One compares Abbot physics to "taking castor oil."81
Mathematics also continued to be unevenly taught, in spite of Miss
Bailey's deliberate attempts to strengthen C.P. Algebra.82

The arts were a longer, richer story. Abbot met the post-Deweyite
surge in favor of the arts with its own traditional commitment to
music and the visual arts, and with its students' irrepressible love of
drama, now no longer repressed. Mr. and Mrs. Ashton had taken
over capably enough from Mr. Downs, but Walter Howe (1922-48)
and his fulltime resident assistant and successor-to-be, Kate Friskin
(1922-61), were overflowing with energy and inventiveness. Like
Downs, Mr. Howe was both composer and organist. Though he also
gave only part of his time to Abbot, he loved to play his organ com-
positions ("Dedicace" was written to christen the enlarged Davis Hall
organ) and to conduct any group willing to perform his piano con-
certo, "Youth" (which was, the Townsman reported, "a very inter-
esting musical interpretation of the delirious abandon of youth"),83
or his cantata, "Ode to Youth" (the text was written by Bertha Bailey
and the Chatauqua Choir gave the world premiere). Howe persuaded
the faculty to require Chorus Singing of every student, every year;
he woke up Fidelio in such a manner that it never again was so inert
as it was under Mr. Ashton.84 He was "an enthusiast with tempera-
ment," an alumna recalls; a "wonderful musician," says another, who
never gave up on any would-be singer no matter how tone deaf.85 A
third traces to his teaching her own "deep joy in music."86 Once a
performer in the Baltimore String Quartet, Howe encouraged the
exhilarating and difficult art of ensemble playing, adding a cello teach-
er to the department and (with Miss Friskin) coaching ensembles, in-
cluding such unlikely combinations as the new Aeolian Honor Society,
founded in 1927 with a cellist, a violinist, a guitarist, several pianists,
and a trumpet player. Miss Friskin, a professional concert pianist who
had studied with the great musicologist Donald Tovey, was British,
brusque, and demanding. "Nobody ever said no to Kate Friskin," re-
members William Schneider of Phillips' Music Department. This force
from down the Hill proved irresistible at times: you cannot sing a
Bach cantata with girls or boys alone, and ambitious musicians do not
rest short of Bach cantatas. Bach's Deck Thyself My Soul with Glad-
ness was the centerpiece of a 1935 Phillips-Abbot program that began
and ended with Howe's organ compositions. Often after supper Miss

230 AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 - I 9 5 4

Frisian played generously and beautifully to all who wished to hear;
faculty and student recitals abounded. Every time Kate Frisian and
her brother James gave a two-piano concert in Jordan Hall, they
would repeat it for Abbot audiences soon after. The Downs concert
series continued (one year Ratan Devi played Hindu music on a sitar),
and an average of 73 students studied music each year during the
twenties.

Painting, sculpture, and art history went on much as they had be-
fore. To "experience the joy of creating" was more the point of it all
during the twenties than were the disciplined seeing or the profuse
cultural learnings of the McKeen era, but this was consistent with gen-
eral cultural enthusiasms.87 Stripped of its social vision, the child-
centered pedagogical Progressivism of the twenties worshiped self-
expression,88 and occasional Abbot art teachers participated in this
craze. However, a staff member of the Boston Fine Arts Museum
came once a week after 1928 to give a course in "design" that brought
back some of the old values. Thus, though no longer central to the
curriculum as in Miss McKeen's day, art continued to thrive.

Dramatics boomed. There were class plays, day scholar plays, cor-
ridor skits, charity benefits, language plays, Dramatic Society plays,
plays written and acted by the Academic Seniors, even faculty skits
and plays, prepared in secret and uproariously received. Draper Read-
ings became Draper Dramatics in 1924, and Bertha Morgan Gray di-
rected both with equal enthusiasm from 19 17 to 1948. "Balmy Martha
Melissa Howey" supervised the writing and production of the Se-
niors' one-act plays. "She was an enormously interesting woman," Elaine
Von Weber remembers. "She was literally passionate about [teach-
ing playwriting], and if we disappointed her she burst into tears."
Rarely did they disappoint her.

No sooner had the Davis Hall stage been cleared of one set than an-
other was constructed. Elaborate stage effects often accompanied them:
Esther Kilton remembers a thunderstorm so successfully mounted from
backstage that no one heard her lines, shouted through the din. One
of the community heroes was Michael Scannell, School Engineer for
thirty years, who read each play before rehearsals began, designed
the scenery with pride and care, procured props from everywhere
(Mr. Flagg's birdbath made a perfect fountain), and supervised Mr.
Hammer, the carpenter, in the set construction. He had a stake in
almost every production. When a rehearsal-watcher gushed, "That is
the best scenery Abbot ever had!" Mr. Scannell quickly replied, "Then
the play ought to be the best work Abbot ever did."89 Miss Bailey
also did her part, always remembering to come backstage after a play

THE LADIES STAND FAST

23*

33. Senior Class play, 1913: "Twig of Thorn.'

34. "Masque of the Flowers" 1914.

232 AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 - I 9 5 4

to congratulate the players and their faculty director. The girls
brought off men's parts with panache. Petrucio in The Taming of the
Shrew and the Irish villagers of Lady Gregory's Spreading the News
surprised new audiences; the pleasure taken in this skill can still be
seen in commemorative photographs.

Abbot seems to have stayed clear of the avant garde: cubism in art,
Dadaism in drama and poetry, anything other than Howe in contem-
porary music— these never appear in studio, on stage, or on class read-
ing lists. Bits of blank verse creep into Courant toward the late
twenties, emblems of easing resistance to the modern in the English
curriculum. Through about 1930 however, the British classics dom-
inated reading lists. Abbot students had to learn to write a sonnet:

Sometimes on winter days the ghost of spring
Returns again to haunt us for a space,
And with her spirit fingers seems to fling
Upon the earth a semblance of the grace
And loveliness with which she used to rule.
Snows vanish at her phantom touch; the grass
Puts on its faded green as if to fool
Itself; and all the drowsy, frozen mass
That is the world stirs in its sleep and dreams
Of summer time; and what few birds remain
Feel in their breasts a strange new joy that seems
To burst forth from their throats, a glad refrain.

But man smiles wistfully and shakes his head,

For he alone remembers Spring is dead.

[Harriet P. Wright, "The Ghost of Spring," in Courant,
February 1932, 20]

before trying a contemporary idiom:

Savagely I love
The sight of fleet, grey rain,
The rip of snagged thunder,
The snarl of frustrate wind,
The sudden hissing silence
Of beaten waves.

[Dorothy Rockwell, "Poem," ibid., 36]

English teacher Josephine Hammond, with her advanced degrees and
her experience in college teaching, was a poet herself: she held several
readings before the school. Lady Gregory came twice to eat Saturday
luncheon and lecture afterward. The English V playwrights produced

THE LADIES STAND FAST 233

some marvelous pieces amid much dross. The Flapper girl in "Flapper
Rule" written by Paulina Miller, '20, and set in the early war years,
appears interested only in flirting— but gentle reader, look again! This
coy facade is a cover-up for her plan to join the Italian Women's
Battalion, a purpose revealed by mistake and reviled by her college
fop of a brother, but, it turns out, much admired by her handsome
suitor (the brother's archaeology professor), who has secretly resolved
to join the Foreign Legion. Now and then a bit of Freudianism erupts
in student writing: one student's Emily Dickinson "had formed habits
of repression; and all her life, she renounced resolutely the things she
unconsciously longed for."90 Most Abbot writers kept such fancies
under strict control.

Though the Academic Course students could adventure in classic
American novels, College English was essentially a history of English
literature from Chaucer through Stevenson. Yet college requirements
were not completely static, nor was the English program. By 1928
Miss Chickering was asking her students both to analyze a Shakespeare
sonnet and to "quote part of some modern poem that you like and
explain why you like it";91 and when Alice Sweeney rejoined the
faculty in 1935, she helped further to modernize the English offerings:
Hardy, Rolvaag, Ibsen, Shaw, Aeschylus, and Virginia Woolf had
found their way to Abbot by the end of the Bailey era. Although this
was a bit late, one is impressed by the richness and variety of the
older English curriculum within its self-imposed limitations. After all,
a lot happened in literature before 1900. Considering how whole-
heartedly many secondary schools embraced the "life-adjustment" cur-
riculum during the twenties and considering the number of educators
"in full flight from the ideal of intellectual education"92 which had
powered Abbot for decades, it now seems fortunate that Bertha Bailey
and her colleagues were so stubborn, so very old-fashioned.

Finally, Abbot made giant strides to deal with an aspect of schooling
dear to educators of the whole child— physical education. Backed by
the Trustees, Miss Bailey made this more than a matter of hockey,
basketball, and daily exercise. There were the four to six required
"hygiene" lectures given by Mary Carpenter, physical education di-
rector, and by a visiting woman doctor in which sex was mentioned
more than once. While the Courant editors' enthusiasm for these lec-
tures appears to be contrived to please their faculty advisers,93 there
is no doubt of Mary Carpenter's kindness, or of the familiarity with
every Abbot student she gained through her single-handed leadership
of the physical education program. She was an accesible confidante
for many students with physical problems— or any problem— and her

234 AGAINST THE TIDE, 191 2-1954

inventive enthusiasm persuaded even the reluctant to exercise. For
those who hated gymnastics, there were folk and rhythmic dancing
classes, while the gymnasts climbed ropes, leaped "horses," and tum-
bled in Davis Hall to their hearts' content. Field Day was potato races,
horseback riding games, and a tug-of-war as well as a track-tennis-team
sport meet. For Saturdays Miss Carpenter organized canoe trips or
"picnic walks" to the more remote woods and farmlands of Andover,
and on rainy Wednesday afternoons half the school flocked to Ale-
Keen Hall to enjoy the intrigue of a game of "Beckons Wanted" or
"Sardines." Best of all was the construction of a winter sports ground
just west of the school— a toboggan slide, a small ski hill, and a skating
pond for informal sports. Mary Carpenter made sure that every girl
in the school 'had a pair of skis to use.94 A sign on the bulletin board,
"Skating today" meant fun— and no excuse to sneak off skating with
the Phillips boys (who were by now too busy sweating in the gym to
go along anyway). One winter there was a full fifty days of skating
weather. The little pond was always the center of Abbot's annual
Winter Carnival, a day-long, mid-winter frolic; in the late spring it
filled up with as many as seventy swimmers (or splashers), all female.
Progressive critics would have approved this emphasis on self-
development and healthy recreation. They would have had less en-
thusiasm for the coercion involved (everyone must exercise at least
one hour a day, and prove it each week by her exercise card) or for
the competition generated by the new team and "point" system, which
replaced the class contests of earlier years. With Mary Carpenter's
help, the Senior athletic captains divided the school into the "Gar-
goyles" and the "Griffins." "Points" recorded every physical activity
or accomplishment: approved walks, posture improvement, hours spent
riding or playing golf, and winning scores for tennis matches, hockey
games, and Field Day events.95 After Field Day, the team with the
most points won for the year, and celebrated at the athletic award as-
sembly. There was a Posture Honor Roll (with but eighteen members
in 1923-24), an "A" Society for students with 200 points, and as if
that wasn't enough, an "Honor A" Society for three or four citizen-
scholar-athletes with flawless disciplinary records and 300 points. Stu-
dent Council members immensely enjoyed their role in nominating
the "Honor A's" to the faculty each year: thus was school-girl catti-
ness legitimized by hallowed purpose. Competition might be suspect
in female academies of the mid-nineteenth century and even more so in
Greenwich Village of the twenties; not so at Miss Bailey's Abbot
Academy.96 The Courant editors may have sounded overwrought even
to contemporary ears when badgering their peers to pull in their torsos

THE LADIES STAND FAST 235

and act like "real, live, wide-awake, enthusiastic girls, full of 'pep and
go.' "97 Abbot alumnae, however, remember the Bailey era physical
education program with pleasure, perhaps in part because the few who
were truly lazy managed to do no more each day than walk down to
Lowe's Drug Store for a soda— and got away with a glowing falsifica-
tion on their Exercise Cards— while gung-ho students could enter the
fray of point-competition, and others could simply enjoy the fun of
exercise in multiple forms.

There was no doubt of Bertha Bailey's devotion to competition. The
social striving fostered by the sororities repelled her, and she closed
them down in 19 14, but she soon instituted a Scholastic Honor Roll
whose much-publicized roster excluded all but 5 to 10 percent of the
students, since a scholastic average of 88 or above and a good citizen-
ship record were the requisite qualifications. After 1925 the name of
every student who received an A grade was read aloud in Chapel.
The girls who presented the day's news most eloquently at dinnertime
were voted members of the newsgivers' Honor Roll. Odeon ceased
to be an open literary club and became an Honor Society limited to
twelve members; Science, Art, and Music Honor societies joined
Odeon in the twenties. The first Cum Laude chapter ever founded in
a girls' school was Abbot's pride after 1926.98 These societies and the
Athletic and Student Government leaders had many members in com-
mon; one wonders how the left-outs felt about the interlocking di-
rectorate. Did they ever complain, as an Abbot student of the late
sixties did, that "At this school the same people always get chosen for
everything?"** Few alumnae admit to having minded; it was called
"keeping standards high." Moreover, there were so many different
honors at Abbot that almost any girl was bound to win at least one of
them. Seemingly there was always some Abbot adult or older student
ready to encourage and approve even the weakest, so long as the
weakest kept on trying.100 This combination of clear standards and
warm encouragement would be a continuing source of strength for the
twentieth-century school— never mind that it satisfied neither Progres-
sive ideologue nor traditionalist pedagogue. For most students it seemed
to work.

Bertha Bailey

A good principal takes ultimate responsibility, and Miss Bailey was
ready. She must have known before she came, for example, how an
Abbot principal must become pastor to the school if religion is to con-

236

AGAINST THE TIDE, 19I 2-1954

55. The Abbot Chapel.

tinue to have meaning and power. Alumnae speak of her as a person
who "lived her religion" with utter sincerity.101 Her pulpit eloquence
never seemed like self-display, for it always started from Scripture
and reached toward each individual in the audience, striving to inspire
and help. "Stir up the gift that is in thee," one sermon began, "for
God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness, but of power and love and
discipline" (Paul's letters to Timothy II, 1:6, 7). After elucidating the
quotation with further biblical references, Miss Bailey explained that
she had chosen it for her 1934 New Year's message "because I think
you need to be reminded, even as Timothy did, of the gift that is in
you. Perhaps you have been unaware that you had any gift ..." The
rest is a paean to faith in oneself and in the ultimate good of God's
purposes. Even unbelievers believed at such time— in Bertha Bailey's
goodness if not in God's— and felt that "power and love and discipline"
might someday be within their grasp. Like Miss McKeen, Miss Bailey
was happiest when students voluntarily joined the Church while at
Abbot ("The universe is ours but we have to take if')102 or came of
their own will to her special Lenten services; but she also felt keenly
her responsibility to each member of that captive Chapel congregation,
and everyone knew it. To Dorothy Rockwell, '32, Bertha Bailey was

THE LADIES STAND FAST 237

a "faith-lifted personality," to Miriam Sweeney, '23, "the most inspir-
ing person I have ever known."103

Seniors after 1925 had special attention from Miss Bailey in the
ethics and theism courses. Growing in confidence as Abbot's unor-
dained minister, she took these over after the highly capable Rev.
Charles Oliphant died, and gave them her all. Each year's syllabus
was freshly thought out with the purpose of "removing obstructions
to faith" for the particular Seniors involved.104 The class began with
different forms of unbelief ("I don't believe in the God of the Bible")
and dealt with these one by one. (Given modern theories of evolution,
the Bible indeed reveals itself as "a childish explanation of nature,"
but study and see how the Creation God of Genesis evolves by the
time of the Prophets: "which God are you talking about?"). Each
week students handed her an account of their reading from a list deal-
ing with "the Cause," the "personality of God," "creative evolution,"
the Trinity. They mulled over the relationship of the spiritual and the
material by discussing the query "How much time would it take to
throw away a million silver dollars?" ("5% days," answered one girl,
"Hardly worth becoming a nervous wreck.")105 Few cynics could
altogether reject her efforts.

For some girls Miss Bailey was "a ship in full sail," a person of such
awesome power and authority that you avoided her whenever she
hove into sight.106 To these few her moral outrage could be over-
whelming: one remembers two girls expelled for spending the night
with two Phillips boys, and a morning-after diatribe in Chapel so
withering that the offenders' sin paled beside their judge's anger. Oth-
ers loved Abbot in spite of her. "The beauty and wholesomeness of
the whole two and a half years were so great I hardly felt Miss Bailey's
unkindness to me," wrote one graduate of 1933. "I could even sym-
pathize with Miss Bailey. She liked people with some life to them,
and I was a rag of a creature, too busy taking everything in to give
anything." Until Commencement day itself the Principal threatened
every week to withhold this "creature's" diploma.107

But most students felt free to come to Miss Bailey in time of trouble,
whether the trouble began with the school or with themselves. She was
"kind and calm and strong," remembers Alice Sweeney, '14 "ready
equally to listen to a problem or a joke."108 Yes, she was a harsh dis-
ciplinarian—but almost everyone agrees she was entirely fair. "We
were all afraid of her, but we all admired and loved her," says one
alumna.109 She tried hard to work with representatives of the Student
Government. If they sometimes failed her by too much respecting
the injunction "See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil,"110 she usually

238 AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 - I 9 5 4

managed to identify the more responsible student councils that could
handle all minor and some major infractions; thus girls saw that she
was consulting with their respected peers, and rarely felt abused.111
The haggling over school constitutions and lists of demerit offenses
("visiting other students in negligee: one demerit") was often petty
and self-righteous; uStu G" nevertheless gave many girls experience in
running affairs, and opened privileged access to Miss Bailey for a few
("Miss Bailey is just wonderful . . . Always tell her everything," the
outgoing Council president of 1923 advised her successor).112 Everyone
knew that she had given up her apartment to a girl who was critically
ill with double pneumonia before the Infirmary was available and con-
ducted prayers for the same girl in Chapel, that she would spend hours
with a student who was struggling to cope with some agonizing family
situation,113 that she herself had nursed her dearest friend through her
final illness,114 and had suffered the death of a beloved niece. Big
Bertha would understand. Much she did in secret. Perhaps a handful
of people realized how little her public stance toward sex matched
her private support and comfort of one student who had become
pregnant.115 Rarely did she confuse Abbot's real business with its repu-
tation.

Now and then Miss Bailey relaxed. The first woman in all Andover
to own a car, she loved to motor into the country or to visit friends.
Her professional travels were also a release, for they brought her occa-
sionally out of reach of Abbot's reputation. A younger colleague from
Bradford still remembers her astonishment at Miss Bailey's behavior
inside a New York City taxicab en route to a meeting of the Head-
mistresses Association. She put up the jump seat in front of her, set
her feet upon it, leaned back and lit a cigarette. And she joked and
laughed in a manner which the Courant editors would not have found
at all "decently and sweetly feminine."116 This too was Bertha Bailey,
but few ever knew it. More of her associates were aware of her love
for her great-nephew and niece, whose visits to her at Abbot were
among her greatest joys.

Except for the Senior Bible and Theism classes, Miss Bailey left most
of the teaching to the teachers, considering herself not so much an in-
tellectual leader as a court of appeal for others' initiatives.117 Her first
inclination when presented with a new idea was always to say "No,"
but she was willing to reconsider if a staff member presented a clear
counterargument.118 She encouraged her teachers to run their own de-
partments, taking onto herself the endless housekeeping chores that
make a boarding school work. Her correspondence files are filled with
letters to carpet dealers, invitations to speakers, and letters to thank

THE LADIES STAND FAST 239

the same speakers. Miss Means had done all this ably, too— but Miss
Means's Abbot had nothing like the thirty-eight nonteaching house-
hold staff members whom Miss Bailey accumulated, or the paperwork
involved in arranging a testing session or a prom. It is little wonder
that Miss Bailey had time to build nothing but the Antoinette Hall
Taylor Infirmary, planned by the Trustees before she arrived and soon
provided for by Phillips benefactor Melville Day and other donors,
most of whom made their contributions at the behest of Emily
Means.119 Though she carried through some renovations in the older
buildings and helped outfit Sunset Lodge, Draper Homestead, and
Sherman Cottage for student dormitories, more brick structures were
not needed at this time. Bertha Bailey was busy building the school
within the walls.

High and Low

Burton S. Flagg? Well, I should say I do.

He's the biggest man voe^ve got . . .

Andover filling station attendant

quoted in Worcester Academy Bulletin

Abbot had seen crises before, crises that tested the school's strength
and adaptability, but the Great Depression put the survival of all inde-
pendent schools in question. For a while, private enterprise itself was
at the barricades. Who could be sure at the time that the crisis would
pass? Not the corporation lawyers who bought subsistence farms in
the Berkshires and waited for Armageddon; certainly not the adults
who steered Abbot through the rising flood. Behind the calm face the
Academy presented to the world, its Principal and Trustees struggled
to hold off disaster. Their success came just in time, for new challenges
were to follow hard upon those presented by the Depression: the
sudden death of Bertha Bailey in 1935 and the installation of a dynamic
new principal amid the gathering clouds of war.

Celebration

It was ironic that the stock market crash of 1929 should break into
Abbot's Centennial year, but there was good fortune as well as irony
in that conjunction. The major celebration was months behind when
the Crash came, and if Abbot's constituency became quite suddenly
unable to fulfill Abbot's dreams for the future, much of the hard work
that was to ensure its passage intact through the Depression had al-
ready been done in preparation for the grand birthday.

Abbot's alumnae were the wheelhorses, while Principal Bailey and
Treasurer Flagg cajoled from behind or canvassed the financial coun-
try ahead, organizing supply bases for the expedition and preparing to
put its findings and accumulations to the best possible use. An active
minority of alumnae had begun planning just after the end of the
First World War to make the Centennial worthy of the Academy.

HIGH AND LOW 24I

They were pleased with Bertha Bailey; they wanted to revive the
long-range plan for Abbot's future that she and Mr. Flagg had set be-
fore the Trustees in 191 5, when $100,000 was needed to fuel the ex-
panding school. The War had intervened but the school expanded
anyway, and was now too full to admit all who would enter. These
graduates were readying proposals of their own for a Centennial fund
in the fall of 19 19 when Miss Bailev sent around to all alumnae a letter
describing Abbot's need for funds. Running expenses had almost
doubled since 191 5; tuition would go up yet another notch, wrote Miss
Bailey, and still Abbot must have outside help to maintain the com-
munity in the style to which it had become accustomed in the A4eans
years, to offer salaries that matched the dignity and importance of the
teacher's job, and scholarships to those daughters of clergymen, teach-
ers, and social workers who had for so long been central to the
school's mission.

In the months following, a conference of alumnae, faculty, and
Trustees sorted out the tasks: the alumnae took on the actual job of
raising a ten-year endowment fund; Miss Bailey would travel and
speak, encourage and inspire; the Trustees would provide Jane Car-
penter to help organize the work, and would take care of all office ex-
penses so that every dollar given could go into the fund itself. The
Loyalty Endowment Fund was born.

A few alumnae were soon off on their own tack planning a new
Library in memory of Emily Means, who died in 1922, an appropriate
memorial indeed for a lady who "was always reading, reading," as one
donor put it.1 Mary Byers Smith's Committee was as determined and
independent as the lady it wished to honor; it was not until 1924 that
its members made their own fund, standing then at $7,000, a subdivi-
sion of the Loyalty Fund. The Means Library Committee found strong
support for its efforts from Abbot's Librarian, Dorothy Hopkins, who
would manage in the first decade of her tenure to double both the
collection (8000 volumes in 1930 compared with 2400 for the average
private secondary school)2 and its yearly circulation (2100 for books
alone). With its browsing section, its system for guidance of student
research, and its active periodical circulation, Abbot's library was al-
ready a model for schools throughout the Northeast.3 It asked only for
better housing, and this Miss Smith was bound she would provide.

Other alumnae were interested in ensuring smaller classes, still others
in establishing a Laura Watson Art Fund or an Agnes Park Chair of
History, in raising the level of all teachers' salaries, or in increasing
scholarships. Thus many concerns were funneled into the single fund;
appeal after appeal went out and was answered; every cord of senti-

242 AGAINST THE TIDE, 191 2-I954

ment was pulled to commit alumnae to repaying their debt of honor
to the old school. Large lump-sum gifts were encouraged, but the
alumnae leaders' zeal was most of all to reconnect each Dear Old Girl
to Abbot with annual gifts, for "the family tie seems a little closer if
one sends a special remembrance to the Mother regularly."4

Alumnae activities of all kinds increased. Connecticut graduates
started another Abbot club in 1923 as the fund reached $40,000. The
Alumnae Bulletin, begun in 1923 and edited by Jane Carpenter for all
alumnae, publicized the D.O.G.s' activities and their school's needs
much more effectively than could the student-run Courant with its
limited circulation. There was more interest than ever in the Alumnae
Advisory Committee, a rotating group of "visitors" founded by Anna
Dawes and Miss Bailey soon after the latter's arrival and chaired for
years by Agnes Park. (True, they did more visiting than advising, for
Abbot never absorbed criticism easily, but the Committee brought
many old girls back in touch with their school.) Alumnae were asked
to recruit new students: "Send us some more," urged Miss Bailey in
the Bulletin, "the best you can find . . ."5 Reunions were enthusias-
tically arranged and attended. Every living member of the Fifty Year
class returned in 1926, several traveling thousands of miles to do so.
Alice C. Twitchell, '86, the Volunteer Fund Director, held many
gatherings at Abbot, and traveled from one Abbot Club to another,
asking always for money and more money. Faculty and students at the
school raised contributions in the time-honored ways: the Bazaar of
Six Nations, held in May 1925, and a faculty recital the same weekend
brought a total of $1,100 to the Fund. The Bulletin wove together the
many strands of this alumnae effort, kept people informed of school
and alumnae news, and as the Centennial itself drew near, excited ever-
increasing interest in the coming celebration.

A grand celebration it was.6 Just four days wide, including the two
Commencement days of June 1929, the birthday box came packed
with 600 alumnae, as many parents and friends, students, townspeople,
and luminaries from the world of education— about 2,000 folk in all.
Baccalaureate and Commencement came first, the graduation address on
Loyalty given by President William Allan Neilson of Smith College,
but all the students stayed on for the further festivities. The third day
there was an all-class parade led by Sarah Abbott Martin, class of
1856, with several classes marching around the circle in costume-
painter's smocks and palettes for 1904 in honor of Emily Means, huge
red hats and boas in memory of 1907's fashions. In the evening a movie
of contemporary school life flickered through several showings in the
big tent, while students and faculty mounted an historical tableau in

HIGH AND LOW

243

j^v art

* »

36. The Dear Old Girls: Class of 1886 at their Fiftieth Reunion.

Br - 1

J w i '

37. Bac& When.

244 AGAINST THE TIDE, 191 2-I954

Davis Hall, all its characters costumed with impeccable accuracy, from
Squire Farrar and Harriet Beecher Stowe through croquet-playing
students of the 1870's to the barelegged rhythmic dancers of 1929.

On the final day, the whole crowd filled the Circle to hear a histori-
cal address by President Mary E. Woolley of Alt. Holyoke, one of the
most prominent woman educators of the time, and shorter speeches by
Vassar's President, Bradford's Principal, a parent (Governor Charles
W. Tobey of New Hampshire), and Rev. iMarkham Stackpole for the
Trustees. No one had been invited to speak for Phillips Academy, al-
though Alfred Stearns sat among the 19 "Delegates from the Schools."7
Perhaps there was some female chauvinism in the enthusiasm with
which the 180 Abbot girls sang out Hoist's anthem, "Lord Who Hast
Made Us for Thine Own," thrilling their audience.8

At this great gathering, the hard workers were publicly thanked,
including the editors of the various Centennial publications— though
Editor Chickering of A Cycle of Abbot Verse could not immediately
be found. "I think she has misplaced herself," said Chairman Constance
Chipman to roars of laughter.9 Finally Alice Twitchell presented to
the Treasurer a scroll of parchment which announced the completed
Centennial Loyalty Fund: $160,000. True, the total was less than all
had hoped for. When large endowment gifts failed to come in, the
Fund's name had been quietly changed to remove the word "Endow-
ment"10 and free the school to use the money for immediate needs as
well as long-range ones. Some $47,000 of gifts specifically donated as
endowment funds were announced separately so that the extraordinary
alumnae effort could stand for all to see. Ninety-eight percent of Ab-
bot's graduates had given to the Loyalty Fund;11 the final sum had been
built out of hundreds of small gifts. Abbot had no millionaires, but it
had many, many friends.

Luncheon over, Abbot and friends looked to the future. Miss Bailey
had arranged a symposium to be chaired by Trustee Ellen Fitz Pendle-
ton, President of Wellesley, and entitled "Art and Life." Four well
known representatives of the arts, including conductor and composer
Alfred Soessel of New York University, spoke briefly and eloquently
about the ways that art might shape life, and Abbot's own alumna
Mira Wilson, '10, principal-elect of Northfield Seminary, spoke for
scholarship.

The Abbot family could well go home content from its birthday
party. The dignity of the celebration had been balanced by joyful
meetings, by the much-remarked welcome that the students gave to
the D.O.G.'s,12 and by tearful leavetakings. The Academy was more
prosperous than at any time in its history, with its $850,000 of assets,13

HIGH AND LOW 245

its respected Principal and Trustees, its body of teachers, students and
alumnae with their varying but usually genuine devotion to the school.
"It's a grand school!" enthused Marion Brooks in nearly the same
words Harriet Chapell had used 55 years before.14

Crash

"And it came to pass!" wrote one participant. 'The Centennial was in
the distant future, it was near— it was here— it was over and gone."15
And indeed, the class banners were no sooner hung in their places in
Davis Hall the next October than warning rumbles were heard from
Wall Street. The warning was late; the collapse was swift. Businessmen
and all who depended on them were bewildered: for the first time on
record, a quorum could not be found for the late fall Trustees Meeting
of 1929. The meeting "has been adjourned indefinitely," reads the
ominous record.16 In fact, Abbot was very much a going concern. On
March 6, 1930, the Trustees picked themselves up and met as usual,
watchful but apparently recovered from the first shock and prepared
to make some decisions.

In the first months following the Crash, no one could be sure how
deep the disturbance would go. On reflection, some anomalies of the
last two years began to fall into place: Principal payments on Abbot's
Chicago City Railway bonds had been in default since 1927; five
boarders had withdrawn for financial reasons during the summer of
1928; enrollments had been lagging in all girls' schools. Treasurer Flagg
went through the winter of 1930 cautiously worrying. Did the de-
pressed market signal fundamental weakness, or was it just a drawn-
out slump?17 Should Abbot go ahead with another fund-raising cam-
paign? While Trustees pondered, signs of trouble abounded. The ex-
ecutor of a California estate left to Abbot could not settle it because
no market had appeared for real estate appraised at $20,000. The
Hoover Conference reestablished confidence (wrote Flagg to the
Trustees) and demonstrated that business was "fundamentally on a
sound basis," but "the recent holocaust in the securities market" could
not be ignored. Anything might happen.18

All through the fall and early winter of 1929-30 the Trustees went
ahead with their plans for a professional fund-raising campaign to
complete the work that the amateur alumnae had so bravely begun.
Impelled by a sense that there must be big money for Abbot some-
where and that men would know how to get it out of men if the
women could not find it or give it, they moved through the uncertain

246 AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 - I 9 5 4

months following the Crash, testing the water. Inquiries of parent in-
tentions for 1930-31 promised only a small drop in enrollment; the
school seemed calm. Abby Kemper remembers just one girl in 1929-30
whose father was in big business and vulnerable; the daughter was
fearful that her coming-out party would be canceled. (It was.)
Courant never mentioned the Crash. The Trustees voted to increase
Miss Bailey's salary from $6000 to $6600; they voted a leave of absence
with full salary for Kate Friskin; they thanked Treasurer Flagg for his
gift of land to enlarge the skating pond, and authorized him to con-
struct a dam "when the finances of the school make it advisable."19
Abbot business as usual. But the long future was less sure, and "in view
of the fact that the present conditions do not afford favorable pros-
pects for the raising of money,"20 the Trustees voted to suspend nego-
tiations with Tamblyn and Brown, the fund-raising firm they had
counted on to find that hidden gold. The Means library project was
soon to be dropped also: the building estimates "were so overpower-
ing" that the consulting architects were sent away until more money
could be raised.21 Regret and mild anxiety pervade these records of the
early Depression. Still, the school had work to do. The big campaign
and the library could wait six months, a year if necessary.

Depression, and "Abbot's Staunchest Friend

"22

Four years later, Abbot Academy was in fear of closing its doors.
According to Flagg's account of the first five years of Depression,23
the school lost an average of $60,000 a year from its $850,000 net
worth in tuition income and in the market value of its securities. This
does not even count the drop in value of all the school's real estate-
assets whose market worth was never tested in the grim years. 1932
and 1933 were the worst: income alone dropped $60,000 from $216,000
ill June 1932 to $156,000 a year later. The worth of securities fell
drastically:

Bonds

Stocks

1931

$140,800

$141,200

1932

$ 78>3°°

$ 5 Moo24

After 1932, the Treasurer simply ceased printing market values in
his Report. Why should he dwell on Abbot's agony? We hear of
neither bond nor stock again until the 1935 Report, when they had
recovered to $136,300 and $79,600 respectively. Enrollments looked as
bad— or worse, for students make a school. They slipped from 181

HIGH AND LOW 247

(135 boarders) in 1929-30 to no (71 boarders) in 1933-34, a drop that
more than halved tuition income because tuition had by then been
lowered to $1200 to reflect falling prices. Furthermore, 45 of the no
girls attended on scholarship. Most of the $26,000 set aside to support
them was income foregone: Abbot's endowed scholarships could pro-
vide less than $4000 a year.

How did Abbot Academy manage to keep going? Many private
schools ceased to exist during the Depression. Others closed for two or
three years and reopened after the worst was over, often much
changed.25 Abbot endured. Deep in its bones was something close to a
preference for adversity, for situations in which the missionary could
show her stuff to a soft world. The school had survived the 1850's
when so many New England academies had shut down for good; it
had adjusted to turn-of-the-century challenges that finished less re-
silient institutions. In crucial ways, Abbot emerged from the decade of
Depression stronger than it was on the eve of the Crash.

Treasurer Burton Sanderson Flagg was the hero of those first five
years. A scholarship student and Greek major at Brown University,
Flagg took up the insurance business in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, after
graduation but was drawn to Andover in 1901 by Cecil Bancroft's in-
vitation to teach at Phillips. Once arrived, he decided instead to go
into business in the town. Not long afterward insurance assistant Flagg
was partner Flagg of the Smart and Flagg insurance agency, and presi-
dent of Merrimack Mutual Fire Insurance Company, founded in 1828
and by 1948 to become one of the largest mutual insurance concerns
in the United States. Abbot's early fortunes had turned on the school's
local connections, but Academy and town had grown apart in the
twenties. Now that Abbot needed all the allies it could find, this Treas-
urer's status as exemplar of Andover's Yankee aristocracy and his ex-
perience as top dog in innumerable enterprises were central to Abbot's
strength.

On the eve of the Crash, Burton Flagg probably wielded more
power in Andover than had any single individual since Samuel Phillips,
Jr., died in 1802. Simultaneously an insurance agent and company pres-
ident, Flagg was a (perfectly legal) one-man interlocking directorate—
and director of several other New England insurance companies as
well. The Andover Press continued to print all of Abbot's publications,
and Flagg was on its board. He was as much in demand as Abbot's
founder, Squire Farrar, for he had Farrar's social conscience, his eye
for detail and his talent for organization. "He was ambitious, but not
desiring," says a friend who knew him well. He became director, then
president of two Andover banks, positions of important responsibility

248 AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 - I 9 5 4

which earned him only a token salary. Was a new building and better
site needed for the Savings Bank? Flagg would make sure they were
obtained in a way that respected the townspeople's interests while it
advanced those of the Bank,26 for to Flagg, the businessman who put
private capital to constructive uses was the cornerstone of American
society.27 A good man also owed his time and talent to public and
charitable institutions. Flagg was a pillar of South Church and clerk of
the South Parish (until 193 1 a separate corporation with membership
restricted to male churchgoers). He served for years on the town Fi-
nance Committee, on the Board of Memorial Hall Library and on the
School Committee. "He ruled the town," one former day scholar re-
members; to a Hilltop friend he was "the Squire of Andover." If en-
vious townsmen occasionally felt that he controlled more than his share
of local affairs, most were nevertheless grateful for his uses of power.28

For all this, Abbot Academy was Flagg's dearest concern, "his
daughter." A father who loved to see every curl and button in place,
Flagg had the same stern, doting pride in Abbot that his great friend
Warren Draper had held; the Drapers had in fact introduced him to
Abbot when the young Flagg first lived in Andover, years when (ac-
cording to Frances Flagg Sanborn, '26) "he was like a son to them."
Like Draper also, and like his more distant predecessor Samuel C. Jack-
son, Flagg saw himself as a champion of education, who believed that
the school's mission was complementary to that of the Church. Since
the Church reached ever fewer young people, the school must do
more. Flagg was invited to be a Trustee of Andover Newton Theo-
logical Seminary, an honor Draper would have prized, but he declined
on the ground that he was too busy with a more urgent concern: the
schooling of young women.29

Burton Flagg and his wife Anne30 had three daughters of their own
who came with them to live in Taylor Homestead, the house next
door to John-Esther Gallery; all three attended Abbot. Responsive to
Rev. John Phelps Taylor's wishes for the disposition of his family
home, the Trustees in 1924 granted Taylor's friends, the Flaggs, a
minimal rent for the brick house; then later,31 recognizing that this
"Treasurer" was singly a business manager, securities broker, grounds
superintendent, and educational planner, all at a minimal salary ($500
at first, then raised by degrees to $2,500 in 1922), they gave him free
use of the house during his lifetime.32 Flagg seemed always to be out
and around the campus, his tall, stately figure making Jane Carpenter,
his loyal consultant on all alumnae matters, look like a quick, inquisi-
tive bird, making scurrying puppies of the students scrambling about
his hockey field or his skating pond (for he had supervised the build-

HIGH AND LOW

249

38. Jane B. Carpenter and Burton S. Flagg: A partnership. Photograph
taken in 1937 by Dorothy Jarvis.

250 AGAINST THE TIDE, 1912-1954

ing or rebuilding of every outdoor sports facility at Abbot by 1941).
When alumnae or parents or potential donors came to visit, Flagg
was on hand to walk them around. He was a somber, remote man to
those who knew him only casually outside the Abbot gates, but Abbot
brought out all that was kind in his character. The school was always
on his mind: the Chapin boys, Barton Jr. and Melville, rarely heard
him talk of anything else to their father, who was first clerk, then
president of the Abbot Board from 1920 to 1952.33 Recalling his kind-
ness, Beverly Brooks Floe, '41 says that "we students had this feeling
of being cherished, like his family, like his own."

Flagg admired and loved Miss Bailey with a depth of feeling he
never summoned for any other Abbot principal after her death, and
she in turn consulted him on everything from rug purchases to salary
changes. Though she was not good at delegating tasks to her female
teachers, preferring to attend to them herself,34 she could leave almost
anything to her Treasurer.35 Mr. Flagg noted "a certain masculinity in
Miss Bailey's mental processes,"36 high praise from a man clearly con-
scious of his own role as chief male in this female institution. Flagg
made a point of inviting the Abbot fathers for a round of golf at the
country club during the Commencement dither, and corresponding at
length with some of them about matters educational and financial. He
persuaded the Andover Sportsman's Club to stock Abbot's pond with
1,000 trout, which were to be fed with 40,000 fresh- water shrimp and
gratefully caught by Abbot fathers and Andover sportsmen upon ma-
turity.37 Each summer he verified his place in the Andover male estab-
lishment with his week-long house party at Kennebunkport, Maine,
for a "group of friends who direct the affairs of Andover,"38 as one of
Flagg's former schoolmates put it, including several bankers, real estate
men, Phillips Academy masters, the Andover School Superintendent,
and the Postmaster.

Indeed, Flagg epitomized the Protestant Yankee spirit in which Ab-
bot had been founded, infused as he was with its frugality, its serious-
ness, even at times its missionary righteousness. William Doherty,
whose large Catholic family had sought its own piece of political and
financial power in Andover since the first Doherty arrived after the
Civil war, claims that Flagg and his friends arranged almost everything
to exclude newcomers, whether from the insurance business or the
local educational establishment. "He ran the show," Doherty says. "He
was an aristocratic gentleman who could do no wrong." If "the Irish
had everything sewed up in Lawrence," Flagg was "the Mayor Daley
of the old Yankee crowd in Andover." During the Depression, Doherty
recalls, the jobless turned to Flagg for jobs. Would-be teachers learned

HIGH AND LOW 25

by the grapevine that they'd have a better chance if they joined South
Church and bought their insurance at Smart and Flagg, though no
demonstrable threat was ever made to those who refused such advice.
Here was a man of power in whose name, inevitably, some things must
have been said or done which he did not approve.39 A small insurance
agent who tried to open accounts for his new clients with the big stock
companies received refusals and apologies— and later discovered that
these insurers had quite naturally been protecting their own profitable
relationship with the Merrimack Mutual. Other banks might fail, but
Flagg and his fellow Andover Savings directors had friends in the
Nathaniel and J. P. Stevens textile family who would help keep their
bank sound. "All legal," Doherty acknowledges. "Any businessman
would do the same if he could." It was, again, perfectly legal at this
time, if not commendable, for the Savings Bank loan officers to sug-
gest to applicants for mortgages that they have their houses insured
against fire loss with a reliable outfit like Smart and Flagg— but frus-
trating for the outsider trying to forge for himself the connections
that allow a business to survive hard times.40 While the Depression
deepened and the Dohertys fumed, Flagg continued to build on his
advantages, certain that what was best in Andover could be preserved
—including both Abbot Academy and the Merrimack Mutual. His
local influence and regional connections lent Abbot Academy a legiti-
macy within the still-conservative town similar to that created by
Farrar's and Draper's involvement during the nineteenth century.
Doubters, take note! This is a solid enterprise! As time went on, and
Flagg's Trusteeship entered its fortieth, then fiftieth year, one can
wonder if this very confidence did not protect the school overlong
from realizing the need to adjust to mid-twentieth-century conditions.
Within Abbot, Treasurer Flagg had been building his power for
good throughout a full quarter century. He made himself indispensable
soon after his appointment to the Board in 1906. It was to him that
many aspiring parents applied during the last years of the Means era,
when it was difficult for outsiders to know whether Miss Means was at
Abbot or on leave; it was he who decided for Miss Means how many
boarders the school could take, for Miss Bailey what special comforts
old Mrs. Draper needed during her last "days of waiting,"41 and what
compensation a teacher should receive while recovering from a thyroid
condition.42 As the Bailey era progressed, he became a member or ex
officio participant of every Trustee Standing Committee, and chairman
of the Committees on Alumnae Relations, on Investments, and on
Business Policy. By 1947 he was such a fixture that a fellow Trustee
wrote him after one of the handful of meetings he missed in all his 59

252 AGA IN ST TH E TI DE, 1912-1954

years as Treasurer, "I wasn't at all sure that [the meeting J was even
official."43 He often presided at Commencement. He took to incorpo-
rating brief sermons about educational goals into his Treasurer's Re-
ports. Melville Chapin thinks that Mr. Flagg and Miss Bailey often
decided ahead of time what these should include, which explains
the Principal's enthusiastic efforts to follow up on the Treasurer's
suggestions.44

Everything about Abbot interested Flagg. He knew each bush and
tree on the grounds by heart. When the Cedar Apple Rust appeared
on Abbot's apples he made sure future cedar seedlings were planted
the necessary iooo feet away from the orchard. He instructed the
Trustees on the tendency of the aphis insect to exude from two tiny
tubes on its back a honeydew which in dry weather formed an ideal
culture for black-leaf mildew, and reported that he had brought the
situation fully under control by ordering applications of the proper
amount of oils and Black Leaf 40 to the affected trees.45 He warned the
Trustees of the hazards presented by curling irons in dormitories.46 He
supervised the installation of sprinkler systems to bring all buildings in
line with the fire code. Wishing the students to learn modern business
methods, he set up an internal "bank" that helped Abbot girls balance
their own checkbooks until the school changed to a simple $2.00
allowance system after Miss Bailey died.

Reared to understand the intricacies of farmwork by his father,
Flagg had profound respect for the man who knew trees, or lawns, or
buildings, or dam construction. He was even known to change his
mind when Michael Scannell questioned one of his practical decisions.
His personal concern for each man on the grounds staff was recipro-
cated by a loyalty so great as to obscure certain perennial problems,
such as low wages and the complete lack of a staff pension plan.47
Paternalistic to the last, Flagg wished to be utterly fair, to consult all
interested parties in every decision, but he always preferred to take
care of specific needs as they arose rather than setting up a mecha-
nistic system; thus, while annual grants were made to a few retirees
like the Misses Kelsey and Mason, he long resisted formal retirement
provisions for the faculty too, preferring to pay endless nursing home
and insurance bills for ancient ladies rather than grant them a steady
sum to use or abuse as they would.

Flagg was always looking for ways to provide Abbot the special
treats with which any father loves to surprise his child. Because he
watched every penny, there was usually some small reserve available
from school funds. Was a diving platform needed for the Abbot pond?
Too frivolous for a school budget, perhaps, but Flagg would have it

H IGH AND LOW 253

constructed himself. In 1933 he gave over to the school the lounge and
kitchenette above his garage where his daughters had entertained their
friends. Teachers could smoke there (and nowhere else, ruled Miss
Bailey); Seniors were allowed to use it on Saturdays; fathers compared
cigars and daughters there at Commencement time. He thought of
everything: an extra draft of expense money for Constance Chipman
when she was delayed in Cleveland, a carnation for each teacher at the
annual Christmas dinner, two tons each of bone meal and sheep
manure to give newly planted saplings exactly the boost needed for
their first summer at Abbot,48 a school advertising policy based on pre-
cise reports of magazine readership, and so on and so on.

It was Flagg who had opened Abbot's drive for a permanent endow-
ment in 19 10 with a special appeal to alumnae. Painstakingly he built
Abbot's assets from the $61,400 of securities and deposits in the vault
when he arrived to the $400,000 portfolio of conservative investments
with which Abbot greeted the Depression.49 He watched the market,
bought and sold, always building capital. Trustee John Alden (1900-
16) confided to his wife that his young colleague was "the best man
I know with whom to advise on matters of investment."50 Flagg took
it on himself to buy $10,000 worth of bonds from the Phillips Trustees
as "an act of friendship and cooperation" during the building of Bishop
Hall, and like so many similar acts, this one paid a faithful 4 percent.51
He set up a bequest program that brought $90,000 from the Antoinette
Hall Taylor estate in 1925. He and the Trustees offered annuities to
alumnae, and Mary Byers Smith advertised them with characteristic
directness in the Bulletin, asking, "Why not have the fun of giving
before you are dead?"52 His name was caution (what else would you
do with $20,000 of new contributions to an Abbot fund drive but de-
posit them in sixteen different savings banks?),53 and those cautious
D.O.G.'s who wished their surplus funds to go far for education would
entrust them to such a Treasurer. Throughout the twenties, Flagg re-
minded Trustees and alumnae of the tax benefits that would accrue to
donors who traded large donations for annuities or gave Abbot high
value stocks to sell. Thus when the Crash descended, Abbot was in a
far stronger financial condition than many private schools.

Abbot Pulls Through

The Depression made for tough going, but most of Abbot's invest-
ments continued to pay dividends amounting to over $4,000 annually
throughout the lean years. A few concerns postponed principal pay-

254 AGAINST THE TIDE, 1 9 I 2 — I 9 5 4

merits on their bonds,54 yet even these finally did deliver after the
worst was over.55 Abbot's rental income, the hedge that Flagg built,
proved more precarious than its endowment income. Flagg's prudent
program to purchase all the houses on the Abbot Street border of the
campus backfired when tenants began vacating them for cheaper hous-
ing during the Depression. Taxes must be paid whether or not the
houses were full; worst of all, the "cottages," emptied of students
when enrollments dropped, became taxable rental property for which
tenants could not be found. Then, as the securities market flattened
out and Roosevelt took over the Presidency, Flagg deposited ever
more of the school's assets in local and nearby savings banks ($147,000
in 1932 and $185,300 in 1933). Andover Savings Bank and the Charles-
town Five might yet escape the reach of That Man in the White
House.56

All this time, buildings must be heated, students must be fed, taught,
and nursed when sick, and faculty must either be paid or dismissed.
These were the days when men waited at dawn near the post office for
the WPA recruiter to hire them, and if he refused them, waited all day
on the curb for the wagons to rumble in from the countryside with a
cabbage for each destitute family. Flagg cut costs wherever he could.
Unlike many schools whose teachers worked gratefully for room and
board, however, Abbot resisted going backward on salary payments as
long as possible. Much progress had been made toward adequate
teacher compensation during the twenties: prodded by Miss Bailey, the
Trustees had brought the average salary, $2412 plus room and board
in 1928, to well above both the median for girls' schools and the $2378
average (1928 figures) for public high school teachers in large towns
and cities,57 a real accomplishment in spite of anomalies that turned on
the world's calculation of what women will put up with (Mr. Howe
got $4000 and an Abbot-owned house for part-time work, for ex-
ample). As prices fell, teachers were willing to accept a 10 percent
salary cut in 1932 and another in 1933, but no teacher was dismissed
without clear cause. Though the grounds crew was reduced and all
but emergency maintenance jobs were suspended for two years, Flagg
made sure to look for the very workers he had had to lay off when-
ever there were special tasks requiring extra labor.

Flagg felt Abbot would do best to take care of its own rather than
accepting government help. When federal unemployment and social
security programs appeared, Flagg concluded that they were no more
than "rackets" which the lazy exploited at the expense of the indus-
trious58 and which only impeded Abbot's efforts to make a fair income.

HIGH AND LOW 255

To his credit, however, he dispassionately informed the Trustees of
every state or federal government action that might affect their school,
cooperated with the NRA, and put to work two archivists assigned to
Abbot by the Work Progress Administration (one of them an unem-
ployed minister). Thus duty overcame his recorded distaste for the
American body politic's "insatiable desire to settle all economic ills by
legislation."59 He also did his best to warn the Trustees of impending
changes in tax exemption clauses so that they could lean on friends in
the State House or the Town Hall to forestall still further government
encroachment on Abbot's independence.60 Throughout its history, the
pinchpenny school had relied on none but itself and its own closest
friends. Hard times were no excuse for giving in now.

The Trustees' strategy for survival was to eschew extreme solutions
and rely on Abbot's proven worth to attract students. "We believe,"
wrote Flagg in December 193 3,61 "that our budgetary plan for this
year tends to preserve the essential elements of the school intact." Far
from keeping girls at any cost, Miss Bailey and her faculty continued
to dismiss unruly or lazy students just as though their tuition payments
did not matter. She knew the school would be several short of full en-
rollment for 1930-31, but this inhibited her not a bit when two girls
left for P.A. one May night after tucking dummies into their beds,
and another, a Student Council member, spent the night in New Haven
with a Yale man. Five more were ousted the following spring for "per-
sistent disobedience," and six underclassmen were invited to leave
after Commencement for failing to prepare their classes properly.62
Trustees and Principal flatly refused to "buy" enrollees, as so many
schools were doing, by offering the shopping applicant a year's educa-
tion for $100 less than whatever the tuition quoted her at school Y or
school Z. "We will not bargain," said Flagg.63 The $1200 tuition was
to remain the target figure for all applicants. Scholarships based on
need the Trustees would continue to offer, but never would they par-
ticipate in the manic, unethical undercutting that now made chaos of
the once orderly private-school market.

Yet for all his sang-froid, Flagg insisted that "an unusual and well-
organized effort must be made to prevent the school from closing."64
The Trustees stepped up advertising. They engaged first the capable
Mildred Winship, then Trustee Constance Chipman, as their "field
representative" to organize alumna meetings all over the Northeast.
They hired a professional field recruiter to tap promising veins in the
Midwest and to be paid per capita for every student who matriculated
by her agency. Most important, they enlisted alumnae help in finding

256 AGAINST THE TIDE, 1912-1954

new students for Abbot. All the lines cast out in preparation for the
Centennial were baited again with appeals to alumnae energy: their
banks might have failed, but their daughters or their friends' daughters
could still come to Abbot on large scholarships.65 Miss Bailey set up
"visiting days," when any alumna or prospective parent might inspect
the school. Constance Chipman cajoled Abbot Club members and the
guests at "Abbot teas" to recruit students— almost any student. Of all
the three measures taken, this alumnae work proved most effective.
The vaunted professional recruiter plied the coffee circuit around Chi-
cago for two years and came up with exactly one applicant; advertise-
ments brought a handful more; all the rest enrolled because friends,
relatives, or grade school teachers had recommended Abbot.

Just enough students came to keep Abbot going— but only if they
paid their bills. Near-ful1 schools were foundering because the tuition
checks never arrived: many Abbot parents delayed their payments for
months or years. Treasurer Flagg wrote to each one, gently prodding.
He was especially patient with the parents of returning students or
with old Abbot families to whom he and the school felt committed,
and they usually responded with equal good will, in a few cases setting
up a payment schedule that eventually reimbursed Abbot for the
scholarships the Trustees had granted their daughters as well as for
tuition defaulted. The character of Abbot's clientele was a crucial
factor in the school's successful journey through the Depression. The
majority of fathers were salaried professionals, local businessmen
whose custom was not wiped out by ticker tape transactions in New
York or Chicago, or physicians or lawyers with a localized practice.66
Abbot's fund-raisers might wish this were otherwise in better times,
but in the Depression years a stable clientele of relatively modest
means proved to be the school's salvation. Of the forty-three schools
whose situation seemed most comparable to Abbot's, only five reached
1933 with a lower percentage of enrollment change than Abbot could
boast.67 That was the year when hundreds of private schools simply
closed down.68

Within, the school was as it had always been in times of crisis:
braced and bracing, reassured by the confluence of its own sober ideals
and the world's necessities. Miss Bailey followed her over-full days of
making ends meet with night correspondence for the Headmistresses
Association Emergency Teachers Unemployment Committee, which
she chaired. Teachers took on extra work without complaint; students
again cleaned corridors and bathrooms where maids had once waited
upon young ladies' wishes. Because the Abbot Family had shrunk, there

HIGH AND LOW

257

39. Cooking outdoors in the Grove, 1933. Egan Photo Service.

was an intimacy that had been lacking in the twenties: no snobbery,
few cliques, recalls Abby Castle Kemper, '31— the school was simply
too small to tolerate serious divisions. Off-campus excursions were few;
the clutch of Boston Symphony-goers diminished from seven to five to
three a week; the horseback riding contingent shrank by two thirds.
Only twenty-eight of forty-six Seniors could afford to go to Intervale
in 1933, that "year of limitations."69 Since you could not escape, you
made your fun at the school— and you used its opportunities to ad-
vance newly serious purposes of your own. Hemlines dropped again,
curling irons were put away. Almost every older student planned on
further education: the proud advocates of the Academic Course could
not turn back the enthusiasm for precollege training that had swept
through middle-class America on a wave of anxiety about employ-
ment, for college entrance was becoming increasingly competitive.70
Academic Course students were now "the dumbbells," Abby Kemper
remembers, though she was happy enough to be one of them. It
seemed an age since Ruth Newcomb and several of her contempo-
raries had come to Abbot in 1908 for a leisurely two years after gradu-
ation from excellent high schools. Late in 1932 the Trustees planned a
modernized catalogue offering a new two-year "graduate course," but

258 AGAINST TH E TIDE, I912-I954

so few students enrolled in it that ten months later Miss Bailey asked
the Trustees to consider dropping the Academic Course altogether.
The following autumn only eight Academic Seniors enrolled out of a
class of fifty-six students.

"The life of the school is free and happy," promised the catalogue
after 1933. Yet over and over, Principal's Reports and alumnae recol-
lections mention the seriousness and determination that predominated
among Depression-era students. In their yearbook photographs the
Seniors looked forty years old. "The relations between students and
teachers are sympathetic and understanding," the new catalogue went
on. With fewer students there could be more individual attention than
ever. Indeed, one of Abbot's attractions was its low pupil-teacher ratio
at a time when public high-school enrollments had quite suddenly
soared (17 percent between 1930 and 1932), and the average teacher
taught more than thirty-five students in each class— for here, too, edu-
cation was preferable to unemployment.71 It cannot be said that the
real Abbot fully matched the catalogue description, however. Most of
the teachers were aging along with their Principal. "Nearly all octo-
genarians," Mrs. Kemper exclaims with mild exaggeration. Except for
Mary Carpenter— "she had a heart," says Jane Sullivan, '31, "and in my
day there weren't many who had a heart"— there were few to overcome
the formality that seems to have prevailed between the young and the
elderly at this time.72 The Principal set the tone by requiring every
boarder personally to give her "Good morning" at breakfast time. "It
was very rigid," Abby Kemper recalls; she was scolded by a Senior
for saying "hello" to Miss Bailey instead of "good afternoon." Even
teachers such as Katherine Kelsey, whose kindness and pedagogical
skill only increased with her long experience, were ladies first, friends
long afterward.

Mrs. Chipman brought back messages from loyal alumnae who were
sure their recruiting would be more successful if only Abbot were not
so old-fashioned. A few changes were made. The traditional full page
of directions for student dress disappeared in the 1933-34 catalogue,
to be replaced after 1934 by two short sentences beginning "students
dress simply . . ." Precisely because the girls— and American society at
large— had left behind the madness of the twenties, Miss Bailey was
willing to lower Abbot's walls here and there, allowing boy-girl danc-
ing in the Recreation Room during the calling hour, and other small
freedoms. She eased the ancient Sunday regimen a bit by ordering the
gates to the campus opened, and permitting inter-room visiting, out-
door walks, frivolous reading, occasional visits from parents, even

HIGH AND LOW 259

studying, in the afternoon. She granted the Student Council's request
for Seniors to be allowed to go on Wednesdays in pairs to Boston once
more, as they had in Miss Means's day. But chaperones made sure no
dancing couple indulged in torso contact; the Senior privileges were
soon abused (said Miss Bailey) and rescinded;73 and Sundays were still
largely consumed by solemn occasions.

In the larger educational world, this was a time of daring experi-
ment—Black Mountain College and coeducational Putney School were
founded the very year that Miss Bailey was tightening the Senior rules
again— and Abbot appeared staid indeed. Midwestern alumnae "wish
we would meet the competition by presenting new subjects in the ad-
vanced Academic course," reported Mrs. Chipman.74 Both Principal
and Treasurer exerted genuine leadership to move Abbot off academic
dead center. Miss Bailey urged teachers to try some of the new teach-
ing methods she had learned about at meetings of the Progressive Edu-
cation Association. Flagg proposed applying business principles to help
teachers "broaden their educational horizons" through intensive dis-
cussion within faculty meetings, through visits to other schools "which
may help to dislodge any one particular . . . educational line of think-
ing" among the faculty, and through systematic connections between
extracurricular activities and class work, an educational technique
"thoroughly practised in business."75

There is no sign that these efforts changed minds already made up
about education. Yet good things continued, for neither Ruth Baker's
nor "Mother Chick's" teaching respected cliches about youth and age;
Dorothy Hopkins substituted imagination for library acquisition; and
others took advantage of small classes to move faster or more sensitive-
ly through academic work. Helen Bean's history students wrote papers
on "The Child Labor Amendment," or "The Work of the C.C.C." in
the fall of 1933. Miss Bailey's Ethics class asked how women could
improve working conditions and prisons, and outlined the roles they
might effectively play in politics and industry. In 1934 Miss Bailey and
a Trustee instituted a business course which immediately became a
popular elective. Alice Sweeney's efforts in the fall of 1935 to update
the English curriculum matched the energy brought earlier to the
Mathematics Department by young Esther Comegys, M.A. Miss Bailey
engaged Miss Comegys for the new position of Academic Dean in
1932, plucking her from her doctoral studies at RadclirTe and her
teaching job at Simmons College to take over much of the work Miss
Mason and Miss Kelsey had together done until their retirement in
1932. Thus the majority of the faculty might be set in their ways, but

260 AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 — I 9 5 4

wrinkles appeared now and then on the smoothest surfaces, providing
a measure of traction for venturesome young minds.

A Sober Recovery

We think of the year 1930 as the norm for Abbot, Flagg told the
Trustees in the gloom of winter 1934, when it looked as though an-
other year like 1933-34 would finish Abbot off. Yet "our charts indicate
that it has been one hundred years since 1930."76 But at the very same
Trustees' meeting, Mrs. Chipman reported more interest in Abbot than
she had encountered for years. That spring applications began to rise
again at last. One hundred and thirty-five students registered for 1934—
35, including forty two day scholars, the largest number since 191 5.
The business index no sooner began to climb than Flagg and Bailey
began plotting new building projects— or, rather, replotting the ones
left in limbo in 1930. One of the two salary cuts was restored for 1934—
35, and restoration of the second was planned for 1935-36. Abbot had
a future.

Yet that future would be shaped for years to come by the worst
period of the Depression. It was more than a test of Abbot's survival
value; like the World War era, it was a time of rededication to old
ideals. The mood of Miss Bailey's Easter address of 1932 echoed that
of her 19 1 8 speeches, though she fashioned her lesson from contem-
porary materials:

The responsibility of world reconstruction lies on our
generation. As the Crucifixion showed us the way, so will the
kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby bring us to our senses.77

A 1932 graduate today looks back approvingly at the fit between
Abbot's ways and the demands of a tough world. "Part of the plan,"
she writes, "was to accustom us to the fact that life requires one to
recognize and accept discipline if one is to survive."78 Abbot's tradi-
tional style suited the times.

There was also a new recognition that Abbot would have to deserve
whatever future it earned, and a healthy sense of uncertainty. The
school's determination to enlarge its constituency did not disappear
with the passing of the crisis; ("Minneapolis and Duluth were new ter-
ritory," reported Mrs. Chipman in December of 1935, "and very
promising.")79 Miss Bailey herself articulated a courageous realism
about things to come in a speech to the Wellesley alumnae. She was
now a trustee of her old college, but she declined the privilege of

HIGH AND LOW 26 1

omniscience. "All that we know of the world our students are to
meet is that we know nothing of it," she said. "The only thing they
have to expect is the unexpected." Given this, she went on, a young
woman required more than ever a deen sense of social responsibility,
excellent health, intellectual readiness, and, interestingly, a capacity
for "ease, dignity and freedom in her contact with young men."80
Abbot Academy would never again take itself for granted.

None of Bertha Bailev's faculty and students realized how quickly
the unexpected would storm the school. On November 16, 1935, Miss
Bailey died of pneumonia while visiting relatives in New York State.
Abbot was stunned. "She had been so well-" remembers an alumna.
She was only sixty-nine years old! One feels that the Abbot Family
had expected this mother to go on forever. She had been so long at
Abbot that large numbers of "her" alumnae were sending their daugh-
ters to be "her1' students, and Phillips alumni who had felt her judg-
mental glare during her first few years as guardian of the virgin gates
came to her quaking with anxious memories when presenting their
daughters for admission.81 Only a few people knew that she had had
diabetes for some time, or realized how heavily the four lean years had
taxed her. Miss Bailev herself had known she must rest a while. Secret-
ly, she arranged with the Trustees for a seven-month leave with full
salary, to begin in mid-fall of 1935 after school was under way, and
end before Commencement. She dared not stay away longer— dared
not even tell most of Abbot she was leaving— for fear of setting back
the Academy's precarious recovery. The farewell party seemed barely
over when the bad news came. "A tremendous shock, an overpowering
sorrow, has come to Abbot Academy that will be felt round the
world." The November Bulletin stopped press to insert this announce-
ment of her death. Tributes to her deluged the Courant editors. A
Senior remembered how "freely and joyously" she lived under Miss
Bailey's guidance because of her Principal's faith in "the goodness of
life."82 Madame Marie Craig, French teacher, wrote that "the very
center of our lives" was gone,83 and a seventy-year old alumna turned
her thoughts to poetry:

Dear heart— suddenly still—

Your book of life was beautifully written.

Stinging the tears which fill

Our eyes,

Against our will they flow

Soon, all too soon, the story's ended,

Just in life's afternoon.

Reverently the pages we retrace.84

262 AGAINST THE TIDE, 1912-1954

There was only one thing to be thankful for: the Trustees and Miss
Bailey had provided for her absence. Dean Comegys had already
agreed to serve as Acting Principal for the year. Registrar Fanny Jencks,
who had been Miss Bailey's assistant and secretary for years, was ready
to supervise dormitory life and other nonacademic activities. Seasoned
by past emergencies, Abbot set itself to get on without Bertha Bailey.

It would be difficult at times, but on the whole, the rest of the year
went smoothly. The faculty decided to present the play they had been
rehearsing when Miss Bailey died; the Christmas service, the Intervale
trip, the "corridor stunts," the class picnics, the weekly lectures and
daily classes— all were carried on as before. "Miss Bailey planned the
calendar very carefully before she left," wrote Esther Comegys to
the Trustees. "The older girls have felt the loss very keenly," she
went on; the Senior leaders are still finding their feet, and "the school
as a whole seems young and noisy,"85 but it survives.

The sudden change impelled the Trustees to take stock. What kind
of school should Abbot become? Where should they look for a new
principal? By March both questions had become urgent. The retire-
ment for health or personal reasons of three elderly teachers and the
firm forced resignation of a fourth made it seem as though Miss
Bailey's Abbot was quietly folding up. Esther Comegys was not a
serious candidate for Miss Bailey's successor. She was functioning
more as a superconscientious Dean than as a Principal-proper— and in
any case, she was to leave Abbot in June for an instructorship at Bryn
Mawr, where she would continue work on her doctorate. No other
obvious Abbot-connected candidates came to mind. Of the several
outside-Abbot women whom Constance Chipman was sent to inter-
view, only the principal of an Illinois college seemed just right, but
she found the offered salary too low and, worse, found Abbot's his-
tory uninteresting— an unforgivable sin in Mrs. Chipman's eyes. The
well seemed dry.

Then, from the least expected direction, word reached north to the
Trustees of a young English professor and Dean at Hollins College,
Virginia, who might possibly be interested in a New England school.
Marguerite Hearsey had talked to the Abbot family about the ad-
vantages of Hollins in the winter of 1933 when her college was hun-
gering for applicants. Even then both sides were impressed, and since
that first visit the grapevine had brought other news of her. Abby
Castle Kemper, '31, had gone from Abbot to Hollins, and found Miss
Hearsey a wonderfully stimulating teacher as well as a "manager"
who had ideas for every occasion— with one left over to create the
next occasion. "She was just born to run a place," A4rs. Kemper re-

HIGH AND LOW 263

members. When the Hollins presidency fell vacant and the college
Trustees chose an older woman, not a few students and faculty there
wished Marguerite Hearsey had been named instead.86 She was a true
scholar, with a Radcliffe M.A., a Yale Ph.D., and a soon-to-be-pub-
lished thesis on Thomas Sackville's Complaint of Henry Duke of Buck-
ingham. She had studied abroad and had taught at Wellesley and Bryn
Mawr. She knew both the Northeast and the Upper South and might
thus realize Abbot's aspirations as a national school. The Trustees sent
Constance Chipman to meet her, instructing her to discern how Miss
Hearsey would appear to the faculty, to the alumnae, and to the
townspeople of Andover.87 (Did the students' opinion not count?)
Mrs. Chipman, entirely satisfied, telegraphed Board President Chapin
that the candidate should be invited to visit Abbot forthwith. At a
special Trustees meeting on April 8, 1936, Marguerite Hearsey was
appointed bv unanimous vote Abbot's fourteenth principal, and a new
age began.

Singular Wfomen

. . . Above all, intelligence.

—Marguerite Hearsey to opening meeting of

Student Council, September 1941 and 1942

Marguerite Hearsey was a scholar. She came to Abbot, she says, be-
cause the years between fourteen and eighteen are critical and exciting
in a young woman's intellectual and personal development.1 She could
easily have stayed on at Hollins College; she had already turned down
a department chairmanship at another woman's college. In spite of
the press of able academics seeking jobs in 1936, she could almost
surely have returned to Bryn Mawr or Wellesley, for her superiors
in both colleges had hated to lose her when she moved on from her
instructorships, first to her doctoral studies, then to her full profes-
sorship at Hollins. But this academic was also an adventurer, who
had loved equally the detail work of her deanship and the rich contact
with students afforded by administrative work in a small college, and
she knew that at age forty-three she was ready to "run a place," ready
to pour all her energies and feelings into a single institution. No one
could fail to notice this emotional vitality, or her big-bone physical
health, or her warm capacity for taking others as seriously as she took
herself.2

Her particular scholarly interests also impelled her toward Abbot.
She had a passion for history, and Abbot had plenty of it. She was
especially happy to meet Burton Flagg, who had lived through so
much of Abbot's history himself; her first request of Abbot after she
was hired in the spring of 1936 was addressed to him: would he send
her any and all historical material that could be safely mailed to Vir-
ginia? Delighted, he replied. Making her maiden address to alumnae
in June 1936, she invoked first Philena McKeen and Bertha Bailey,
then Christopher Marlowe of the English Renaissance; behind this
speech and many later ones is a woman who has consciously stepped
in to advance a unique cultural tradition. Finally, she was, like all of
Abbot's founders, a Christian who sought the meaning of her own
work in the larger social mission of Christianity. Abbot was congenial

SINGULAR WOMEN

265

40. Miss Hearsey greeting dancers at the Senior Prom, 1941.

266 AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 — I 9 5 4

to such a "consecrated soul," as the Treasurer would term the Prin-
cipal at her retirement in 1955. Jesus was to her above all a human being
of surpassing courage whose historical reality could speak worlds to
young people, given a scholarly interpreter and an articulate voice.3

She seemed almost too good to be true. When they learned of Miss
Hearsey's appointment, older alumnae who had despaired at Miss
Bailey's death— including the entire Fiftieth Reunion class— happily
predicted a return to the intellectual vitality of the McKeen period.4
Another alumna saw promising analogies between Miss Hearsey and
Miss Means. The graduates who had been pushing their school to join
the twentieth century were thrilled to hear of Miss Hearsey's varied
experience, her "wise enthusiasms," and her broad interest in contem-
porary affairs.5 If a few of Abbot's own faculty, still grieving over
Bertha Bailey, could not bring themselves to wish success for Miss
Bailey's successor,6 most expectations for the new Principal were in-
credibly high.

Moving to the school in July of 1936, Miss Hearsey set herself at
once to fulfill them. She began carefully. She was, it seems, the only
person around Abbot who understood her limitations. Knowing per-
haps her own tendency to be swept into the emotional tangles of a
small academic community7, knowing certainly that all good adminis-
trators require some minimum of distance from their charges, she
had specially requested that the Trustees arrange for her to live
in an apartment or house of her own outside Draper Hall, where Ab-
bot principals since 1890 had lived surrounded by students. Trustee
Mira Wilson, Principal of Northfield School, gave her experienced sup-
port to this plan, and the Board agreed to fix up Sunset Cottage for
Miss Hearsey's use. Before school began in September, she was wel-
coming teachers into her new home with a gentle hospitality absorbed
from her nine years at Hollins; students and alumnae would soon fol-
low. New England visibly melted when it crossed Virginia's threshold.
Marguerite Hearsey understood also that one woman cannot do every-
thing. Far more readily than Miss Bailey had done, she delegated tasks
to others, holding the college admissions and household supervisory
work just long enough to understand it and then pointedly handing
it on.7

Almost immediately, Alice Sweeney became Miss Hearsey's indis-
pensable colleague, to whom she would soon assign college admissions
responsibility, the Senior English courses, and, in addition, the crucial
post of Director of Studies. The two women were about the same age,
but while Miss Hearsey was always somewhat of an outsider to And-
over town,8 Alice Sweeney had lived in the Lawrence-Andover-

SINGULAR WOMEN 267

Methuen community for most of her life, and had been watching Ab-
bot women's interchanges with outside-Abbot realities for twenty-five
years as student, townswoman, occasional teacher, and alumna. Her
roots went deep in the Merrimack valley: her grandfather had helped
to build the great dam that would turn thousands of spindles, power
the cotton looms, and create a city. He also made the family fortune.
His bosses delayed giving him his wages for a full year, and after living
in squalid poverty beside his fellow Irish laborers, he suddenly had
money enough to buy land on the North bank of the Merrimack
River, which no one then seemed to want. The next generation of
Sweeneys were local public school teachers and newspaper publishers
and politicians; John P. Sweeney, father of Alice, Nora, Mary, Louise,
and Arthur Sweeney, was a lawyer— and a Protestant, for the Sweeneys
left Catholicism without abandoning their Catholic friends, or their
catholic sympathies, or their interest in all who struggle upward. Alice
Sweeney had gone happily enough to the Methuen high school before
following her sisters to Abbot. Secure in her local "place," content to
have lived most of her life with her beloved sisters, Alice combined
a comfortable, almost aristocratic sense of family importance with an
entire lack of pretentiousness.9 It was a steady vantage point.

And her sight grew keener with years: Miss Sweeney accumulated
an extraordinary sense of the relatedness of things, a capacity for ab-
sorbing the unexpected while respecting the givens of any situation.
This was in character with Abbot Academv at its historic best. Not
so much in character was a sense of humor with which she could as
readily make sport of herself as of the world in general. A superb
teacher, she must have known how good she was, for she never needed
to intrude herself on her students' aspirations, nor did she spare them
from their failures in search of gratitude. To Miss Sweeney, it could
not be kind to be less than honest. Parents were doubtless surprised

the first time they learned from one of her Dean's letters that "

has less than the average equipment for the grade in which she is

placed," or that " tends to substitute efficiency for thought."10

She was just as direct with students in class. When one of them did
well, a "Well done" from Miss Sweeney struck home. Admiring, many
Abbot colleagues absorbed these high and frank academic expecta-
tions much as Miss Sweeney had nourished herself on the qualities
Rebekah Chickering so abundantly possessed. As a practical matter,
Alice Sweeney's skill in taking care of the home front was invaluable
during Miss Hearsey's many duties away from the school, for the
Principal's reputation and experience were soon in demand at meetings
and working committees of the Headmistresses Association; the newer

268

AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 - I 9 5 4

41. Miss Sweeney greeting dancers at the Senior Prom, 1941,

SINGULAR WOMEN 269

NAPSG (National Association of Principals of Schools for Girls),
which she served as both director and President; boards of trustees
throughout New England; even as judge at Phillips Exeter Academy
Public Speaking Contests.11 Both Town and Hill were reassured by
Miss Sweeney's pervasive presence.12 The two women's collaboration
proved as successful for Abbot as that of the McKeen sisters, for this
generous and competent woman made an ideal temperamental com-
plement for her Principal. Supported by Alice Sweeney's capacity for
objectivity, Miss Hearsey's ardent identification of self with school
could almost always be a source of energy for Abbot rather than a
weakness.13 Miss Hearsey's own estimate of Alice Sweeney? "A great
person. I don't know what I would have done without her."

Miss Sweeney, Burton Flagg, Trustee President Barton Chapin, and
several other powers from the Andover community were immediately
helpful in arranging a reception, so that 800 alumnae, townspeople, and
Phillips Academy faculty could meet the new Principal. The party
confirmed Abbot's symbiosis with the town, as expected, but it was
especially symbolic of Miss Hearsey's openness and cordiality toward
the men— if not the boys— of the Hilltop. Before long, Alan Blackmer
and his wife had dined at Sunset. Blackmer was already Chairman of
the Phillips English Department and would soon be Dean of the Fac-
ulty; this initiative opened a social interchange that each faculty found
welcome, and Blackmer began to feel something more than the "con-
descension towards the school at the foot of the Hill"14 which had been
most Phillips teachers' stance in Miss Bailey's day. Never again would
an Abbot principal dig such chasms between Abbot and Phillips as
did Bertha Bailey. With many other Phillips faculty, the Blackmers
sent their daughter to Abbot. After the War, Headmaster John M.
Kemper did likewise, and called Miss Hearsey "Peggy." For her part,
Marguerite Hearsey openly enjoyed men's colleagueship, and she ap-
proached Stearns, Fuess, and Kemper as friends, inviting them to speak
at Sunday night Vespers in successive years. In fact, during nineteen
years of Sunday nights, women would come from the outside to speak
on only six occasions; not once would a woman give the Commence-
ment Address. Thus men confirmed the value of this female institution
from a distance, much as they had in the McKeen years. For his part,
Fuess renewed Stearns's invitation— rejected by Abbot from 191 2 on-
to attend Sunday services in the Phillips Chapel, and Miss Hearsey
took him up on it for a few Sundays each year.

Of all her male co-workers, the closest was the Board President,
Barton Chapin, who greatly admired her and strove to bring her many
plans to fruition. Flagg remained official "adviser-in-chief."15 Miss

27O AGAINST THE TIDE, I912-1954

Hearsey drew gratefully on his experience, and before acting on any
idea that cost money, made certain that he was sympathetic to it.16
She found that his sense of humor resonated happily with her own,
and the two became good friends. However, she listened less to his
day-to-day advice as he grew older and gave ever more of it: an
administrative colleague remembers often seeing her holding the tele-
phone with one hand and writing parent letters with the other, while
the Treasurer went on and on.17 She did accept the Flagg tradition
that the parent who pays the bills is a school's formal client; for fifteen
years all Miss Hearsey's and Miss Sweeney's student report letters were
written to the fathers. This practice ended only after mothers pro-
tested ("This is the second time you have sent a letter to me which
is not addressed to me except on the envelope," wrote one divorced
mother in 1949, returning the letter). Occasionally after 1950— for
fun and for the fathers' sakes— a letter like this from Miss Hearsey
arrived home:

My dear Mr. and Mrs.

I rather wish that we could send you 's mid-year grades

in the form of a stock market report because it would sound
so spectacular to be able to say— "History up, 18 points . . ."18

At the same time, Miss Hearsey encouraged women's help, includ-
ing that of the female Trustees. Miss Bailey's penchant for stocking
the Board with Wellesley presidents and deans would be a congenial
tradition to Miss Hearsey, and the various alumna Trustees of the peri-
od were workhorses whose energy matched the Principal's. Marguerite
Hearsey unabashedly asked for a formal vote in all Board delibera-
tions and a place on three major committees, and got them. Already,
a few of the older faculty were finding her overassertive once she had
decided on a given course of action— for this neophyte Principal was
concerned with the details of departmental organization and teaching
as Miss Bailey had never been— but Trustees expect to be pushed while
decisions are still making, and the Board welcomed its Principal's
drive.19

Trustees and teachers waited eagerly to see how this educator so
knowledgeable about college study would assess the Abbot curriculum.
It was reassuring to learn that she found it good. "She would not en-
gage in fads," her endorsers from RadclifTe had written, and while
she carefully kept both the faculty and the Board in touch with
developments in the larger world of education, her chief faith was in
teachers, not in programs. Within her first two years, she had chosen

SINGULAR WOMEN 271

eleven new ones, including Isabel Hancock, a Hollins alumna who had
an M.A. from the University of Virginia, and Eleanor Tucker with
a B.A. and M.A. from Smith college and two years' experience as an
instructor of chemistry there, to strengthen Abbot mathematics and
chemistry. The basic College Preparatory requirements stood pat,
dictated largely by the Northeastern private colleges:

3 years of English

5 years of languages, (including 2 or 3 of Latin)

2 or 3 years of Mathematics

1 year of Science

1 year of History

College Preparatory students must take at least four courses a term,
including electives, and must also take

Physical Education (3 to 4 afternoons a week)
All-school Choral class (2 hours a week)
Bible (one hour a week)

The Trustees added the course in business principles that Miss Bailey
and Mr. Flagg had long wanted. Since about a quarter of Abbot stu-
dents appeared to be weak in reading, Miss Hearsey brought back
Jane Sullivan, '31, to teach remedial reading, and later to serve as
Alumnae Secretary as well. That Miss Sullivan was Abbot's first Cath-
olic teacher was happily unremarkable, given the Principal's and Board
President's endorsement of her.20 The only traditional subject that
Miss Hearsey consciously sought to redefine was Bible study. While
Miss Bailey taught theism, Bible had languished. To the new Principal
"form(ing) the immortal mind" was a scholarly exercise worthy of
every student's attention, whatever her faith or lack of it. In time she
would draw for support on the position of the American Council on
Education, which deplored the retreat of public schools from con-
stitutionally permissible study of the American religious tradition, and
urged that all schools teach "the role of religion in our history, its
relation to other phases of the culture, and the ways in which the
religious life of the American community is expressed."21 Students
were almost immediately to notice that the intellectual exploration of
the Bible was taken seriously once more (had they known it, as seri-
ously as in the McKeen- Watson days), while faith was now left to
Chapel. A typical alumna remembers Dr. Hans Sidon as "a wonderful
man" whose Bible teaching thrilled her "all the time that my religious
beliefs were gradually slipping away."22

One programmatic decision was required. Once more the under-

272 AGAINST THE TIDE, I 9 I 2 — I 9 5 4

enrolled Academic Course must be voted up or down.23 Characteris-
tically, Marguerite Hearsey chose in favor of tradition, and of keeping
curricular alternatives that met a variety of student interests. More-
over, the school was not yet full, nor would it be until the following
year;24 this was the wrong time to abandon a program that still at-
tracted applicants. The Principal did propose a more demanding domes-
tic science course. She also admired Abbot's offerings in music, art,
and speech; hoping to emphasize these and to reverse the steady de-
cline in music enrollments (from ninety-one in 1926 to twenty-six a
decade later), she suggested giving the Academic Course a title more
appropriate to its contemporary purposes. Thus "Fine and Practical
Arts" students whose major interests were musical, artistic, or domestic
rather than bookish continued to enrich the school long after applica-
tions began again to outnumber openings, reminding the community
that there was more to Abbot than college preparation. The F.P.A.
requirements:

4 or 5 years of English

3 years of Modern language, (or 2 of modern language,

2 of Latin)
2 years of History
One year of Science
One year of Mathematics

2 years of Art, Music, home making or business principles
Physical Education same as for

Chorus and hymn singing C.P. students

Bible (2 years)
Senior Bible (ethics)

Courses or activities open to both C.P. and F.P.A. students, in addition
to the requirements for each, which could be taken as electives by the
other:

Fourth year French and Latin Fidelio and Choir

Review or remedial years in Elements of Psychology

English and Latin and Ethics

Astronomy Problems of Democracy

Geology Third year Math (Completion
Ancient, Medieval and Modern of algebra and plane

and English History geometry; Trigonometry)

Speech and Dramatics

Consistent with Miss Hearsey's interest in world affairs, Problems
of Democracy gave a full year's credit, where Current Events had

SINGULAR WOMEN 273

always been more casual. The gradual updating of Literature texts
continued, creeping almost always about twenty years behind the
present. Fortunately, Ibsen and Robert Frost are always modern. It
is interesting to note that the French and German texts Abbot stu-
dents read under Bertha Bailey were still in use in 1945— and none
was as advanced as those given to the McKeen-era Seniors.25 Oral
language training had also deteriorated after the French and German
residences were given up at the turn of the century; it would take
years for Miss Hearsey and her successor to reverse the trend.

"All is well," said Miss Hearsey to the Trustees both at the end of
her first year and in the middle of her second.26 Yet for all the Prin-
cipal's knowledge and experience, Abbot found those first two years
difficult. Some vocal alumnae expected miracles; students thought new
social freedoms would surely follow a change in administrators. "See
if you can get back some of the privileges Miss Bailey took away,"
the Student Council President for 1934-35 had written the President
for 1935-36, and some student leaders would press Miss Hearsey still
harder for more downtown leaves, for lipstick, for every freedom left
behind in home-town high schools. With Big Bertha no longer on the
watch, many girls made their own rules, with no one's leave. A bliz-
zard of demerits from on high— for the student proctors were more
and more reluctant to give them— seemed useless to cool this petty
rebellion, and the heroic efforts of the 1936-38 Student Council presi-
dents to help their Principal accomplished little more.27 For Marguerite
Hearsey it was an unprecedented situation: there had been no young
adolescents at Hollins or Bryn Mawr to contest her "methods and
procedures ... of a scholar"28 with little-girl gripes and surreptitious
trips up the Hill, with smoking, or even drinking. Near-frantic faculty
efforts to clear the mess only seemed to make it worse. In an informal
memorandum proposing smaller dormitories, Flagg expressed his con-
cern to the Trustees about the "confusion" that resulted from "regi-
mentation" of the Draper Hall residents. "It was struggle, struggle,
struggle," remembers one teacher, and for a person of Marguerite
Hearsey's temperament and training it was bound to be terribly frus-
trating. As a teacher-scholar, you can have a gem of a class; you can
write a gem of a monograph. But there is no such thing— for more than
five minutes at a time— as a gem of a school: the whole is too com-
plex. The administrator who carries final responsibility for the whole
must grin and bear it.

Finally she did. And though she tended to take student or faculty
discontent personally and could not but feel hurt by students' restive-
ness, she would not give in to it in any fundamental way. Principal

274 AG AIN ST TH E TIDE, I912-I954

and teachers were quite willing to relinquish the age-old black stock-
ings and the ban against Sabbath Day hair-washing, but they added
late-afternoon and Saturday Study Halls. They found it convenient
to change the free day from Wednesday to Saturday so that students
could visit home for one full weekend and two overnight weekends a
year— especially since Wednesday was now Phillips' free day, and
fraught with the danger of chance meetings between boy and girl-
but the basic Abbot routine remained intact. The adults believed in it,
whatever the students might think.

Early upsets were compounded by Rebekah Chickering's sudden
death while on summer vacation in Europe in 1937, and by a sharp
drop in the business index early in 1938 which seemed to portend new
trouble for all private schools. The economy bounced back, but nature
disregarded men's little successes: three days before the school was
to open in September 1938, the worst hurricane Andover could re-
member ripped through the township, uprooting seventy-one huge
red oaks (as old, on the average, as Abbot Academy) from the an-
cient Grove and scouring the campus of some of its most beautiful
recent plantings. "Mr. Flagg was out in the wildness of the storm,
seeing the pride of his heart laid low," wrote Jane Carpenter in the
Bulletin.29 Though actual damage to buildings was relatively slight,
the school's opening had to be put off a week until power returned
and the worst mess was cleared. For the old students who finally ar-
rived on campus, the landscape was changed.

Strangely, this meteorological disaster seems to have marked a turn-
ing point for Abbot. By mid-fall of 1938 it was clear that things were
different in more ways than one.30 The new Principal had taken hold.
The faculty (nearly half of them hired by her) was behind her. The
students seemed to have accepted her. Miss Hearsey thought this might
have been partly the result of the late opening: told they could not
come back to school, most of the reluctant suddenly wanted to.31
In any case, events were conspiring to help create those subtle chemical
changes that make each school year different from the last. Early in
the fall Miss Hearsey proposed and the students had tried out a fresh
disciplinary "honor system" which was intended to substitute for the
mathematical demerit system a set of positive rewards: a "citation"
or "rating" of "Alpha" with extra privileges to match for the few most
outstanding girls, "Beta" for the majority who deserved the ordinary
privileges of the school, and "Gamma" for the shaky sinner until she
had redeemed herself— which she well might do, for a student-faculty
committee decided ratings several times each year. An offender could
be apprehended by other students for wearing loafers, say, or for flirt-

SINGULAR WOMEN 275

ing with bus drivers, then brought before the Student Council and
warned of an impending Gamma rating without the faculty being
aware of her misdeeds. The Council continued to recommend punish-
ments, including dismissal. Student leaders had helped keep order ever
since the early Bailey years, but this felt like a real change.

On the whole, the girls found it an improvement. Whether rating
was done at Miss Hearsey's home or (later) in separate student-faculty
sessions, it was exhilarating for Council members to have adults listen-
ing to their judgments of other girls; most of them sincerely tried to
deserve Miss Hearsey's trust, and struggled not to revel in those cat-
tier rating discussions which they could hardly help enjoying.32 Honor
systems were the thing at smaller colleges now; the McKeens' "self-
reporting" tradition was still remembered at Abbot. The new system
had a chance of working. Inevitably, there were difficulties, for what
government satisfies everyone? The Student Council President bore
the double burden of persuading her Council to accept and defend
Abbot's Victorian rules33 and trying for her constituency's sake to
get the faculty to ease up a bit. Presidents' speeches and the traditional
"Presidents' letters" to their successors are filled with warnings and
laments:

You have a tough job ahead . . . [Pres., 1935-37]

Try to deeply impress upon (the Council members) the
seriousness of their positions, and that nothing, absolutely
nothing, must be carried beyond the meeting. Somewhere there
is a leak in the Council and it is very bad. [Pres., 1936-37]

I strongly advise your having no gripe meetings. [Pres., 1937-38]

It's the worst thing to keep order in Chapel, on the streets
in fact everywhere. [Pres., 1936-37]

Our class has . . . split. We've got to stop Parties after lights
and changing of roommates for a night and things like that which
can seem so trivial on the surface but which underneath can
cause a great deal of damage and ruin. [Pres., 1939-40, in
Senior— Senior-mid meeting]

The Rec Room needs a very firm hand. For this and wherever
you appoint people, get them from every group ... so that
never does one crowd "take the lead." [Pres., 1938-39]

I guess you remember that last year was not (by far) one
of Abbot's best years. [Pres., 1943-44]

276 AGAINST THE TIDE, 1912-1954

No swearing if possible in Council meetings . . . Don't say
too much about "spirit" and "attitude." [Pres., 1941-42]

It will undoubtedly be your hardest year, but your fullest
and most appreciated as well. [Pres., 1941-42]

Though it sat well with many girls to be adults' allies in enforcing
rules, the faculty always had the last word, and some years the gap
between adolescent aspirations and adult standards was enormous.
Ultimately, few were fooled by the show of student-faculty unity
which the opening school meeting always assumed. Now as in years
past, a few individuals each year openly revolted against the honor
system's expectation that girls turn in their scofflaw peers, though no
one ran away from school to avoid cooperating in an investigation of
some cigarette-smoking friends, as had happened once under Miss
Bailey.34 As one frustrated Student Council secretary put it after Miss
Hearsey's rejection of the Council's Honor A nominees:

May 22, 1946:

One hellish meeting (catty?!) was called for Honor A.
Miss Hearsey came in half way through (no longer catty).
We have to re-consider girls for Honor A; she doesn't
think we did them correctly, although we did them as she is
telling us. (This shows how important Stu G is if the faculty
are not in agreement. We fight, but against stone walls.)
. . . The meeting was adjourned and I have a headache.

Respectfully? submitted

Yet "Stu G" ratings continued. Successive Student Councils tinkered
with the system under Miss Hearsey's patient eye, adding a "High
Beta" category whose members were free to sleep through Sunday
breakfast now and then and to study in their rooms instead of study
hall, adding this, adding that; but the essentials remained intact for
fifteen years.

A Room of One's Own

One could live with such an arrangement. "Submit yourself glad-
ly to the discipline of mind and character which Abbot— like a wise
and kindly parent— will require of you," Miss Hearsey advised her
charges,35 and by 1938, most students seemed willing to take the ad-
vice. Overall, the decade following September 1938 had the flavor of
a little golden age, similar to the middle McKeen and Bailey periods

SINGULAR WOMEN 277

42. The Abbot Faculty, October, 1938: Under the Old Oak. Top Row, left
to right: Gertrud Rath, Assistant to Principal; *Lucile Tuttle, English;
Margaret Snow, Librarian; Laura Pettingell, Latin; Walter Howe, Music;
Ruth Baker, Languages; Louise Robinson, Assistant Secretary; Alice
Sweeney, English; Miss Hearsey, Principal; Helen Robinson, Latin; *Hilda
Baynes, French; * Laura Smith, History. Middle Row: Virginia Rogers,
Speech; Mrs. Hannah Richmond Duncan, Nurse; Hope Baynes, Financial
Secretary; Kate Friskin, Piano; *Marjorie Hill, History; *Rowena Rhodes,
Physical Education; Mary Dodge, Household Sciences; *Dorothy Baker,
English; Mrs. Roberta Gilmore Poland, Physics; Octavia Mathews, Spanish.
Front Row: *Hope Coolidge, Dietitian; Eleanor Tucker, Chemistry and
Mathematics; Mary Carpenter, Physical Education; Mrs. Eunice Murray
Campbell, Business; Mrs. Jeanne Vical Miller, French; Isabel Hancock,
Mathematics; Barbara Humes, Secretary to Principal. Part-time members
of the faculty not shown in this picture: Bertha Morgan Gray, Elocution;
Rev. Winthrop Richardson, Bible; Mr. Francis Merritt, Art; Gertrude
Tingley, Singing. (Asterisks indicate new teachers.)

in students' general acceptance of the school's requirements and their
enthusiasm for its special offerings. Courant editors had begun to write
of uthe new Abbot" as soon as Miss Hearsey was hired. Now the
"new Abbot" seemed to be taking shape; if student government
changes were just a different set of clothes on an old body, the girls
themselves approached their school with a fresh spirit.

It helped that the few disgruntled Bailey partisans had left or been
eased out,36 and that Miss Hearsey had added a strong group of teach-
ers to those committed veterans who still remained from the Bailey
years. Many were young; young and old were willing to involve
themselves in all phases of school life. The Spanish teacher taught
skiing ("Advance not so much the nose, advance more the k-nees\"

278 AGAINST THE TIDE, 19 I 2- I 954

she could be heard imploring her beginners). The chemistry teacher
loved field hockey. A young British teacher found that ninth and
tenth graders could put on a Shakespeare play with nearly as much
success as the Seniors. The whole school was show-struck again. Now
that money came a little easier, three or four adult drama enthusiasts
took 100 students at a time to a Boston Shakespeare production with
Maurice Evans or Helen Hayes. And Shakespeare wasn't all, for (al-
most) anything went on the active Abbot stage. A Yearbook account
of Curse You Jack Dalton (or The Villain Still Pursues Her) described
it as "always encouraging when the main character makes his grand
entrance and all the decorations fall dramatically on his head."37 Miss
Hearsey chose Francis Merritt as art teacher even though he was a
handsome twenty-six years old (something Miss Bailey would never
have done), and Merritt began a revival of studio art that later would
be skillfully advanced by Maud Morgan, already in the 1940's a
painter-teacher of extraordinary talent and now in the 1970's an artist
of national renown. By 1943-44 ninety students a year were taking
studio art.

The older women who kept their distance were nevertheless richly
present to students: Kate Friskin's tenth graders in Homestead seldom
brought her their problems, but she surrounded them with her music,
practicing for hours each day, demanding so much of herself that it
was difficult to resist the demands she made on them. "Miss Friskin
was the first teacher I ever encountered who took me seriously," says
one of her students. "Do you know that from the very first day of
chorus, she expected real music from us? This was not what you ask
of children! We were to create something beautiful that anyone would
delight to hear."38 Others still conjure up the awesome beauty of the
Christmas music, and the yearly ritual the choir itself carried on of
walking through the dark corridors carrying candles, singing carols to
waken the whole school before dawn of the day Christmas vacation
began. Alumnae of this period remember Walter Howe as rather
subdued and passive, but Miss Friskin was teaching a full load and
performing more than ever in Andover, Boston, and New York. The
Principal herself taught the Senior English students one day a week;
several recall being moved to a love of poetry for the first time by her
sensitive discussion of it.39 Courant flourished with Alice Sweeney as
adviser. The editors who served during the 1940 diphtheria quarantine
were undaunted by the requirement that every page of proof be baked
in an oven before being sent to the printer. ("The Courant has been
roasted, but never before has it been baked!" laughed Miss Sweeney).40

SINGULAR WOMEN 279

One active Courant Board member for that year, Joan List Van
Ness, remembers living "most of our lives at a positive boiling point of
excitement." "We cared passionately about everything," she goes on,
surmising that rich intellectual fare and ua higher standard of teaching
than I have ever encountered since" had much to do with this.41 "You
weren't pushed into it but you always found yourself trying things
you hadn't dared try before," says Beverly Brooks Floe, '41, who be-
came Editor-in-Chief of Courant the following year. Beverly Brooks
had failed both mathematics and Latin during a year of illness and
came to Abbot convinced of her inadequacy, but Miss Hancock and
Miss Harriet McKee simply assumed that she could do them and do
them beautifully. She did. She sang in Fidelio for love of Abbot music
(and of the Exeter dances which followed joint concerts); she learned
fencing first "out of sheer romanticism" from French teacher Jeanne
Vical, an Olympic fencer, but kept at it out of appreciation for
the discipline and precision the sport demanded. There was never
enough time for her or most of her classmates to do all they wanted
to do.42 No individual seems to have felt constricted by established
programs. Though the majority were able scholars and knew it ("the
rest went to Briarcliff," sniffs one), nothing was static: a C.P. graduate
of 1940 went from Katherine Gibbs to real estate management, a Fine
and Practical Arts graduate of 1941 eventually went on to teaching
and doctoral studies in home economics.

Miss Hearsey tried to know every student. Her effort went way
beyond her personal good night to each girl after Vespers, and the
Sunday night suppers at Sunset— though these were important too,
as were many of the older rituals, including the yearly Christmas din-
ner, the Ring ceremonies and Tree Songs that had touched adolescent
hearts since the McKeen days. True, the old forms of competition still
goaded everyone: it took 20 athletic points and a High Beta rating
to win membership in the A Society now, 450 points to earn an Abbot
Blazer. The names of all Alpha and High Beta girls were read at
Chapel. The anonymous student Posture Markers still lurked, watch-
ful for slumped shoulders. But most important for alumnae of these
years was the general sense that standards were high, that anyone good
enough to be at Abbot in the first place could meet them, and that to
do so one would get all the help one deserved. No one was ever sent to
a psychiatrist: one dropped out first (or at most went discreetly for
summer vacation therapy).43 The adulthood that the Abbot faculty
represented was comprehensible and on the whole admirable at this
time. Adolescents were hurtling toward such an adulthood— or toward

280 AGAINST THE TIDE, 1912-1954

another future not far afield— and there was serious work to be done!
Miss Hearsey's rhyme read in honor of Burton Flagg could have ap-
plied to Abbot Academy itself:

Whether you've taught better that work is play,
Or play is work, it's hard to say.44

The old Puritan equation held.

Beverly Brooks somehow made sure she had Miss Sweeney for an
English teacher two years in a row, and Miss Sweeney made sure that
no Abbot girl left the school without having read Virginia Woolf's
A Room of One's Oivn. This guide to an unencumbered imagination
combines ruthless historical analysis of the logic of oppression with a
celebration of women's possibilities— given 500 pounds a year and a
room of her own. Woolf described the obstacles women writers and
scholars face: "The world said (to woman) with a guffaw, Write?
What's the good of your writing?"45 Equally it asked her, why found
women's colleges (or academies)? and taunted her: try if you can
to match our grand grey halls of learning, monuments to masculine
creativity built on the wealth we have wrested from peoples less man-
ly, more ignorant than we, and rightly kept from our women's free
use. Woolf's book was an eloquent reminder to Abbot students of all
that young women and their schools contend with on the way to a
full humanity that is free of self-centeredness and self-pity. At the
same time, Abbot Academy seems to have been for many a young
woman a room of her own, where her present, personal strivings could
find support in a consciousness that generations of women had there
striven and succeeded before her. Woolf considered this consciousness
of successful forebearers crucial to men's creative accomplishments.
Abbot kept it alive through the Principal's welcome in Opening Chapel
("over 5000 girls have climbed these Chapel stairs . . . have sung the
hymns we love") and in a host of rituals and traditions that the stu-
dents of these Hearsey years appeared to love as much as their Abbot
grandmothers had. Most simply and pervasively, "Abbot's not good
because it's old, it's old because it's good," Marguerite Hearsey would
say,46 and most of her students believed her. It is no accident that of
the five woman Trustees now serving the co-educational Phillips
Academy, four attended the school during this brief golden age.47

No educational ideology seemed necessary to Abbot; history was
sufficient. Miss Hearsey gave up Miss Bailey's membership in the Pro-
gressive Education Association. True, she did describe to the Trustees
in 1 94 1 the outcome of the Eight- Year Study, organized by the P.E.A.
to compare the college records of students from relatively unconven-

SINGULAR WOMEN

281

tional secondary school programs with a comparable group from those
traditional high schools that still followed the college preparatory
course laid out by the Committee of Ten. The progressive school
graduates did as well or better in college. College admissions officers
concluded that they might make course-unit requirements more flex-
ible; Miss Hearsey, unimpressed, concluded that her faculty could

43. Christmas Vespers, 1949.

282 AGAINST THE TIDE, 1912-1954

continue offering a curriculum built around teachers' talents and Ab-
bot's traditional leanings toward the arts.48 Especially after 1944, when
the F.P.A. course was abandoned, she felt she must urge faculty against
"priming the pump" for college admissions tests.49 The key to educa-
tion was teachers who knew their subjects, she said, not cram courses
or pedagogues trained in normal schools. Marguerite Hearsey's tenure
coincided with the acme of the professional educationist brand of
progressivism and with the P.E.A.'s divorce from lay interests and
concerns.50 The Eight- Year Study was the only one of the Associa-
tion's works she thought worthy of mention. She hired not a single
classroom teacher with a college or graduate degree in education. In
part this represented a self-perpetuating upper-middle class loyalty
to upper-middle class private liberal arts college training— but not en-
tirely, for Miss Hearsey eventually added several language and arts
teachers whose formal education was unconventional, incomplete or
both. Abbot teachers would visit Putney School and other progressive
shops to learn what they had to offer; they would create an interlock-
ing history-English-music-art core course for tenth graders and draw
on a variety of specific progressive ideas; but "it's primarily the quali-
ty of the teachers" that counts, wrote Miss Hearsey,51 and which of
those chosen high-quality Abbot teachers would disagree? Miss Bailey's
faculty seminars had ended; faculty asked for little discussion of ed-
ucational issues. "We didn't much question what we were doing or
why, and neither did the students of those days," says Alice Sweeney.
Once Miss Hearsey and Miss Sweeney were satisfied that all was going
well with a new teacher, they might offer help but they never im-
posed it. Thus each teacher also had a room of her own, for better
or worse, and would have till Abbot's corporate life was over.

Master Builders

By the fall of 1937 Miss Hearsey was well enough established to join
the Trustees in their plans to add to Abbot's material goods. The De-
pression's worst dangers past, Tamblyn and Brown were rehired to
launch the Second Century Fund at last, with $250,000 as its five-year
goal. These consultants were already helping six other schools and
colleges raise from $500,000-14,000,000; their analysis of Abbot's con-
stituency convinced them Abbot could find its half-million with a
decade or so of effort. The Trustees had recently retained Mr. Jens
Frederick Larson of Dartmouth College, a distinguished and ambitious
institutional architect, to advise them on expansion of library, living,

SINGULAR WOMEN 283

and dining space. Though Draper Hall was only forty-five years old,
its original pinch-penny construction was already beginning to tell.
The foundation under the dining-room staircase had begun to sag in
mid-Depression; the supports buckled and the staircase leaned dan-
gerously. Flagg solved this problem with a new concrete foundation
and steel bracing, but no amount of tinkering could restore fourth-
floor dormitory space lost to fire regulations, for the Fire Department
did not approve of an escape system which depended on individual
"fire ropes," employed largely for fun or for night escapades once
students had been instructed in their use, seldom during Abbot's fre-
quent fire drills.52 The ceremonious prediction that the memory of
Warren Draper's "benefactions will outlast the Hall that bears his
name"53 seemed likely to be borne out all too soon. On the other hand,
Larson looked at tough old Abbot Hall and waxed lyrical. He thought
it must have been designed according to some standard Bulfinch plan if
not bv Charles Bulfinch himself,54 and he immediately proposed that
all new construction be of similar design. Excited and hopeful, the
Trustees and Miss Hearsey put all their dreams into an appeal to Ed-
ward S. Harkness, who had given a $7,000,000 gift to Phillips Exeter
Academy six years before.

The appeal is important as an expression of Abbot's values during
the Hearsey period, even though Harkness refused to respond. "Dur-
ing its long and honorable history," it began, "Abbot has educated
many young women who have won distinction themselves and many
who have become the mothers of distinguished sons. The ideal of
Abbot has never been a 'feminist' one. Thorough and solid in its in-
struction, from the first it has aimed constantly at the cultivation
of womanly qualities. It places much emphasis on art and music and
offers good training in 'Home-making.' "55 The appeal quoted Abbot's
Constitution and described the school's fund-raising effort, then crit-
icized the present accommodations for one hundred girls in Draper
and twenty-five in the cottages. No official document had ever ex-
pressed such discontent with Abbot's traditional living arrangements:
"This division is not only undesirable from a practical point of view,
but it is illogical and unsound from an educational point of view. It
allows for no reasonable grouping of the girls, nor for any natural
and close relationship between teachers and girls." As little as $12,500
of Harkness money added to Second Century funds would allow
demolition of the long southern wing of that aging elephant, Draper
Hall, and an entire remodeling of the rest that would lower the roof
and redesign the facade in accordance with Bulflnch-Larson specifica-
tions. This new "Draper Hall" could accommodate a kitchen-dining

284 AGAINST TH E TIDE, 1912-1954

room, a library, and forty Seniors. Would Harkness also pay for two
or three small dormitories of about twenty-seven girls each and endow
salaries for three additional "Dons or Counselors" so that Abbot, like
Exeter, could foster "constant and natural association" between youth
and adult "during these most impressionable adolescent years?" "We
conceive of education as a process involving the entire life of a young
person"; would not Harkness make this possible "for girls as well as
for boys" by giving Abbot $2 8 2, 500? 56

No, Harkness would not. Not for Abbot, not for girls anywhere.57
The Trustees began a retreat to less ambitious goals, determining that
at least the top two stories of Draper be amputated, that a new roof
and exterior be constructed in the Bulfinch style of Abbot Hall, and
that two new wings in the same architectural tradition be added. But
the fund was limping, short of $50,000 in spite of prodigious campaign
efforts and expensive efforts by Tamblyn and Brown. All Miss Hear-
sey's trips and speeches, all Bulletin pulls on alumnae heart strings,58
and the "tactful cultivation" of the sixty-one "large gifts" prospects59
could not change the fact that the 1938 recession had halved stock
market values once again. An alumna's letter in December 1938 apol-
ogized for the size of her contribution, asserting that it would have
been more, "if the author of our 'fireside chats' were not so uncertain
a quantity, and the future . . . less dark."60 Another added, a year
later, "Of course if things continue on the inclined plane, we shall
probably all end our lives at the county farm."61

Fortunately, one Abbot friend was just rich enough and just ec-
centric enough62 to give $50,000 for a dormitory on three conditions:
that it be built immediately, that it be named for her, and that she be
given an 8 percent life annuity on the contribution.63 Gratefully, Ab-
bot accepted this gift from Emily Abbey Gill, and work on Abbey
House, a dormitory for twenty-six students, started in the spring of
1939. Just two years later construction began on the two new Draper
wings, in spite of ominous sounds of war in Europe and the Trustees'
fear of strikes, inflation, and short supplies, soon to be borne out. The
buildings rose, even while the total fund seemed stuck at $130,000 and
Flagg grumbled about $5.00 contributors who owned yachts or the
costliness of Tamblyn and Brown's advice.64 Ten thousand dollars of
contributions were memorials to Bertha Bailey, $7,500 to Miss Chicker-
ing, and $24,000 to Miss Means; dining room, reading room, and li-
brary were built and equipped with these funds. Unfortunately, roof
reconstruction had to be abandoned after the builder discovered that
Draper's west foundation was weakly made of "field boulders poorly
laid with large voids" and must be rebuilt;65 as it was, the total cost

SINGULAR WOMEN 285

came to $71,000 more than total contributions. For the first time since
1890, Abbot went in debt to finish the job. Flagg procured a 1.5
percent loan of $20,000 from the Andover National Bank, where he
still served as director, and borrowed the rest from the endowment.66
A world out of joint favored such bold action. Robert Hutchins
went so far as to ask "What good are endowments?" in an article
which Miss Hearsey reported to the Trustees a year before Pearl
Harbor; he answered his own question by invoking the futility of
"conserv[ing] assets for an unpredictable future, the conditions of
which we cannot ever guess."67 Still, it seemed a drastic risk for the
traditionally frugal Abbot Trustees to take, and one senses from ac-
counts of Trustee deliberations that lacking Miss Hearsey's optimism
and Barton Chapin's responsiveness to her constant pushing, it would
never have been taken at all. Yet it paid. Increased enrollments during
the War were to bring in a surplus of at least $20,000 every year, and
more than restore the endowment to full strength. Sitting on its re-
furbished physical plant at War's end, sitting on an endowment of
$514,800 in 1946, a far larger total than that of any other school for
girls (even if endowment interest was now only half of the 5 percent
of pre-Depression days), Abbot Academy could be extraordinarily
pleased with itself. As in the late McKeen era, dreams that outstripped
Abbot's capabilities had produced real gains, despite the odds.68

Again War

Rumbles in Europe had long sounded faintly at Abbot Academy. A
speaker compared Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Roosevelt in 1934,
and QED held a debate the same spring on the subject "Resolved,
that Nazi Control in Austria will endanger the Peace of Europe." If
most students were at first oblivious to foreign affairs,69 the many
Abbot teachers who had studied or vacationed in Europe kept in
touch with European friends, and worried. A British countess spoke in
1937 on the dark mood of English youth. Miss Hearsey asked (and
received) the Trustee's permission to hire a Jewish refugee "on a main-
tenance basis" in December 1938, as Shady Hill School in Cambridge
was doing.70 With the invasion of Poland, Courant writers and Satur-
day lecturers came alive to the impending danger. Just as had hap-
pened during World War I, war began for Abbot Academy well be-
fore most of the nation had any interest in war at all.71

For Marguerite Hearsey, as for Miss Bailey, the danger without gave
point to the educator's mission. At Opening Chapel in 1939, she told

286 AGAINST THE TIDE, 19 I 2- I 954

all Abbot that "we must be willing to go into a sort of voluntary
training for service to a world so needing our help." In the spring
of 1940 she urged alumnae to come to Commencement to be "recon-
firmed in your faith that a school like Abbot is an influence of incal-
culable value in our modern social order."72 Her antennae were es-
pecially sensitive to the drawing in of Great Britain. She had done
several years of YWCA war work in World War I; her academic
field was Elizabethan England, and her heart was with the British as
they began to buckle before the juggernaut. "In the face of such suf-
fering and heroism, we all feel, I am sure, that there is no place for
self indulgence, for littleness or laziness or softness," said the Principal
in 1940, in her opening speech to the school. Students made plans to
devote the year's Bazaar to British war relief, while the Trustees agreed
to provide full scholarships for British Refugee children. The Principal
had hired Dorothy Baker, her first British teacher in 1939, and Miss
Baker soon offered to seek out six English girls who could make good
use of Abbot. The youngsters were chosen, packed, and ready to sail
(one had been "so proud of my white dress," which had taken "some
scheming" and many ration coupons to acquire)73 when an evacuee
transport was bombed and sunk, drowning hundreds of children, and
the British government decided to allow no more to leave that year.
It was a great disappointment, for Abbot had wanted desperately to
help.

Another chance came early in 1941. Ten eastern private schools
cooperated to fund a British ambulance unit, and they invited Abbot
to join them. Miss Hearsey jumped at the idea. She brought in a Brit-
ish friend fresh from the London nursing stations to join her in speak-
ing to the school through a two-hour special meeting about the
project, hoping to convince both girls and teachers that Abbot Acad-
emy should support an ambulance unit all on its own. If the entire
student body would contribute all the cash they had or could raise,
if the faculty would sacrifice a portion of their salaries, and, most of
all, if parents would make contributions according to their means, a
$10,000 Abbot ambulance could roll. Yes, yes, said everyone. "Over-
whelmed with exhortation . . . we dazedly voted away our allowances
and every other little amenity of our somewhat option-lacking lives,"
writes one alumna.

"A few hours later, sobered up" from the afternoon's "revival meet-
ing," she goes on, some of the older girls had time to decide that
they "had been railroaded." "Taxation without representation!" ex-
claimed one, and the slogan started around the school.74 These students
knew how much work it had taken to earn just $1,000 for worthy

SINGULAR WOMEN 287

causes at the last two Bazaars. Earlier in the year, QED had seriously
asked in one of the student-run Chapel services, "Is Hitler's defeat
essential for the United States?" All who took Bible had heard Rever-
end Richardson argue for pacifism and neutrality.75 Students were no
more sure than were their parents that the nation, much less Abbot,
should commit itself heart and soul to Great Britain's cause. Though
they wanted very much to join the ten-school ambulance project, they
balked at footing the whole bill. Had advanced Anglophilia possessed
both their Principal and all their teachers, they wondered? Or was
this simply an assemblage of strong women distressed by their help-
lessness to fight a man's war?76 Spontaneously, the group made Beverly
Brooks, '41, their spokesman; all of the Courant board, most of Fidelio,
then the school itself quickly followed. Beverly went to Miss Hearsey
and described the students' mood. They would gladly raise all they
could through rummage sales and canteens, and they were planning an
all-out Bazaar, she said, but they could not see soliciting parents or
forcing a sacrifice of $1.25 weekly allowances for what should be an
inside-Abbot volunteer effort.

Now it was Miss Hearsey's turn to be incredulous. She could not
believe her students would protest this generous, heart-felt proposal—
and indeed, she seems to several alumnae to have felt sure they were
rejecting her, not just her idea. Sadly, she retreated from the $10,000
project. Yet a visitor on campus would not have guessed that anyone
was rejecting anything. The Seniors' canteen was supplying snacks
as good as the downtown fare, and it had become a mark of patriotism
to forego luxurious food in Andover or new Easter clothes at home.
Miss Hearsey would not agree to let the most enthusiastic skip Sunday
night suppers, but the school ate one spartan meal each week, and
donated the savings to the cause. "We worked terribly hard," say
two of the leaders. Another still holds shreds of resentment against
the administration for throwing bureaucratic roadblocks in the way
of some of the most promising projects merely (she thinks) "because
we had opposed Miss Hearsey's original fund-raising ideas and had
mounted our own drive for the ten-school ambulance." Rumor con-
vinced many Seniors that the faculty had considered withholding the
diploma from at least one student leader for stirring up the younger
girls, and that they might well have done so had not Alice Sweeney
and a few others turned the tide. When the Student Council unani-
mously recommended this same girl for an Honor A, the faculty re-
jected the recommendation. Whatever the cause, there was tension
to spare between many Abbot students and adults that spring, as well
as a "wretched inner turmoil" for individual students who greatly

288 AGAINST TH E TIDE, I912-I954

admired their Principal and her idealism but felt out of phase with
her expectations.77

Eventually, things quieted down. The faculty allowed the endan-
gered student leader to graduate cum laude with her class, and wished
her Godspeed; the students sent nearly $2,000 for the ambulance and
British War Relief. In a sense it was nothing but one of those spring
tempests in a boarding school teapot, yet it plunged half the two upper
classes into a soul-search that several still remember as one milestone
on the way to womanhood: respected adults could go overboard.78

On December 7, 1941, Abbot's only Oriental girls, a Chinese and
a Japanese, walked off" together down the Maple Walk, both equally
upset. The formal entry of the United States into war cleared all am-
biguities and divisions for the rest of the school, however. "We shall
try to avoid emotionalism . . . Our orders are to carry on," Miss
Hearsey told the students the next day, before instructing them in
air raid procedures against Japanese fighter-bombers. Flagg arranged
$1,000,000 worth of war damage insurance with Merrimack Mutual and
passed the purchasing lessons of his World War I experience on to
Hope Coolidge, Abbot's unflappable household superintendent. Teach-
ers helped townspeople with plane spotting, students again took de-
fense courses (Home Nursing, Motor Mechanics, World Events), ate
"golden rule" dinners, rolled bandages, and waited on tables to replace
the maids who had left for defense plants seeking more than the
eleven dollars a week they got from Abbot Academy. Odeon, ADS,
and the other societies were suspended for the duration. "Study, Save,
Strive for Strength" was the wartime Abbot slogan, and for the most
part everyone measured up. "This is no time for 'education as usual,'
for anything as usual," wrote the Principal. "The War will not wait.
Total war must be totally waged."79

Stimulated by the national discussion of training priorities, the
faculty considered changing the emphasis of the curriculum from
liberal arts to applied sciences, mathematics, modern languages, and
other immediately useful skills.80 Phillips Academy ran a summer
school to offer such training to young men hurrying toward enlist-
ment; should not Abbot do its part? On second thought, however, Ab-
bot decided with many other girls' schools that a liberal arts education
was the best defense of those civilized values the Axis sought to de-
stroy. As in past wars, American men would fight, and the traditional
American culture would "have to be sustained largely by women."81
John Dewey and other philosophers of the original Progressive move-

SINGULAR WOMEN 289

ment had urged schools to deemphasize this "cumulative experience
of the race," to cultivate instead the young person's immediate sense
of purpose and his capacity to solve those problems he himself iden-
tifies.82 But Abbot Academy was already simmering with purpose
within an "embryonic community" such as those Dewey advocated
for all schools.83 "Our School is a little democracy," Miss Hearsey
often said in Chapel; if one could discount the process by which the
elite gathered at Abbot in the first place, the statement was credible
now that wartime fervor had overcome student preoccupations with
style and status— the way to set off one's string of pearls against one's
Shetland sweater, for example, or the place to buy exactly the right
"reversible" raincoat (which one never reversed).84 Petty divisions
vanished before the great national task.

As in the Depression years, travel was limited (spring vacations
were canceled to avoid it) and one must make the best of Andover
Hill. "The sense of community was stronger during the war than it
would ever be again," remembers Eleanor Tucker. Fancy entertain-
ments and casual Boston trips were out, but each teacher's tea set
served her colleagues in turn, while students roller-skated around the
Sacred Circle. Homegrown shows were mobbed. Music, drama, and
dance faculty jostled each other for stage space in Davis Hall (and
music usually won— "You had to try to hold your own against Kate
Friskin," says Miss Tucker) ; about sixty piano and voice students each
year gave recitals; with the help of her husband, Phillips Art Instruc-
tor Patrick Morgan, Maud Morgan arranged Phillips-Abbot art com-
petitions; Phillips and Abbot students mounted Gilbert and Sullivan
operettas together for four successive springs, the first joint produc-
tions since Miss McKeen had allowed the Haymakers Chapel space
in the 1860's. The stiff "calling hour" was abandoned for informal
Friday night dancing in the recreation room. One girl broke her leg
jitterbugging, but the dancing went on. An alumna has written that
the "warm and sheltered life within the gates" contrasted strangely,
sometimes disturbingly, with the "savage forces outside" as girls tried
to put their fears aside and concentrate on school responsibilities. For
some who had taken on serious summer jobs, Abbot's rules suddenly
seemed insulting; for others, the school was a haven.85 It is interesting
that Miss Hearsey herself found time in the middle of the war to
write a poem for the Christian Science Monitor.

So still the woods that dappled light and shade
Lie gentlier, and ants moving in moss

290 AGAINST THE TIDE, 1912-1954

Seem noisy in their immemorial trade.
Soundless, the pines with slow rhythm toss . . .86

No one need worry overmuch about the liberal arts at Abbot.

Unlike most secondary schools, Abbot kept nearly all its teachers,
adding only a few refugee or other European teachers to its staff.87
For ten years after Pearl Harbor, fully one third of Abbot's twenty
teaching faculty were European born, European educated, or both.
Abbot had drunk of European culture since the Civil war; now the
cup was filled every day by teachers who had seen the Spanish Civil
war or the French Resistance first hand.

Applications soared. The trend had begun in 1939 as college en-
trance competition intensified, but the war hastened it so much that
the school had filled its 130-143 boarding places with promising ap-
plicants or returning students by March of almost every year; and
many had to be turned away.88 Boarding tuition had already returned
to $1,400 in 1937; it mounted to $1,500 in 1945 and $1,700 in 1948, to
meet a 50 percent war and postwar rise in wholesale prices. Still, it was
lower than almost all other eastern girls' boarding schools,89 and par-
ents newly affluent with wartime wealth could pay it.90 If IQ tests
measure anything, applicants' academic ability was also higher; 14
percent in 1938-39 had IQ's in the 80-98 range, (15 percent were over
120) while in 1941 only 3.4 percent fell in the 94-100 range. By 1949
the average IQ for Abbot's 190 students would be 118; the Seniors
who had made it all the way through averaged 125.91 Abbot was not
unique. "All of the good preparatory schools are overflowing this
year," said Miss Hearsey in the fall of 1944.92 In part the competition
for college admissions was responsible, for by that year the major
women's colleges could accept only one in four or five applicants;
but the disruptions in families where parents were undertaking defense
work or serving abroad must also be accounted. Yet Abbot applica-
tions would keep on growing during these postwar years when many
schools went hungry for students, as though parents were continuing
to seek some still, orderly place for their daughters in a troubled
world.

One World

V-E Day found Abbot thankful, and already preparing for worldwide
peace and brotherhood. Miss Hearsey prayed with deep emotion for
the millions of young heroes who "in their courage and devotion to

SINGULAR WOMEN 2QI

the cause of righteousness, followed the way the Master went." The
Choir was ready with several suitable anthems of thanksgiving. For
over two years, Abbot had kept in close touch with "World Peace
Plans" as one of the monthly wartime discussion groups was entitled.
Beginning in the fall of 1943, Abbot mounted a series of lectures on
Postwar Problems, including experts on Russia, on China, and on plans
for international organization and cooperation. Miss Hearsey joined
Alan and Josephine Blackmer to speak on the Dumbarton Oaks pro-
posals at the Andover Public Library; she regularly brought news of
the ambitious discussions of "World Citizenship" from meetings of
the Headmistresses Association and the NAPSG. The students raised
$2,000 for the World Student Service Fund in 1946, more than any
school in the country.93 Briefly, Andover was considered as an alter-
native to New York City for the permanent site of the United Na-
tions.94 Abbot students participated in World Youth Forums, in
World Government weeks, and in model international free-trade
councils; they gave Bazaar proceeds to the World Student Service
Fund; a small group of World Federalists campaigned vigorously in-
side the school.95 One World was coming, if not here already, and
Marguerite Hearsey's Abbot was determined to be part of it. It would
be a far more complex world community than the Utopia which the
nineteenth-century Abbot had envisioned— where all humanity were
to become evangelical Protestants— but it would be as surely One.

Practical postwar problems at Abbot required attention: Should
students continue to wait on table in spite of the sacrifice of dignity
that went with the rush and clatter of well-intentioned amateurs?96
(After a trial of the old system it was decided that the maids were too
slow and too unreliable, so student crews returned— including "dawn
patrol" for the breakfast waitresses.) How should Abbot handle the
crowds of visitors and parents that arrived almost every week now
that cars were available again, bringing fresh applicants or requests for
special week-end leaves for their daughters? Miss Hearsey eventually
appointed Isabel Hancock as Admissions Director and hostess, and set
up a yearly Parents' Weekend to alleviate part of the problem.97 Yet
none of these deterred the Principal from the challenges her idealism
had posed her. "Noblesse oblige," she would tell her students, and not
with a snicker.98 She had been working for years to sharpen her profes-
sional colleagues' interest in private schools' responsibilities within a
world soon to be done with tyranny. From 1943 on, all those Anglo-
Saxon lady-principals sat together worrying the problem at their New
York meetings, sincerely concerned with eliminating their students'
sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority, though most of their schools had

292 AGAINST THE TIDE, 1912-1954

thrived on a clientele that sent its daughters to them partly to enjoy
that supposed superiority." A 1944 exchange of letters between the
Rogers Hall Headmistress and the Phillips Headmaster suggests the
ladies' courage in even considering Negro admissions. Miss McGay
had asked Fuess to keep his one black Glee Club singer home from a
joint concert-dance at Rogers Hall.

Dear Mr. Fuess:

Quite frankly I still feel like a worm to have refused our
hospitality to any one of your students. However, I believe
that our girls are not old enough to handle such a situation
tactfully [We have several from the South who] would be in
a state should any one of them draw him for a dancing partner.

Miss Katherine W. McGay, [November 30, 1944]

Fuess's reply is understanding:

. . . the situation is different with girls than it is with boys,
as I know only too well. Personally I have, I think, no prejudice
whatever against Negroes, but I should not like to have them
attend our P.A. tea dances, and so far as I am aware, they
have not done so . . .

This was a slight improvement over a letter Fuess wrote that same year
to an alumnus, in which he stated that the two Negroes attending Phil-
lips were enough; more might cause "excitement and trouble."100

Few girls' schools served Jews, much less black students. Abbot, at
least, welcomed occasional Jews, brought in black musicians, poets,
and lecturers on interracial problems, and sponsored student-faculty
forums on minority groups in American life. Oriental students had
been to Abbot for decades, including a Japanese girl who had come
from Tokyo just before the War to stay through 1942, and the first
of the three Young girls who came by way of the Philippines after
their father had been murdered by the Japanese.101 Most of these had
loved the school; a few had been top scholars. Abbot was to Genevieve
Young, '48, a haven of "order and stability" with its invariant schedule,
its polished tea silver, even its constriction of choices. She loved En-
glish history with Anna Roth, whose passion for her subject "was so
great that your knees knocked and you felt totally wrung out after
one of her classes,"102 and her teachers say she developed brilliantly as
a student. Abbot was also accustomed to giving scholarships. The
Young sisters had full tuition-board grants; so did two sisters from India
and four daughters of Oxford professors; so did Minola Hapsburg,
daughter of a deposed Rumanian Princess, who spent several of the

SINGULAR WOMEN 293

war years at Abbot.103 Most scholarships were small ones spread thin,
however, and the percentage of tuition income added each year to
the endowed scholarships had fallen from a Depression year high of
n to a steady 5. Miss Hearsey had been hoping since 1943 to increase
and systematize them through a group-scholarship system similar to
that of the Seven Sisters Women's colleges.104 After 1946 a chock-full
school could afford to invite three or four girls each year from families
without resources, as well as ten to twenty for half tuition.

Abbot knew, if most Americans did not, that thousands of black
families could now afford half or even full tuition for private school.
Alice Sweeney had been especially cheered to watch the accretion of
Jewish, Italian, and Syrian names appearing on the roster, and now
she wondered aloud why Abbot should have no Negro students. A
Jewish alumna105 wrote her soon after the War to pose the same ques-
tion. Students talking with a black social worker in Miss Hearsey's
living room after yet another lecture on interracial understanding
asked what Abbot was doing about it.106 Together, Miss Sweeney and
Miss Hearsey decided Abbot was ready.

Miss Hearsey's first step was to write a respected Abbot father in
Rome, Georgia, for his opinion. In his reply he expressed his fears for
an interracial Abbot's future. The school would risk the withdrawal of
any Southern girl who had to attend a social occasion where male
Negro callers were present, and he promised he would withdraw his
own daughter if Negro girls were admitted; so would most of his fel-
low Southerners. After "many years thought," he had concluded that

The Negro, with many fine qualities, has other qualities which
are very undesirable, and are apparently not affected by educa-
tion or circumstances. Accordingly, I believe that social inter-
mingling should be avoided, since I think it will lead to
intermarriage . . . 107

This was a blow, for Miss Hearsey had been actively and successfully
recruiting Southern students; but she persisted. She wrote the Principal
of Emma Willard to ask how her one Negro girl was faring. (Fine,
was the answer, though the girl has tactfully kept potential black boy
friends away.)108 Miss Hearsey warned the Trustees that Negro girls
might soon apply to Abbot on their own, and told them Abbot should
make ready either to welcome or to refuse them.109 She continued to
educate them against racial stereotypes, speaking (one feels, with ad-
miration) as much to her own biases as to theirs, for she had a Vir-
ginian's pocketful of pickaninny stories which she had used quite often
in speeches before 1944.110 Though most of the Board waxed receptive

294 AGAINST THE TIDE, 1912-I954

to her repeated reminders, the kindly Irving Southworth resisted. "It
just wouldn't work," he would say.111 His wife was a Southerner; he
had been a Trustee since 1923 and Clerk since 1934, and at Abbot the
enduring held much influence.

For three years no black student applied. Then one applied and was
rejected: her academic record suggested failure at Abbot. Finally
Irving Southworth died. Miss Hearsey called a Southern friend who
knew a few of Atlanta's distinguished black families. In the late spring
of 1953 the Principal was informing all Abbot parents that Beth
Chandler from Atlanta and Sheryl Wormley from Washington had
been accepted for admission, and by midsummer three families had
withdrawn their daughters. This news did not daunt the Chandlers:
Beth's father had been one of a handful of blacks at Middlebury Col-
lege and had done well; her older brother was at Middlebury now, and
her grandfather lived in Andover. Still, Professor and Mrs. Chandler
wanted to make certain Beth knew what she was in for. Was she sure
she still wanted to go to Abbot? they asked her. "I don't see anything
wrong with me," Beth Chandler Warren recalls saying. "Therefore it's
their problem, not mine." Thus she entered her Senior-Mid year as an
almost-fifteen-year-old, hungry for the academic challenges her local
high school could not give her and looking forward to everything
Abbot, Andover, and Boston had to offer. She had decided she
wouldn't care whether she made friends or not.

Few Abbot girls, if any, had ever known a black person who was
not a servant or a porter; one wondered where Beth's stocking cap
was, another why her hair wasn't greasy. Beth told them. They learned
to laugh at their ignorance, and she got on fine. There was a near crisis
when Beth and her closest friend, a white girl, decided to room to-
gether for Senior year, and the girl's parents refused to allow it. Miss
Hearsey asked the two girls if she could help. Shortly after this a tact-
ful letter from the Principal arrived at the home of Beth's friend, de-
scribing the advanced degrees Beth's parents held. It was irresistible:
the white parents changed their minds.

Many minds changed in those years at Abbot Academy. "The stere-
otypes were just shot to pot," says Beth. Beth's stately grandfather
came to visit, his British accent still crisp from his young manhood in
Jamaica. Her brother came calling from Middlebury, but no more
Southern girls withdrew. The faculty waxed nervous at Commence-
ment time: youngsters were one thing but what would the white par-
ents think? "Are we welcome?" Sheryl's parents asked Alice Sweeney
as they drove into the gates. "Indeed yes," replied Miss Sweeney, but
she had no way of being sure this was true. As it happened, not a

SINGULAR WOMEN 295

ripple of resentment showed. No one could know how close was
Supreme Court-ordered integration when two lone blacks entered Ab-
bot; just a few predicted the social revolution that would be under
way by the time Beth Chandler graduated with many honors in 1955.
And while Abbot had joined up late to claim any medals, the school
grew proud of its own small part in that revolution, for however few
and however harassed at times, each of its black students was trans-
formed in the minds of her white peers from token to highly valued
friend or associate.

Marguerite Hearsey would also leave Abbot with honor in 1955.
Several trying years were to precede and follow her retirement, how-
ever, years of dissonance between Abbot's standards and the changing
aspirations of its students. Dissonance does not preclude individual
growth; on the contrary, it often engenders it. But Abbot and its
faculty were unaccustomed to serious contradiction, and it would be
tough going at times. Fortunate it was that Miss Hearsey had built
well during her first dozen years, for some of the best things about
Abbot in its final decades were continuations of her initiatives.

The More Things Change,
1945-1963

. . . The more they remained the same at Abbot Academy. Abbot
moved, of course; but the world was speeding by so much faster that
what strikes one is the amazing inertia of the place, a conservatism
partly deliberate and useful, partly perplexed. Although Marguerite
Hearsey would retire in 1955, her successor would do all she could
for at least eight years to hold Abbot steady amid the tide of change,
keeping to the course that had been set in the years following the War.
Such changes as Mary Crane did wish to make were resisted by force-
ful faculty perennials loyal to the Abbot they had known under Miss
Hearsey. Those that succeeded were dictated by external pressures
more than by internal purposes.

If a school's success can be measured in applications and enroll-
ments, then Abbot was wise to resist rapid change, for while demo-
graphers predicted doom for private school enrollments through the
early fifties and the President of Harvard did his best to persuade good
citizens to send their children to comprehensive public high schools,
Abbot's applications steadily increased. Those good citizens wanted
their children to get into colleges like Harvard and RadclifTe, or they
wished sanctuary for their daughters from worldly confusion, or hus-
bands for their daughters from Phillips Academy or a share for them
in a family Abbot tradition— and in ever greater numbers they had the
money to buy these things, for family income rose as rapidly as family
aspirations for a first-rate education. By i960 Abbot Academy was
riding the crest of the postwar baby boom. Only the tensions of the
sixties would prove powerful enough to dislodge the school from old
complacencies and set it on a conscious search for a new future.

Teachers and Students
and How They Grew

Even the most dedicated twentieth century

adherents of Victorianism suffer from a

progressive decrease in certainty.

Stanley Coben, 1975

The young are insatiable.
Marguerite Hearsey to the Trustees, 1950

Teachers

Through the ten years following the War, Abbot melded new and old
with its usual confidence. The half-dozen teachers who joined Abbot
immediately after the War found themselves part of a vital community
of women, proud of their profession and backed by long tradition.
Perhaps the most colorful novice was Germaine Arosa. More students
than ever wanted French, and the techniques of language teaching that
had been developed during the War were turning teachers back to the
oral-aural emphasis in which Abbot had specialized before Miss Bailey
came on the scene, and away from the exclusive study of College
Board grammar that had become all too common on Andover Hill.1
Since she was a professional diseuse, Mile. Arosa was a French speaker
par excellence. She arrived at Abbot in the fall of 1945 after a decade
of touring the nation and delighting audiences by her costumed re-
citals of eighteenth-century French songs, monologues, and dances.
Travel was exciting, but at age forty-three she wanted a home, and
Miss Hearsey, certain that this artist could also teach, offered one.

"She took a chance on me," says Germaine Arosa, who had never
taught French to American girls in her life. She was entirely free of
American pedagogical tradition, a law unto herself. It was bound to be
difficult at first. Mile. Arosa was aware of great expectations for Abbot

302 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, IQ45-I963

teachers but found it hard not simply to fall back on her own school-
girl experience in an authoritarian gymnasium. The youngest girls
were terrified; Miss Hearsey gently reassigned her to French II and
III classes. Other colleagues helped too. Alice Sweeney's good-humored
response to the new teacher's woes could transform a classroom di-
saster into an experience to build on; Anna Roth helped her to pick
herself up and go on when she thought she had failed as a teacher.
She found a fellow artist and warm friend in Kate Friskin, who shared
supervision of the Homestead girls with her and whose transatlantic
experience spoke to her pride in the cultured Parisian society of her
girlhood. Miss Hearsey had already encouraged her to go to Middle-
bury for a summer's training, and the Trustees would later make a five
hundred dollar grant to help her study eighteenth-century poetry at
the Sorbonne so that she might add a fifth-year French course.

Above all, she relied on Miss Hearsey. "Marguerite was a queen,"
says Mile. Arosa now. The Principal's trust in each of her appointees'
capabilities became self-trust in the new teacher, and it was not long
before Mile. Arosa was acting queenly herself. Some younger teachers
and timid students found her energy, her physical beauty, and her self-
confidence— verging, say a few, on arrogance— overwhelming. But if
"arrogance is a common quality in the French," as one of Mile. Arosa's
American colleagues insists, the Mademoiselle was an education all by
herself. Among Abbot Academy's greatest strengths was its refusal to
stamp teachers in a single mold: within its gates she could be "a woman
of extremes" whose very presence was always interesting.2 Abbot gave
Germaine Arosa a fair field for her own growth— her "blossoming" as
she calls it— and plenty of strong students and fellow teachers who de-
lighted in her humor and refused to be intimidated by her.

Another character off a stage was Emily Hale, the British-trained
teacher of drama who came dropping names of renowned friends and
associates, casting herself as she would ingeniously cast her students in
the roles that allowed most scope for their abilities. For many years a
college teacher of drama and literature, she had the reputation at
Smith of being "an affected snob." T. S. Matthews, a more recent
critic, terms her "arrogant," but also "intelligent, elegant, immensely
discriminating,"3 a Boston Brahmin who conversed, acted and taught
so supremely well that her poses reflected the realities of her talents.
Matthews gives her a full chapter in his biography of T. S. Eliot, for
Emily Hale was Eliot's lifelong friend. She was in love with him when
he was an undergraduate at Harvard; she expected to marry him; and
her friendship with him ran so deep that she was able to forgive his
"impossible" marriage to another— "a temporary lapse"— and remain his

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS 303

closest woman friend and confidante for forty years, still hoping even-
tually to be his wife, say her friends in both Andover and England.4
After Eliot left his wife in 1932, he turned to her for solace and com-
panionship. It was she who took him to see Burnt Norton for the first
time during one of her English holidays. She read many of his poems in
typescript, apparently gave him valuable criticism of a few, and shared
her enthusiasm for them with favorite Abbot students.5 He visited her
often; he wrote her over a thousand letters— which we may not see till
the year 2020— but he never encroached too far on her spirited inde-
pendence, though he was the one person for whom she would will-
ingly have relinquished it. On three occasions during his visits to Ab-
bot, he talked about his poetry with the Seniors or with students who
were rehearsing Murder in the Cathedral, after instructing Miss Hear-
sey not, under any circumstances, to advertise his presence, so that he
could stay on good terms with his agent.

Emily Hale made Abbot her home for the final ten years of her
working life, leaving only after Marguerite Hearsey retired.6 She found
friends capable of high repartee all up and down Andover Hill, and
fellow Abbot teachers found in her a wonderfully stimulating col-
league. "A good person was Emily Hale, intelligent, sensitive, a really
fine teacher," Alan Blackmer remembered. Though college entrance
competition waxed ever fiercer during her years at Abbot, students
clamored to act in her demanding productions just as though term
papers did not matter. Eliot made his most enduring tribute to her in
his Family Reunion: she is Aunt Agatha, says Matthews, "the strong-
est character in the play and the only one who from the first is aware
of what is really happening."7 To her Abbot students she was much
more than a stage presence. Says one, "She found and woke in me an
imagination that no one else at Abbot had touched upon."8

Others who would stay long arrived by 1948: Dorothy Judd and
Shirley Ritchie for athletics, Carolyn Goodwin for mathematics, and
Mile. Marie Baratte, fresh from years of privation during the French
Resistance, who found Abbot's New England simplicities luxurious by
comparison. Several older teachers combined with Miss Hearsey's earli-
est appointees and two of the Britishers to become a kind of "court"
for the Principal,9 a group of friends who went with her to her
family's summer home in Jaffrey for several days each summer, who
entertained her and themselves with a ritual of Canasta parties and
country drives during the academic year. So generous with herself and
so often sensitive to criticism, the Principal seemed especially to need
the uncritical affection of others, and this group gladly provided it,
somehow staying free of "that everlasting touching of the nerve"

304 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, 1945-1963

which so often characterizes the faculty groups within "the small
room" of a women's school or college.10 "We all worked, we worked
terribly hard," say two survivors, but when they played, they played.
"Abbot was a ready-made social life for an unmarried woman"— "a
family," our "whole adult life," these two remember.11

Miss Hearsey included all the faculty in dinners and receptions for
speakers, for the mayoress of Andover, England, when she visited on
the town's three-hundredth anniversary, or for the Trustees. Marie
Baratte was not one of the in-group, but Miss Hearsey watched over
her like "a wonderful mother," warmly encouraging this shy new-
comer to give her best.12 Interestingly, Miss Hearsey also managed
special appreciation for the few who preferred independence to mem-
bership in the "court." Carolyn Goodwin would not play Canasta on
order, or wear the required decorative hat downtown if the weather
suggested a woolen scarf to her instead. Other teachers were shocked
when she and Alice Sweeney changed places in Chapel, upsetting the
seniority seating so that Miss Sweeney, who had become quite deaf by
1948, could hear better; but Miss Hearsey didn't care. She watched
Miss Goodwin and Miss Sweeney go their ways and seemed to know,
as subsequent principals would also know, that she needed the special
perspective they brought from their distance.

Once the War-related vacancies were filled, most teachers settled in
with the veterans to stay. The faculty lost only one long-time col-
league in these years: Walter Howe committed suicide. For years
Howe's ebullience had tended to change without warning to mild
depression;13 more recently his sight had been failing. He tried to hide
this by hours-long practice for each Sunday hymn or organ-prelude,
but it got harder and harder.14 Shortly after the Christmas service of
1948, he turned on the gas in his kitchen and lay down to die. For
Abbot, it was one of those personal tragedies which hurt a close com-
munity so deeply— or hold so many embarrassing overtones— that they
are seldom made known outside. It says much of Miss Hearsey that
she did not hush it up but sent a brief letter to every student describ-
ing what had happened, preferring the truth to schoolgirl fantasies.
Howe was strictly an outsider to the community of women, of course,
but at his best he had been a fine teacher, and he was long missed by
faculty friends.

Students
Given Abbot's capacity to nourish a variety of excellent teachers, it is

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS 305

disconcerting to learn how many alumnae of this period found the
place difficult or deadening for students. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas,
'49, once sent Abbot a dime.15 And though twenty years later she sent
Abbot her daughter, her single year at the school left her hating the
place. Elizabeth's one-year status made her an atypical student, for she
never had the time most had to adjust— if not to resign themselves— to
Abbot restrictions, and she came from an unusually liberal family who
had granted her the independence her extraordinary intelligence
seemed to command. Any girls' boarding school would have been
alien; her perspective was that of the disaffected minority which all
schools harbor. Still, in a small community like Abbot, the disaffected
affect everyone, and their perceptions describe certain aspects of reali-
ty. Elizabeth spent most of the free time she had with a "large, solid
clique" of friends, most of whom had had "zero choice" about coming
to Abbot, as she remembers.16 Some were enrolled by their Abbot
mothers, some shipped from South America for a proper New England
education; others, like Elizabeth, were there on the recommendation
of some college admissions official who felt the candidate needed a
year of growing up before entering college. By Commencement time
she had won entrance to Smith, and "Miss Hearsey was ready with a
post-ceremony pitch to my father," who agreed, with a $250 contribu-
tion, that Abbot had made it all possible. ("He had to: she was bigger
than he was," laughs Elizabeth.)

Now a writer and a college English instructor, Elizabeth remembers
Abbot teaching as the best she has ever had. "College was easier than
Abbot" says she— say scores of other alumnae. Biology under young
Louise Coffin was "marvelously done," Miss Roth was a "magnificent,
fiery teacher," Miss Sweeney was "nice, strict," a kind of missionary
for her own "wonderful standards" of taste and workmanship. Ever
since, sitting stubbornly through bad movies to the end, Elizabeth has
remembered Miss Sweeney's advice to walk out. ("You lose more by
staying than by leaving," she had said; "She's right," says Elizabeth.)
Drama with Miss Hale was stimulating; the French teacher was sweet
and kind in class.

But out of class? To Elizabeth and her circle of friends, there were
no out-of-class relationships with teachers. Adults seemed miles away
in their own world unless they were enforcing the rules— watching for
lipstick and improper footwear, or on patrol through the Phillips
campus; "chaperoning" telephone calls17 and checking mail for An-
dover postmarks and return addresses to make certain Phillips boys and
Abbot girls stayed incommunicado except on occasions arranged from
above. Since Abbot began, Abbot students had more or less accepted

306 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, 1945-1963

the space between teacher and girl. "When at school I looked up to
my dear teachers as occupying a station wholly above me," an 1865
graduate wrote to Miss McKeen, "and when you spoke to me so
tenderly I would scarcely ever keep back the tears."18 None of the
students Elizabeth Marshall knew wept tears of happiness over teach-
ers' attentions. Fewer each year accepted the adult-student gulf: in the
decades following World War II, it became a problem to be solved.
Among other things, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has taught writing
at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Walpole. There, she has
observed, wardens and prisoners are purposely kept from making
friends; now Abbot seems to her to have been a kind of prison which
unconsciously used the same means of social control. To most alumnae
the analogy would be extreme, but to the few it was apt. When one
Senior who really liked the school was caught smoking for the first
time and suspended, her friends felt they had no one to whom they
could appeal to reverse the ruling, though undoubtedly there were
willing ears on the faculty.19 They only despaired— and returned to
the studied rule-breaking which made out-of-class life bearable for
them, checking off their sins in the rule book one by one. "We had
never known such a loss of freedom," Elizabeth remembers; "the very
dullness of it all" made you like academic work, she says, and num-
bers of graduates through the mid 1960's echo her lament.20 Student
Government officers were the "trusties" who turned in offenders who
refused to honor the honor system and turn in themselves. According
to a 1954 alumna, the free-spirited developed "a whole system of de-
ception" to get messages to Phillips boys— delivering notes through
day students or dropping them under designated bushes. The same
girl, though "an atheist then and now," took Confirmation classes
downtown and actually got herself confirmed, "just to get out of the
walls on Wednesday afternoons."21 Elizabeth Thomas admits that she
smokes precisely because Abbot so vehemently forbade it; others re-
member the elaborate exhaust-piping system which one Draper Hall
crowd ran from their "smoking closet" to an open window, and the
drinking parties that climaxed the spring term of Senior year. Drinking
was the worst thing you could do: temperance was an ancient cause
at Abbot; Andover still tended to frown on any educator who bought
a cocktail in public. It was in 1950 that the preps in Sherman House
bloodied their fingers carving a secret compartment into the floor of
Room E, a safe place for cigarettes, beer, a favorite onion extract that
was 80 percent alcohol ("tastes God awful," wrote a 1957-58 resident),
and— eventually— for twenty years' worth of secret letters to the next
year's inmates written by tradition the night before Commencement.

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS 307

The letters instruct new girls how to hold a secret midnight party for
town boys on the roof, and advise that "You can do almost anything

here . . . Mrs. is so lazy . . . but watch out for Mrs. B., the maid.

She prys around your room and tells Hatchet about everything." "But-
ter up to Hatchet, D & B, and you'll go places. I know cause I didn't."22

For her part, Miss Hearsey blamed the rebels' restiveness on their
families, who had provided their daughters with "little education at
home in accepting any limitation in freedom."23 But Elizabeth Marshall's
questioning went beyond prohibitions against drinking (which she
understood) to the core of Abbot's values. "Why was the faculty so
intent on having the school go on in that crazy old fashioned way?"
she wondered then and wonders still. "Abbot was the only place I'd
heard of in 1949 where 1849 was still preserved." Though "Miss Hear-
sey always listened" when students dared ask her such questions,24 she
could not give to such as Elizabeth a satisfactory answer.

What grated most upon this alienated minority was being expected
to admire and cheer the school when you were angry at it. "It was
like East Germany," says a 1955 graduate. "You were just constantly
being rounded up to do stupid things that nobody in their right minds
would want to do, and having to sing songs about what a good time
you were having." This woman's memories of forced daily worship
in Chapel bear no resemblance to the "simple and reverent" services of
the Means years.25 Year after year, Student Council minutes describe
the futility of "Stu G" efforts to control hymn-book slamming, gum-
chewing, reading, whispering, and note passing. No longer was the
Abbot constituency almost uniformly Protestant Christian and church-
going. Some of the Catholic families— along with unchurched girls-
chafed against the Bible requirement, and one girl left in 1948 because
the school refused to release her from Bible study in order to spend
more time in the art studio.26 A few Seniors even refused to sing the
"Parting Hymn," protesting that their lives and futures were entirely
their own, not "portioned out to me" by God above.27 Of the prayers
Miss Hearsey led at Vesper Services which some students found so
beautiful, Elizabeth Thomas says simply, "They were lost on me. I
didn't let them in."

Yet even those to whom teachers were "the enemy," found solace in
friends and fellow sufferers.28 Miss Hearsey's efforts to attract interest-
ing applicants brought a brighter, more various group to the school
than ever. The children of Latin American diplomats and businessmen
took the place of the missionaries' daughters. Alumnae of certain
classes29 mention the intellectual stimulation of their peers before any
of Abbot's more formal offerings. The rising national divorce rate

308 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, IQ45-1963

meant that for a number of girls, Abbot friends became a kind of sur-
rogate family;30 these counted themselves lucky to have landed in a
school where a tradition of care for fellow students had been passed
from one student generation to another for more than a century. The
secret Sherman House letters contain as many offers of comfort and
help to new preps as enticements to rule-breaking. "No matter how
you feel about Abbot," says one, "it's so terrific to be able to make
friends like we have." "I learned . . . how to love" in this school and
this room, says another.31

Students of almost all backgrounds enjoyed exclusive friendships
and crushes that were much like those rich relationships of Harriet
Chapell's day. "It was entirely accepted for tenth grade girls to fall
in love with Seniors," one alumna of the early fifties remembers.
Her own "powerful alliance" with a younger girl proved a source of
strength to both, and grew into a friendship far more durable than the
dozen red roses which the younger delivered to the elder— along with
a "passionate letter"— once each week in the spring before graduation.
These two did not feel the freedom Harriet and her friends had en-
joyed to express this quasi-physical affection, but they poured into it
their inmost selves, and each found in the other a confirmation of her
worth as a person. "All my friends had tenth graders too," says this
woman, who now combines a career as teacher and therapist with
equal responsibilities as wife and mother. Though relatively few stu-
dents were sophisticated enough to cope with the barriers Abbot
threw up against natural and easy friendships with boys, these girl-to-
girl affairs absorbed much psychic energy. Teachers seemed to under-
stand their importance to the girls, and did not interfere; a few, like
Emily Hale, encouraged them in a friendly low-key way by inviting
"pairs" to tea.

There was other comfort. Through most of the 1950's Abbot teach-
ers shared their students' confinement to a large degree; many sympa-
thized, and provided what parties and treats they could to make
things jollier.32 The adults had to wear hats and stockings downtown
too. They also wondered (with amusement) whether they should be
eating their potato chips with their forks, if their dining tables were in
sight of the one over which Latin teacher Marion DeGavre presided,
though most agreed with the student who later wrote "Mrs. D" of her
admiration for "a person who knew what table manners were."33
Though they could skip the required Saturday evening "entertain-
ments," they had to be on their corridors with their doors open two
weekends out of three and every weekday after 4: 30. They could not
have private telephones, or smoke in their rooms, or skip Tiffin or

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS 309

Chapel or lunch any more than students could. Germaine Arosa felt
she "had had [her] life," and did not mind, but she knew how hard
it was on younger teachers. Some teachers shared students' pet hates
as well. Perhaps the most distasteful of the Abbot adults to such as
Elizabeth Marshall was the secretary who guarded the entrance to
Draper Hall like a local FBI agent, assiduously listening for boys'
voices on the extension phone, checking male callers in with suspicion
and out with relief; but some of the faculty also suffered from her
zeal. Every time she spoke to you, remembers one teacher, "she would
get something out of you that you didn't want to tell her," and report
it all to Miss Hearsey, whether Miss Hearsey wanted to hear it or not;
she recalls her initial pleasure at being invited downtown for tea by
this woman, and then her surprise when the occasion proved to be a
quiz session about her department chairman. Similarly, many younger
faculty no more enjoyed downtown or dormitory patrols than the
girls enjoyed being constantly watched.

A few students admitted they'd brought it on themselves. Spy work
among the girls seemed more and more necessary as the student lead-
ers became ever less willing to push one another toward righteous-
ness or judge peers who had gone astray.34 The "Honor A" was given
up in 195 1 after several years of irreconcilable faculty-student dispute
over the nominees,35 and fewer students were willing to report them-
selves for offenses like listening to the last presidential election returns,
as Carol Hardin Kimball dutifully did in 1952. Little concessions such
as being allowed to wear make-up to the Exeter-Andover football
game no longer thrilled the girls36 but merely whetted appetites for
more.37 The "Citation" or rating system failed badly in 1946-47 under
a weak Student Council,38 and was abandoned altogether in the early
fifties in favor of a shifting, uneasy combination of "honor rules" and
general rules enforced largely by the faculty. It was small comfort for
Alice Sweeney to reflect on how natural it was for girls who had
taken unusual responsibilities in wartime to wish more freedom in
peacetime,39 or for Marguerite Hearsey to learn that other headmis-
tresses were experiencing many of the same problems.

Yet in spite of all, many students thrived at Abbot through the post-
war decade. They say they didn't expect to be closer to faculty than
worlds apart, or that they found a satisfying foothold in classroom
interchange. If one rather shy 1955 graduate dreaded the way Mile.
Baratte "humiliated" her in class no matter how hard she worked,
most girls loved her as she loved them.40 As might be expected from a
girl afraid of the gentle Mile. Baratte, this alumna has extreme memo-
ries of Mile. Arosa's treatment of weaker students— "she'd stomp on

3IO TH E MORE TH I NGS CHANGE, I945-I963

their fingers as they were clinging to the cliff." A Phillips teacher re-
calls both her extraordinary knowledge of French drama and her way
of embarrassing her clumsier actresses to tears in front of the Phillips
actors during rehearsals of the Phillips-Abbot French plays ("she was
terribly difficult to get along with, but she certainly "knew her
stuff");41 and Germaine Arosa herself acknowledges that some stu-
dents found her "a terror." Yet there are many others who loved her
volatility, who thrived on her determination to face her students with
their faults and show them how often success follows only on struggle
and near failure.42 Beth Warren had had no oral French in her Atlanta
high school: "at first I was petrified" of Mile. Arosa, she says, but "the
terror" brought her along with loving firmness. The French "stars"
were the Mademoiselle's special pets. "She owned us, and she said so,"
says one, who also recalls Mile. Arosa's special gift to her: "She taught
me to laugh at myself."43 Ambitious French scholars often preferred
her to the kinder, softer American teachers of which Abbot had its
share. More than one alumna recalls Mile. Arosa's after-hours kind-
nesses: a full evening spent listening to one girl whose worry over her
parents' troubled marriage had made concentration on French verbs
impossible, for example. Dorothea Wilkinson found her British-bred
standards of excellence exactly consistent with Abbot's rigorous ex-
pectations, and for years she passed them on to her English students.
A few who knew Miss Hancock in her earlier days as a corridor
teacher remember her as "The Virginia Creeper" whose crepe-soled
shoes allowed for a swift approach to unsuspecting rule-breakers,44 but
many, many more are grateful for her enthusiasm for astronomy, the
quiet skill with which she took a trouble-maker aside and talked her
into a constructive act such as helping her to clean the telescope, her
hospitality and warmth as Admissions Officer after 1957, or the extra-
ordinary effectiveness with which both she and her younger colleague,
Carolyn Goodwin, taught mathematics. Miss Tingley brought color
with her voice teaching, say her students, and Miss Judd carried the
spice of friendly sarcasm to the athletic field and later to her Spanish
classes.45 Many Student Council members who had tangled with teach-
ers over school-government issues agreed that "the faculty are really
pretty fair; they just need reasons."46 Beth Chandler Warren says that
the trick was to "pick out the best of what was there." There was true
Christian kindliness if one spoke her need to others, as well as the
institutional altruism expressed in the annual Christmas party for in-
digent Andover children and every season's contributions to the Hind-
man school or other good cause.47 There was "the joy of an Andover
spring, the mischief that was permitted at Intervale."48 There was

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS 3 I I

above all "the wonderful tranquility of the place," says one of the
women who spent some of her adolescence smoking in the Draper
Hall closet. Through its varied faculty, Abbot offered students "a
whole spectrum of approaches to womanhood." By its strict ordering
of community life, its very determination to take some decisions out
of adolescent hands (Shall I drink or not? How much time shall I
spend with this or that boy?), the school cleared time and space for
that "peaceful collection of self" which is the young person's most
important task. "How safe we were!" marvels another grateful alum-
na.49 Once they had got over what one Southern alumna calls "the
shock of confinement," all who more or less accepted the rules found
much the same support for growth and accomplishment throughout
the earlier fifties that prewar students had enjoyed, and dissolved as
readily into tears over the singing of "Abbot Beautiful" at Commence-
ment.50 And finally, almost every alumna speaks of Marguerite Hearsey
with either awe or affection. Elizabeth Thomas says, "I remember be-
ing very touched by her— I still am. She was honest, tough, very in-
telligent. I liked her . . . she was doing very strong things: to be so
out of touch with modern times required a lot of character."51

New Faces

Miss Hearsey was still several years younger than Abbot's retirement
age when she decided it was time for her to leave. At 207 students, the
school was larger and more in demand in September 1954 than it had
ever been.52 The endowment Flagg and his colleagues had built was
worth $1,000,000. The 125th Anniversary drive was nearly complete;
the alumnae looked strong and willing, if not very affluent; new tradi-
tions—an all-school picnic at Crane's Beach, the Principal reading
Winnie-the-Pooh aloud at Intervale, and many others— had established
themselves among the old; above all, the faculty seemed stable and
competent. Miss Hearsey was secure enough not to feel indispensable;
except for some student government problems, the school had got
along well under Miss Sweeney during her year's leave in 1946-47.
Early retirement seemed only sensible for a woman who had further
plans of her own in mind: to try some new teaching projects while
she had ample energy, and to set up housekeeping with her great
friend Ella Keats Whiting, with whom she had lived for some years
before taking her job at Hollins, and who was dean of Wellesley Col-
lege at this time. Miss Hearsey also had, she says, a sense that some of
the parents whose daughters she took in charge needed an empathy

312

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, I945-I963

44. Miss Hancock with a student in the Abbot observatory.

4$. Christmas dolls dressed by Abbot students as gifts to the children of

the Hinman School in Kentucky, 1949. Andover Art Studio photo.

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS

3'3

k * V- V ^

46. To South Church for Easter Services. Look Photo Service.

314 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, I945-I963

she could no longer give them: she and they stood now a full genera-
tion apart, and that, she thought, was too much. She felt herself losing
rapport with some of the bright, aggressive girls she had once thor-
oughly enjoyed, the ones who always, always wanted still more free-
dom than she had just newly granted them.53 She had reflected on the
causes of this constant push at a talk to the Boston Abbot Club in 1949:

It is an interesting phenomenon that while the average school-
leaving age in the United States, and therefore the age of de-
pendence, has been extended, there has accompanied this change
a contradictory process, a steady lowering of what might be
called the age of protection. Freedom of choice, freedom of
action, removal of adult supervision begins earlier and earlier in
our social life.54

By 1950 parents, too, were urging Abbot to loosen up in places;55 yet
boarding schools were expected to be just as responsible as ever for
"dependent" adolescents, and Miss Hearsey felt that Abbot had eased
up on rules to a point where they had reached a bare minimum. If
girls insisted that "some of those rules were made to be broken," as
one alumna concludes in retrospect,56 well, better for rebellion to
spend itself on forbidden eye shadow or fleeting, proscribed rendez-
vous with Phillips boys than on boundless experiments in dissolution.
Liberty was not a right but an achievement, a status one could amply
earn through Abbot-imposed "discipline and work," as one alumna
gratefully wrote her;57 or, as Marguerite Hearsey herself said in 1949,

The only truly free and released individual is the one who has
voluntarily bound himself to something greater than himself.58

Perhaps most pervasive was Miss Hearsey's well-schooled knowledge
that history always moves on, or, as Alice Sweeney terms it, "an in-
stinctive sense that it was time for a change, that someone with a dif-
ferent point of view could now direct more successfully the future
development of the school."59 She would miss everything, from Sun-
day morning parent conferences and Student Council meetings to the
planning sessions for each year's bazaar or prom, and those clumsy,
touching notes from Hilltop swains like the tenth grader who wrote
her his regrets just before the big dance: "Due to a case of mumps I
regret my kind acceptance of your invitation." But she would not
wait, complacent, for bitter ends.

The most hardened advocates of a more self-centered freedom were
moved by Miss Hearsey's announcement of her retirement. "It was as
though doom had hit the school," says Beth Warren, '55, who recalls

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS 315

the tears wept at the unexpected news. Suddenly, no principal could
be better. The ceremonial leave-takings were rich with the poetry of
reminiscences, with presents given and received, with letters of appre-
ciation.60 There was just one reassurance: Mrs. Mary Hinckley Crane,
Miss Hearsey's successor, was already working at the school, a teacher
of English and history of art much admired and liked by all who had
come to know her in her one year at Abbot.61

The Trustees had long searched for a new head at a time when ex-
perienced women administrator-scholars were almost impossible to
find.62 A large group of the faculty expected Eleanor Tucker to be-
come Principal, but "Tuck" herself felt that she was not ready.63 The
last generation of pioneering spinsters— whom even Elizabeth Thomas
admired— was nearing retirement age, and relatively few college gradu-
ates of the twenties and thirties had committed themselves to adminis-
trative careers with the enthusiasm of Miss Hearsey's or Miss Bailey's
contemporaries. At last Abbot's old friend Marion Park had suggested
that the Trustees look in their own backyard, for one of Bryn Mawr's
most promising graduates was right there. True, Mary Crane had
never taken anything like the administrative responsibility that Abbot
would require— she had been absorbed in taking care of her family—
but she was a warm-hearted, intelligent and skillful teacher as well as
a practicing archaeologist with considerable field experience.64 She was
also a mother with four young daughters of her own. A widow, she
needed a home and a good education for her girls, but more impor-
tant, thought the Trustees, these restless mid-twentieth-century stu-
dents might find a family woman more accessible, more sympathetic
to their own aspirations than they would another unmarried prin-
cipal.65 "Here is just the breath of fresh air Abbot needs," thought
Helen Allen Henry as school opened in the fall of 1955.66

It certainly was a change. There were little children in the Abbot
dining room for the first time ever: curly-haired Juju, just four years
old; Lucy, a little older, who seemed to one maiden teacher "always
to be crying"; the two eldest, junior high school age, doing their best
to help their busy mother field her students' questions and oversee
Juju's food intake at the same time. There were also men on the aca-
demic faculty. Paul Werner, a rather elderly part-time mathematics
teacher, who came with his abrasive and energetic English-teacher
wife to live in Ripley House, felt conspicuous and self-conscious at
first;67 but John Iverson, Abbot's first full-time male teacher, soon
moved into Cutler House next door, where his wife added ten Abbot
boarders to the two small Iversons already in her charge.

Almost immediately, Mrs. Crane put her stamp upon a new Abbot

3 16 THE MORE TH INGS CHANGE, IQ45-I963

catalogue. Photographs of smiling, busy girls crowded out the somber
buildings that had graced catalogues of the Hearsey years. Sunday was
still described as "a day of quiet," but the school was no longer labeled
"definitely Christian," and special mention was given to the Abbot
girl's opportunities to meet the boys from the Hilltop. The fall "mixer"
was Mrs. Crane's first social innovation. It seemed to be a great suc-
cess: certainly it attempted to fulfill the promise many prospective
parents had seen in Abbot's position half way up Andover Hill, a
promise— Miss Hearsey herself acknowledged— that brought many can-
didates to Abbot in the first place. Mrs. Crane agreed with her prede-
cessor on the value of a self-sufficient single-sex school, but her em-
phasis was slightly different. To Marguerite Hearsey the very close-
ness of the two schools had meant that Abbot must guard its girls all
the more strictly.68 Under Mary Crane, the censoring of telephone
calls and the confiscation of Phillips-Abbot mail would gradually dis-
appear; in time girls could actually sit with boys during the second
half of a football game and walk with their callers in the Grove at
specified hours Saturday afternoon. Similarly, Mrs. Crane agreed with
her predecessor that "children are less and less disciplined at home"
but she was willing to entertain the possibility "that we really do have
too many rules."69 Mrs. Crane encouraged the "town meetings" which
brought together all interested students and faculty once a term
or so for an open discussion of school problems. Lights-out time
for older girls crept later and later from the original 9:30 curfew, till
Seniors might stay up till midnight with special permission. Through-
out her eleven-year tenure, Mary Crane would search always for the
reasonable response to the students' "annual crusade for change,"70
instead of taking refuge in tradition, as a few older faculty wished
she would do.

At Abbot, however, tradition was so powerful that substantive
change was never made if stylistic change would do. Off-campus leaves
were a little more plentiful by the early 1960's, but Abbot still dic-
tated its girls' dress and demeanor on trains and planes and whenever
they were in Boston, Andover, or nearby towns. No proliferation of
chaperoned occasions could disguise the prohibition against meeting
any boy outside of "the supervision of the school,"71 or talking with
male passersby for more than two (later five) minutes. (Teachers were
obliged to time such encounters whenever they noticed them.) The
silver napkin rings and linen napkins were still standard equipment
brought from home. Mrs. Crane's deep religious faith, as well as her
constant effort to act it in her daily dealings with students and faculty
and to communicate it in Chapel, helped to continue Abbot's Chris-

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS 317

tian tradition against mounting odds.72 Though there were a few new
fourth- and fifth-level language and mathematics courses and more
girls took five courses in response to college demands, the number of
course choices remained about the same through i960. Except in
studio art and in one English course, the content changed little. The
English and Latin teachers continued to defend the value of Latin as
a major course, much as Miss Hearsey had done in an elaborate argu-
ment-by-memo with Phillips Headmaster Fuess just after the War;73
Ann Werner taught a section of Latin I as well as Advanced Place-
ment English because she was certain that English grammar could
best be understood by those steeped in Latin grammar.74 A 1957
graduate says that Mrs. Crane's own once-a-week Senior English class
"was the only time during my stay at Abbot that I was taught any-
thing about current trends or thought in the U.S.A. We knews lots
about ancient Rome, but almost nothing about modern times."75

The biggest difference between the Hearsey and Crane administra-
tion came in the two women's styles of leadership, for Mrs. Crane was
neither mover nor shaker by nature: rather than dominate events she
would steer them along their natural course. If faculty or Trustees re-
buffed one of her proposals, such as her fervent request for a regular
psychiatric consultant to help the occasional girl in serious trouble,
she backed off and did not pursue the issue. "Plus 9a change, plus
c'est la meme chose," Mary Crane wrote the alumnae in the fall of
1964;76 by the time she resigned in 1966 there seemed no doubt that
she had done all she could do to accomplish what the Trustees seemed
to expect of her when they hired her: keep this fine school going
much as it is.77

Teachers Again

"Mary Crane's great contributions were her warmth as a person and
her interest in getting good faculty to continue," says Eleanor Tucker.
Mrs. Crane learned immediately that mere interest in competent teach-
ers was no longer enough. The old definition of the Abbot teacher's
responsibilities was one tradition she felt should not be left to "the
momentum" of the Hearsey years which otherwise sustained the school
through most of the Crane era.78 During her last few years at Abbot,
Marguerite Hearsey had found it ever more difficult to recruit live-in
teachers who would supervise dormitory corridors, take their turns at
weekend chaperonage and bell duty, and so forth.79 Emily Hale agreed
to return in 1948 only if she could move to an apartment.80 A few

3i8

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, I945-I963

47. Mary H. Crane, Principal, 1955-1966.

teachers already lived outside the student corridors on the fourth floor
of Draper; now they, too, moved off the campus. Miss Hearsey set up
a weekend refuge for off-duty faculty in one of the Abbot-owned
houses on Morton Street; she puzzled over how to make "a more adult
form of living" possible in an age when students nocked to the cor-
ridor teacher's room to listen to her radio or play their records far
more often than they came for quiet counsel.81 In 1944 she had begun
to organize Teacher Work-Load Study Committees; new ones were
formed every &vz or six years. Yet one wonders if her heart would
accept any drastic change. Either the committees decided that teach-
ers' corridor duties could not be sacrificed without great loss to
teacher-student relationships,82 or teachers found they could not bring
themselves to press their complaints with a Principal who worked so
tirelessly herself and held so much trust in her faculty's capacity to
do likewise.83

Mary Crane poured no less energy into her job, but she understood
from personal experience how much adults need some privacy. She

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS 319

herself had required a separate house as a condition of her hiring, and
it would be a constant struggle for her to keep students from using
her home as a drop-in social center, a struggle she generously gave up
as her own daughters became Abbot students and sought a place to
entertain their friends, both male and female.84 Besides, she was now
the one who had to find new teachers, full sixteen of them in her first
two years, half of these corridor teachers. It looked like high time to
implement the recommendations made by Miss Hearsey's last Teacher
Work-Load Study Committee. The group had divided on the question
whether to substitute house mothers for corridor teachers, but they
made many suggestions for getting the academic teacher out from
under the blizzard of trivial duties she had been expected to undertake.

Progress would be slow. Mrs. Crane surveyed the field from her
position as chairman of the Teacher Recruitment Committee of the
NAPSG, and kept in touch with the efforts of her colleagues in other
schools. Her wish to create a more natural community by inviting
men to teach would remain hollow, for few men teachers would work
for the pay Abbot could offer as long as they were in high demand in
boys' private schools or in the public schools: John Iverson stayed
just one year before seeking a greener pay envelope. The new Yale
and Harvard Master of Arts in Teaching programs, which by their
concentration on scholarly disciplines promised to overcome the dis-
parities between private-school recruiting standards and those of
public schools, availed Abbot little where public high schools tempted
the M.A.T.'s with salaries Abbot could not match and a democratic
rhetoric to which many idealists responded. Mrs. Crane did hire several
new college graduates who did not want state certification.85 Though
she was not an aggressive recruiter,86 some able women came her way
looking for a first job. She also persuaded the Trustees to create po-
sitions for several excellent part-time teachers, some of them highly
educated Phillips Academy wives who preferred jcbs of their own to
dispensing tea and sympathy on the Hilltop.

Finally, beginning in i960, she allowed the corridor teachers to
move out of the dormitories one by one, replacing them with house
mothers. Only a handful— Marie Baratte was one— preferred to stay.
Now new candidates found Abbot more attractive. The old guard had
got what they had earned— and they moved thankfully into the apart-
ments Abbot opened up for them in Sunset or other houses. In time,
most realized that something had been lost— though never regretfully
enough to return to corridor duty. Kate Friskin was now only a music
teacher, not a counselor who would leave piano practicing to comfort
a miserable Junior in her special charge. Those few like Eleanor

320 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, 1945-I963

Tucker who could be simultaneously a jolly friend and a competent
teacher87 were no longer so accessible as before. Distant though facul-
ty had seemed to students under the old system, they were more so
now. "We were a family," says Germaine Arosa, "and then quite sud-
denly, it was finished. There was no more family: there was a teacher
and girls."

For some of the older teachers this sense of loss was sharpened by
Marguerite Hearsey's absence. "She was the head and we were part
of the school through her," Mile. Arosa remembers. A few of the
"court" became the core of a new in-group, which took Mary Crane
in hand, advised and helped her from day to day (or, in one young
teacher's view, "told her what to wear or what to do"). But it wasn't
the same. Mary Crane was terribly busy with students and daughters.
The Friday night Canasta-and-talk sessions at Sunset were no more;
rare now were those parties for speakers or Trustees from which Miss
Hearsey's teachers had regularly drawn a sense of the larger signifi-
cance of their work.88 Though many outside the old Hearsey "court"
found Mary Crane extraordinarily accessible and kind, or admired her
scholarly mind and enjoyed the enthusiasm with which she spoke to
the receptive (including students) about "the things she loved" in
classical art or architecture,89 she could not spare emotional energy
for many close collegial friendships.90 And because "we were not in-
cluded," as one teacher put it, some felt less obligated toward the
school.91 Thus an inevitable result of the residential change was that
the Principal herself must take on still more of the students' complex
problems, this at a time when the school was larger and more un-
wieldly than it had ever been before. Mrs. Crane talked endlessly with
unhappy girls or anxious parents, so much, say a few, that some rou-
tine parent communications were neglected. A girl in trouble came
first, or a grandmother who found herself suddenly responsible for
her Abbot granddaughter— her daughter caught in the double bind of
a mental breakdown and a messy divorce— and needed help right away,
lots of it.92 Routine must stand aside while Mary Crane listened and
with compassion counseled the whole family.

While some left dorms, others left the school. Gone now were the
secretaries and administrative assistants like Barbara Humes, Mrs. Ruth
Reeves, and Gerda Kaatz who had been willing to work nights and
weekends as Miss Hearsey's "stalwart lieutenants."93 Some of their
chaperonage and extra office duties fell again on younger teachers,
though Mrs. Crane repeatedly suggested that the Trustees hire enough
staff to release teachers for teaching.94 The more Phillips-Abbot social
occasions there were, the more chaperones seemed needed. Dorothy

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS 321

Judd guarded the Abbot gate on mixer nights, and watched the hedge
and Circle, others were sent on "bush patrol" during every tea dance
and prom weekend. Mrs. Crane felt each teacher who drove a car
must take her turn checking the routes of "approved walks" to pre-
vent unapproved rendezvous; and well might the faculty worry, for
students say that the mixers and tea dances bred more of these than
ever. Resident faculty could still smoke only in Baronial— must still, if
they wished to go out for a drink, find a place to do it where they
could be sure neither Abbot parent nor Trustee would see them.95

Given all this, given the availability of jobs elsewhere, it is not sur-
prising that teachers went and came with increasing rapidity. The
average length of tenure fell from nine years in 1954 to 6l/2 in 1964—
or 4!/4 if one discounts the six veterans remaining from the early Hear-
sey years. Abbot was not alone. Mary Crane brought numerous re-
ports from professional meetings that other private and public schools
were finding it difficult to hire, and keep, good teachers.96 A few came
fresh to Abbot from college and left in two or three years to marry,
but both found and gave much strength while they were there. Blair
Danzoll, who later became Headmistress of the Bryn Mawr School,
was one of these. Students recall her superb classics teaching— and she
thinks of Mary Crane's confidence in her as a crucial ingredient of her
willingness to dare large tasks. Hilary Andrade-Thompson served as
English Department Chairman just two years before returning to her
native England, but she is remembered as an extraordinary teacher and
colleague. A few others remained long: Pamela Tinker, a skillful
science teacher, came from England under Miss Hearsey to stay a
single year— and stayed for ten under Mrs. Crane. Twelve of the
Crane appointees taught until the merger of Abbot and Phillips in
1973; eight of these stayed on at the new coeducational school.97

The new teachers brought fresh life to traditional courses. Students
who took studio art with Virginia Powel wanted to spend so much
time painting that Mrs. Crane agreed the course should receive full
credit and expanded the studio on the fourth floor of Draper. English
teachers Jean St. Pierre and Barbara Sisson worked with the History
Department to coordinate literature and history in the tenth and
twelfth grades; history teacher Lise Witten, fluent in three languages
and expert in European art, could teach interdisciplinary courses all
alone, but she joined with others to enrich both their teaching and
her own. French and Spanish teachers set up a small, excellent
language laboratory, a project for which Dorothy Judd took prime
responsibility.

Not wishing to stir a fuss over her retirement after nearly forty

322 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, IQ45-I963

years of teaching, Kate Friskin quietly left "on sabbatical" in 1959, but
Margot Warner and a series of excellent piano teachers carried on Ab-
bot's music tradition. Mary Crane had long wanted to add Asian his-
tory to the curriculum; in Caroline Rees she found an enthusiast to
teach it. Eleanor Tucker took over from Alice Sweeney as Director of
Studies and college adviser after Miss Sweeney's retirement in 1957;
from this position she did much to bind the senior and junior faculty
together. Considering the handicaps under which Abbot and most
other girls' schools labored to get and keep good faculty, it is a tribute
to Mary Crane that Abbot teaching was carried on for the most part
at standards as high as ever.

Thus did Abbot's academic success overlay communal tensions and
a conscious refusal to bend to increasingly insistent changes in the
larger society. Such conservatism had proven wise in the past; it
seemed the most comfortable stance for an old school to fall back
on now.

History in the Making

History in the making is often uncomfortable.

Mary H. Crane,

Principal's Report, 30 November 1959

Grand Issues, Cautious Responses

Private schools were not left alone to adjust in their own quiet ways
to problems of teacher recruitment and the push-pull of contemporary
mores. During the years that Abbot was searching for a modus vivendi
with its bright, restive students, critics in high places were insisting
that these very youngsters would be better off in public high schools,
where they could both add intellectual vitality to student bodies
grown flabby on misdirected progressivism and gain in democratic
sensibilities from the public school mix of social classes, creeds, and
ethnic groups. In June 1952 Miss Hearsey quoted to the Trustees the
speech given by President James Conant of Harvard to the American
Association of School Administrators proposing an end to the nation's
"dual system of education" and urging that "all the youth of the com-
munity attend the same school, irrespective of family or cultural back-
ground."1

Private school educators were aghast; they had not forgotten the
influence commanded by Charles W. Eliot, the last Harvard President
who had mounted the rostrum for public education. Conant's attack
climaxed a season of anxiety for all independent and parochial schools.
They were already uneasy about the decline in applications that
marked the Depression babies' arrival at secondary school age, for this
generation was all too small. Unlike more than half of New England's
girls' schools, Abbot remained full during 1948-50, the leanest years,2
but Miss Hearsey wrote anxiously to the Trustees of her fears for
future enrollments,3 and worried about the ill feeling against non-
public schools that was bound to emerge from the controversy over
the Congress' first substantial effort to aid secondary schools.4 During
that effort parochial schoolmen had lobbied hard for funds, made

324 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, IQ45-I963

many enemies for the nonpublic school, and retreated in bitterness
after having largely failed. Independent school people found only
crumbs of comfort in the more moderate position Conant took the
following year, when he insisted that at the least all who love de-
mocracy should beat back the efforts of nonpublic school advocates—
principally "powerful church leaders"— to gain a share in public funds.5

The debate over the role of private schools in national life was
many-sided and complex. Conant championed the comprehensive pub-
lic high school at a time when Cold War rhetoric had thrown all
public schools on the defensive and provided Abbot Academy with
some embarrassing allies. Looking fearfully at totalitarian Russia, the
communization of the Catholic East European nations, and the "fall"
of China, many Americans deplored "Godless statism"; extreme critics
characterized public schools as centers for propagating a revolutionary
new social order.6 More analytical critics like Arthur Bestor and
Albert Lynd made powerful thrusts at the self-perpetuating educa-
tionist cartel that had persuaded most state governments to adopt the
teacher certification systems that kept them in work, and nourished a
wasteful, clumsy state education bureaucracy larger in New York
State than in all of England.7 Conant had his answer ready: granted
the public schools have problems— let all citizens pitch in to improve
them, and teach their children democracy by practicing it. "It may
well be that the ideological struggle with Communism in the next
fifty years will be won on the playing fields of the public high schools
of the United States," he wrote, in all seriousness.8

It is difficult now to imagine how grave the ideological struggle
seemed at the time— so grave that rational citizens and their public rep-
resentatives were willing to tolerate blatant attacks on the civil liberties
of individuals and on the integrity of educational institutions. Senator
Joseph McCarthy is often blamed, but it was this demagogue's massive,
approving audience which made McCarthyism possible. With other
private schools, Abbot Academy offered mild but steady resistance to
the general hysteria. Marguerite Hearsey had done her share of worry-
ing over "the ideologies of Communism and fascism being spread or
practised right here in our own country,"9 but she and most of her
independent school colleagues were determined not to overreact. They
looked for the special contributions they might make within a society
that had become polarized over issues of ideology and academic free-
dom. Private schools are uniquely positioned to resist national fetishes,
and the Headmistresses Association gladly defined "the Responsibility
of the Schools in a Democracy Challenged by Communism" as the ob-
ligation to "put great emphasis on civil rights," to "act when they

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 325

are attacked," to support the United Nations, to keep in mind "our
own national shortcomings" while continuing to teach "the great
values of the American tradition."10 In spite of the noises heard from
the many states wishing to tighten up private school accreditation re-
quirements, the NAPSG determined to resist all state efforts to sacri-
fice teachers' independence or their own high hiring standards."11 Miss
Hearsey kept the Trustees informed of various state efforts to elimi-
nate school and college books written by or about Communist or
Socialist sympathizers, and of Massachusetts legislators' proposal that
all schools rename the English language "the American language."12
The Trustees agreed with her that students should have full access to
material about Communism, even though Abbot should never know-
ingly hire a Communist.13 It was not an idle possibility. All private
educators knew about the bitter teachers' strike of 1949 at Putney
School. Putney, so long accused of harboring Communists, actually
found it had a radical labor organizer in its midst, a young man who
persuaded fellow teachers to organize under the CIO and demand
higher pay, tenure provisions, and faculty representation on an inde-
pendent board of trustees.14

Inside Abbot, teachers met this national ferment with a general ef-
fort to do better what they were already doing. One group of critics
had excoriated American schools for failing to teach basic academic
skills, and for neglecting those gifted students who should be prepar-
ing to lead the race against Communism. Abbot faculty tightened the
school's testing and placement procedures, wondered if its long tradi-
tion of heterogeneous class sections was wise after all,15 and set up a
noncredit seminar in Greek for twenty-five especially able students,
who met with Phillips classics scholar Allston Chase once a week.
President Conant had taken educators to task for the ill fit between
school and college which pinched the most able students. The educa-
tors of Andover Hill could accept this charge: for years some Phillips
and Abbot graduates— like highly capable students everywhere— had
found freshman courses dull and dulling. Pushed by Dean Alan Black-
mer, Phillips Academy designed and the Ford Foundation funded a
study to discover whether advanced placement in college might not be
possible for such young people. Miss Hearsey read every report com-
ing out of "The Andover Study," kept in touch with the few Abbot
graduates who had entered college a year early, and sent question-
naires to other college-going alumnae to try to find out— among other
things— whether Abbot's education had been proof against the alarm-
ingly high dropout rate for college women.16 Skeptical of a full-blown
Advanced Placement program, the school moved cautiously. The fac-

326 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, I945-I963

ulty instituted fourth-year French and mathematics well before Miss
Hearsey's retirement, but Miss Hearsey, Alice Sweeney, and Mary
Crane knew far too much of the complexity of talent to go along with
the fifties fad for exclusive "A-T" (Academically Talented) tracks.
When Marguerite Hearsey was asked in 1959 to address the NAPSG
on the subject "gifted youth," she ignored the expected topics and
presented instead an inspired and scholarly account of John Keats's
education and upbringing. The institution of a fifth-year French class
in 1956 had more to do with Mrs. Crane's and Aiiss Sweeney's feeling
that Germaine Arosa and her Seniors should be rewarded for moving
swiftly through fourth-level French than it did with keeping up with
the Joneses or the Phillipses in both Exeter and Andover.17 Like Miss
Hearsey, Mary Crane gave special attention to the academic place-
ment of applicants with unusual records or home problems, ably as-
sisted by Eleanor Tucker, Director of Studies and college adviser from
1956 to 1966. Their careful counseling of students and parents, much
of it incredibly time-consuming, could not be conveyed in catalogues
or proud articles in professional periodicals; it was taken for granted
as part of a private school's responsibility to its clientele.18

After 1956 Mary Crane and the Trustees would draw on the work
of the Sputnik-inspired Physical Science Study Committee and similar
groups to revise Abbot's science curriculum. The National Science
Foundation would eventually spend a billion dollars to develop the
new courses, and Abbot would hire a series of teachers trained in
NSA-sponsored institutes to bring the new physics and chemistry to
its students. The New England Association of Colleges and Second-
ary Schools (NEACSS) accreditation committee came in 1958 to
praise the school's general program— and to recommend more select
A.P. sections. Abbot responded to the nudge by establishing fourth-
year Spanish and sixth-year French courses; Principal and Trustees
created special Advanced Placement English sections, bringing in Ann
Werner— "one of those interesting, difficult Abbot characters," says
Virginia Powel— from her chairmanship of Wheeler School's English
department and her work on Advanced Placement testing for the
CEEB. They continued, however, to insist on a well balanced general
education, rather than countenance the early "majors" that were the
rage in some high schools, or push students beyond sense to build
grade-point averages that would impress the colleges. "Abandon fear,"
Miss Hearsey had told Abbot students in 1944. "Do not work for
grades but for mastery of the subject." Mary Crane rang her own
changes on this theme again and again. Nor would Abbot stretch
teaching resources to accommodate a handful of Advanced Place-

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 327

ment candidates in subjects other than English.19 A joint Phillips-
Abbot A.P. program would have been a simple solution to the latter
problem, but no one seems to have mentioned it in public.

Abbot must have been doing something right, for applications in-
creased faster than ever throughout the fifties. There was more to it
than War babies,20 than general prosperity, or the Eisenhower admin-
istration's benign attitude toward private institutions. The critics of
public schools had created a fresh constituency for private schools.
Conant's insistence that far too many parents and private schools
pushed inept scholars into college did nothing to dampen enthusiasm
for college preparatory programs that guaranteed both higher educa-
tion and higher social status.21 In spite of Supreme Court integration
rulings, in spite of heroic efforts to create the democratic high schools
of Conant's dream, the ethnically and economically diverse communi-
ties that could support them were becoming ever fewer. Some of
the best high schools emerged from one-class suburbs whose homo-
geneity made the Abbot community seem positively polyglot. Small
schools like Abbot looked inviting beside most of those enormous new
comprehensive schools which President Conant had inspired, with
their two or three thousand students and their often-mechanical or-
ganization of academics and activities.22 Again and again parents and
alumnae mention how flexible and sympathetic Abbot was when con-
fronted with students behind in Latin, say, and ahead in mathematics
or some other subject.23 Finally, there was the private school's basic
appeal: exclusiveness. Local Andover parents who fretted over their
status as the "right" people sometimes sent a daughter to Abbot to con-
firm it.24 President Conant could not prevent a pair of Illinois parents—
both transplanted Easterners— from noticing with horror their daugh-
ter's midwestern accent and shipping her to Abbot for a proper New
England education,25 nor could he keep hundreds of Abbot alumnae
from urging Abbot on relatives and friends.26

Shoring Up an Island

Generally speaking, new candidates and their families were attracted
to Abbot itself, rather than to Andover town and Abbot together, as
in years past. The self-contained town of prewar days, with narrow
roads leading out from the Abbot campus to woods or farmlands, was
no more. Long country walks were rare now, and even the skating
pond that Abbot once shared with a few neighbors had been aban-
doned for a flooded rink on the tennis courts, where the girls could

328 THE MORE TH INGS CHANGE, 1945-I963

skate on a smoother surface under watchful eyes. Movies and radio,
then television, had all but eliminated townspeople's attendance at Ab-
bot's Saturday lectures and student recitals; most of the town's newer
residents had no interest in Abbot Academy. Subdivisions were laid
over the hay meadows to make more room for the engineers who
worked in the new Raytheon missile plant or staffed the electronics
industries on Route 128, now that superhighway construction had
brought Boston closer than ever. New families came to take advantage
of Andover's public schools, not of "in-grown" Abbot Academy.27
The new population soon outnumbered the old. Those town connec-
tions that Abbot had sustained through its Treasurer had lapsed one
by one as the ageing Flagg resigned from the various Town Meeting
and South Church committees where he and his friends had once held
sway, while the newcomers gradually won a loud voice in town
affairs. More than ever before, Abbot was on its own.

Though none of the Trustees proposed major changes at this time,
the Board took several steps to strengthen the school and adjust its
administrative routines to new conditions. It was a strong group and
getting stronger, which was well, for several of its members would
eventually make decisions for Abbot more momentous than those
made by any Abbot Board since the mid-nineteenth century. Philip K.
Allen, P.A. '29, a distinguished local resident, came on the Board in
1948, to stay, with a two-year hiatus, until 1973, and to carry through
the merger of Abbot and Phillips Academies. Allen had briefly taught
both at Phillips and at the progressive Cambridge School, and was An-
dover's state senator and leading Republican at the time of his election
to the Board. Through the years his experience as director of several
other schools and of the Boston Symphony was to prove invaluable.
Two alumnae would serve long and vigorously: Helen Allen Henry,
'32, later Helen Anderson (1945-73), and Jane B. Baldwin, '22, invest-
ment banker and trust officer (1948-1970). In 1964 Alice Sweeney
would join them. Caroline Stevens Rogers, from North Andover's
public-spirited Stevens Mill family was not an alumna herself because
her mother, an Abbot day scholar, had found Miss McKeen's Abbot
"so terribly old-fashioned," but she was fascinated with education and
"thrilled to help."28 J. Radford Abbot, P.A. 19 10, the resourceful archi-
tect of the pre-war Draper Hall additions; Mrs. Frances Jordan, of
Cambridge; the Reverend Sidney Lovett, Chaplain of Yale and alumna
husband; and Margaret Clapp, President of Wellesley— all brought
fresh ideas from outside Abbot and were glad to work under Chair-
man Robert Hunneman, although Barton Chapin was sorely missed
after his retirement. All were to become powerful contributors to

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 329

future plans.29 And although Flagg had given over many of his duties
to a Trustee Investment Committee and a salaried Assistant Treasurer
after bringing Abbot through two financially chaotic postwar years, he
remained the Board's essential link with Abbot's traditional strengths,
speaking up always for continued independence from government en-
croachment, never forgetting the small helps that meant so much to
Abbot teachers. ("I want you to take this letter of credit with you,
just in case of emergency," he said to a protesting but grateful Mar-
guerite Hearsey as she embarked for her European trip in 1946.)
George Ezra Abbot had joined the Board in 1937 and accepted the
chairmanship in 1952— "to keep Flagg from running Abbot pipes down
under my backyard," he said, not entirely in jest, for he respected
Flagg's ability to accomplish anything Abbot needed done. Though he
died shortly afterward, his effectiveness was long remembered.

The War's end, the school's continued popularity, and fast-rising
costs impelled Abbot toward long-term planning.30 Yet again Miss
Hearsey was agitating for a financial campaign, this one leading to-
ward Abbot's 125th Anniversary in 1954. The Board sought rational
answers to the problem of Abbot's optimum size— and found none but
the seating capacity of the Chapel (225), the fit between classroom
space and the school's maximum class size of fifteen, and the Principal's
hunch that a relatively small school works best. With no more than
200 girls in her charge, Marguerite Hearsey could think of each as an
individual, and often handle special problems herself. Principal's files
bulge with long letters to students and their parents— for example, to a
Senior just expelled following the Student Council's decision that she
had not quite met the terms of probation; to the Senior's conservative
mother ("Although you are deeply disappointed about this I hope you

realize that herself is also suffering because of it, and I hope that

you may be able to forgive her . . . We must have faith in her and
help her turn this hard experience into good"), to two other schools'
heads describing the girl's disciplinary troubles ("she is at an important
turning point") and recommending her as a vigorous person of much
promise; then finally, in April, to the college where this young woman
had applied. In a small school parents could readily be counseled about
their daughter's academic placement, or congratulated at her election
to an important student office. At any rate, the Abbot buildings could
hold only so many. The Chapel seemed to be the ultimate limitation,
for in a crucial sense the Chapel was Abbot, having held since 1829
those recitations, those Draper Readings, and all those prayers of
women old and young seeking after knowledge, goodness, and courage.

Though she was uninterested in expansion, Miss Hearsey hoped for

330 TH E MORE TH INGS CHANGE, I945-I963

one more dormitory to replace the homelike but inefficient cottages.
The Trustees demurred. For several reasons, funds free to fuel expan-
sion of plant were in short supply. Emergency repair costs betrayed
the too frugal maintenance schedules of past years. As Flagg gradual-
ly gave up his formal responsibilities to Gardner Sutton, the capable
Assistant Treasurer, Abbot lost the secretarial help that Flagg and his
Merrimack Mutual office staff had been donating for decades. Replace-
ments must be hired, enough of them to handle the mounting paper
work attendant on new state regulations, federal school lunch aid, and
so forth. Thus nonacademic expenses climbed, and income had to rise
to meet them.

Teacher's salaries continued as a major concern.31 Although Abbot
fared extraordinarily well through the immediate postwar shortage of
teachers, the mid-fifties found the school unprepared to meet the
salary demands of either young or older teachers. At last the Trustees
began to feel that they could no longer impose on the loyalty of old-
timers. Teacher applicants knew they were in a buyer's market;32
furthermore, the War had raised women's pay from the half of men's
wages which women had received for the same work in 1937 to about
two thirds a decade later. By 1955 senior teachers in Andover's public
schools were receiving $4,200-4,400 a year; Abbot with its $3,400
average for long-tenured teachers, was losing its position just above
the median for girls private schools.33 Staff members also felt restive.
Responding to a polite but forceful protest from the grounds staff,
Flagg had raised the nine men's wartime pay 20 percent from the
$26-$43 a week they were receiving in 1941, but by 1950 the men
were comparing their wages with those of the Phillips staff, and
grumbling.34 The problem was how to raise all salaries without at the
same time raising the tuition ($1,800 a year in the early fifties) well
beyond the rate that was giving Abbot an edge in the competition
against comparable schools. No one seriously considered more drastic
measures, such as halving the service staff (fifty-seven strong by 1961)
and setting young ladies to grounds and kitchen work in order to
bring Abbot's nonacademic costs down to those of schools like North-
field or several of the Quaker academies. Even at its simplest, gracious
living cost money.

Pensions were another perennial. Despite Flagg's reservations, a
formal faculty retirement plan had been set up with the Teachers In-
surance and Annuity Association in 1946, and was made mandatory
"except in special cases" by 1949.35 Abbot was still coping case by
case with such older retirees as Mme. Craig, who refused to live in
the Andover Nursing Home even though Miss Hearsey or one of the

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 331

teachers visited her there every week; she had to be gently moved to
Salem by Flagg and her other Abbot friends.36 Alumnae of both the
Hearsey and Crane years remember with pity a few weary or ill
teachers who should perhaps have retired long before, and might have
done so had pensions been really adequate. The students finally told
Miss Hearsey about one old woman who would drop off to sleep dur-
ing class; she was tactfully let go within the week.37 There was no
pension plan at all for staff, though Miss Hearsey urged that the
Trustees adopt one.38 The Trustees would continue through the
1970's to assess each retiring teacher's independent income and pay her
yearly supplement to TIA A and Social Security accordingly.39 Though
these were practices guaranteed to appall any unionized public school
teacher, they were so deep in the tradition of the girl's boarding
school that no one could dislodge them. True, the same tradition pro-
vided some compensations: long-time staff retainers had their yearly
Christmas presents from the faculty; the most respected teachers could
take their turn with the $500 a year the Trustees set aside for summer
study, or even win an occasional leave of absence with part or full
salary; but none of these benefits quite made up for the financial dis-
parity between working for Abbot Academy and selling similar skills
to business, industry, or public schools.

Perhaps the Trustees could not be blamed, for Abbot had little or
no financial leeway. Flagg's last detailed financial review before he
handed most of the books to the Assistant Treasurer asked the rhe-
torical question: "What causes the operating deficit?" ($7500 in 1947,
$10,000 in 1948). To the Treasurer the answer was obvious: Even
though pensions seemed entirely inadequate to some, the total spent
for this fixed cost had jumped from $632 in 1939 to over $14,000 in
1947. The jump was the more striking in that operating expenses had
risen just 10 percent faster than total income.40 Thus Flagg was not
being merely petulant or old-fashioned: he resisted standardized pen-
sions and a more generous, more systematic salary scaje largely be-
cause he felt Abbot could not afford them.

Given this hallowed nonsystem, it is perhaps most surprising that
Abbot continued to evoke the loyalty it did from teachers and staff.
McKeen Custodian David Robb brought his wife to every concert and
play that took place in the assembly hall which he himself kept so
scrupulously clean, and left Abbot $10,000 at his death in 1973. Mr.
and Mrs. Jes Bonde, whom Miss Hearsey brought in to direct the
kitchen and the household staff, were so warm-hearted and capable
that bakers, dishwashers, and maids were willing to overlook the level
of their pay and the entire absence of Abbot pensions to stay for

332 TH E M ORE TH I NGS CHANGE, IQ45-I963

years at the school. The length of teachers' tenure through i960 also
seems remarkable. For many adults, Abbot was still home.

Finally, the Trustees sought to regain the momentum of the fund
drive that had been interrupted by the War. None seemed willing to
act as fast as Marguerite Hearsey wished. Much as Miss McKeen had
done, she reminded them repeatedly of the need for a new campaign,
and their response was similar to that of the nineteenth-century Trust-
ees. Too early for the next anniversary, they said. A bad time for a
capital campaign, they said.41 True, the Investment Committee was a
little cell of persuasion, taking up Flagg's gentle cudgel for an ex-
panded endowment, and an alumnae-parent fund waxed more success-
ful every year, but these were small things, for endowment interest
and donations combined amounted to less than $30,000 a year. One of
Abbot's latter-day development officers suspects that the male ma-
jority on the Board simply did not take seriously this female institu-
tion's need for larger science laboratories and better athletic facilities.
From 1945 on, the Trustees went through convincing motions, ap-
pointing and retiring committees on School Needs and Development,
allowing Miss Hearsey to mount her own campaign among 175 Abbot
fathers in 195 1 after she and Flagg had become convinced from par-
ents' financial references that the income of the average father had
substantially increased since the War. She wanted money for higher
salaries, a much larger scholarship fund, a gymnasium, and, simply,
for a hedge against the small but persistent yearly deficit.42 She didn't
get much from the fathers, and this convinced her that it was past
time to begin the major 125th Anniversary campaign. In the very
month that President Conant opened his guns on the United States'
dual school system, Miss Hearsey told the Trustees that the time had
come. She had been enormously encouraged by the new Alumnae
Council's interest in Abbot and its problems, and she was sure the
alumnae as a whole were "ready to work for some challenging cause."43

At last the Board agreed. Their latest Development Committee had
decided that a gymnasium should head the list of building needs:
this would free Davis Hall for its many competing uses, as well as for
the movies and other "secular programs" now accommodated in the
Chapel— most inappropriately, Miss Hearsey felt. The Physical Educa-
tion program was a full one: four or five hours each week of hockey,
basketball, and tennis in the fall; skiing, skating, and gymnastics in
winter; softball, track, archery, lacrosse, tennis, and horseback riding
in the spring; and modern or folk dancing throughout the year— all led
now by two athletics teachers and their faculty amateur assistants
rather than by Mary Carpenter and a few enthusiastic Seniors; but it

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 333

burst at the seams when the weather was poor, especially on those
dank February days when nearly every student in the school was
either hauled out protesting to ski or confined to Davis Hall. In every
age since 1852, Abbot had striven to create a self-sufficiency appropri-
ate to the times; now a gymnasium was a patent necessity.

The Trustees went to work to find large donors, while Helen Allen
Henry, '32, and Mary Howard Nutting, '40, took chief responsibility
for fund-raising among the alumnae. The campaigners received a
heartening boost in the form of a $50,000 gift from the Nathaniel and
Elizabeth Stevens Foundation; then fate gave them a rationale to create
a special memorial to Board Chairman George Ezra Abbot after his
untimely death in 1953. The campaign was entirely Abbot's work: no
outside fund-raisers were called in to help— or to interfere with— this
grand project of the school's extended family. Alumnae who had
loved Abbot sports rallied to lend a hand. One feels that many of the
married volunteers warmly welcomed work that was uniquely theirs
as women, as individuals with selves rooted in a past their husbands
and children, however beloved, had not shared. Surely among 3,400
alumnae a large share of the remaining $250,000 needed to build and
maintain the gymnasium could be found.

Miss Hearsey used the school's grand 125th Anniversary dinner to
appeal for funds in spring of 1954. The Senior Class of 1953 gave its
class gift to the fund, and two years of birthday Bazaars earned $2000
more. John Mason Kemper, Phillips' postwar Headmaster, brought
with his own contribution a ringing endorsement of the school his
mother had enjoyed in Miss Means's day. Other long memories were
awakened by the chosen site on the orchard hill, for that very land
had been Andover Theological Seminary's last gift to Abbot before its
move to Cambridge in 1908. Helen Henry and Marguerite Hearsey
visited other schools to assess their athletic facilities and sat with
architect-Trustee Radford Abbot again and again for planning sessions.

By the spring of 1955 $200,000 was in hand.44 Parents had donated
about $50,000, friends and Trustees $125,000; $32,000 had been given
by over a thousand alumnae, most of it in small donations, and hun-
dreds of alumnae came to the celebration of the building's completion
in February 1956. It was nothing like the Dear Old Girls' accomplish-
ment for the Centennial, but then, no one had expected so much, for
they knew that the alumnae as a group had less to give than in 1929.
Throughout the twentieth century an ever larger proportion of Abbot
graduates had married and given up their jobs or their plans for
them;45 in vain did Flagg remind women who had little income of
their own that new tax laws would benefit those who donated up to

334 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, IQ45-I963

3 percent of it to private schools and colleges.46 Still, the gymnasium
campaign showed clearly that Abbot could in two years' time draw
major resources from a constituency that believed in private institu-
tions, whatever the critics might think. The simple, handsome two-
story building with its 90 X 45 foot main gymnasium was cause both
for pride and for an immediate expansion of the sports program. It
would prove of central importance to the community of girls and
women over Abbot's last two decades.

Thus Mary Crane received from Miss Hearsey and all of Abbot's
friends a campus that provided ample space for learning, and room for
more students as well. The pressure of increased applications seemed
irresistible: by 1959 there were 231 Abbot students, including forty-
two day students from a community still keenly interested in educa-
tion. With a sigh from the older teachers, the school moved to Davis
Hall for daily Chapel in 1964, but the crowd meant more tuition in-
come and a richer program, so it was acceptable. Students took more
courses in all subjects except in art history and music, and they were
demonstrably brighter. Abbot scores on College Entrance Exams and
IQ tests show that early sixties girls were the most able as a group that
Abbot had enrolled since testing began: while the Seniors' median IQ
in 1 95 1 had been about the same as the median for all independent
schools (118), the median in 1961 (134) was much higher.47 More girls
took mathematics (77 percent), and nearly twice as many as in 195 1
took science (40 percent). Though neither Mrs. Crane nor the Trustees
opened new fund drives, the alumnae-parent annual giving effort drew
in more each year, until it stood in 1962 at $34,700, with over 40 per-
cent of the alumnae contributing; endowment the same year was
$1,542,000. With the recession of the late fifties out of the way, all
private schools grew fat. As if to confirm Abbot's treasured inde-
pendence and its defiance of James Conant's assumptions, the Trustees
voted in 1961 a resolution stating their opposition to any federal aid to
nonpublic schools, and passed it on to the National Council for Inde-
pendent Schools. If Abbot salaries were never high enough, if pensions
were inadequate and teaching loads were heavy (twenty hours a week,
on the average, with three preparations), the school as a whole, never-
theless, appeared to be a healthy old lady, pleasingly plump.

Undercurrents

No matter how prosperous Abbot seemed, no matter how hard the
Trustees and Mrs. Crane worked, the fifties and early sixties presented

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 335

the school with difficulties it had not known before. For generations
Abbot had projected a clear design for women's lives. Artist- writers
like Phebe McKeen and Emily Means, scholars like Laura Watson and
Marguerite Hearsey, powerful personalities like Philena McKeen and
Bertha Bailey, female teachers of many disciplines and talents— all had
represented in their very persons a life of responsible, fruitful inde-
pendence. None denied the richness of marriage and family life; in-
deed most warmly endorsed it,48 and many had cared gladly for par-
ents, sisters, and other dependent relatives or close woman friends
whenever they were needed.49 The great majority of alumnae now
married, but married or single, almost all of Abbot's graduates before
1950 had seen their school as a confirmation of women's need and
right to lives of their own. Yet suddenly, postwar America seemed to
have a different message for growing girls: by far the most worthy
role for a woman is that of wife and mother, seed-bed and support of
others' lives. No one can know why this message appeared so con-
vincing at the time. Had it something to do with the mass marketing
of teen magazines like Seventeen— which Abbot girls devoured— and
their pink-fluff visions of romance in a split-level home? Did family
life seem a safe Utopia to individuals scattered by the War? Did it pro-
vide a sanctuary from fearsome international problems that many
found overwhelmingly complicated and depressing? Whatever the
cause, the marriage asd birth rate ballooned to the point where the
single woman seemed vaguely incompetent if not perverted to many
Americans, the childless woman fatally unfulfilled. Sociologist Betty
Friedan blames advertisers among others for creating the "feminine
mystique" which glorified mothers and housewives and their sparkling
homes stocked with products A-Z; but surely the sincere wish to bring
up children conscientiously and well was part of it too. That very
wish was creating an unprecedented demand for an Abbot education
which peaked at a 4: i applicant-acceptance ratio in i960.

Americans had been obsessed with the "momism" issue ever since a
gaggle of self-important psychiatrists had told the world that most of
the 2,400,000 "psychoneurotics" rejected by Army recruiters or dis-
charged to civilian life during World War II were "the victims of
clinging and domineering mothers,"50 a delicious exaggeration that was
only heightened when other psychiatrists found the same cause for the
Korean War prisoners' vulnerability to brainwashing. Supposedly,
daughters suffered as much as sons: countless urban girls "will be
emotionally and morally ruined if some way cannot be found to sepa-
rate them from their mothers," wrote one enthusiast.51 Hidden in this
foolishness was the truth that a society rushing back to peacetime rou-

336 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, 1945-1963

tines had indeed pushed women out of their defense jobs and into the
home, while learned psychoanalysts loaded them with a sense of awe-
some responsibility for their children's personalities. The women most
aware of this responsibility tended to be the college graduates who
had the highest aspirations for careers outside the kitchen, and Abbot
girls grown to adolescence under the care of such mothers could not
but be perplexed about their own futures.

Families newly interested in private schools seemed to care not at all
about one of Abbot's original functions: to give young women a res-
pite between girlhood and domesticity. A good secondary and college
education was no longer proof against hasty marriage— often quite the
contrary. To Patricia Graham the obsession with marriage in colleges
of the fifties and early sixties was largely a demographic matter, the
result of the vast increase in the number of young women aspiring
toward, or attending, college. The less exclusive the group was, says
Graham, the more it was trapped in majority mores— and since colonial
times, America had basically believed that woman's "great vocation is
motherhood."52 By the late fifties the proportion of women doctoral
candidates was lower than it had been for fifty years, and the most
common age for a girl to marry was eighteen. Among the Seniors at
Smith in 1959, "no one had any real plans," Friedan found. "I don't
want to be interested in a career I'll have to give up," a college Junior
told her.53 Similarly, the 135 Abbot Seniors of 196 1 and 62 who wrote
autobiographies for English class or college counseling responded to
teachers' questions about their own futures outside of marriage with
only the vaguest thoughts. It is not surprising. Only 18 percent men-
tioned their mothers' work at all, and of the mothers who did work,
just four had paid jobs. Asked what they remember of talk about the
future, most Abbot alumnae of this time have echoed a 1955 gradu-
ate's recollections: "I don't remember that anybody had great career
plans. I think it was mostly agonizing 'will I ever get married?' I ago-
nized as much as everybody else ... if you weren't engaged by age
nineteen or twenty you'd had it."54 One does not have to assume that
these Abbot Seniors of the fifties and early sixties were "terrified of
becoming like their mothers" and thus "afraid to grow up"— Friedan's
too facile explanation for the general sense of purposelessness among
young women; into the 1961-62 Seniors' memoirs of family life— for
the most part close and happy— one cannot read such subconscious
fears.55 One can wonder whether a growing minority's obsession with
"the college of their choice," as Mary Crane described a worrying
early-sixties phenomenon, may be related to the pressures that parents

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 337

put on their daughters to prove to the world by their top grades, their
success with boys, and their entrance into prestige colleges how won-
derfully brought up they were.56 On the whole, however, boarding
school worked against child-smothering "Momism." The independence
that parents granted in sending their daughters to Abbot (an indepen-
dence cherished by most of the daughters) suggests a healthy respect
for their children's need to live lives of their own, while Abbot's con-
scious building of its students' self-respect very often carried forward
parents' deepest hopes for their children.

Nevertheless, inside Abbot the "feminine mystique" had subtle ef-
fects. Though many openly scorned its more mindless implications, its
pervasive spirit tended to undermine ancient assurances and to cloud
visions that had once been sharp and useful. The school's difficulty
recruiting committed teachers was one symptom; once teachers ar-
rived, students' attitudes toward them became a central factor in the
equation. The quality and character of teachers may have been as high
as ever— the point is hard to judge— but where a community of un-
married women seemed "perfectly natural" and on the whole admir-
able to Elizabeth Marshall in 1949, later students perceived many of
the single teachers as lonely and frustrated. As though to exempt her-
self from these stereotypes, one widow talked constantly to her stu-
dents about her late husband (a businessman whom she called "Mr.
Wallstreet"), her more recent lover, and the fact that she would in no
wise be teaching if she had any alternative, but her husband's suicide
after the Crash of 1929 had sealed her fate. This was a bit fantastic.
More persuasive, especially as housemothers entered the scene, was the
number of younger teachers who appeared to their students to be
marking time until marriage, and the number of never-married women
who seemed "somehow ashamed of themselves," as a disenchanted
1964 graduate put it. Obviously, many Abbot adults felt no such
thing, but any who did had chosen a discouraging setting for their
careers, for they were surrounded by fresh, nubile teenagers with all
of life and sex before them. "They were jealous of us," the 1964 gradu-
ate insists. "To all of us a teacher was somebody who couldn't get a
husband," says one ten years older. All these views must be taken as
they evolved in individual adolescent minds, for inevitably, each girl's
Abbot was a mirror of her own problems, hopes, and fears. Inevitably,
too, they became part of her particular Abbot education.

A handful of women appeared to their students and to some of the
younger teachers to be substituting complex in-school relationships for
tangled family ones. " was the most seductive and manipulative

338 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, I945-I963

person I've ever known," a fifties alumna reports; "she was constantly
using power plays to get students' affections, picking up kids and
dropping them when they displeased her." And "she was only one of
several" adds '64. These students and young teachers felt much less
antipathy toward "Mrs. Wallstreet," the loquacious, openly domineer-
ing Latin teacher who frankly made enemies among her colleagues by
her refusal to give up smoking or inch-long red fingernails. Alumnae of
the sixties actively enjoyed a colorful, capable pair whom to a woman
they suspect of having been lesbians. "At least they felt good about
themselves," says alienated '64. Abbot had moved a long way from the
all-female community which for a full century had confidently offered
to single women both a respectable role and a life-long home.

The school itself seemed actually to encourage the idea that one had
either a job or a baby. When one young teacher got pregnant, Abbot
hired someone to replace her without even asking whether she hoped
to return. She did not discover what had happened until she called the
school in August to order some books for her English class. To be sure,
Mrs. Crane had children in plenty, but "she was a noble widow— she
had to work, so it was all right," says this teacher now. Mrs. Crane
judges that she brought John Iverson and his wife to Abbot before
most teachers were prepared to accept a man and wife with small
children, for Abbot's first "house parents" did not feel welcome. Did
some of the old hands snub them because they feared to lose the ex-
clusive claim that single women had for so long held on teaching jobs
at Abbot? If so, their fears soon came true as another married teacher
or two arrived each year. It was not until the sixties that most of the
faculty (like all of the students) were ready to appreciate a new crop
of part-time married teachers with children, and the teacher who had
left to have her first baby happily returned, rejoining the English de-
partment in 1969 when the youngest of her four children was two
years old. Her eventual return to Abbot was partly inspired by Bar-
bara Sisson, herself a mother of three young children who committed
herself heart and soul throughout the 1960's to imaginative leadership
of Abbot's English department by day and to her own family by
evening and weekend. "She was a really important role model for me,"
says the mother of four, echoing the feelings of many alumnae. Though
formal faculty meetings were consumed with petty argument over
stockings downtown and dates up the Hill,57 Barbara Sisson and num-
bers of other new teachers both married and single spent much time in
these first years of the sixties puzzling out together the problem of
how to bring Abbot into step with the new decade.

HISTORY IN THE MAKING 339

Some teachers and more students had thought that the trouble lay in
all those restrictive rules. Well then, thought the faculty, let them visit
each other's rooms and have stereos, and whistle or drink cokes in the
hallways. Let them have more legal occasions to meet boys, and they
won't be so naughty. But as the rules eased a bit, the girls found
ways to be still naughtier. The controls on boy-girl friendships loomed
larger as Phillips contacts multiplied and required more and more sur-
veillance. It was one of the ironies of these years when girls were
thinking ever more of marriage that Abbot Academy continued to be
"terrified of sex," as Elizabeth Thomas expresses it, speaking for
many. Actually, news from the colleges suggested that there really
was something to worry about now. The accuracy of the Kinsey Re-
port was being demonstrated by student pregnancy and abortion rates
and statistics both sensational and reliable on premarital intercourse.58
At a Columbia University Teachers' Conference a psychiatrist told
thirty-four secondary educators that anything in sex "that promotes
successful interpersonal relations is moral."59 Thus the requests of Ab-
bot girls and Phillips boys for closer contacts up and down the Hill
were made to anxious ears. The response of Abbot's faculty was more
of the same: more chaperoned dances, more calling and dating, more
"cattle-market mixers" (as a once boy-shy alumna terms these com-
pulsory parties). After i960 Mrs. Crane did allow older students to
attend regular coeducational drama and singing groups with both
Phillips and Brooks School boys, Brooks being favored (as always)
because of its safe distance from Abbot, a whole township away.
These activities provided really welcome chances to get to know boys
outside of the usual, loaded "dating" context, but few younger stu-
dents were allowed to participate, and the new contacts only whetted
older students' appetites for more. Abbot would go no further. No
one suggested putting Abbot and Phillips on the same weekly sched-
ule so that joint activities could be easily arranged. There was no
serious, frank attempt at sex education beyond a regular biology
unit which some took and some did not; a visiting lecturer now and
then;61 and occasional forays made by the bold: Ann Werner, had
her 1964 Seniors read and write a critical essay on that contemporary
shocker, Sex and the College Girl, and Mrs. DeGavre brought Dido
and Aeneas to life for her Latin students with explicit descriptions of
sexual love and reflections on the responsibilities of a mature relation-
ship.62 A young married teacher shared the confusions of her first
pregnancy and the joy of her first baby with her history students.63
These were exceptions, however. On the whole the Abbot faculty re-

340 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, IQ45-I963

fused to deal with the sex issue. As they did in response to so many
out-of-class problems, they fell back on inherited traditions too long
unexamined.

It is true that hundreds and hundreds of students went through Ab-
bot hungry for its opportunities and taking rich advantage of them
during these strangely troubled years. They sought and found teach-
ers, friends, and a Principal who met their deepest needs. But there
seemed to be a growing minority who found Abbot's dissonance with
the world outside more stifling than stimulating, or who constantly
created cacophony themselves; and if the brass are out of tune, the
loveliness of the string section cannot be heard. The Trustees listened
to the orchestra with an ear for portents of Abbot's future, an ear
newly sensitive to the possibilities of change now that the conformist
fifties were giving way to the more open, restless sixties. They heard
only the brass, in spite of the conductor's efforts to bring the ensemble
into balance. It was time, they decided, to act.

The Final Decade, 1963-1973

No school is an island: before i960, every chapter of Abbot's story
had been bound in some degree to the realities and dreams of the
larger society. Yet insofar as any school could do, the old Abbot had
made itself a place apart, especially after the McKeen sisters came, and
it did its best to remain so through the early 1960's. During the final
decade, the outside world beat upon Abbot's doors with such insis-
tence that they must either be opened up or broken down. The Trust-
ees opened them and the world rushed in like a clumsy repairman,
knocking over tables and trampling valuable heirlooms, but also bring-
ing fresh air into musty places, and piling on the floor a heap of lumber
and tools with which to build anew.

This was the way of the sixties. They began conventionally enough:
a presidential election followed by ringing rhetoric, promises of equal
rights at home and a rational foreign policy abroad. But America had
heard these before. What was new was the far-off rumble of cracking
conformity: the California poets, tousle-haired and vulgar, putting
words to their longing for selfhood outside the System;1 radical
educator-writers like Paul Goodman who had finally found a public
willing to consider that young Americans were "Growing up Absurd";
above all, black leaders and their people, who had decided they could
count on no one but themselves, and had taken the American dream
into the streets, the lunch counters, and the schools, insisting that
promises would no longer do. New also was the power of the re-
action already gathering against all that seemed faddish, treasonous,
and dangerous at the extremes of this new activism.

At Abbot, at first, these foreshocks were barely felt. A Senior named
Cathlyn Wilkerson wrote an editorial for the March 1962 issue of
Cynosure, the new school newspaper, describing a chain of East Coast
peace marches against nuclear testing and the arms race, a demonstra-
tion in which eight Abbot students had taken part. Mary Crane had
let them go, but Abbot had been too comfortable to show more than
passing curiosity about the burning ideas they brought back with
them. Cathy wrote, "The eight of us who participated are also guilty
of inaction, of passively letting these ideas smoulder within us." A

344 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

gentle sensitive girl, she could plead for her cause and not be reviled.
Mrs. Crane and a few young teachers listened with interest, but most
of Abbot was busy preparing for the Winter prom.

Eight years later the girl had joined the Weathermen; her cause was
a desperate revolution against a state so corrupted— she felt— by the
misuse of force in Vietnam and the ghetto that only violence could
right it; and the ideas had become home-made bombs stored in a
Manhattan brownstone. Deep one night before it could ever be used
for the cause, the arsenal exploded. Cathy Wilkerson left the ruins
and the bodies of three friends and went into hiding from a world that
would not forgive. Thus were individual lives wrenched out of shape
by the pain and the apocalyptic dreams of the sixties, if they were not
lost altogether on the paddy fields, or in a Wisconsin physics labora-
tory blown up by the Weathermen, or in the cellars of brownstones.
Though Cathy Wilkerson has apparently held to her original ideals as
she continues in hiding, the force of those years swept away all sem-
blance of normal after-Abbot life for this young woman.

It was force enough to change a school, many schools. The char-
acter of change depended on how a given institution responded to the
shocks dealt out by events that defied comprehension. Fortunately
there was more to the sixties than assassination and urban riot, more
than napalm and Nixon: there was also new music, cleansing political
satire, black pride, red pride, participatory democracy in suburbs,
schools, environmental protection groups, and garbagemen's unions.
There was exhilaration and release. There was a revival of the women's
liberation movement as radical as any of its nineteenth-century in-
carnations, as sweeping and influential as the final Woman Suffrage
campaign before 1920. Finally, there was a romantic revolution in edu-
cation which drew together the strands of individualism, of Freudian
radicalism and reformist enthusiasm, finding expression in thousands of
new private schools. Most of these clung to the lunatic fringes only
briefly before dropping into bankruptcy or oblivion, but others sur-
vived. The best of them inspired older schools to think anew about
their own goals and methods, whether in fear for their futures or
in hope.

At Abbot Academy, then, change was inevitable. Yet it would be
much more than a helpless giving away to external pressures: an ac-
tivist Board of Trustees proved eager and able to help lead the school
throughout its final decade, meeting the turmoil outside with initiatives
of its own. In general, Abbot's response to the sixties and early seven-
ties was to stand on the most durable of its ancient virtues— its small
size, its care for individuals and attentiveness to all aspects of their

THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973 345

lives, its ideals of academic and artistic excellence— and like a carpenter
on a very firm stepladder, to reconstruct both its internal program and
its entire relationship to Phillips Academy. As in all revolutions, good
people suffered and much was lost, including, at last, the school's cor-
porate identity. The main business of schools is students, however.
While the original Abbot Academy was working itself out of a job,
more girls attended Abbot than in any decade in its history, and many
if not most of them thrived on the school's continual plan-making, its
conscious weighing of alternatives, its struggle to sort out the tradi-
tional, the fashionable and the truly innovative, all of which mirrored
those private, dialectical processes by which an adolescent grows to-
ward independence. The last chapters of Abbot's history are concerned
as much with beginnings as with endings.

The Trustees Decide

With great difficulty I begin to ivrite about myself,

because I am changing all the time.
Autobiographical essay by an Abbot Senior, 1961

As Abbot Academy opened the 1962-63 school year, an outsider
would have wondered what there was to worry about. According to
the numbers and graphs, the school was doing well. The applicant-
acceptance ratio had stabilized at about three to one; Abbot's "average
student" ranked above the median in independent school testing pro-
grams.1 There were some brilliant scholars and some not so brilliant,
but the school's age-old commitment to fostering a variety of talents
made it hospitable to both groups. Just five years earlier, an evaluation
committee of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges
had praised Abbot as "exceptionally well administered," made a few
suggestions for Advanced Placement courses, and recommended re-
accreditation.2 Income had more than kept pace with rising expenses;
endowments and investments had increased 65 percent in five years.
For some students Abbot continued to be "exactly what I needed:
protection from the world; an extremely simple place to grow up in
at a very complicated time," a community drawn together by morning
Chapel ("a special, cherished occasion"), by Phillips-Abbot mixers
("scary but fun") and, above all, by teachers who took time with girls
who needed time.3

Yet those discontented voices would not be stilled. One alumna who
loved the school says that nearly all her "most interesting friends
chafed tremendously under the insular, limited character of the place."4
Years vary, and 1961-62 seems to have been a tough one. To some stu-
dents and younger faculty, the school seemed stagnant: nothing hap-
pened, no issues, no discussion. "We just went along as a good girls'
school," two teachers recall. They remember Mary Crane wearying
herself trying to nudge it forward, and an active Senior class simply
taking over leadership as she grew discouraged.5 It was the year a
Phillips faculty wife and friend remembers her asking, "I'm running,
running all the time; why is it that it's so hard to get anywhere?"6

THE TRUSTEES DECIDE 347

College admissions statistics were heartening, and the variety of col-
leges chosen was on the increase (interestingly, only a third of '62
Seniors went on to the traditional women's colleges, compared with
75 percent in 1935), but the anxious push toward college made Abbot
"a place to get through" for numbers of girls and took some of the
shine and simple fun out of daily, present school life.7

Beginning in i960, a new school newspaper gave voice to the dis-
heartened as well as to the vibrant students who had long smiled on
the pages of the Alumnae Bulletin. The winter of 1961 was "confusing
and tense," at least for the Cynosure editor who wrote about it;8 at-
tendance at games had fallen and athletes were discouraged; too often
the whispering and fooling in Chapel by the many destroyed devo-
tions for the few. Of course students wrote sparkling accounts of
dances and plays too, and made genuine attempts to air issues that had
long gone unconsidered: the dearth of science courses for younger
students (twice as many students now took science as in 1951—40 per-
cent of the school— and more were asking for it); forced attendance
at lectures and concerts; the rigid, picayune rules (how can we boast
of an honor system centered on chewing gum and nylon stockings?
asked one reporter);9 and grades (why were Abbot's so low when
colleges wanted high ones?). One parent insists that "those Latin
teachers actually enjoyed flunking people."10 First letter writers, then
editors asked why Phillips and Abbot could not combine courses in
Physics and German.11 Cynosure described students groping for some
comprehensible relationship between their little school world and
events outside. A speaker from the Friends Service Committee "was
barraged with questions concerning work camps, integration and other
aspects of social work."12 The captive Saturday night audience was
startled awake by a Dr. Albert Burke, who quoted Mao Tse-Tung,
and described American education as out of touch with modern reali-
ty, utterly "irrelevant" to young people's lives.13 The editors kept all
Abbot apprised of the efforts Principal and faculty were making to
bring Russian and Far Eastern studies into the curriculum, and to re-
vive the emphasis of the Hearsey years on internationalism.

All this was healthy. None of it could dispel the sense of several
Trustees that Abbot was becoming dated— inching forward while the
world leapt ahead. Why had Abbot's applications stagnated following
the sharp rise in 1957, while applications to most competing girls' schools
had gained steadily? Sargent's Handbook of Private Schools assured
the school-shopper that Abbot had "maintained for more than a cen-
tury the even tenor of its traditions, undiverted by passing fashions,"14
but was this raison d'etre in the sixties? Principal and Trustees had

348 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

been discussing a new major fund-raising campaign— but Philip Allen,
Helen Henry, and others were asking themselves how they could per-
suade donors to provide for the future of an institution whose present
was almost unexamined. The Trustees' unanimous agreement on the
need for new funds gave this restless minority the opening they were
looking for. They asked for and got a commitment from the Board
for a long range plan which would bring Abbot out of limbo.15

Philip Allen was the Trustee who least cared for limbo, and now
Allen was emerging as the force behind reform. "It was time to take
this nineteenth century school with its crinoline and old lace, and pump
it up into the twentieth century," Allen has said. Highly experienced
in politics of all kinds, from Andover Town Hall where he served as
Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, to Washington, D.C., Allen was
accustomed to aiming high and getting there; if he didn't make it the
first time, he had the confidence to try again. But here was no self-
seeking manipulator: Allen is the perfect politican, because he really
loves people. He seeks to understand and respond to their interests and
needs, even while he refines and pursues his own goals. Long ago in
his life he had taught English for two years at the progressive, coedu-
cational Cambridge School. It was a wonderful experience which he
kept tucked away in his mind. As he went on to teach at Phillips for
two more years and to send his daughters briefly to Abbot, he won-
dered why these two admirable Andover schools could not shed their
hauteur and open themselves to fresh ideas as Cambridge had done
with such zest in the 1930's. In his wildest dreams he asked why they
couldn't simply combine into one coeducational school? No one who
knew Allen laughed. His wildest dreams had a way of coming true.

A special Trustees' meeting in April of 1963 took large first steps;
Robert Hunneman, Board Chairman, proposed two Trustee "Visiting
Committees," one to meet with the Principal and department heads to
consider curriculum and student affairs, the other to examine Abbot's
scholarship and salary policy.16 At the June meeting the Trustees
voted to engage a firm of New York educational consultants, Cresap,
McCormick and Paget, to conduct a complete review of the organiza-
tion and administration of the Academy, and to make suggestions for
improvements.

Plans

Cresap and Company went to work with a will, interviewing all Trust-
ees and most of the faculty and staff at length, searching books, asking
and getting administrative analyses of costs and tasks. By January 1964

THE TRUSTEES DECIDE 349

its confidential report was ready for the Trustees, all ioo pages of it.
It began conservatively enough with a description of Abbot's sound
financial position and a recommendation for clearer accounting prac-
tices; but the second section, Organization for Top Management, must
have awakened the most somnolent Trustee reader, for it indicated a
substantial discrepancy between Abbot's present structure and its need
for clear, tight overall administration, as well as for a system to ensure
future planning in tune with mid-twentieth century business and edu-
cational practices.

Much of the Report boils down to simple home truths for Trustees:
decide policy and long-range goals, delegate power to the Principal to
implement them, and evaluate the Principal's success in achieving them.
But the implications were more specific, potentially more upsetting—
and more helpful to those who wanted real change. If Abbot was to
commit itself to college preparation, for example, its academic pro-
grams and college advising would have to be based on a thorough
knowledge of colleges and their requirements, (considerably more
thorough, is the suggestion, than that obtaining). The implication:
time for the Board to make sure it happened. The Trustees must finally
settle the question of Abbot's optimum size, and plan accordingly. If
they were not happy with Abbot's salary scale, they should say so and
do something about it. The Board itself required overhauling. Most
revolutionary, given Burton Flagg's more than half a century as work-
ing Treasurer, Trustee terms should be limited to six years, to be re-
newed only twice. (After a year's time, an ex-Trustee could be
elected again.) No Trustee should serve after age seventy-five. The
Treasurer and Assistant Treasurer should "cease to be regarded as
members of the administration"; they should provide counsel and
guidance, but leave day-to-day financial administration to a staff
headed by a full time business manager well versed in modern budget-
ing and cost-accounting procedures.17

In anticipation of this published recommendation, Robert Hunne-
man had already gone with Phil Allen to visit Mr. Flagg and tell him,
gently, that he must retire. "It was one of the hardest things I've ever
had to do," says Allen now; it could not but be a terrible blow to the
ninety-year-old Flagg, who had apparently assumed that he and Abbot
would go on together, while he became ever weaker and more deaf,
until he died.18 The various trustee-treasurers' endurance had been
Abbot's strength for 130 years, but by the early sixties, no individual's
life-time commitment could itself perpetuate an institution resilient
enough to meet the challenges facing independent schools. New blood
must be guaranteed by new by-laws.

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THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

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The Cresap Report proposed other conduits for fresh air: non-
trustees to serve on Board committees, and a procedure for setting
up ad hoc Trustee committees (these could and eventually would in-
clude teachers and students) which would dissolve once their work
was done. Members of the Trustees' Educational Policies and Student
Affairs Committee must oversee admissions policies, curriculum, schol-
arships, teaching loads and class size, library standards, "quality and
methods of instruction," and extracurricular affairs, with the view to
revising policy and judging performance.19

Finally, Abbot's overall organization should be simplified, with the
principal made responsible for all academic and financial administra-
tion, while a Secretary of the Academy would lead long-range plan-
ning efforts, organize Board staff work and record-keeping, and take
on special assignments, reporting directly to the Board.

Except for the new, clean arrangements of Board functions and the
professionalization of business management, this plan projected little
change in the principal's formal authority. Abbot had never been a
democracy: traditionally the principal consulted teachers as much as
she wished, and then declared her decision. As the consultants saw it,
Mary Crane's problem was to engage the faculty more effectively in
school affairs. Most full faculty meetings were "incredibly boring,"
teachers of 1962 and 1963 remember, because there was little to decide
beyond chaperonage procedures or the question of how one was to
tell from a distance— now that seamless stockings were in— whether
girls were wearing stockings or not. The resolution of many dilemmas
over rules was often determined by who got to Mary Crane first out-
side of faculty meetings, and spoke most insistently— even to the point
of getting her to change her mind on a decision already announced,20
while most academic and admissions matters were decided in private
by Miss Tucker as Director of Studies, the Principal, and, occasional-
ly, individual department chairmen. (Mrs. Crane rarely consulted the
chairmen before hiring teachers for their departments, a point which
rankled when her decisions went awry.) The Principal's attempts to
stimulate full faculty discussion of substantive matters, such as the
need for a consulting psychiatrist, usually met stony ears, possibly be-
cause the teacher-housemother group as a whole was not accustomed
to difficult, many-sided dialogue.21 It didn't help that some of the old
pros thought the housemothers rank amateurs, nor that for a few young
teachers, Abbot was only a way-station to marriage, and that more
committed women had only scorn for their opinions or their com-
plaints. Cresap and Company pondered the muddle of the day-to-day
difficulties their investigations had uncovered and made a series of

THE TRUSTEES DECIDE 353

proposals to clarify faculty and staff responsibilities and to open up
communication and reporting within the school.

Their report suggested that the teachers' voice in school decisions be
more systematically evoked through an elected faculty "senate," or
cabinet. They proposed that the director of studies preside over all
curriculum development, athletics, and scholarships as well as college
advising and daily instruction, and that a new director of residence
take responsibility for students' nonacademic life, leaving the principal
free to oversee the whole. They wanted cost accounting for each
course (cost per student, cost per class), an equitable rearrangement of
teacher workloads, a merit salary scale, and more efficient use of the
nonacademic staff, which now amounted to 101 full-time people, in-
cluding an aging grounds crew, half of whom were over sixty-five
(lacking pensions, one puts off retirement).

Consultants' recommendations often go straight to the wastebasket,
once Trustees' consciences have been appeased by the appearance of
their report. The Cresap Report was important to Abbot Academy
because nearly every one of its proposals was implemented during
Abbot's final decade. As old-Abbot people accustomed to the more
informal arrangements retired or were shifted to other tasks within
the school, job descriptions were tightened up, contracts were written,
and staff people who had done five or six different jobs concentrated
on one or two. These rational schemes generated some irrationalities:
Faculty contracts listed a series of specific tasks but always ended with
that ominous phrase "and whatever further duties the school shall
require of you." Evelyn Neumark, a versatile "secretary" who served
for fifteen years as receptionist, as chief assistant to Alice Sweeney and
then to Eleanor Tucker, as informal counselor for troubled students,
as editor of the Parents' Newsletter, and as organizer of Parents Day
and a steadily increasing Alumnae-Parent Annual Giving Fund, began
feeling under-used the year after a Director of Development and
Secretary of the Academy was finally hired in 1969 at two and a half
times her salary, and so left. There would be expensive lags and over-
laps: the savings Cresap and Company promised from streamlined de-
ployment of staff could not materialize when able (male) administra-
tors came so high, at least not until Abbot's enrollment expanded in
the early seventies to justify their ministrations. Still, the Trustees kept
invoking the Cresap Report's principles as they moved into leadership
of Abbot. For Philip Allen, who became Board President in 1965 and
immediately assumed a more active role than had any Trustee since
Samuel C. Jackson in his early heyday, the Report provided outside
confirmation of his own long-time worries about Abbot's viability in

354 TH E FIN AL DECADE, I963-I973

an age of change, as well as backing for his ideas about modern man-
agement practices. The Trustees held two special Board meetings in
the spring of 1964 to get the new systems under way; the three sub-
committees immediately began functioning, and the Executive Com-
mittee met every single month from 1964 to 1973 to carry out the
responsibilities the Board had set for itself.22 One by one over the
next eight years, the Trustees' votes turned the Cresap proposals into
realities.

Action

Mary Crane happily tackled the new tasks established for her. Though
her responsibilities being made more clear were made more awesome,
the changes were designed to support her best efforts, and in many
respects they did. The Trustees' new Administrative Policy Committee
chaired by Frances Jordan, worked most closely with her. The first
decision made by the Committee was its most crucial: it recommended
that Eleanor Tucker become Vice-Principal in charge of the academic
program, giving her authority to direct curricular affairs as well as to
advise Mrs. Crane on the hiring of teachers and on all nonacademic
matters. The experience Miss Tucker thus gained was shortly to prove
invaluable to Abbot. This done, Committee and Principal turned to
pensions and salaries, two areas to which Mary Crane could bring
much wisdom, thanks to her NAIS and NAPSG Committee work on
both subjects. Beginning September 1, 1964, Abbot's share of TIAA
contributions was expanded from 50 percent to 75 percent, with each
teacher contributing only 2.5 percent of her salary. The Committee
backed Mrs. Crane's arguments for higher salaries and merit raises.23
Some salaries bordered on the ridiculous— $3,400 for a librarian ex-
pected to teach library use and reference work, and $4,800 for one
long-tenured department head. In five years, teachers' (and librarians')
salaries would increase about 40 percent; by 1967, $5,000 was the low-
est salary, $5,600 the median, and $8,000 the highest.24 In the last years
of Mary Crane's tenure, the Administrative Policies Committee actual-
ly helped the Principal make decisions on individual salary awards.
Trustees cannot get much more involved than this.

Backed by the Committee, Mary Crane also initiated a large increase
in scholarship aid, to come both from Abbot's own scholarship funds
(which doubled to $30,000 by 1967) and from new federal and foun-
dation scholarship programs for underprivileged students, most of them
urban blacks.25 A few years before, Mrs. Crane had brought two Greek

THE TRUSTEES DECIDE 355

students to Abbot on full scholarship, and had welcomed Muthoni
Githungo, a Kenyan girl willing to leave her beloved village to pre-
pare for medical or dental training under the J.F. Kennedy Scholar-
ship program. Muthoni described in poetry the sorrows and hopes
with which she bade farewell to her grandmother and came to America:

Tear upon tear falls then,
Constantly flowing;
On her wrinkled face
And she holds me tightly
And says, "Muthoni dear
Don't go to America,
Stay here in Africa
And take care of me."

Thus she said, and I

Told her, "Oh Cucu,

Can't you understand?

To America I must go;

The land of freedom,

Of cowboys and of education.

There I will be educated

And I will return as a great doctor."

After I said that,

She took my hand

And kissed it.

She then placed it near her breast

And blessed me.

Abbot students had raised nearly $2,000 to help match the govern-
ment grant; thus Muthoni was able to spend two years at Abbot pre-
paring for college, eventually to return to Kenya as an expert dentist.26
Anxious to increase Abbot's minority enrollment to the four girls a
year the outside programs allowed, the Trustees entirely left behind
their own resolutions and Flagg's scruples about federal involvement in
private enterprise. All over the country, youngsters were seeking quali-
ty education; it seemed an age since 1944 when Miss Hearsey and her
faculty committee looked for "especially able girls who needed help"
and were unable to find any.27 Now the Trustees' new Planning and
Development Committee put the acquisition of scholarship monies
high on its list of long range needs, along with increased salaries, and
took the first steps toward a major fund drive by again retaining Tam-
blyn and Brown, fund-raising consultants.

356 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-I973

Finally, Cresap and Company had described several of Abbot's older
buildings as in "fair" to "poor" shape, and pointed out that only the
newest were "excellent." It was not much of a distinction for Draper
Hall to boast the oldest hot water heating system in New England.28
The consultants confirmed Philip Allen's long-held opinion that the
whole plant was suffering from a maintenance policy too frugal to do
the job; iMrs. Rogers' Buildings and Grounds Committee got right to
work on this problem, and began assessing future building needs.

The Cresap report— and the Trustees— had proposed that the Prin-
cipal consult regularly with elected faculty on matters of school-wide
importance. The resulting faculty "Cabinet" represented both young
teachers and old,29 and talked of much more than seamless stockings:
student workload, improved counseling, a fairer class ranking system,
the question of mixed-class dormitories, the low morale of resident
faculty, and the need for better new faculty orientation. (Clothes did
intrude when students complained that young faculty wore jeans
while they could not.) Mary Crane had worried about such problems
for years— "We have no plan for in-service training of teachers, al-
though I cheerfully engage in-experienced ones," she had told the
Trustees—30 but with the Cabinet's help, she would do something about
it. The Cabinet helped set the agenda for full faculty meetings, which
were now less frequent but more serious.31 Department heads met to-
gether to make long-range academic plans, and arranged for teachers
to present particularly worthy teaching innovations to the academic
faculty as a whole. To keep track of day-to-day matters, the Direc-
tors of Studies, Residence, and Admissions met with Mary Crane as a
Faculty Council. All these mechanisms materially strengthened both
the Principal's perceptions of faculty needs and opinion, and the teach-
ers' sense of responsibility for Abbot Academy as a complex whole.

The various consultative groups helped Mrs. Crane with one of the
most difficult areas of school management: the split between the teach-
ing faculty and the housemothers. Part of this was sheer snobbery by
a few teachers, part was their age (the average housemother of the
mid-sixties was 64 years old), but part was that a few housemothers
were at Abbot earning low salaries because they were untrained for
other work.32 "A really good housemother was harder to find than a
good teacher," remembers Mary Crane.33 Students had no mercy on
the weak: "They're just sentimental old bags," wrote a Sherman
House correspondent. A housemother was all but helpless when her
charges stuffed their beds with dummies and joined each other in a
remote bedroom for a midnight beer party, or when the whole of
Abbey House embellished a winter night by screaming out their

THE TRUSTEES DECIDE 357

windows from exactly 10:47 to 10:48 p.m.34 Turnover was swift.
" 'Mummsie' ruined parts of our year this year," wrote Sherman
House in the early sixties, "but Mummsie is leaving, thanks to the
whole dorm." A '62 graduate whose parents worked abroad looked
through four years for attention and guidance from Abbot's house-
mothers, and could not find it. "The gap was enormous," she says
now. Some housemothers were successful in spite of the odds. "Mrs.

[Mummsie's successor] is a wonderful, wonderful person. You

may not appreciate her fully at first, but the more the year goes
on . . ."35 So was Isabelle Trenbath, who also arranged and oversaw
student social functions for years; so, apparently, were several others
whom alumnae remember with great affection. The majority were
simply neutral presences; they could rarely influence, or interfere with,

girls already anxious for (and often deserving of) independence. "

isn't all there," but she tries to be nice, and "it's the thought," wrote
one youth who doubtless imagined that she herself would never age.36
Few blamed the housemothers for the rules that grated on them. It
was the faculty who ordered the main power switch turned off every
night at lights-out time, the faculty who forbade earrings for all but
Seniors. (If you had had your ears pierced before coming to Abbot,
you had nothing but the holes for decoration.) A 1965 alumna sees her
three years at Abbot as a fascinating immersion in a superior academic
experience and, out of class, in a "dying tradition that taught me a
lot— a terrifying amount—" about the constraints most women took for
granted just before the women's liberation movement took hold.37 It
was an old story at Abbot, this uneasy combination of rigorous teach-
ing and a social context "overwhelmingly genteel," as Lise Witten has
put it. Increasingly, Mrs. Witten and other new teachers questioned
the arrangement. In the spring of 1965, the Trustees joined them,
hypothesizing that Abbot's antique rule structure might after all be
related to stagnating applications, and appointed a three-woman com-
mittee (Helen Henry and Abby Kemper from the Trustees and Caro-
lyn Goodwin from the faculty) to propose changes. It was a studied
choice of personnel. Abby Castle Kemper, '31, had come back to An-
dover from her deanship at St. Catherine's School in Virginia to marry
John Kemper, Phillips headmaster, and was familiar both with the
special traditions of all-girl schools, and with the pressure for more
normal access to Abbot that Phillips's student leaders were bringing
on her husband, who tried always to respond to their more reasonable
requests. Carolyn Goodwin was highly respected by both faculty and
students for her tough good sense and her saving wit; Helen Henry
had similar qualities, along with the trust of the alumnae. This group

358 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-I973

listened as attentively to students as they did to faculty, taking on
willy-nilly an investigative role which they found discomfiting but
necessary to the job.

The Committee proposed no drastic changes. "We cleared out a
lot, but there had been so many rules before, you'd hardly notice,"
says Carolyn Goodwin. All three women agreed with Mary Crane
that clear, predictable rules were the more necessary to adolescent
growth when the world outside was wobbling toward the unknown,
abandoning "long-held beliefs" on its way.38 They found it reassuring
that Miss Porter's School and Emma Willard also required tie shoes.
They did, however, plow up the weed-garden of little regulations and
recommend that a student-faculty Honor Board free the Student
Council from its disciplinary role to concentrate instead on repre-
senting and organizing its student constituency. Cynosure came alive
with printed exchanges on rules and educational philosophy. The
Committee's fresh look at the rules inspired gratitude and hope in both
students and teachers, who saw now that Abbot could be moved.

Comings and Goings

Perhaps the most pointed criticism the consultants had made was of
Mary Crane's teacher-recruiting procedures; she "has relied too heavi-
ly upon casual opportunities, as contrasted to establishing objectives
for the academic program and then searching for the best available
talent to fulfill it."39 In one of her characteristically self-critical Re-
ports to the Trustees, Mrs. Crane had summed up her part of the
problem:

I must confess that it is difficult to assess the value of a teacher
who applies for a position involving dormitory duty. Some who
seemed very promising, with experience in working closely with
girls, have proved not very capable of the leadership, guidance
and discipline which the work calls for. This is not entirely any
teacher's fault; I am sure there is some lack of conviction on my
part, as well, and probably not enough administrative control
and encouragement.40

One new resident teacher arrived at Abbot in time for the first faculty
meeting, assessed her duties, and promptly left. Mrs. Crane replaced her
almost immediately— with a person who proved nearly as poor a
choice.41 At the same time, the consultants welcomed the Principal's
forceful and well documented assertion that Abbot's salaries were still

THE TRUSTEES DECIDE 359

so low as to make it nearly impossible to find experienced resident teach-
ers.42 They praised Abbot's success— which was really Mary Crane's
success— in retaining "stimulating" nonresident teachers whose outside-
Abbot interests had much enriched their relationships with students.

The problem was widespread; it seemed that very few American
teachers of the early sixties wanted to live in any dormitory in any
boarding school,43 but that did not solve Abbot's need. One of the
Principal's most difficult tasks was to find a director of residence who
could take on broad nonacademic responsibilities as the consultants
had recommended. Old soldiers like Mildred Hatch ("Hatchet" of the
Sherman House documents), who both taught Latin and oversaw Ab-
bot's dormitory life with gruff good humor, simply could not be
found.44 Anyone who cared to enforce every jot and tittle of Abbot's
out-of-class rules tended to have little energy left for the job's more
friendly responsibilities, such as arranging social occasions and coun-
seling students. Mrs. Crane's nominee for Director of Residence made
herself so unpopular by her passion for propriety that girls avoided
her. If she saw you wearing a suspiciously short skirt, you had to
kneel on the floor in front of her to prove it would touch the carpet.
Students taunted her by following the letter of the Sunday dress rules
with scorn for their spirit: hats, yes, but the dowdiest or most out-
landish you could find; stocking with runs in them ("But they're the
only pair I have!")— all these passed inspection but infuriated the
inspector.45 Finally, the Trustees received so many parent complaints
about this unbending lady that she was dropped in the middle of the
fall term of 1965, and was replaced by Christine Von Erpecom, a
personable and effective dramatics teacher who was given the new
title Dean of Students.

Mrs. Crane carried her search for teachers farther afield each year
after the Cresap Report. True, three of the six full-time women
brought in for 1965-66 graduated from Vassar, but MIT gave Abbot
a math teacher that year, and Reed College had trained Carolyn Kel-
logg (later Mrs. Salon), an inventive and demanding biology instruc-
tor. Still, the problem would not go away. Though salaries crept up-
ward, Mrs. Crane told the Trustees in 1966 how difficult it was to
attract diverse faculty: all of Abbot's teachers were female, and nearly
all were either in their twenties or over fifty, a combination that
seemed to portend internal division and future instability. No one
could know at the time that several of the youngsters would not teach
a few years and move on, as so many of Abbot's young teachers had
recently done, but would stay to build the school: Jean St. Pierre in
English, Faith Howland Kaiser in classics, Jean Bennett in mathe-

360 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

matics, and Mary Minard, '55, who became at age twenty-five one of
the best organized chairmen the History Department had ever boasted,
as well as Carolyn Kellogg Salon and others already mentioned.

Abbot had special cause for discouragement in 1964, when Isabel
Hancock, the last of Miss Hearsey's Virginian friends, died tragically
of cancer. Still vigorous and comely in her fifties, Miss Hancock had
welcomed hundreds of applicants and new girls from her admissions
office, given old girls her time as a friend and quiet adviser, and taught
many of them mathematics or astronomy. "A beautiful person" says
one young teacher, who only came to know her courage and cheer-
fulness as it shone through illness. Her strength waxed and waned
through an agonizing series of treatments, and most of Abbot clung to
each shred of hope till all was hopeless. "It was a heartbreaking time,"
a parent remembers, and when it was over, "a light had gone out."
Students and faculty together organized a special memorial service and
a fund drive for a mathematics prize to be given in Isabel Hancock's
honor. She would not be forgotten, and her absence only underscored
the rarity of those devoted, single teachers on which Abbot had so
long depended.46

Now the key position of admissions director had to be filled.
The consultants had urged that Abbot find an admissions expert who
could recruit as well as graciously receive, a tall order given the
$6,500 salary projected for the position. Mrs. Crane thought she had
what Abbot needed in a rather elderly woman who had worked
in girls' schools admissions through the 1950's; she hired her without
consulting the Board, as was her privilege. The new Director was con-
scientious, and (say, several teachers and parents) fatally aristocratic.
Invariably, she dwelt on Abbot's Brahmin connections when candidates
came to visit. Her notes on interviews stressed each girl's clothes, her
"poise," and the gentility (or lack thereof) of the parents who had
brought the candidate. In a year when several poised but mediocre stu-
dents were accepted, she turned down a brilliant applicant whose face
and accent were apparently all wrong (as a Bryn Mawr student, the
same girl urged her sister to apply to a new Abbot Admissions Office,
and the sister was accepted). A high point of her year was the first
faculty meeting in September, when she briefly described each new stu-
dent to the faculty ("from a fine old New York family," or "father
with Continental Can").47 Instead of floating on the tide of private
school applications through 1967, Abbot's applications slowly declined
until they stood at 2:1 (two applicants for each place).48 No one per-
son can possibly be blamed for this problem— after 1967, all private
school applications began to sink— but the Trustees were enough con-

THE TRUSTEES DECIDE 361

cerned about admissions to ask Mrs. Crane's appointee to retire a year
early, and to replace the old admissions operation with an entirely dif-
ferent team for the last four years. Competence and long experience in
the world of traditional girl's schools were not enough to meet the
challenges of the sixties.49

Finally, the woman who had hired and fired and overseen all for
eleven years was herself replaced by this determined, activist Board of
Trustees. Again, Philip Allen led the change-makers. "I think the po-
sition of Chairman is just exactly what you make of it," says Allen
now. "You don't want to interfere, but sometimes you have to."
Beginning with his election to the Chair in the fall of 1965, Allen
"interfered" until an entirely new administration took over in 1968.
Not that he was alone: nearly all of the Board supported him with ex-
perienced sympathy both for the Principal and the long-term needs of
the Academy. Most of the Trustees seem privately to have agreed that
Mary Crane should have about two years to work within the new
administrative guidelines, but if she could not move fast enough, they
were prepared to ask for her resignation. They admired their Principal
as a "superb teacher,"50 a humane and hardworking person— in fact,
their very fondness for her and their gratitude for her effort caused
them to put off for a year the final resolution of her tenure.51 Who
could fail to be touched by a Principal whose central charge to her-
self and her faculty was that "we ... be able to love: our work, our
subjects, our students, our colleagues and even ourselves"?52 Never-
theless, they had begun to feel that the rush and pressure of events
now required more energetic, more focused leadership if Abbot was
to do more than drift. These days, to drift might be to drown; and
this Principal was functioning rather like a skillful dean who fields
day-to-day problems, but never really digs into the task of planning
for the long future.53 "It was a holding operation," says one teacher.
For all her successes in helping troubled individuals, recent alumnae as
a whole were not behind her. Money talks, and so do money-raisers:
Tamblyn and Brown, Abbot's fund-raising consultants who came once
more in 1966 to survey the field for a major campaign, found that over
half of the 45 alumnae they questioned felt the current administration
was weak. "She didn't seem happy in her job by the time we left,"
a 1964 alumna remembers. A 1962 graduate has said for many: "Mary
Crane was a wonderful person, but she should never have been a
principal."

Perhaps more accurately, the sixties were not the right time for the
kind of principal Mary Crane could be. In voice, in demeanor— in all
her virtues as well-she was "Old New England, Old School,"54 while

362 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

Abbot was groping toward new modes of thought and action. She
herself knew that "in the great stirring of energy and imagination
within the field of education, now there is no possibility of remaining
static."55 As one of the first Directors of the National Association of
Independent Schools (two years) and a member of the NEACSS Ex-
ecutive Board, she had long been in on the exchange of ideas which
these organizations fostered.56 Now the NAIS spread news of innova-
tive courses and teaching methods in every one of its conferences and
publications, and numbers of the Trustees read the NAIS Bulletin.57
Activities on the Hilltop supplied another goad to Abbot. Phil Allen
was Trustee for Phillips Academy as well as for Abbot, while Gren-
ville Benedict was simultaneously Abbot Trustee and Phillips Dean of
Students. Phillips had just finished a $6,000,000 building program, had
expanded the scholarship program to open Phillips to any qualified
boy, no matter what his family's income, had raised faculty salaries to
match the top secondary schools in the country, and was embarking
on a detailed examination of curriculum, admissions, school gover-
nance, and residential life through a faculty-administration steering
committee that was fully prepared to propose radical changes, if neces-
sary, to bring Phillips in line with the soundest of reformist ideas.

Ironically, Mary Crane's own ideal of a dynamic, responsive school
also inspired her Board to ask whether Abbot could not more quickly
become such a school with a fresh principal. Mrs. Crane identified the
basic problem in spring of 1963:

The trouble— and the fearful responsibility— is to guess what kind
of training we must give girls who are growing up in a world
that seems totally different from the one in which we found our
experience.58

No adult grown to womanhood in that "totally different" world
could have tried harder to bridge the distance to her students' lives.
Through difficult times she had maintained Abbot's strength even if
she could not increase it; thanks to her efforts and those of her most
energetic teachers, the old Academy was poised for forward move-
ment at a time when a few other girls' schools seemed hopelessly
stuck. When two Trustees spoke to her informally in the winter of
1966 and told her she must resign following her sabbatical leave in
1966-67, she was neither surprised nor angry. She knew her limitations
as an administrator, and she soon found herself longing to do more of
what she had done supremely well: teaching, and leading students on
archeological tours of the ancient world. The last thing in her mind
was to dig in her heels and shout for grievance procedures, as did a

THE TRUSTEES DECIDE 363

late fifties principal of the Masters School, who with her assistant
simply refused to budge until she was fired. One of Mary Crane's most
valuable qualities as an educator had been a conviction born of the
changes in her own life that personal growth never stopped, that one
"should be continuously aware of the tension between knowledge
gained and knowledge yet to be won."59 In the spring of 1966 Pierce
College in Athens invited Mrs. Crane to serve as Interim Principal for
the High School division. By summer she had thrown all her energy
into planning for this new work, and by November the Trustees had
received her letter of resignation and accepted it "with regret."60 The
following year she would begin a second career of art and history
teaching at the Winsor School in Boston, where her talents have been
much in demand for ten years. From Boston and from Athens she has
generously cheered Abbot on, returning for her youngest daughter's
graduation and for other grand occasions, and enjoying those special
alumnae friends to whom she was— and still is— Principal.

"Make No Little Plans"

Everything that once certified culture and

civilization is in doubt.

. . . The school manager of the old style is a lost man.

Peter Schrag, quoted by Donald Gordon

An explosion is an explosion, and an explosion is

never done little by little.

Germaine Arosa, interview

Resignation became Mary Crane's choice because she wished the best
for Abbot, and she realized that new directions must be steered by a
fresh hand.1 For much the same reason, Eleanor Tucker took herself
out of the running for Principal2— although she agreed in 1966 to serve
as Acting Principal while the Trustees began their two-year search for
the leader Abbot seemed to need.

Eleanor Tucker did much more than wait to be replaced. She had
been chemistry teacher, corridor teacher, Director of Studies, college
counselor, and Vice Principal. Abbot had been her life for thirty
years, and she felt ready to lead the school.3 "Tuck" was— and is— a
person utterly without pretensions, a tireless, selfless worker who for
years had symbolized the no-nonsense side of Abbot's personality. Her
training was in science, her talents were with methods rather than with
words. The words she did find useful were not metaphors but labels:
factual labels which inspired truthful exchange, free of emotional en-
tanglements. A student in trouble who, relishing some exquisite per-
sonal problem, presented it as rationale for aberrant behavior got a
hearing, a brusque, cheerful warning, and a girl-scout handshake. No
brooding allowed in the Principal's office. Verbal embellishments were
as foreign to Miss Tucker as a Dior dress: her inevitable hand-tooled
western belt was all the decoration she required.

In addition to her personal strengths, she had one great political
advantage: "Everyone in the school really liked Tucker," as one
teacher has said. "She was so real and warm and generous. You could
tell her anything." And when she disagreed, she accepted your view

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS 365

as a reality to be dealt with, not a balloon to be pricked or a threat to
her pride. Her friendships crossed barriers of age, of temperament, of
intellectual acuity— even of altitude on Andover Hill, for she had won
the respect of all the Hilltop teachers who knew her work as the first
dean of girls in the Phillips Academy Summer School. There were
tensions enough in the outside world; Abbot needed a familiar hand to
consolidate the institutional changes already initiated by the Trustees.
No one expected an acting principal endlessly to attend professional
meetings, as Mary Crane had done, or to build images of self and Ab-
bot among affluent alumnae as the next permanent principal must do.
"Tuck" stayed home and tended to business, continuing as college
counselor and (through 1966-67) as Director of Studies on top of her
Principal's duties.

There was plenty of business. Encouraged by the Trustees, Miss
Tucker supported one new initiative after another, including several
that were quite out of her ken. "A great innovator," says Virginia
Powel, describing Miss Tucker's receptivity to an expanded art pro-
gram and its unconventional and imaginative new teachers, Audrey
Bensley for ceramics and Wendy Snyder for photography. Neither
cared two cents for ancient girls' schools as such; they simply saw
Abbot as a place where work could be done, and it wasn't long before
they and their students were building their own kilns and darkrooms.4
Girls chafing for "real" work met both its joys and frustrations at the
potter's wheel or in dawn-lit photo-taking sessions ("the shadows are
good then," Wendy told them), and spoke their own lives as they
searched out others' in North End pizzerias— for documentary pho-
tography was Wendy Snyder's special art. Several who had teetered
on the edge of the drug scene teetered back again, needing clarity to
practice craft.5

Similarly, Miss Tucker and the Trustees finally made up Abbot's
mind to hire a consulting psychiatrist, and to help teachers get expert
training in counseling. And when Jean Bennett realized that the new
student generation's seeming sophistication about sex almost always
disguised deep ignorance, Miss Tucker rearranged Jean's mathematics
teaching schedule to allow her to create a sex education course. If
Tuck got more than she bargained for, she never blanched. The first
full year's course was a series of films and lectures by gynecologists
to which many teachers came, bringing questions that Abbot girls had
never heard adults ask before. "There was a world of fear-of-sex em-
bodied in the old Abbot," says Carolyn Goodwin. The "effort to open
up hidden subjects" was both "strenuous and immensely rewarding" in
that it freed discussion throughout the Abbot community. "Is mastur-

366 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

bation harmful?" asked one worried girl of the physician-of-the-week.
"No, it isn't, if you aren't feeling guilty about it," was the answer,
"and a lot of people do it at one time or another. Don't be surprised if
you're not the only one on your floor to try it." Whereupon Ger-
maine Arosa put on her gloves and walked out. But the next day's
French classes bubbled with conversation (in French) about the lec-
ture, and Mile. Arosa was reassured by Miss Tucker, who told her she
was sure the doctor wasn't actually advocating masturbation. Jean
Bennett was immensely relieved when Mile. Arosa returned to the
lectures, and joined again in the discussions.6

That year it may have been just as well that the Phillips faculty
refused to allow boys to attend the Abbot sex education course. Gren-
ville Benedict, Phillips Dean of Students and Abbot Trustee, thought
Phillips should have welcomed this near-first in modern Abbot-Phillips
history, where Abbot moved into new territory and invited Phillips
along. Now it was the Phillips administrators who balked before the
unknown, anxious over the restiveness of their own students as they
had not been since the Abolitionist cause came to Andover Hill; for
the Phillips boy-men were beginning to share in that anguish over
Vietnam and the draft which were to shape young people's views
toward adult authority for years to come.

Phillips and Abbot students did join one another in community
service groups, tutoring school children in Lawrence and organizing a
"Contemporary Social Issues" conference on racism. The Phillips Asian
Society became co-ed. Abbot flocked up the Hill to see the boys and
hear such speakers as Professor John K. Fairbank of Harvard, as well
as singers like Judy Collins. Abbot girls were not only welcome at
Cochran Chapel every Sunday; Abbot allowed them to attend. An
Abbot-Phillips daily mail service flourished, legally now. There were
at least a dozen Abbot-Phillips dances and concerts each semester. The
Phillips Drama Lab launched more Abbot actresses every month. An
awe-inspiring King Lear was played on Phillips' main stage, and
Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia were Abbot boarders, not Phillips fac-
ulty wives. In the Phillips-Abbot Madrigal Society, now five years old,
males and females sang instead of flirting, because there was work to
do together and plenty of chance to flirt elsewhere.

It would have taken heroic effort to run a dull school in these two
years, 1966-68. The blue-clad Seniors with their red roses and bag-
pipes had marched down School Street as always for the 1966 Com-
mencement, but Norman Thomas, the head of the American Socialist
Party, was there awaiting them with a powerful Commencement
speech, which he delivered out of his husk of a body in a voice that

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS" 367

filled the church, and still sounds in the minds of those who were
there that day.7 Cynosure published article upon article of aching, in-
trospective argument over black power and white guilt. For the first
time since Miss Bailey had arrived, the value of Abbot's numerical
grades and publicized honor roll was questioned by teachers as well as
students, "new emphasis on learning," announced Cynosure9, as all
numerical grades were eliminated. For the first time, too, there were
scattered instances of drug use, along with utter bewilderment among
the faculty as to how to respond. Then there were the Abbot peren-
nials: Student Councils pushing for yet one more dining-out day for
Seniors, for a few more hours when telephone calls might be made
and received, for sandals on Saturdays, and all the little freedoms
which meant so much and were still doled out so niggardly. By ad-
ministrative decree, Phillips-Abbot couples still paced the Circle in
front of Draper Hall of a spring day like tigers in a cage, instead of
making free of either campus as they had often asked to do. And in
spite of (or was it because of?) the new contacts with Phillips boys,
alumnae remember a pervasive sense of anxiety which had never oc-
curred to the Abbot girls of Miss Means's and Miss Bailey's day: how
well, really, did Abbot measure up beside Phillips? Some Phillips intel-
lectuals delighted in perpetuating the stereotypes that seem to have
dogged the two schools ever since the late forties. As Mary Crane puts
it, "You should have heard some of those P. A. Seniors telling the Ab-
bot girls that they knew nothing, but nothing, especially in the field of
American history." Even close-hand reality could not shake the stereo-
types. Where Miss Bailey's students had disdained the typical Phillips
boy as richly as he disdained the typical Abbot girl, a '59 alumna "felt
that the boys up on the Hill were far superior— except the ones [she]
knew." "They seemed so much more grown-up than we were," adds
Kathy Dow, '55, "Why, they were reading Hemingway and Faulkner,
and we were reading Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad!" The sheer
numbers of Hilltop students— three times the Abbot enrollment— and
the grandeur of the campus weighted many comparisons irrationally
in Phillips' favor. The inferiority theme appears over and over in the
recollections of recent alumnae.9 Contrary views also tended to be
stereotypical. "How much do you see of the Phillips boys?" a visiting
Abbot applicant asked her student guide. The answer: "We see about
as much of them as we can stand."10

Unknown to most students of these two years, forces both seen and
unseen were gathering to push Abbot and Phillips closer together. As
early as 1957, Abbot faculty had talked coordinate education among
themselves while gearing up for the NEACSS Evaluation Committee.11

368 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

A decade later, the Phillips faculty was beginning to respond. By the
fall of 1967 a Phillips- Abbot committee had been formed to plan a
wide range of shared activities. And there was more. The Trustees'
search for a permanent principal meant a host of decisions as to the
kind of school the New Abbot Academy should be. Philip Allen had
made at least one decision of his own years before, when he deter-
mined that somehow, some day, Phillips and Abbot should become one
institution. Though none breathed a word of this hidden agenda ex
camera— Allen spoke in public of the great advantages of coordination
without merger— he and his Search Committee colleagues were look-
ing for someone who could carry it out if ever the opportunity arose.12

Given the size and nature of the challenge, it seemed to the Search
Committee a man's job. This was not a put-down of women but an
assessment of political realities: it appeared fairly certain that a man
could cope more successfully with the "rather Roman Senate environ-
ment" of the Hilltop, if not with the "extreme degree of chauvinism"
that characterized some Phillips alumni.13 Men also had a better repu-
tation as fund-raisers, deserved or not. Just as the original Abbot Fe-
male Academy seemed to need male leadership to confer legitimacy
on its birth and infancy before 1852, so American society in the mid-
sixties, suspicious of spinsters and career women, thought it felt safer
to have males running schools. Besides, high-powered women adminis-
trators were still as few as they had been in the fifties; several girls'
schools had recently chosen male principals, and even the exhaustive
search that Bryn Mawr was making for a new president at this time
would not turn up a woman.14

The question seemed settled by the fact that no women from out-
side the conservative boarding school world were willing to apply for
the job. Nor, at first, were any outstanding men. Sixty candidates
came and went. It was a full year before the Search Committee learned
through Phil Allen's son-in-law of a man named Donald Gordon who
headed the Barstow School, a nourishing day school in Kansas City.
In his two years at Barstow, Gordon had helped bring boys into the
upper elementary division and black students into the entire school.
The upper school was still all girls; Donald Gordon had been a mis-
sionary for coeducation, but a politic one, who had shown himself an
able leader for both male and female in a day-school setting. Philip
Allen opened a correspondence with him— and it warmed with each
exchange. Gordon immediately responded to Allen's enthusiasm for
change with his own large optimism; Allen was impressed. After all,
the Trustees were asking for an experienced innovator, a person with
no commitments to the old Abbot, eager to design a new school.15

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS 369

Gordon was only 33 years old, but he had taught in private schools all
over the country since receiving his Master's degree in American his-
tory from the University of Pennsylvania. Such restlessness did not
seem strange in the convulsive sixties: youth felt almost obliged to
seek, reject, and seek again, always looking for the elbow room a
change-maker requires. This innovator had the biggest elbows that had
ever pushed Abbot anachronisms out of the way, and a pair of shoul-
ders that looked ready for any burden. The Trustees marveled at their
find when Gordon flew east in August to meet the full Board. Stand-
ing 6'y'\ the candidate's frame matched his larger-than-life visions of
Abbot's future. At the same time, his sympathies were both ready and
generous: "An ideal head for a girls' school," said Trustee Rogers,
who never veered from that opinion no matter how strong the cross-
winds of the next five years.

The Search Committee had done the preliminary work with such
care that it took only two weeks for the Board to decide on Donald
Gordon, and less time for Gordon to accept. Barstow was sorry to see
him leave— except for one trustee, who had labeled him "a spend-
thrift," the single qualification to the high praise Abbot had heard
of him.16

It is impossible to know for certain what Donald Gordon had in
mind by giving up the security of his Barstow position and accepting
the Abbot job, but some educated guesses are possible. As with Miss
Hearsey, history counted: "Abbot had always been a solid academic
institution. It didn't attract fluffy heads," Gordon says. And in spite of
his wanderings westward, New England itself had a powerful hold on
this Massachusetts-born graduate of Phillips Academy and Yale, a per-
son much moved by seasons and daily weather, whose inner thoughts
are shaped by the age of the houses and trees along the street where
he lives or by the character of the nearest mountain range. New En-
gland meant stability, an anchor to a continental imagination. Andover
Hill in particular invited the closing of a circle uncomfortably open
for a man who was now ready to come to terms with his own adoles-
cence. Gordon had felt uneasy at Phillips. "Odd man out," he says: too
tall, too serious, too hungry for dream time ever to be comfortable in
the bustling round of Hilltop life— though many boys respected him, and
his Greek teacher set aside low grades to marvel at his "fine poetic
sense and appreciation of the moral sublimity of Homer," predicting
that he would "do surprisingly well as he matures."17 Don Gordon had
had his share of discomfort over a mediocre academic record (he dis-
liked science and mathematics) and a sense of isolation from peers less
sensitive than he. To show what he could do to lead Abbot handsome-

370 THE FIN AL DECADE, I963-I973

ly would be to win a recognition that Andover Hill had largely de-
nied him before. "We'll show 'em!" said Gordon again and again in
his five years at Abbot. It was a goad Abbot would use well, on the
whole, just as any good teacher tends to learn more from his difficul-
ties than from his successes. His slow-growing but exhilarating mastery
of American literature and history at Yale had taught him how near-
sighted is the school that types any youngster too soon. He wanted to
bring the best of his Phillips Academy experience to Abbot, but he
also wanted deeply to create a school where any adolescent willing to
do her— or his— part could grow and thrive.

Several people close to Gordon think he must have held in the back
of his mind the possibility that he might eventually head the single
coeducational school of which Philip Allen dreamed. What man of
ambition would not have done? they want to know. Gordon insists
this is not the case. Allen had told him at the outset "that he had only
one task, and this was to bring Abbot up to the point where it could
be part of Phillips Academy. 'You're going to merge yourself right
out of a job,' " Allen remembers saying to Gordon, as they talked
calmly about all the animosities that were bound to surface in any
effort to combine two schools. The idea was easy enough to accept at
the time, says Gordon. He assumed Abbot would be going strong for
eight or ten years at the least, and to a young man, ten years is an age.
There is, however, a poignant tone to all his outside-Abbot writings
on the role of a principal.18 Invariably, in his third-person accounts of
his own experience, he refers not to "the principal," but to "the head-
master." His traditional boarding school head had to become both a
"new man" and a "super-teacher"19 in order to remain "headmaster."
The word itself implies both power and confirmation of masculinity.
Though he would never be called headmaster on Andover Hill, he
would strive always to become the ideal man whom the title evoked
for him.

Whatever Gordon's private thoughts about the years to come, there
was no doubt that Abbot had once again engaged an extraordinarily
interesting and complex person for its principal. He visited Andover in
November 1967 to meet Abbot students and discuss coordination of
social activities with Phillips' Dean of Students John Richards, II. Ab-
bot was fascinated. "The purpose of education is to make a person
civilized and brave," he told eager ears. "School must be a dialogue
among students and faculty," rather than a closed system imposed by
adults. More men teachers were needed he said, (Abbot had one full-
time male in the fall of 1967) for a more natural learning environ-
ment.20 "How do we get there tomorrow?" student reporters wanted

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS 371

to know. Gordon, cautious, stuck with generalizations for the time
being. As it was, the promise of good things to come was enough to
lift from its fall-term doldrums a student body grown tired of waiting.
Smelling freedom in the wind, the Class of '68 "fought for changes" in
an effort that left Cynosure writers exulting, "It's truly getting better
all the time."21 Eleanor Tucker, who had poured into her triple-tiered
job "all my time and energy, and what wisdom and compassion I
have,"22 prepared to resume her role as Director of Studies, surrounded
by a gratitude almost powerful enough to overcome her weariness
and her misgivings about Abbot's future under a man barely known.
Amid the encomiums, a headline in the last Cynosure of the year told
what students were thinking of the year to come:

you ain't seen nothing yet.

"Beginnings are wonderful for their freshness."24

The first two years of the Gordon administration were a dizzying ride
up heights of aspiration and success and down into confusion and near
despair. Only the Principal rode the whole track: others would get
out and walk for a while after a particularly exciting section of the
ride and miss the plunges, and a few left the roller-coaster altogether.
Teachers and staff members hired by Miss Hearsey, Mrs. Crane, and
Miss Tucker kept time-honored Abbot routines going while Gordon
surged ahead, designing the new track to be thrown up before him as
he rode. And students. As had happened before in times of turmoil,
most students went through Abbot picking and choosing what worked
for them from an ever richer jumble of offerings, and found the
school a good place for growing. They learned useful lessons about
adult fallibility which no one intended to teach. Perhaps most im-
portant, Donald Gordon made them conscious as never before of their
responsibility for their own education. The malcontents stopped blam-
ing Abbot when things went awry and sought or created more suc-
cessful alternatives. There are older alumnae and faculty who see
these two years as "a catastrophe" (as three have put it) but very few
students will agree. Whether Abbot unwittingly did these few real
damage is a haunting question, impossible to answer. The outside-
Abbot world was damaging lives every day, and one feels that, on
the whole, Abbot girls were better off inside.

A new principal is supposed to go slow, and at the very beginning,
Gordon did. The trappings of the old Abbot remained intact through
much of Year One: students rose to greet their classroom teacher

372 THE FIN AL DECADE, I963-I973

every day; maids pushed tea carts to the faculty room at Tiffin time;
traditional dress was the rule. (One new teacher remembers appearing
on campus wearing sandals on her first hot-weather working day, and
being told by a veteran that stockings and closed-toed shoes were
required.) All the pomp and circumstance the school could muster
went into a grand Installation for Donald Gordon, organized to a T
by Dorothy Judd, Convocation Chairman. Town and Hill gathered to
welcome Gordon; South Church rang with Bertha Bailey's (and
Vaughan Williams') "Hymn of Praise," Trustee Emeritus Sidney
Lovett of Yale prayed everyone in, and Reverend Graham Baldwin of
Phillips— retired but much loved by the generations of Abbot girls
who had taken his Bible course— pronounced the Benediction. In be-
tween, Richard Sewall, one of Don Gordon's favorite English teachers
at Yale and the major speaker, grappled with the present dilemmas of
young people. They are buffeted between champions of feeling and
champions of the intellect, Sewall said, between radicals who see soci-
ety as hopelessly corrupt and an Educational Establishment struggling
to hold the same society together. "Make no little plans, Don, this is a
boiling and seething age," Sewall advised his one-time student. Gordon
answered in his own address that he planned to do no less than bring
Abbot in line "possibly for the first time" with "the proud rhetoric"
of its current catalogue and its original charter. The independent
schools' struggle for survival in an era of declining applications obliged
Abbot to be daring. Each adult and student in the Abbot community
must become "sensitive enough to realize what is worth saving and
tough enough to manage its implementation." The crowd loved it.

On campus, it was honeymoon time. The year's Crane's Beach picnic
was a coeducational festival of sand-castle building, soccer games, and
touch football earnestly joined by the Principal, who outreached all
the boys as well as the girl players. Don's wife Josie and their small
son Jamie were there too, winning hearts. Phillips-Abbot social activi-
ties continued to proliferate just as they would likely have done had
Miss Tucker still been head; coeducational political and artistic activi-
ties boomed, all of them duly reported by an extraordinarily able and
enthusiastic Cynosure board— and much of the credit naturally fell on
Donald Gordon. He would always have a good press at Abbot and
beyond, no matter what happened. The Principal helped students in-
itiate two "Creative Days" at the beginning of winter term, when each
student and teacher followed whatever craft or art she had been long-
ing to try. According to Cynosure, it was Abbot's "trivial traditions"
that "inhibited creative change," not its Principal, and Cynosure cam-
paigned to topple every one of them."25 "I was working to build a per-

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS

373

sonal base with the student body," says Gordon now. "I wasn't think-
ing in terms of confrontation with the faculty, but I did want the
students' good will in whatever I did and I wanted it quickly." He was
getting it, too. The Cynosure Editor-in-Chief talked both with Gordon
and with his student admirers and marveled at his "way of making

50. Donald Gordon on Prize Day.

374 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

everyone feel special." Important as he was, he wanted most of all to
be "a human being," she wrote. He already was "a teacher, an adviser,
a friend and a father."26 Almost immediately, friendship had been con-
clusively demonstrated by declaring that students might leave campus
almost any weekend. The new Abbot would be open: let the restless
stretch their souls outside the walls if they wished.27 "Our headmaster
has an extraordinarily humane understanding of today's youth," the
reporters intoned as the fall went on.28

Of course other faculty had agreed to the move toward open week-
ends, just as they had planned for months the modified modular class
schedule that went into effect in September, but the new administra-
tion got the cheers. That was perfectly all right with those teachers
who welcomed the changes. The Abbot faculty had never pretended
it participated in a democracy. Like several of his predecessors, Gordon
carefully informed the faculty that first year, and consulted them on
curricular matters, but rarely asked them to decide anything of school-
wide importance. Later on, as Gordon became more rushed and har-
ried, he would employ the more arbitrary features of Abbot's hier-
archical tradition and sow anger as well as assent, but for now, the
faculty were delighted to be discussing the tough, fascinating educa-
tional issues he brought before them or assigned to various faculty
committees, instead of debating whether girls should be allowed to
sit on their newly made beds in the morning.29 If a few of the older
faculty gathered in a knot of discontent at Tiffin time to talk away
their annoyance at the power students seemed to have gained over the
Principal, most teachers quietly backed his initiatives.

Their support was not blind loyalty. Whether or not they agreed
with all of Gordon's ideas, most were convinced that institutions must
somehow respond to the yearnings and fears of this generation of
students. Abbot girls would never be quite the same after the political
assassinations and urban riots of spring, 1968, or the mayhem in Chi-
cago at the Democratic convention that summer: the school must
speak to their needs. Besides, teaching was simply more fun than it had
been in recent years. Gordon had been concerned about Abbot's
casual student-counseling system, but what Faith Howland Kaiser
noticed now was that girls were filled with "a sense of hope, excite-
ment and change," and that the little Latin problems that had been
an excuse for asking her special attention in the afternoons had van-
ished. Several teachers had thought the required mixers "terrible";30
now they quietly became optional. The five-minute limit on boy-girl
sidewalk conversation lapsed into oblivion. "It was such a relief!" says
one teacher of the many small changes that allowed her to concentrate

"make no little plans 375

on teaching instead of defending faded rules. Don Gordon showed his
respect for teaching by joining the two United States history teachers
and doing some teaching himself in a series of topical seminars which
the three set up together and conducted simultaneously all winter.

This was his last as well as his first teaching at Abbot. As resistance
hardened among the few old-Abbot hold-outs and hiring decisions for
the following year had to be made, Gordon left more and more of the
daily chores to Miss Tucker and retreated into his office to plan for the
next year. The endangered Admissions Director tried to plead with
him for one more year's contract, but somehow she could never find
an appointment time that was convenient for him. "He just couldn't
face her," one teacher recalls.31 Another Crane appointee— in Miss
Tucker's words, an "honorable, vigorous, imaginative teacher"— began
experiencing trouble with her classes, but she could not get his atten-
tion, so absorbing and difficult were his other problems, and she left,
embittered. Others resigned of their own accord. Germaine Arosa and
Donald Gordon had met each other's match. She had never liked
Gordon, she says, and the feeling seems to have been mutual. She
thought he was "wrecking the place," yet she felt that all constructive
channels by which she might help were being closed to her. Philip
Allen had urged Gordon to hear out his critics with a third person in
the room, but this was complicated to arrange; the result was that he
rarely met with the critics at all. Already beyond retirement age,
Mademoiselle Arosa decided early on that this would be her last year,
and she knew she was powerless.32 This seemed the more clear after
she and another teacher had taken their complaints about a third fac-
ulty member over the Principal's head to the Trustees and reaped noth-
ing but the whirlwind of Gordon's anger.33 It disturbed her deeply
that Gordon seemed too busy to appreciate some of her closest faculty
friends, or to further their plans and suggestions, such as those Margot
Warner made for the Music Department. In the end, Mile. Arosa and
Miss Warner both resigned; after them would go the modern Abbot's
most enduring teacher, Eleanor Tucker.

Miss Tucker's resignation in mid-spring of 1969 was a terrific blow
to the Abbot community, even to those Trustees who had seen it
coming. Gordon could not help being saddened by his differences with
a person so much beloved by others, but he was philosophical. "By the
time I got to Abbot I had long since concluded that all educational
problems are problems of culture, not problems of personality," he says.

I found myself measuring this person who had been acting head
and was now my employee in terms of our cultural compatibility.

376 TH E F IN AL DECADE, 1963-1973

I think the important question is this: You have to ask what are
the perceptions of development of young people that this person
holds. As a team, an administrative group must conform to the
overall objectives, although individuals can differ. I was the one
responsible. The first fall and winter there were endless outcrop-
pings of difference about how to approach problems of dealing
with adolescent girls. We did agree that we needed a college
counseling person, so I offered her this college counseling job
and decided to get a new director of studies. This was an effort
to find a place where Tuck would be comfortable. Then she
herself decided to leave and I was greatly relieved. I confess that
I saw people like Tuck as cultural artifacts in themselves.

It is heartening that several of the "cultural artifacts" found important
work to do almost immediately, Mile. Arosa as a French instructor at
the University of Massachusetts and at the Boston University Music
School, and Eleanor Tucker as Principal of Winchester-Thurston, a
thriving girls' day school (kindergarten through twelfth grade) in
Pittsburgh. Abbot had nurtured their talents through these long years
as richly as it had those of so many students: they too were prepared
for lives beyond the walls.

Don Gordon had prescribed for himself in his Installation address:
The independent school must "be conservative when dealing with
people, but fearlessly revolutionary when dealing with systems and
methods." Yet Abbot's systems could not be changed without the
radical sacrifice of people— "No matter what Don had done with
Mile. Arosa, it would have been wrong," says one teacher— and some
of the new people whom Gordon was courting to replace the old for
1969-70 would swing the systems so far left by the force of their own
lust for change that Gordon himself would wonder if the two can
ever be separated, except in speeches. Nevertheless, administrators must
never stop struggling, for systems and people— and money— are all
they have. Principal and Trustees sat down together in the spring and
summer of 1969 to create what new systems they could to make reali-
ties out of their visions.

Their most far-reaching decision was to launch at last the New Ab-
bot Fund to increase radically both salaries and scholarships and to
build a center for the arts near the Abbot-Phillips border, a facility
long dreamed of at Abbot which could serve both schools.34 Abbot
had planned and delayed major endowment fund drives since 1930;
now the need for more endowment was clear to everyone. It was
not just the palpable sense that Abbot's competitors were catching up

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS" 377

with, and surpassing, the old Academy with their own endowment
drives (though they were);35 Abbot must have insurance for any
future, whether with Phillips or alone.

None could now fault the Trustees for holding back on fund rais-
ing,36 but the grand plan had its critics. Tamblyn and Brown found
the $3,000,000 goal overambitious, given Abbot's consituency. Others
felt the strategy too luxurious: with these bold development plans
came a new public relations staff and a Director of Development,
Richard Sheahan, whom Don Gordon knew from his teaching days in
California. There was no way of knowing that Sheahan's office would
amply pay for itself in the years to come, and that Sheahan himself
would prove an indispensable balance wheel as Abbot's forward en-
gines built up to full steam. Jane Baldwin, always cautious, asked
whether it was not far too soon to commit funds to a building before
programmatic questions of coordination had been decided. She and
others questioned the wisdom of opening the New Abbot drive before
most of Abbot had any idea what the new Abbot would be; they
were not content with the daring answers they received from Allen
and Gordon, who had been mapping the future together for months.
Already alumnae seemed to be hesitating: after years of increase, do-
nations to the Annual Fund had dipped $1,000 in 1968-69.37 But most
of the Trustees felt it was time to move. "We must have something
special to offer Phillips," they said, "if our own bid for coordination
on equal terms is not to be laughed out of court." When Miss Baldwin
had heard rationales for such speedy action once too often, she would
resign.

Donald Gordon also hired the full-time professional business man-
ager which Cresap had urged upon the Abbot Board six years earlier.
Now that Gardner Sutton was close to retirement, a fresh hand wras
needed. Richard Griggs provided it— and well that he did, for the
budgeting and accounting procedures that had served in more stable
times had burst at the seams in Gordon's first year. The Board had
planned a $7,000 operating deficit for 1968-69; that first year Gordon
authorized special projects as they came up, and Abbot finished the
year $1 17,468 in the red. The Trustees were surprised but (with a few
exceptions) unruffled by the bill Gordon was running up; most of the
special expenditures seemed necessary and commendable. They had
wanted an innovator, and they were prepared to support him. "You
do not sit on your hands if you have been brought in to save a school,"
says Carolyn Goodwin;38 nor do you stint to raise faculty-staff salaries
if you are, like Gordon, a person of generous impulses, anxious to right
past wrongs. Writing a budget for the following year proved more

378 THE FIN AL DECADE, I963-I973

complicated. Abbot's expenses had traditionally changed so little from
one year to the next that the budget had never been drawn up before
late spring. Under this system it was as difficult for Assistant Treasurer
Gardner Sutton as it was for Donald Gordon to know what extra
monies could be committed for 1969-70, yet most of the Trustees
agreed with Gordon that Abbot needed a college counselor, a busi-
ness manager, an associate admissions director, and supporting staff.
To get them, they had no choice but to run a deficit even larger than
the one for 1968-69. The physical plant also presented both problems
and opportunities. Barton Chapin's sons were offering the Trustees the
family house. Once renovated, it would make an ideal small dormitory;
the proposal seemed far too generous to turn down given the eventual
economies implicit in a higher enrollment. $115,500 of other renova-
tions had been proposed to increase dormitory spaces, to provide better
dining and study space for the burgeoning crowd of day students, and
to make Draper Hall more pleasant and workable.

To several Trustees it seemed insane to contemplate these expendi-
tures; even Allen's optimism began to flag. The full Board met in
special session at the Abbot Library on June 26, 1969, the year's bad
news before them on balance sheets and budget projections. The mood
was gloomy; the rational response seemed obvious: scale down, cut
back, forget the new Abbot.

True, there was good news to be considered too, but no hard figures
supported it except for a thin, hopeful column of applications statistics
for 1969-70. Nearly everyone in the room had a sense of the many
seeds sown in the year just past, a year in which accomplishment and
promise loomed even larger than pain— though there had been pain in
plenty too. The Board questioned Gordon: How could Abbot possibly
manage such deficits? Could the school attract candidates enough to
enlarge and prosper and thus eliminate them? The most optimistic
answers could not dispel the uncertainties yawning before the Board.
Only faith could overcome them, and what grounds were there for
faith?

It was Alice Sweeney who turned the tide. She rarely spoke, but
when she did, everyone listened. "Let's finish the job!" she said.
"Either we build a school that meets modern needs or we won't have
any school at all."39 "I've been blamed for everything that happened
to Abbot since that day," laughs Miss Sweeney now. Heartened, the
Board voted the entire renovations budget, agreed to increase the
salary budget to $490,000 (nearly double the figure for 1964-65, in-
cluding over twice the amount for administrative salaries than had

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS 379

been needed in 1 967-68 ),40 and decided to ask the Phillips Trustees to
join them in an effort finally to decide what the long-term relations
between the two schools would be. The Principal had already discussed
with the Business Manager-elect the mechanisms by which long-range
educational goals could be systematically geared to financial capabili-
ties; with James K. Dow, the Treasurer-elect, Griggs proposed that
Abbot adopt the flexible budgetary procedures that had been developed
by the NAIS. The Trustees felt confident that they and Griggs could
help Gordon control Abbot's purse strings even in an age of rapid
change, and this assurance played a crucial part in their willingness to
move ahead. Gordon welcomed the help: he knew he would need all
he could get. There would be no turning back now.

Blitz

A mid-fall afternoon, 1969. A mother and alumna, Class of '51, drives
through the Gates to see her Abbot daughter for the first time. To be
sure, they had visited the campus the year before when the daughter
came for her interview; then, the mother had been reassured to find
Abbot looking much as it did in her own time, with only a hand-
somely tailored male Principal and some unfamiliar teachers whom
Mrs. Crane or Miss Tucker had hired to break the illusion of change-
lessness. But now! Touch football players romped on the sacred Circle.
Not a saddle shoe was to be seen; indeed, one boy and two girls
played with no shoes at all, in spite of November. Two pairs of faded
blue jeans wandered by, one belted in macrame and filled by a man of
bristling beard; he was discussing English papers with the other. After-
noon Study Hall should be beginning just about now— but no one was
heading for McKeen. Where had Abbot gone? Perhaps the alumna
would find out at supper time: everyone coming freshly dressed to
her assigned seat at table, the Grace sung to usher in a dignified meal,
the News given. Or at daily Chapel the next morning— surely, Abbot
would be there.

It was not. There was no Chapel. There had been no study hall, no
Grace, no News, no dignified dinner. The mob ate in its touch foot-
ball clothes or its pottery-making clothes or whatever clothes it
wished. Though several adults and two cheerful babies joined it for
dinner, there was no assigned seating. The Phillips boys lay in wait in
the social rooms, "calling hours" having been extended to most of the
afternoon and evening. It would have been appalling— except that the

380 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-I973

Abbot daughter was enjoying it immensely, and seemed to be learn-
ing something to boot. Maybe one could get used to it after all. Since
the daughter was to stay, one would try.41

In the second of the Gordon years, the space inside the privet hedge
seemed if anything to amplify the revolutionary changes taking place
in the world at large. New teachers and houseparents brought that
world in; many veterans complemented them by virtue of their efforts
to respond (as Abbot had always tried to respond) to students' needs.
The first and most sweeping innovation of the year was the advent of
a town meeting form of government to decide all out-of-classroom
issues touching students' lives. The fall before, the old student govern-
ment system had come apart when the Student Council president
found herself unable to uphold the "honor system" and turn friends
in. That was nothing new; in the early sixties, five of the six Seniors
on one year's Student Council were among the worst rule-breakers in
the school.42 The novelty was in this president's refusal to hide her
feelings from Mr. Gordon or anyone else. "Follow Abbot's rules or
resign," said the Principal, and she resigned. Predictably, the remaining
Council members called two old-style town meetings, closed to faculty
and traditionally devoted to subjects such as the design of class rings,
to discuss the situation; unpredictably the girls decided to rewrite the
student government constitution. Warmly backed by the Principal,
they asked Mary Minard to act as their faculty adviser, and set to
work.

What they came up with was nothing new in a larger world that in-
cluded progressive schools and "free schools,"43 but it was entirely
new to Abbot. The town meeting would meet regularly, its agenda
organized and published in advance by its officers. These last, one fac-
ulty and two student secretaries and one student moderator, were
elected for two terms by the entire community, one woman (or man)
—one vote and never mind seniority. Faculty, houseparents, and stu-
dents also voted on equal terms at the meetings themselves, which
were run by Robert's Rules. Anyone could propose new business once
the old was disposed of; thus, theoretically at least, anything was dis-
cussable— any thing. No vote could be taken except on an issue an-
nounced beforehand, but once voted, a decision could only be re-
viewed and vetoed by the Principal. Lacking a veto (Gordon used it
just four times in four years), the majority vote became school policy
a week after it had been taken. To the chagrin of some older faculty
who knew how much Abbot traditions had meant to the girls of years
gone by, the new school government banished all ghostly presences,
all mystical loyalty to the historical Abbot, and defined "Abbot" as no

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS" 381

more than the sum of its present parts: the students and adults who
inhabited the campus at any given moment. It seemed an age since
1968, when all Abbot girls had recited for the last time the traditional
pledge at the student government induction ceremony— "banded to-
gether in our loyalty to Abbot . . ."—and had sung "Abbot Beautiful"
to seal it.

To Donald Gordon, pledges and school hymns were relics of an ir-
relevant past: young people need plain, unvarnished responsibility to
grow on. "Students are partners in the educational enterprise," Gordon
wrote that fall. "The human spirit needs encouragement and trust,"
and the key to faculty-student trust is "scrupulous honesty in working
with students on school affairs."44 Town meeting symbolized, and gen-
erally carried forward, this central principle throughout Abbot's final
four years.

Truly, the new system was an open one. It exposed everyone, ready
or not, occasionally laying bare as many reasons for distrust as for
trust. For openers, town meeting abolished the old dress code, sub-
stituting "neat and clean"45 (a few teachers later wondered whether
"underwear required" should not have been added), and determined
that girls be allowed to skip Sunday church and attend instead a Sun-
day evening gathering organized by the Abbot Religious Association
(ARA), whose name had been changed to make Jewish students wel-
come. Daily Chapel went next. It had already been eliminated at
Phillips on the initiative of a new chaplain, who could not see how one
could "justify compulsion at any level of worship";46 and Donald Gor-
don, a searching agnostic, could not bring himself to wear the pastor's
mantle in the McKeen-Bailey tradition. Town meetings established a
faculty-student committee to discuss the abolition of grades.47 At first
it looked like revolution. For suspicious teachers, however, a few sur-
prises lay in store. The grades committee investigated other schools'
grading systems and organized school- wide discussions on the subject.
Seeking to avoid a Principal's veto, the secretaries made sure the final
committee report to town meeting culminated in a town meeting
"resolution to the faculty" rather than a decisive vote for or against
letter grades. This was no runaway democracy. Faculty found that
students actually listened when they asked town meeting to consider
larger issues such as the meaning and purpose of academic evaluation;
as the novelty wore off and the uncommitted students stayed away,
adults' voices counted more.48 Still, it was an enormous change, and
for all their frustration with the clumsiness of such an open system,
students knew it offered them both a forum for grievances and access
to real power, "town meeting strikes again" cheered Cynosure, an-

382 THE FIN AL DECADE, 1963-I973

nouncing that Abbot had voted to invite Phillips boys down after din-
ner, and that the administration would bring the proposal up the Hill.49
Most faculty put up cheerfully enough with these unfamiliar forms
and enjoyed the discussions they engendered. Some of the old hands
found that town meeting, by involving students in school-wide deci-
sions, engaged teachers and housemothers more fully as well. Teachers
who recall that they "came, did what they had to and went away
again" during the Crane-Tucker years now stayed at school all day
and into the evenings.50 "More freedom for the students always means
more work for the adults," Gordon kept telling the faculty. It was
true, but to most of the adults, it seemed work worth doing. From the
first, Gordon had "wanted a school where people would crack open
any subject and talk about it."51 Rather suddenly, students found it
easier to take their grievances or their problems to a teacher. Faculty-
room conversation spilled out into student-filled corridors; several new
history and English and mathematics courses were hatched and fledged
on the strength of student interest or teacher inspiration, or both.

In a certain sense, however, a new common culture was being im-
posed on Abbot girls. If Chapel was no longer required, "humanities"
was. "Watch out! I may be teaching your daughter," Stephen Perrin
warned in the new Abbot Forum, which rose live and kicking that
fall from the ashes of the staid Bulletin. This bearded, gentle man
posed every tenth grader his question: What does it mean to be
human? and if he acknowledged that every person has her own answer,
he was determined it should be well informed. Robert Ardrey on ver-
tebrate social behavior, Freud, Fromm, Bruner, Erikson, novels and
biographies about artists or scientists — these readings demanded effort
of a new kind, for Perrin offered them as stimuli to introspection, not
artifacts to analyze. Who am I? What do I learn from James Agee
about myself? students were encouraged to ask. Write it down, write
anything, it's you, it's O.K. The same in Sue Hosmer's philosophy
classes, which were explorations of self and universe together. No texts
at all were required in Peter Stapleton's and Paul Dyer's English classes.
Dyer had put aside the medieval poetry that had stirred him in college.
"Students themselves are the content of the course," he told the Forum.
"All assignments are optional for all of us in one way or another,"
said Stapleton; "what is exciting is making the choices."52 Dyer had
students write their own "teacher comments" at the end of each term.
A few parents and alumnae really were appalled. It was Donald
Gordon who quoted Eric HofTer in his Installation speech to warn
against excessive freedom:

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS" 383

A fateful process is set in motion when the individual is released
to the freedom of his own impotence and left to justify his
existence by his own efforts.53

A year later it seemed to a small minority that Gordon was fostering
the "fateful process" he had deplored. Nevertheless, experimentation
bubbled on. "If you're going to show students that no one should fear
to inquire," says Gordon, "teachers have to be secure enough to do it."
Perrin still recalls that security with gratitude. "Don Gordon hired us
as change-agents, and then left us to ourselves, defending us to the
Trustees when he had to," he says. "It was a wonderful freedom; I
had never felt so creative or worked so hard, or, I think, taught
so well."

Students ran the gamut in their opinions of these new courses. "My
favorite," says one girl of Perrin's humanities class. She was a search-
ing, deliberate reader, who gained "great insight into people" from the
difficult texts. On the other hand— "I found him a hypocrite," who
"couldn't stand to have me to disagree with him," writes another
alumna, herself a sharp, contentious character; "While upholding free-
dom, he was an absolute authoritarian in class." Stapleton's course had
one Catholic girl amused and angry and distressed to tears all at once.
Knowing she needed stays, her family had sent her to Abbot for a
conservative academic education the year before, and her father was
infuriated by the changes made without warning to parents in the fall
of '69. "If Stapleton is going to be the student and you the teacher,"
he told her, "he should give over his salary to you."54

In Hall House lived Phyllis and David Maynard, the first of the
series of young houseparents whom Gordon hired at salaries equiva-
lent to those of the teaching faculty in his effort to revamp dormitory
supervision. They were operating on much the same principle as did
the most radical new teachers: this is your home; you are nearly adult.
Let's work out together the common house rules which meet our
common needs, and stick with them. From his position as the new
Director of Studies, John Buckey, former teacher and admissions of-
ficer at Quaker schools, former urban community organizer, listened
as carefully for the personal concerns behind each student's academic
plans as he did to each teacher who came in with a course proposal or
a kid problem. To him, all educational decisions edged learner and
teacher toward social commitments. Sterile talk of college require-
ments and rank in class obscured the complex processes by which an
individual makes her own unique sense of the larger culture and pre-

384

THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

57. Stephen Perrin with Jesse.

$2. Coed football on the Sacred Circle.

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS

385

S3. Ceramics.

386 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-I973

pares to take on adult responsibility within it. True, Alice Sweeney
and Eleanor Tucker also had known how much more there is to aca-
demic counseling than meets the eye, but Buckey had just arrived at
Abbot from the bruising world outside, and this made him exciting;
his own commitment to the civil rights and antiwar movement sensi-
tized him to young people's anger and uncertainty. At first it seemed
as though Buckey's warm-hearted activism would wonderfully flesh
out Gordon's more abstract sense of the need for "an enlightened
radicalism of method" by which a school could join in the best aspects
of "the revolt of our times."55

Across the hall, Marion Finbury gave full time to college counsel-
ing. To Gordon this was no luxury: where Seniors once had asked,
"Can I make one of the Seven Sisters?" now they wondered openly,
"What do I do with my life?"56 It could take hours and weeks of talk
to break the question into its component parts and deal with each. His
faith in high gear, Gordon had found a person with no formal train-
ing for this crucial job, a bright Jewish woman ready for work of her
own. "Hired off the wall," she says. "I could have been a disaster.
It was disaster year." But her qualifications were excellent: for
years she had worked to improve public education in her own com-
munity; she had been an Abbot parent, and a friendly critic of Abbot's
college admissions process; she was ready to learn whatever needed
learning; and she and her teen-aged children were still speaking to
each other.57 A fresh eye might make sense of the confusing new
patterns of college admissions which were emerging as the colleges
pried themselves open to women, minority applicants, and others who
had once been beyond the pale. When she arrived in June 1969 to get
going, Marion Finbury found that Gordon had locked the old college
files; he sent her instead to a Harvard Admissions Institute and on a
trip to West Coast colleges ("I hadn't been on a trip without my
husband in fifteen years") and generally helped her begin that process
by which Abbot teachers defined both their work and themselves. In
September she "opened for business, shaking from top to toe." She
began by talking with each Senior. She called up Radcliffe and told
the Director of Admissions, "I want to come see you." "Whatever
for?" asked the Director, who knew that in the past two decades only
a handful of Abbot girls had applied for and entered Radcliffe.58
Marion Finbury would badger Radcliffe and Berkeley and every col-
lege in between with such good humor and such intricate knowledge
of her charges that she was hard to resist. She knenjo one candidate's
450 S.A.T. scores said little of her, and she persuaded New College to
take her on probation. In four years the young woman had simultane-

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS" 387

ously finished college and served a term in the New Hampshire legis-
lature; then she scored over 700 in the Law School Aptitude test and
entered Law School. As her predecessors had done, Mrs. Finbury en-
couraged students to consider an ever wider range of colleges. Four
of seven applicants made Radcliffe that first year; many other gradu-
ates were equally well placed in newly coeducational colleges or uni-
versities never available to Abbot girls before. Like Gordon, however,
Finbury felt that the process of college counseling was as important
to a student's total education as the result. Again, Miss Sweeney and
Miss Tucker would no doubt have agreed— but Marion Finbury was
the first to be given the time to act on the conviction.

The old birds were by no means sitting still while the new ones
tried their wings: Abbot's swift movement in the first two Gordon
years can only be understood in the light of veteran teachers' readiness
for change and their willingness often to advance it, given the Prin-
cipal's encouragement. The students who loved Abbot in 1969-70 are
the ones who enjoyed the rigors of Carolyn Goodwin's calculus class
as much as the heady confusions of Paul Dyer's "English" encounter
group. "It didn't matter to me that Stapleton didn't make us read
because suddenly I found I wanted to read all the optional history
stuff, and I wrote about that in my English journal," says one such.
Sandra Urie Thorpe, '70, found some changes disturbing, but she was
absorbed in her urban education course field work and in special
Spanish study with Dorothy Judd, work so advanced that she would
be taking senior-level courses at Smith the following year. Georges
Krivobok and Susan Clark were new birds, but their language classes
were as demanding as any that Mile. Arosa or Mrs. DeGavre had
taught. For spring term the three United States history teachers of-
fered three different approaches to twentieth-century studies, and each
Senior chose her poison. In the Revolution at Home and Abroad
course, a tie-dyed girl fed up with intricate foreign-policy readings
and Black Panther community-organization plans exclaimed, "But the
Revolution is here! All we have to do is love each other!" "And read
fifty pages a night," quipped a black girl, to whom knowledge was
strength for the struggle. Still more options appeared as Phillips Acade-
my courses in advanced studio art, religion, Asian history, German,
and Italian were opened to Abbot students, with boys enrolling in
similarly specialized Abbot courses such as Sex Education, Ceramics
and Advanced Placement Spanish. All this was consistent with Donald
Gordon's conviction that the key to growth is the opportunity to
choose among a variety of endeavors. In his view the instilling of
"correct" ambitions only ossifies the soul. He traces his own feeling

388 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

back to his childhood and his father's tendency to identify great
achievement with narrow, self-denying labor: " 'Work, by God, work
your ass off!'"— this was the father's message to the son, as the son
conveys it. But the freedom and the responsibility to choose one's
work gives the young person "the chance to see that achievement can
be pleasurable. ... I had enormous faith in the subliminal effect on
students of a happy, diverse, vibrant community," says Gordon now.59
Abbot "seeks to be a house of many rooms," Gordon told his public
in 197 1.60 Indeed, the greatest strengths of the Gordon years lay in the
extraordinary variety of academic and other choices that Abbot of-
fered to any student ready to make them. Strong characters did beauti-
fully from the start, and many others grew strong on this rich fare.61

Break-Up

All of Donald Gordon's first three years coincided with an era of stu-
dent revolution at home and awful foreign policy failures abroad,
but for Abbot, 1969-70 was the most tumultuous of all. Universities
and secondary schools both public and private had seen their students
march and rally and roar their protests over policies out of the White
House and dictates from principals' offices. Every month, it seemed,
another college president resigned. "We students are in revolt," wrote
the Choate News early in 1969. "We are part of a worldwide rebellion
of the young. We want a say . . . We will not be suppressed."62
America had seen youth subcultures before: the last three decades had
had their Beats and their Young Socialists, who dressed to prove their
empathy with the downtrodden, railed against the grey-flannel values
of academia, and labored with migrant workers in the summertime;
but the scale and the hostility of this new protest were unprece-
dented. It was the clamor of a generation that saw history itself ca-
reening out of control, a generation "by no means sure that it has a
future," as George Wald has said.63 Defensive adults saw only the re-
pulsive hair styles, the obscene dress, and the frightening upsurge in
teen-age drug use; the students demanded the right to decide their ap-
pearance and devise their own escapes from the realities adults had
prepared for them.

Abbot was not doing badly, considering. There was a knot of drug-
gies in one or two dormitories, and there were several boarding school
counterparts of the ubiquitous teen-age runaway, but teachers kindly
and firmly picked up the familiar hitch-hikers and brought them weep-
ing back again; a few of them were running no further than John

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS" 389

Buckey's house in West Andover anyway. The Maynards advised one
troubled girl to clear out on her own for a while; another teacher who
could find neither parents nor Principal to grant an abrupt permission
took responsibility on herself for a girl who had secretly had an abor-
tion and needed the comfort of her twin sister in Lowell. Gordon was
furious when he found out (he could not know about the abortion)—
but was this better or worse than in years past when (insist alumnae)
at least two students ran away to parts unknown for days at a time,
counting on friends to sign them in each night and in other ways
assure gullible housemothers of their continued presence on campus?

Principal and faculty did all they could to encourage constructive
social action. Given minimal guidance, girls ran YWCA and "Wide
Horizons" programs for underprivileged children all year long. With
teachers and parents as drivers, over a hundred Abbot and Phillips stu-
dents tutored immigrant children one to three afternoons a week dur-
ing the spring at a special Title I school in the middle of the most de-
crepit neighborhood in Lawrence. The New Abbot had its own
"Golden Rule" dinners: Gordon worked with the Bondes, their
kitchen staff, and a group of students to arrange a safe Fast for World
Hunger and send proceeds to American Friends Service Committee
hospitals in Vietnam. He joined teachers and students to launch first
an Indochina "teach-in," then an Earth Day, during which classes were
moved aside to make room for school-wide assemblies and small group
discussions on these urgent world problems. Abbot girls joined with
Andover High School students on several antiwar projects and con-
ferences. Longing to shed the elitism that had characterized Andover
Hill for over a century, they sought solidarity with those of their own
generation everywhere. April 15, Income Tax day, was a milestone:
teachers drove Abbot and Phillips and High School students to an
early morning protest at the Northeast Internal Revenue Service cen-
ter in west Andover; John Buckey delighted the protestors by film-
ing on his home movie camera the FBI agents who stood on the roof
of the IRS center filming the crowd below. (As he walked toward
them, his camera grinding, they folded up their cameras and retreated.)
That afternoon two busloads of Abbot and Phillips students and facul-
ty joined 75,000 other citizens in a massive Boston Common rally
against the War and the Black Panther trials.

It was wearing for everyone, especially for the man at the helm who
was having troubles enough fielding the distress of parents and alum-
nae and reconciling some of his new appointees with Abbot's long-run
needs and plans. Yet Donald Gordon felt more in tune with the up-
surge than did Colonel Kemper up on the Hilltop. The sixties had

390 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

allowed Gordon to "go public," as he puts it, after years of lonely
worry over "the degradation of the environment and the stifling of
political discussion" in the fifties. Abbot's relatively small size was a
large advantage. Phillips Academy "has sometimes been guilty of
treating boys impersonally," reported the Phillips Steering Commit-
tee.64 "Pessimism plagues P. A.," wrote Cynosure reporters.65 "Even the
best are bad," one "Thomas Doland" told a Look Magazine reporter
who came hunting revolutionaries on Andover Hill that year.66 Dol-
and's Andover was an "active tool" of the government warmakers (he
said), but the boy himself expressed most of his rebellion in the Phil-
lips medium: eighty-one class cuts a year, jimmied in the records to
look like nine, marijuana joints by the gross, and lots of good sex in
the Sanctuary with Abbot girls for pleasure and defiance combined.67
At least, said Doland, there was the new Phillips Art Center, where
creative work with other "alienated and artistic intellectuals" earned
reluctant academic credit from the anti-art Establishment— and it was
too bad about those Abbot girls, "really good chicks," basically, who
"don't have the ability ... to be particularly creative themselves." Be-
cause of this, and because so few Abbot girls are "into drugs and other
liberating things (Doland continued, relishing his chance to play Nor-
man Mailer), most of them have a very large sexual need which they
transfer to the Andover student who is creative."68 Chauvinist hog-
wash, but startling nonetheless. Jane Baldwin wrote to Phil Allen
when the Look article appeared and told him Donald Gordon should
be released from his post. "Give the boy a little longer," said Allen.69
To fire a principal so recently hired would destroy whatever credi-
bility Abbot still possessed.70 The article was peppered with proven
inaccuracies and therefore suspect; and after all, it was about Phillips,
not Abbot. Like many teachers, Allen had noticed again and again
that year how much happier and more sensible most Abbot students
had seemed than the Hilltop students. Being female helped: girls did
not have to be drafted, or to kill or die in Vietnam.71 But Abbot as
institution was also working hard to channel rebellion, to counsel girls
with sexual and other needs both large and small, and to provide cre-
ative outlets everywhere, even if "Doland" couldn't see them.

It wasn't till the crisis in May that Gordon let on how battle-weary
he was. On April 30 Nixon ordered American troops to invade Cam-
bodia. On May 4 four innocent college students were shot and killed
by panicky National Guardsmen while watching an antiwar demon-
stration at Kent State University. In Andover all hell broke loose. It
was O.K. for Abbot girls to set up a congressman-writing station in
Draper Hall; but it was not O.K. for them to strike their classes in

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS" 39I

order to gather signatures on antiwar petitions (not yet, at least), and
it was not at all O.K. for Paul Dyer to defy the Principal and take off
for the Washington demonstrations with two Abbot students immedi-
ately after Gordon, fearful for their safety, had denied the girls per-
mission to go. Principal gathered faculty for a special meeting, intend-
ing a rational discussion of Abbot's response to the crisis. Instead, an
exhausted Donald Gordon picked up on a critical comment John
Buckey made, talked himself into a rage on the subject of loyalty to
him and to the school, and stomped out, leaving the faculty puzzled,
stunned. Most felt they had gone out on many a limb for and with the
Principal, and that any criticisms they'd made were meant to help.
While Gordon drove to Plum Island to walk off his anger, Peter
Stapleton led the group through the completion of a plan whereby
"striking" students could pick up their assignments and leave for
hometown antiwar work, or could join the seminars and action groups
already organized at Phillips— for those Hilltop warmongers had laid
extraordinarily clear-headed plans for "Strike Week."72 Gordon re-
turned home that evening to find a bunch of red roses waiting for
him, a peace-offering from two concerned teachers.

As it turned out, most students took to these opportunities peace-
fully and responsibly, and only a few actually went home on strike.
A brief town panic over "Communists" from Abbot and Phillips infil-
trating the public schools died down when the agitators proved to be
two peacable history teachers who were helping the Junior High
Principal and some students set up a panel on American business in-
terests in Indochina. (The Junior High group was eventually allowed
to attend a packed meeting at the Abbot Chapel in which Philip Allen
debated the subject with a gentle socialist-anarchist from Lawrence,
the socialist-anarchist read some of his poems, and everyone agreed
that both had won.) A massive drug bust on the Hill cleared out several
of "Doland's" friends just before Abbot Commencement, though two
would spring forth in each one's place the following year.

Finally, painfully, Donald Gordon resolved some of his "loyalty"
problems by releasing the teachers who had— in his view — taken his
injunction to experiment and run away with it. Of the twelve new
faculty members he had hired, half were released from their positions
at the end of the 1969-70 school year, including the new Dean of Stu-
dents and the new Director of Studies. The Maynards and Paul Dyer
had been "in tune with the times, close to the kids," remembers Caro-
lyn Johnston; by May they seemed too much so on both counts to
Donald Gordon, who, with Johnston, had heard from one too many
parents about the liberation of the Maynards' dormitory from legal

392 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

constraints against marijuana. Such a slaughter had never happened
before at Abbot, and it was a wrenching time, as much for Gordon as
for all those colleagues who counted them friends. The parting of
the ways with John Buckey was the most dramatic. Gordon ac-
knowledged that many of their problems lay in their personal incom-
patibility rather than in Buckey 's professional deficiencies; indeed,
Don Gordon and Phil Allen together backed Buckey as he sought and
found another excellent job. Through his warm interest in both stu-
dents and colleagues, and his driving, often stubborn idealism, Buckey
had expanded the influence that the Director of Studies traditionally
commanded far beyond the boundaries Gordon envisioned for the
position, and finally collided so often with the Principal that he knew
before his boss fired him that he could not remain. Two alumnae re-
member Mr. Gordon advising them to do one thing and sending them
to check out the details with Mr. Buckey, only to be told to do some-
thing quite different. Buckey was endlessly patient with students in
trouble; Gordon wanted some of these same girls to go on to Abbot's
official psychiatrist for expert counseling. At the juncture between dis-
turbed individual and institution loom all the terrors that no institution
can fathom, and those responsible become terribly anxious: a girl who
had attempted suicide refused to return to Abbot's psychiatrist, and
Buckey and Gordon argued over alternative psychiatrists till they
were shouting at each other. Gordon thought Buckey wanted to sac-
rifice the variety of teachers Abbot enjoyed in order to fill the place
with flower children and political radicals. Buckey insists this is not
true, but can understand the impasse: a principal needs real authority
as well as pride.

And Donald Gordon was nothing if not proud. His pride energized
some of the new Abbot's most successful programs, but it also made
him terribly vulnerable as a person and a leader. One way to cope
with criticisms or human complications was to drown them in talk:
a teacher or student who went to Gordon with a curricular proposal
or a personal dilemma might get a marvelously responsive hearing—
or she might do all the hearing herself while Gordon talked through
most of the hour of his own problems and visions.73 Gordon's loqua-
ciousness certified the distance he had traveled from that "quiet," "ex-
tremely shy" youngster whom his Phillips housemasters knew in
1952.74 Daring much, the Principal needed the reassurance of sympa-
thetic listeners at every turn in his adventurous path.

Some teachers and students found it hard to see Gordon at all, for
he was away raising money and attending professional meetings more
than any of his predecessors had been.75 When at Abbot, it was natu-

"make no little plans" 393

ral for him to spend most of his time with the colleagues who ap-
proved his ideas. His favorite conversor was Peter Stapleton, the lively
and articulate young English teacher as short as his boss was tall,
whom the Principal had named "administrative intern." Gordon had
asked him to conduct a study of the headmaster's role in educational
change as part of Stapleton's graduate work at Harvard, and had in-
vited him to collaborate on a short book about it. As Phil Allen puts it,
"Don needed to have somebody to throw his wild ideas at." The two
spent hour upon hour assessing Abbot's progress and talking out plans;
it was a process immensely helpful to Gordon, but it left many teach-
ers feeling excluded— especially older ones accustomed to a voice in
Abbot affairs: why was the Principal consulting this natty, witty
young outsider and not consulting them? Gordon had hired him at
full salary "to needle my faculty in a constructive way";76 Stapleton
was only an intern observing when he visited their classes or talked
with their students, but might not the hilarity they could hear behind
the Principal's office door be a joke at their expense?

Occasionally the answer may have been "yes." Drawing a self-con-
scious circle around himself and his privy councillor as they drafted
their account of the principal's job, Gordon enlarged on the lonely
eminence a "headmaster" occupies, even the "new" headmaster who
refuses to clothe himself in myth or "big Lie."77 The modern leader
"must truly be better than average human beings," honest, natural, re-
sponsive to students and (most difficult) to his faculty, who, "being
teachers, full of educational philosophy, often absolutist . . . know
everything. And you are a grubby administrator."78 When "brute
fatigue" or the "endemic bitchiness" of the boarding school over-
whelms and unanswered mail piles up (it takes time to write a book
with your administrative intern) and parents rant on the sidelines, de-
manding Utopia for their children, what is there left to do but laugh?79

Every principal has such problems and such protective egocen-
tricities to some degree. What was surprising (and often deeply ap-
pealing) about Donald Gordon was his way of wearing them all on his
sleeve— at least within Abbot's boundaries. (Out on the hustings, the
image of serenity and control held up pretty well.) This openness was
not just a personal need; it was also part of a conscious, candid effort
to develop educational policy. An example: many male principals of
all-girl or coeducational schools would hesitate to reveal the complex
sources of their desire to understand and work with women and girls.
Gordon says he was influenced most of all by his strong-minded and
sensitive British mother, to whom "a gentleman was a gentle man."
Her— and his— ideal man embodied "the whole world of sensitivities and

394 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

sensibility that is excluded from the American archetype."80 Gordon is
certain that such a vision, if openly lived and articulated, can cross
sexist boundaries, and inspire young women as well as young men.
One highly successful Abbot principal had been equally candid about
this issue a century earlier: the Reverend Joseph Bittinger, who took
Abbot on for the year 1848-49, when Asa Farwell went to Europe.
By his own account, Bittinger personified the alliance between the
nineteenth century woman and the male minister:

I cannot help thinking that (in the years when Abbot was run
by clergymen) ministers partook of the nature of both man and
woman. I was too much of a woman to be a man, and not fair and
gentle enough to be a woman. I was surprised at being called to the
head of this school . . . but I am not ashamed that I was accounted
worthy to keep a woman's school in Massachusetts. Whatever I
taught others, I learned much during that year. . . . Every man
and woman must make himself or herself; the working power
is not in the institution. The schoolmaster . . . hews a living stone
which has an influence on himself.81

Bittinger was mildly apologetic, but by the 1970's no apologies were
needed. Like Bittinger, Gordon daily demonstrated the range of cre-
ative possibilities open to all who refuse to be limited by cultural
stereotypes of male and female.

Some of Gordon's difficulties lay in the size of the job he had taken
on, and the competing demands of his family. He had taken the Abbot
principalship at an age when most married men have seen their chil-
dren through the years of highest demand on parents; but Gordon had
married in his late twenties, and his son and daughter were still babies.
Pulled one way by his responsibilities as Principal, another by his
equally serious responsibilities as father, he found it terribly hard to live
up to Trustees' and parents' images of the serene "family man" and
model for young people, managing everything beautifully, every day.

Three Good Years

Gordon certainly did try, however, and in a great many ways he
succeeded, especially as he took to heart the lessons of his first two
years and settled down to see Abbot through its final three. "If the
third year isn't better, I'll hang it up," Gordon remembers thinking; but
it was better, partly because he made it so. "We came gently down
from what was actually a period of excess," says Gordon now. Having

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS 395

dominated the scene, he retreated a bit. Having distrusted many teach-
ers, he began delegating his authority to some of them; if he still con-
sidered "dreaming"— the establishment of "sustaining goals"— the head-
master's province, he no longer disdained plans already made as
"garbage" to "be handed over to a subordinate" while he went on with
his "creative wishing." These tongue-in-cheek terms with which he and
Stapleton filled their book would become anachronisms as he brought
closer together in his mind the stuff of dreams and the everyday life of
the school. At his best he functioned as a coordinator rather than the
heroic leader he seems at first to have tried to be, and in doing so, he
fostered the communal enterprise he had wanted so much all along.
In the first two years Gordon had possessed the place; during most of
the last three, Abbot belonged to itself.

First came appointments of new people to fill the places of those
who were leaving. Gordon was determined not to be so trusting of
appearances— Paul Dyer had come to his Abbot interviews in a Brooks
Brothers herringbone suit, which he never wore again— and instead to
look for experience. The best place to find this was among the old
hands inside Abbot. Carolyn Goodwin already knew academic sched-
uling and student placement from her work as chairman of the Math-
ematics Department. She had been twenty-three years at Abbot, a
topnotch corridor teacher in the old days and member of dozens of
committees in the new days. Whether or not she agreed with them,
students admired her as "disciplined, intelligent" and infallibly honest,
stern when she must be where Gordon was "too soft."82 With some
difficulty, Gordon persuaded her to become Director of Studies for a
one-year trial. A few Trustees were surprised at the choice. "Goodie"
was so quiet that they had hardly known her. They were more
familiar with Carolyn Johnston as a former Associate Dean, an ex-
perienced counselor and a firm but compassionate trouble-shooter who
had picked up the pieces for years when a dormitory crisis or a miser-
able student had proved too complex for one lone Dean of Students
to handle. Now Mrs. Johnston became Dean in her own right, and
immediately set to work devising a system of weekly guidance for
houseparents and resident advisers, and an advisory Dorm Council to
keep student representatives in touch with school-wide problems. The
two women were to prove themselves equal to almost any challenge
their boss was to hand them; perhaps more important still, they pa-
tiently took care of the day-to-day details which, from his altitude, he
could not even know existed. In time, students who spoke of "the ad-
ministration," (whether in anger or approval) as often meant Good-
win-Johnston as they meant Gordon, for Gordon "trusted us, let us

396

THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

$4. The deans: Carolyn Johnston and Carolyn Goodwin.

help," "supported us when we did need support, and left us complete-
ly alone," as Carolyn Johnston says. "Don was not a good adminis-
trator," says one Trustee, summing up the views of several people who
worked closely with Gordon, "but he was wise enough finally to find
people who were."

The two Carolyns completed Abbot's administrative team, joining
Dick Griggs, Dick Sheahan, and Faith Howland Kaiser, Admissions
Director, all of whom had made it through 1969-70 more or less un-
scathed. Four of the five were middle-aged and tough. Sheahan was
thoroughly Republican to boot, with a talent for turning every ideo-
logical argument into a friendly discussion, an invaluable gift in this
age of acrimony. Faith, just twenty-six years old, had thrown herself
with the ardor of the young into the Gordon camp when distressed
faculty took sides in the Buckey-Gordon battle the year before, but
she and her still younger assistant, Priscilla Peterson, were so able and
so excited by the success they were having in recruiting new applicants
that they made time to talk comfortably (and endlessly) with Gordon
and work hard too. From her special perspective, Faith added her keen
sense of student morale, and an enthusiasm for Abbot's future that
kindled warmth within the entire adminstrative team.

It helped that the battering political events outside gradually re-

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS 397

ceded over Abbot's last years; once the Vietnam War was hopeless,
once Nixon had been proven immoral if not criminal, there was less to
fight about everywhere. If there was just as much as ever to do in the
cause of social justice, well, Abbot had its long tradition of charitable
deeds to back the organizational techniques that students and teachers
developed together during that best and worst of years, 1 969-7 o,83 and
the work went on, strongly supported by the administration. By June
of 1972 a series of panty raids (three by Phillips boys, one by Abbot
girls) was the best Andover Hill could produce in the way of rebel-
lion. Donald Gordon and his faculty could concentrate on extending
the most promising reforms and on keeping Abbot's house in order.

This last task was challenge enough by itself. By the time Carolyn
Johnston had run two dorm searches for drugs and liquor, had spent
half one night tracking down a girl who had run naked from a Phillips
dorm, and taken care of several unhappy students at her home for a
few days, she began "to wish we still had tie shoes for them to rebel
against. It was a lot simpler, a lot simpler!" For every ten alumnae
who now rejoice that 1970 saw the last of the "distorted social life"
and the "Capezzio shoes stereotype" of the "old Abbot" girl, there is
at least one who feels that she "wasn't ready for all the responsibility."
"We wanted all that freedom, but once we had it we didn't know
what to do with it," writes a '71 alumna.84

Even noble impulses sowed trouble. One girl who went to work at a
half-way house for mental patients forgot that she was never to give
patients her last name or her address; a large, pathetic man known to
have beaten up several girl friends told her he must have both so he
could reach her when he felt like slashing his wrists— and was shortly
prowling around her Abbot dormitory looking for her. The same year
a housemother became ill and had to leave. The students on her cor-
ridor brought a self-proctoring proposal to Carolyn Johnston, and
after much discussion and refinement of the plan, she and Gordon de-
cided they could trust one Senior to be acting counselor for the cor-
ridor. The Senior kept all in order: she knew exactly in which Phillips
dormitory each vagrant girl could be found if she must be reached by
telephone. The girls signaled an end to the experiment themselves
when one took off on a terrifying LSD trip and the rest brought her
down to Carolyn Johnston for help. Because of such incidents, Mrs.
Johnston tightened up on dormitory supervision a little more each
year. It meant "a lot of rule-making in the summer, when town
meeting wasn't around," says a '73 graduate with resentment. Cyno-
sure complained, but the rules stood. Most students accepted them,
administered as they were by the generous and responsible young

398 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

houseparents (six couples in all) and other resident advisers whom
Don Gordon managed to find. So long as all went well enough, girls
tended to focus affection on them and on special faculty friends, and
thought of Mrs. Johnston as School Disciplinarian until they needed
her badly. "Then you went to her," writes one former student leader,
"and you could never lie to her." Another alumna who habitually
went from caper to agonizing problem and back again writes of her,
"I still to this day believe that Mrs. Johnston had eyes on the back of
her head!"85 It was just as well, given the job a boarding school must
do in the sixties and seventies. The outward decorum girls maintained
in Miss Bailey's and Miss Hearsey's day evaporated as both adolescent
and adult dug down to find the springs of authority and found them
dispersed under and over the land. They were there— in adult experi-
ence and capacity to help, in perceived communal needs — but they had
lost their magical qualities; they could no longer be taken for granted.
Teachers would occasionally wonder whether boarding schools could
be made viable in these difficult times.

Yet boarding schools have enormous advantages, and Abbot's ad-
ministrative team was determined to make the best of them through
imaginative scheduling, through expansion of those offerings in the
creative and dramatic arts which can blossom in ample evening and
weekend time, and through the conscious assembling of an ever more
varied community. Abbot drew an average of 10 percent more ap-
plicants each year from 1969 on, many of them girls who said they
wouldn't have dreamed of applying to Abbot in the old days.86 Eliza-
beth Marshall Thomas brought her daughter Stephanie to visit, and
Stephanie happily enrolled in 1971 for a four-year stay. Expanded class
coordination with Phillips was a major attraction, of course: each year
Abbot could offer more academic variety as the two schools' arts and
modern language departments opened all courses to students from
either one, and upper level electives in science, theatre, music, English,
and history drew students from up and down the Hill. Enrollment had
expanded by 1972-73 to 330 to take full advantage of Abbot's plant
and people, "Antoinette Hall House," the old Infirmary, having been
opened for boarders in 1969 and Chapin House in 1970. The roster
eventually included 88 day students, who seem to have felt more wel-
come than at any time since the McKeen sisters arrived to create a
"school-home" at Abbot.87 Boarders hosted them in the dormitories,
and the school completed the process (well begun in the Crane-Tucker
years) of opening all meals and evening activities to them. "The
crumby little room across from the library" (as a '55 graduate de-
scribes it) was still headquarters, but it no longer "felt like second

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS

399

$$. All-girls' soccer, Shirley Ritchie presiding.

$6. Deborah and Richard Wine, houseparents.

400 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

steerage on the Titanic," because there were so many other places to
go. Perhaps most important, Treasurer J. K. Dow and Richard Griggs
sprung loose twice as much money for scholarships as Abbot had
made available in the years before 1968: $80-95,000 each year after
1969, to support 13 percent of the student body. Eight black students
were on full scholarship. Teachers' salaries, too, were raised until they
stood once again above the median for girls' schools by 1970-71—
though this was not enough for a new breed of young teacher (gen-
erally male) who refused to speak softly on the subject, and success-
fully pushed the administration if not to higher salaries then to a more
rational set of criteria by which to award them.

All this money had to come from somewhere. Griggs and Dow
were ready by early 1970 with a plan to borrow enough from the
endowment to cover the $311,000 deficit that had accumulated from
1966 to 1969, and to use New Abbot Fund monies to finance future
capital improvements, especially those which would generate larger
tuition income. The plan seemed all the more necessary as the 1969-70
deficit approached $362,ooo.88 Burton Flagg would have been horri-
fied, but that good old man was dying in a nursing home. At first
Gardner Sutton objected. "I'm from Boston," he said, "and here we
don't believe in spending money we don't have." "Well, I'm from
Virginia," answered Trustee Guerin Todd, a Washington lawyer, "and
down there we spend money we don't have all the time." "Keynesian
economics," Todd dubbed Abbot's system of planned deficits.89 The
idea seemed reasonable. The fund drive was starting out strong under
Todd's and Sheahan's leadership; it looked as though alumnae would
endorse the New Abbot after all. For this, enormous credit was due
Jane Sullivan, '31, Alumnae Secretary, who had spent nearly half her
life at Abbot and was thus able to dispel much alumnae panic over
passing crises during the Gordon Years. "SRW," '28, wrote to Forum
Editor Sheahan, "to share with you my tremendous excitement and
enthusiasm over what I learned about Abbot through the Forum" \
"EBS," '66, said, "All I can say is 'wow!!'"90 As time went on, the
Trustees grew more discouraged. "So many of the older alumnae saw
the Gordon era as the end of Abbot Academy" and simply refused to
give, says Caroline Rogers. "I found this hard to understand, because I
was enthusiastic about everything Abbot was doing." In the end, Mrs.
Rogers' enthusiasm proved crucial: over half of the $1,175,000 that
Abbot finally raised came from her family or from foundations she
knew well or helped to manage. Important operational funds were
donated by two foundations whose directors liked the looks of the
New Abbot; $75,000 for faculty support from the Mellon Foundation

"make no little plans" 401

over three years, and $87,500 for scholarships through 1976 from the
Independence Foundation.

Meanwhile, Abbot's budgeteers were sharpening their pencils. Prod-
ded by Jane Baldwin, they helped the Investment Committee find new
management for investment funds, and endowment income crept up.
They went after unpaid tuition bills to bring in thousands extra each
year. They scrutinized the Principal's salary budget, and ran quiet
checks on teacher-workload to make certain new positions were
needed. Their intent was not to push Abbot teachers back to the
twenty-five class-hours-per-week that had been common in earlier
days, but to discover— as they did in the spring of '72— that one teacher
had just five hours of scheduled teaching each week, and to tighten
up on job descriptions. Through higher enrollments and tuition (raised
to $4,100 for the 1971-72 school year, which brought Abbot just
above the median relative to its major competitors), by careful plan-
ning, and by cheerful resistance to Gordon's more expensive inspira-
tions, the Trustees and administration pulled Abbot's annual deficit
down toward zero.91 It was just $6,800 in the last year, 1972-73.

The managers also took a look at outdated assets, and cast sentiment
aside to realize as much money as possible for the current operation.
No Organ Fund was needed now that Abbot's mechanical organ had
been retired. Nor did the Trustees think that those hopeful donors
who had put the first and last $7,000 toward a Chair of Literature in
memory of Phebe McKeen would turn in their graves if the $103,236
that had accumulated in the savings bank were used to endow salary
raises for living teachers. The most valuable anachronism was the
John-Esther Gallery collection, which no one seemed to want to ex-
hibit any more even if there had been time to do so between the lively
exhibitions of student, faculty, and professional work set up each
month or so by curator Stephanie Perrin. Stephanie herself brought to
the Trustees a proposal to sell the paintings rather than allow them to
deteriorate in the attic of Draper Hall. J. K. Dow and Richard Shea-
han knew the paintings must be worth more than the $20,000 that a
dealer was willing to offer for the collection as a whole; several auc-
tions by Parke-Bernet realized $98,000 and proved them right. George
Innes' "A June Day" brought $39,000 of the sum alone. The rest of
the Trustees were as pleased as Dow and Sheahan. The little bonanza
was a symbol of the Board's success in working with Abbot's faculty
to put money to work prudently for present needs.

"Our job as administrators was to clear away the tactical rubbish so
that teachers could get on with teaching," says Donald Gordon. The

402 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

teaching staff from 1970-73 was as various as the student body. Gordon
continued to seek teachers from outside the prep-school-Ivy League
nexus— young people, for the most part, who could both accept Ab-
bot's salary scale and further the new Abbot's values. He did not have
far to look. In contrast to the Crane years, eager young teachers were
a glut on the market: 348 teachers applied for ten openings in 1970-71,
at least a third of these serious, competent candidates. Whereas twenty-
eight of thirty-three teachers had received their training in women's
colleges or abroad in i960, only fifteen of the forty 1972-73 faculty
had done so. A dozen of the latter had completed undergraduate or
graduate work at state universities, compared with two in i960. One
third were men, and though the average age of the group as a whole
dropped from forty-four to twenty-eight in the five Gordon years,
there were teachers scattered in every age bracket. Carolyn Goodwin
encouraged every student to try out a range of teachers. After 1970
ninth graders took one trimester of English with each of two old
hands as well as one with Peter Stapleton. Upperclasswomen could
choose as required courses Black Literature, The Comic Vision, Epic
Poetry, and The American Dream, or several English electives, such as
Humanities III, Irish Studies, Southern Gothic: Novelists of the Gro-
tesque, or The Expatriates: Paris of the 20's, as well as a host of
specialized English courses at Phillips Academy. They had their choice
of four different year-long United States history courses, including a
full-blown American studies course with as many novels to read and
paintings to study as political tracts to analyze. A new mathematics
teacher set up an individualized contract-learning course which he
described in faculty meeting in detail so that others might adapt its
most successful features to their own work. The Mathematics Depart-
ment hooked into a Cambridge computer and offered one term of
computer study for fourth-level mathematics students. But Abbot's
laboratory science courses remained limited to one year each of chem-
istry, physics, and biology. "I found when I got to college that I'd had
lady-like science; other students in the pre-med courses were much
better trained," says one alumna; another no,w in nursing agrees. Yet
others feel their basic preparation was excellent. In biology, "It de-
pended on what teacher you had," explains one, who says that she was
crazy about her teacher, "even though I knew more biology than he
did," because he taught her all about white-water canoeing. There was
no doubt that quality was more uneven than it had been in the past;
there was so much going on that class preparation sometimes went by
the board. A Crane appointee puts it in extreme terms: "Hardly any-
one had any real commitment to the school as an academic institu-

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS 403

tion." She says, "Tradition was a dirty word." One of the most able
eleventh graders on Andover Hill (class of '73) drew four teachers
out of five who were simply dull. History was worst. "The teacher
was bored. We were bored. We were all bored. We were very bored.
Oh dear." Asked why she didn't leave, she describes all the rest of
Abbot with warmth: student and faculty friends, basketball Abbot
style ("very relaxed, super fun"), helping to organize a Thanksgiving
Vespers that could encompass every faith and every agnostic yearn-
ing, gathering greens by the Shawsheen River to deck Davis Hall for
Christmas Vespers, and working very hard on stage crew for main-
stage productions at Phillips. It was an interesting switch from Eliza-
beth Marshall's day when it was Abbot's academic work that kept the
blood moving even if nothing else did. As a Senior, this '73 graduate
took four of her five courses on the top of the Hill, including a superb
Advanced Placement Biology course.

"We lost some of our professionalism," says one long-time teacher—
who also admits to having enjoyed her rest from the pressure of aca-
demic work she had felt in the Crane-Tucker years. "It's a shame,"
says another. "We didn't need to hire any of those friendly incompe-
tents to change the school. Luckily most students knew what they
needed, and flocked to the more demanding teachers wherever there
was a choice— and usually there was." Pressure or no pressure, many
teachers worked terribly hard: they created for another bright, quest-
ing girl an experience wholly different from the one Abbot gave to
her '73 friend above. "Jean St. Pierre was the best writing teacher I've
ever had," says this '72 alumna, speaking for many, "an emotive, per-
ceptive, demanding teacher, really excited about her subject." She also
"learned tremendously" from her history class. She cut her teeth on
the Abbot computer and then climbed the Hill to join the Phillips
computer "club," even though she was denied access to most Phillips
mathematics courses. "Academically, it was an incredible treat for me.
I came from a high school where one did not discuss ideas or reading,
[and] I was beginning to abandon intellectual interests." "Almost for-
got Mr. Gordon," her letter goes on. "I liked and respected him. He
was very accessible. Three of us went to his house once a week one
winter to listen to him talk about economics— unstructured, but fasci-
nating." Her friend of '73 did forget Mr. Gordon, because "he was
hardly ever around." "He was busy raising money; he didn't know my
name. I kept having to check out plans with him because he was head,
but in terms of running the school, he didn't seem to have any say
whatsoever," a judgment little different from that of several teachers,
one of whom liked Gordon very much but says, simply, that "the

4o4

THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

faculty was pulling on its own." The '73 student goes on: "My last
spring there was this shakedown in Hall House which, in terms of
civil liberties, seemed a little appalling. The morning after, Mr. Gordon
was to speak in assembly so I had a pen and pad out, ready to write
down how he justified it, or whatever. But as usual, he talked and
talked — for an hour and ten minutes— and didn't say anything." There
is no such thing as a moderate student opinion of Abbot's last Prin-
cipal. Still, it was a sign of Abbot's good health that students could
joke about the one characteristic on which everyone agreed: his over-
done eloquence.

^ AND I HAVE JOST orSE fi\o*£
3K\£P Point I'd uiKG To lOnftKe

57. Talk and Laughter, Cynosure, 1$ October 1971.

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS 405

The few who really got to know Donald Gordon most appreciated
him. A great deal of his attention went to the girls who participated in
the two-year Indian exchange program, an experience that profoundly
affected them and opened a shutter on the outside-Abbot world for
many more. Abbot principals from Miss McKeen through Miss Hear-
sey had looked toward Europe; Gordon, fascinated with the American
West, faced the old Academy toward its own continent. He joined
efforts that several Eastern schools were making to include native
Americans and Indian studies in their schools and curricula through an
Intercultural Exchange Program, which sent six Abbot girls to the
Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota during March and brought Da-
kota (Sioux) Indian girls (as well as one "white" girl living on the
Reservation) to the Eastern schools for three weeks in April.92 Abbot
and Concord academies were the first schools to arrange the month
at Rosebud. The Abbot pioneers prepared for their adventure through
a week-long seminar with Gordon on Dakota culture, and flew west
at the begnning of March, where they were met, introduced to the
principals of the mission high school and public school to which they
would go, and brought to the Reservation families who had agreed to
take them on.

"One more won't matter," Mr. and Mrs. Black Spotted Horse had
said to the Rosebud coordinator when he asked for host families; they
had fifteen children already, in a house about the size of three Draper
Hall student rooms. "Sam" Howland shared a bed with five of the
children, learned to breakfast on potato-and-meat soup, and to enjoy
the Sunday family feasts and the endless driving around in cars which
many Dakota considered the only worthwhile winter entertainment.
No two girls had the same experience; one lived on a farm with a white
family, and two others spent week nights in a barracks dormitory with
fifty Dakota girls from the poorest part of the Reservation. Some
found high school deadening (one was seated by her teacher and made
to write "I will not be late for school" two hundred times), while
others found teachers extraordinarily friendly, willing to include and
help them. Romantic stereotypes of Plains Indian life disintegrated be-
fore the whisky bottles in the grass, the listlessness of unemployed
men, and the almost universal preference for indoor life ("It was hard
to go on a walk because everyone started worrying that you were up-
set," said one girl), but every Abbot girl brought back some powerful
images: the slower pace of life, the sere beauty of the rolling winter
plains, the wind, their dear, close host-families, and, most of all, the
sense of having managed well within an unfamiliar American sub-
culture.93

406 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

Abbot was not entirely prepared for the Dakota girls who came
East. It was not just that Don Gordon was leaving most of the details
to a few and failing to consult others94 (the Admissions officers were
never brought in at all, though they knew best where space for beds
and a friendly reception could be found). It was also that the Rosebud
schools had given their girls no clear sense of what to expect or how
they should keep up with courses at home. The Dakota girls came to
Abbot classes expecting to be as bored as they were by many classes
back at Rosebud, and therefore, with a few exceptions, they were.
They had never done any serious homework, so they quickly fell be-
hind; several simply stopped going to class at all. Even those who did
attend, especially the full-blooded Indian girls who rarely spoke or
smiled, baffled students and teachers. Here they were in the land of
let-it-all-hang-out; the intense reserve by which these girls hid their
homesickness and protected their dignity was entirely unfamiliar to
Abbot in the seventies. After a week, Carolyn Goodwin gathered them
and their student hosts together, and with them sketched out a plan
for their stay which combined modified class schedules with trips to
the ocean, to Lexington and Boston, to a conference of Indians staying
at Northfield and Concord academies. Nothing worked perfectly, but
by the time the girls had to leave, they all wanted to come back again,
and several Abbot teachers and students wished they could.95

There were ten black students now, most of whom had prepared (or
been ill prepared) in ghetto junior high schools and nearly all of whom
were highly conscious of the revolutionary responsibilities of black
youth. The Dakota visitors were startled by the vehemence with
which several of these girls took them aside into special caucus and
pleaded solidarity with Third World causes. It was not the only such
instance. A few of the more bitter black students felt no blacks could
survive unless all stood together against the school; two issued threats
to the rest: join us or get beaten up. Abbot gave them space for an
Afro-American center, Mrs. Johnston allowed them special late sign-
ins when they attended Afro-American dances at other schools, a very
few got away with some serious rulebreaking— "if a white girl did that
she'd be kicked out," says a white alumna— but the angriest stayed that
way. A part-time adviser, a black graduate student from Tufts, only
exacerbated the situation, adding her own threats to those others had
made, insisting that Abbot and all white America was hopelessly racist,
and advising the black girls finally to walk out after Thanksgiving of
1972 and not come back. At that point Gordon called on Beth Chand-
ler Warren, '55, whose husband Ted had joined the Abbot History
Department that September. She brought the girls together and told

MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS

407

$8. Growing up black at Abbot, 1970.

408 THE FINAL DECADE, I 9 6 3 - I 9 7 3

them, "Yes, Abbot's racist, American society is racist, so what else is
new? . . . You think you're being ripped off? Well, then, you get in
there and rip off all the academic power you can get from this school.
Learn everything you can and get yourselves ready to change things."96
Throughout the Gordon years there had been at least one or two
extraordinarily serene and able black students at Abbot each year;
almost imperceptibly, leadership of the 1972-73 group of blacks passed
over to them, and things rocked back into their usual uneasy balance
between the black girls' loyalty to each other and their will to prosper
as individuals within a multicolored society.

uNo risks, no progress," says one of the veteran Abbot teachers.
Abbot's struggle to come to grips with the realities of the sixties and
seventies was bound to include failures and awful mistakes, as well as
successes even beyond Donald Gordon's dreams. The overwhelming
majority of alumnae from these years say they would never have
traded their Abbot experience— take it all in all— for anything more
sane, more dull. Once the roller-coaster had been taken aside for re-
pairs in 1970, it never came close to being derailed. In fact, by 1972,
when Phillips Academy took one last look at Abbot and found the
bride worthy, she was riding along smooth track well out of Fun City,
going places on her own.

Endings and Beginnings

The union of Abbot and Phillips Academy

has been achieved, and in a fashion

that will not impoverish either school

but enrich both.

Abbot Trustees' Minutes, September 20, 1972

Phillips Academy ATE Abbot
Abbot alumna to Phillips student, Class of '78

There remains the merger story to tell. Given Abbot's long life, it is a
brief tale, but an intense one, with some surprising turns. Much of it
was hidden from students at the time, some of it from faculty as well.
"You couldn't let on what you were doing till you were pretty sure it
would work out," explains Phil Allen. The school had work of its own
to do that must not be weakened by hopes or fears concerning the
rest of Andover Hill.

'To the Fern Sems of Andover; so near and yet so far!"

Thus did Phillips' finest toast their Abbot sisters whenever longing
coincided with a celebratory mood. The salute rang out on the Phillips
Seniors' class sleigh ride of 1883;1 it encapsulates a paradox not finally
resolved until 1973, when Abbot and Phillips became one school under
the name of Phillips Academy. The merger was prefigured by his-
torical ties between the two academies, and powered by present
urgencies in which both Abbot and Phillips saw far more opportunity
than danger.

Long had Abbot considered its mission complementary to that of
Phillips. "What the Trustees of Phillips Academy would provide for
young men, we would provide for young ladies" the Abbot Trustees
wrote to Mary Lyon in 1834.2 Though the disparity between the two
academies in numbers and economic power would only increase, the
idea of their complementarity persisted. Abbot's and Phillips' institu-

4IO THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

tional lives overlapped throughout the nineteenth century: their an-
cestry in the Sarah Abbot -Samuel Phillips family connection, their
board membership, their formal social life, their visiting lecturers and
part-time teachers, their constituencies, and their supporters within the
town of Andover— all were shared to a greater or lesser extent. Though
Abbot let the early experiments in regular academic cooperation lapse
and went the way of other post-bellum boarding schools in creating a
thoroughly single-sex community, social interchange flourished, as we
have seen. The Phillips Class of 1872 held a reunion feast in the Smith
Hall dining room, to the delight of Harriet Chapell and her friends.3
Phillips came down to cheer the Abbot baseball games with such en-
thusiasm that Miss McKeen wondered whether she had been wise to
allow her young ladies to play baseball at all.4 One institution, the
Ladies Benevolent Society of Phillips Academy, aptly foreshadowed
the Phillips-Abbot merger: under a charter drawn with the help of
several Phillips Trustees, Abbot's real interests were continually ad-
vanced. The Society was founded in 1831 by Academy and Theologi-
cal Seminary wives and daughters, but most of them were also Abbot
parents, students, or alumnae. It met regularly in the Abbot Chapel
throughout its first few decades. By the 1970's the Society would stand
as the oldest woman's club in the United States, yet another Abbot-
Phillips connection so ancient that it was simply taken for granted.

The twentieth century witnessed a cooling of the friendship on an
official level. In 191 2 Abbot students advocated closer ties: Phillips'
Charles Forbes had brought greetings from "Abbot's big brother" to
Bertha Bailey at her Inaugural, and the Courant Editors were slightly
miffed; "Let us suggest that, in the future, something be done to make
the family get together," they wrote.5 But 191 2 also marked the year
Miss Bailey began cutting what lines there were up and down Andover
Hill. Merger seemed so far from reality by 1949 that Marguerite
Hearsey felt free to joke about a coeducational Utopia when she intro-
duced Headmaster John Kemper to the Boston Abbot Club. "There's
an idea for us, Mr. Kemper. Think of all the problems it would solve!
Well, who knows?"

When Abbot's last rules have been lifted

And no freedom is longer denied:
When the older critics have left us

And the wildest new theories been tried . . .
We shall learn and the answer seems simple

That altho' we have always been two
We'd better henceforth combine forces

And be one without further ado.6

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 41 1

Joking aside, the idea of coeducation would not go away. We have
seen how extracurricular contacts between the schools gradually
widened and deepened through the next two decades, how the privet
hedge lost its symbolic loading, how the bushes that had long held
illicit notes or sheltered illicit lovers became just bushes again. Students
engineered many of the changes themselves, a not surprising develop-
ment when one considers that in the late 1960's 94 percent of students
in northeastern single-sex secondary schools wished for coeducation.7
A Social Union in the basement of Cochran Chapel near the Abbot-
Phillips border, a co-ed Senior ski weekend, coeducation of the Phillips
Summer Session, Abbot participation in the Andover-Exeter Washing-
ton Intern Program and School Year Abroad— all were responses to
students' initiatives or applicants' desire for coeducational programs.
Separate corporate identities still kept the two schools "so near and
yet so far," but by the end of the sixties the "far" distance had radical-
ly diminished, and many on Andover Hill had begun to wonder
whether it need exist at all.

• "It's a coed world"8

Just as the times favored women's education in the 1820's when Abbot
began, so now they favored coeducation as never before. Single-sex
fortresses were falling fast: In 1968 alone 53 colleges and universities
(35 of them women's colleges) either became coeducational or began
coordinate instruction. With only 33 men enrolled in its first year of
coeducation, Bennington's applications rose 56 percent. Ivy League
colleges gearing up for coeducation saw their applications bottom out
and begin to rise, while the number applying to all-male Princeton
continued to dwindle. (Princeton soon changed its plans.) Popular
articles spoke of "cracking the cloister"9 and likened the remaining
hold-outs to prisons.10 Educators wrote that the young no longer
needed a moratorium from worldly concerns. Professors discovered
that females could think after all, and deans rang new changes on the
nineteenth-century theme of women's civilizing influence on young
men. In the ten years from 1962 to 1972, half of all women's colleges
became coordinate or coeducational institutions, and those remaining
found that they garnered far fewer of the talented students who had
flocked to them in their heyday.

"The secondary schools, like the colleges, are yielding to the de-
mands of the times," wrote the Saturday Review in 1969.11 But they
yielded cautiously, with many a backward look. The late- Victorian

412 THE F IN AL DECADE, I963-I973

adolescent resurfaced in the National Review soon after Exeter ad-
mitted girls, "unsure, preoccupied with [his] intense, chaotic sexu-
ality." The slower maturing boy watched girls outshine him in grade
point averages and verbal skills, and his rebelliousness flared; mean-
while, because of his need for authoritative controls, his more trac-
table female classmates suffered a disciplinary system inappropriate to
their needs.12 NAPSG members exchanged poignant accounts of the
demonstrated advantages of all-girls' schools as they watched their
single-sex membership shrink. In such schools, says Valeria Knapp of
Winsor, "there was never any question of girls taking second place. If
they've really run things as teenagers, why should they stop running
things as adults?"13

New research seemed to back Knapp's experienced convictions.
Psychologists were fascinated with Matina Horner's evidence that
bright women in coeducational colleges were often hampered in com-
petitive situations by an anxiety uncommon in males: a fear of the
social and personal consequences of success, such as loss of femininity
or rejection by friends. The researchers took Horner's projective tests
to coeducational and all-girls' high schools and discovered a far higher
proportion of girls possessed of this anxiety in the coeducational
schools than in comparable single sex schools.14 Other scholars did
some counting and found that women who had attended all-female
high schools or colleges were much more likely to have won doctor-
ates, to have proven their competence as college teachers or adminis-
trators, or even to have made "Who's Who in America." They noticed
with interest the disproportionate number of women scientists and
physicians who had graduated from Mt. Holyoke and Bryn Mawr.15
The studies confirmed what all feminists and some psychologists had
believed for decades: social institutions must consciously take the
path of most resistance if women are to become other than "a reflec-
tion of a feminine image which men carry about in their heads."16 Or,
as Margaret Mead has put it, "The trouble with American women is
too much coeducation."17

Finally, the women's liberation movement, born again in the late
1960's, evoked young women's special need for strong female friend-
ships and worthy female models in a society that sold heterosexual
love like candy and refused to credit women's need to ground them-
selves in self-respecting independence from men. A few feminist hero-
ines such as M. Carey Thomas had long ago argued that true coeduca-
tion was the ideal school for a world in which "men and women are
to live and work together as comrades and dear friends and married
friends and lovers." Unfortunately America considered women in-

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 413

ferior; thus Thomas felt that true coeducation was impossible, and all-
female schools and colleges must be sustained.18

Yet there was hope as well as cynicism in President Thomas' view,
and many secondary educators seized on the hope as the sixties closed:
might not America finally be ready for true coeducation? If so, then
all the earlier bets were off— those bets based on the college success of
graduates of all-girls' schools, on Ph.D. statistics, and on the sheer fun
and personal satisfaction tens of thousands of young women had ex-
perienced in single-sex schools. Dean Simeon Hyde of Phillips Acade-
my stated this position in 1970: "As the roles of men and women be-
come less differentiated, differentiated education loses its validity . . .
The separation of the sexes in secondary boarding schools is a kind of
hiatus in the normal process of growth ... at odds with the experience
of all but a tiny minority of the American population, a status no
longer supported by the concept of a special mode of education for
a special class."19

Both Phillips and Abbot Academies had been founded and main-
tained as separate institutions in response to particular cultural and eco-
nomic circumstances. Now, if it was not yet entirely "a coed world,"
that new world was close enough so that a coed school might help to
make it a reality.

On the Hilltop

Phillips Academy held the cards. The Abbot Trustees had effectively
committed Abbot to some form of coeducation when they hired
Donald Gordon in 1967. The Phillips Trustees balked at any such rash
moves, but later the same year the Hilltop faculty followed the recom-
mendation of its Steering Committee and voted to encourage shared
social activities and "joint instruction" "with one or more neighboring
girls' schools."20 Though a few were dead set against further sex-
mixing, and their voices would become louder as time went on, the
traffic up and down Andover Hill warmed the hearts of Phillipians
like Frederick Peterson, first dean of the coed Summer School; Simeon
Hyde, Dean of the Faculty; and Alan Blackmer, Hyde's predecessor
and Phillips' free-spirited elder statesman, who had been talking of
coeducation for thirty years. A further, crasser impetus came from the
Phillips' Admissions Office: Applications followed the general decline,
with no sign of a reversal to match that which Abbot began to record
after Gordon's arrival. The decline would become more alarming as
St. Paul's, Taft, Northfield-Mt. Hermon, and Exeter became coedu-

414 THE FIN AL DECADE, 1963-1973

cational and an increasing number of boys turned down an Andover
admission to accept one from Exeter. Mere resolves would no longer
do; Phillips Andover girded itself to catch up with the times. Its
faculty set to work with Abbot the spring of 1969 to plan the first
experiments in "joint instruction."

The planners already knew from the "coordinate education week"
of inter-school class visiting in early 1969 that schedules frustrate the
best intentions. School schedules are sacred things: Phillips and Abbot
had purposely kept theirs distinct in order to separate male and female.
Now Abbot teachers much preferred their flexible modular schedule
to Phillips' fifty-three minute time-slots, and were loath to give it up.
Though they soon sacrificed it for the cause, early coordination from
1969-71 would remain minimal and largely one way— up the Hill. The
experiment would expose the traps of the piecemeal approach: teach-
ing overloads for Phillips Visual Studies teachers, keen disappointment
on the part of those Phillips students who found themselves scheduled
out of a long-anticipated Senior elective in favor of an Abbot Senior,
the anxiety of the single female in a class full of males and vice versa,
and the deepest trap of all— serious pedagogical disagreement between
Abbot and Phillips departments over how to teach French, say, or
whether to combine any classes at all.21

Still, these first two years of joint instruction raised some pioneers.
The Art departments of the two schools moved first: they planned a
group of complementary courses and opened them to Phillips and Ab-
bot students alike. The Music and Modern Language departments fol-
lowed suit. Early coordination proved that boys and girls could sit
together in the same classroom and refrain from flirting— that they
could even take Sex Education classes in stride, enjoying their raw
humor along with their abundant factual information. (Jean Bennett
does recall that the Hilltop administration drew the line at the boys
being invited to a special lecture given by a homosexual, a respected
physicist and college teacher. She says she did not endear herself to
the Phillips brass by putting up announcements throughout the Phillips
campus the night before the lecture was to take place.)22 Altogether,
fifty-six major courses and eighteen minors were open to both sexes
in 1969-70.

Given this taste of coeducation, most students wanted much more.
Yet official negotiations dragged. Early in 1970 some of Phillips showed
itself unwilling to wait longer. A faculty-student committee of the
"Cooperative," Phillips' school government forum, recommended to
the Coop "that P.A. not only press vigorously the development of co-
ordination with Abbot Academy, but at the same time the Academy

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

4J5

It's a real turkey. 1 s*w it in our sex ed class!

59. Sex Education, Illustrated. (Cartoon from a 1972 Sex Education Course

Exam.)

accept in principle the enrollment of girls as diploma candidates."
The Coop then drew up a faculty-student referendum on coordination
the enrollment of girls in P.A. Student opinion was strongly in favor
of both routes to coeducation. Faculty opinion was divided, but twice
as many favored coordination as favored separate moves to coeduca-
tion. After a restless month, the Phillips faculty voted to ask their
Trustees "to investigate the question of coeducation and coordinate
education."23 In response, the Trustees issued the vaguest resolution
conceivable: Phillips Academy might "after study, perhaps contribute
to the education of young women." To the Abbot Trustees, already
committed to educating young men, this looked timid indeed; but the
Phillips Board followed up its vote with a directive to its Educational
Policy Committee to "undertake a complete in-depth study of the
needs and possibilities and future course, whether positive or negative,
of either coordinate education or coeducation at Phillips Academy."
The investigation was to be made "in collaboration with an appropri-
ate committee of Abbot Academy," and would draw on such faculty
and students as the Headmaster wished to designate.24 By design, the
Phillips Alumni Council was meeting the very same weekend; John

41 6 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

Kemper told the alumni of the Trustees' resolution, and invited Donald
Gordon to present his own vision of the two schools under a single
administration and board of trustees. Shortly afterward, a summer
study committee was organized, including administrators from both
schools. So began a full sixteen months of earnest study and planning—
a period of hope, of imaginative moves toward the future— and at its
close, of bitter disappointment for the advocates of merger. In spite of
brave beginnings, no smooth path to coeducation was to be found
where small groups of traditionalists and principled advocates of swift
solutions held the two extremes, while the large number of Hilltop
teachers in between shifted from one coalition to another. Vested in-
terests swept some toward coeducation, others away; fears of disorder
vied with the recognition that Phillips Academy's very survival might
depend upon its willingness to change. Though all wanted the best for
their schools, over two years would pass before Andover Hill could
agree on what the best would be.

Leaps of faith: 1970-197 1

The key administrators from both schools met throughout July to de-
cide how to move forward, and determined after long discussion that
an early commitment to merger by both boards of Trustees was
needed to undergird the enormous effort the two faculties must make
to plan for a new school. They also set up three complementary
Phillips- Abbot committees to start the work: A Curriculum Commit-
tee, a committee to study school governance and community organiza-
tion, and a committee on social life, later to be called the Boy-Girl
Relations Committee. In time others would be added, including a com-
mittee on Coordination of Athletic Programs. Early on, Simeon Hyde
took intellectual leadership of the planning for Phillips, leaving John
Kemper to ponder the political problems of how he might persuade a
faculty of assertive individuals to come along. For years, a few Abbot
Trustees had felt Kemper was stalling on coeducation. He was too
much tied to the traditional Abbot, they thought, too imbued by his
military past with the idea of women as— above all— wives or daughters
whom men must protect, and quite unable to think of women as col-
leagues.25 But now Kemper quietly moved onto center stage in the
plan-making. His long-time Abbot connections became crucial, and his
caution gave essential reassurance to those Phillips faculty who still
defended Phillips as a male bastion now and forever more. He had

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 417

grown up on legends of his grandmother Mason, who refused to be
left behind when her army doctor husband set out with his company
on campaigns of Indian pacification; she bore her first child on one
expedition. His mother (an Abbot graduate) and a favorite maiden
aunt were equally powerful people. Some years after his first wife's
death, Kemper married another special woman with a long career as
teacher and dean behind her: Abby Castle, Abbot '31. His three
daughters, one an Abbot alumna, had brought close the problems and
joys of female education. Yet the decorous distance between Phillips
and Abbot had been comfortable for him; a friend and Phillips alum-
nus says he dreaded coeducation at first. "He told me so. He was suf-
fering from some relative of the same syndrome as Miss Bailey."26 In
time, however, he moved. Kemper's style was to talk over a dilemma
with anyone who would listen; to slowly, deliberately settle his own
mind as to the wisdom of a given course of action; then, quietly and
informally, to speak his case to others. Friends think he decided for an
Abbot-Phillips merger during the 1970 summer conclave; from that
time on, he worked to make it happen.27

Simeon Hyde, on the other hand, was a master of the position paper.
His "Case for Coeducation," October 1970, was an intellectual's argu-
ment based on historical and sociological analysis, but it also affirmed
the validity of young people's dream of community in a time of social
disintegration, a kind of "extended family, founded upon principles of
love and respect for individual diversity."28 He sensitively described
how "used" and disillusioned the new Yale and Princeton women had
felt as their position of "token females" became clear to them. By
joining with Abbot, Phillips Academy could avoid pitfalls such as these.

A merger, though full of difficulties, seems practical, ethical, and
educationally sound. A true merger would bring to either partner
the insight, experience, and resources of the other; and with no
alteration of numbers, the combined school would have a better
start toward an acceptable ratio of boys and girls and of men
and women than would be possible at the beginning of any one
school's solitary effort ... If Abbot and Phillips could together
commit themselves to the development of a school in which boys
and girls and men and women shared equally, they would be far
ahead of other institutions striving to escape from the limitations
of sexually segregated education.29

Hyde's "Case" hit the faculty mailboxes just after the Abbot and Phil-
lips Trustee Subcommittees on Coeducation met jointly and agreed to

418 THE FIN AL DECADE, 1963-I973

recommend to their respective Boards that the two schools become
one. Nearly everyone on Andover Hill expected that the Phillips
Trustees would vote for merger during their fall meeting in 1970.

Yet the majority of the Phillips Board refused merger. This was the
first of three votes rejecting an Abbot-Phillips union. Old Phillips
grads all, and Ivied over in college, they treasured their biases; but bias
was not the whole story. They were legitimately fearful of the finan-
cial consequences of merger— the more so given Abbot's enormous
deficit for '69-70; they simply would not consider it without further
study. They did commit themselves at last to Abbot Academy, voting
"that Phillips Academy should be involved in the education of women,
and [that it] should not do so independently but in close association
with Abbot Academy."30 Abbot's Trustees made a similar commitment
to Phillips in their own fall meeting. So, somehow, Abbot and Phillips
were to join forces. The question was, how?

It seemed both fitting and practical for Philip Allen to be made Co-
ordinator of the study and planning of coeducation since he was
Trustee for both academies; fitting also for him to set up headquarters
in Phillips' Graham House next door to where Sarah Abbot had once
lived. He had his work cut out for him. The Abbot and Phillips Ad-
mission Officers had never even met: Allen introduced them and many
others, too. Plenty of Abbot-Phillips faculty threw themselves into
their planning tasks however. The Abbot and Phillips Curriculum Com-
mittees first convened in November while the student-faculty commit-
tees on School/Community Organization started work in January of
1 97 1. In spite of the Phillips Trustees' hesitations, these and their sub-
groups still talked in terms of merger. Each committee held frequent,
open meetings to keep in touch with teachers and students in both
schools as they progressed. The Curriculum Committee, asking "What
is the purpose of secondary education?" found itself engaged in an
effort to define and prescribe for the future of American society. Its
members exchanged extensive readings in the theory and practice of
education; they solicited position papers from academic departments
and exchanged memoranda until their notebooks bulged with ideas
both intricate and grand. Meanwhile, the Abbot School/Community
Organization group and the corresponding Phillips Committee almost
immediately decided that their concerns were the same, and a tall
order they were:

Living arrangements
Decision making
Student organization

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 419

Adult roles

Social-cultural activities
Rules

Individual rights
Campus life

Administrative structure
Guidance, Counseling, Religion
Off-Campus learning centers

The Boy-Girl Relations Committee was building no Utopias. It talked
over details of room visiting, the counseling of boys and girls who
became "dangerously involved with one another,1' the make-up of
disciplinary committees, the need for more women teachers, and all
the specifics of an environment that recognizes adolescents as sexual
beings, yet also supports same-sex privacy where necessary and "dis-
courages sexual license."31 Academic departments in both schools also
got into the act, charged by their administration to define the material
and curricular issues at stake in a joint instructional program. A single
new language lab, replied the Phillips Modern Language chairman;
joint borrowing privileges in both libraries, replied the librarians. It
was an exciting time, not least because key members of both faculties
were discovering each other as persons and enjoying the process. Little
by little, they replaced visions with plans for a new school in An-
dover Hill.

Deep Waters

By Springtime, however, it was clear that nothing would be easy. The
more progress was made by the busy planners, the more resistance
coalesced among those men of the Hilltop who realized that the plan-
ners were actually serious. A poll of the Phillips teachers taken in
March 1971 showed many of them backing away from Abbot: only
5 percent now hoped for full academic coordination. True, there was
a sizable group (almost 40 percent) seeking a coeducational school, but
asked how coeducation should be achieved, 63 percent preferred that
Phillips take in its own girls rather than merge with Abbot. The re-
sults testified to the complications that lay ahead for those who had
not seen them coming in the stereotypes that were multiplying up and
down the Hill. Abbot students had been "dumber," and "more emo-
tional," for years, but a host of new Hilltop characterizations now fed
on the few real excesses of the 1969-70 school year. Today's Abbot

420 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-I973

girls were "spoiled" as well. All decent standards of dress and deport-
ment having been abandoned, they had become "slobs"; they sang
siren songs to the weaker, freakier Phillips boys, who fled to the
Draper Hall corridors to escape the rigors of Hilltop life. Abbot teach-
ers coddled math cripples; they accepted late papers and atrocious
spelling; they sprawled on classroom floors and grooved with their
students instead of teaching them; they solved communications prob-
lems in "group-grope" sensitivity training sessions rather than submit
with dignity to Roberts Rules; the older, more experienced women
teachers were fast being outnumbered by pot-smoking, draft-dodging
young men.32 Abbot faculty returned the insults by grumbling in the
shelter of their faculty room, and Abbot girls protested, occasionally
in print. Cynosure's "Bertha B" advice column was the ideal medium:

Dear Bertha B.,

I have a problem . . .

He's all I ever wanted in a guy . . . The basic problem is that
he's more interested in my body than my brains. He takes classes
at my school because he thinks they're easier than those at his
own school. But when I take classes at his school all he does is
laugh . . . He thinks I'm stupid but I always end up doing his
homework . . . Please help.,

Desperate.33

They and their teachers easily latched onto their own stereotypes of
Phillips Academy. Phillips was business-like, cold, ruthlessly competi-
tive, insensitive to student needs. The ideal Phillips boy was a hard-
muscled automaton, who traveled between classroom and athletic field,
head stuffed with outlines of Supreme Court cases. Much of Abbot be-
lieved the story about the Phillips math teacher who (it was said) so
hated girls that he got a stomachache whenever one appeared in his
Summer School classroom, and students attached similar attributes to
the Phillips faculty as a whole.

Myths aside, there were real differences between the two schools,
some of them hardened over a century of separation; further, there
were special stresses on the Hilltop peculiar to the 1970-71 school year
which complicated the existing confusions about coeducation. Phillips
was three times the size of Abbot. It could not help being less per-
sonal, more bureaucratized, more prone to "institutional inertia."34 Its
central Discipline Committee brought formal procedures in cases simi-
lar to those which Abbot's house parents and dorm representatives re-
solved themselves. Faculty moguls sat for years on the Phillips Com-
mittee dealing out swift chastisement and often recommending dis-

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 42 I

missal for first-time offenders, while Abbot's elected student Honor
Board would agonize for hours searching for appropriate individual
punishments before advising probation. Time and again the Honor
Board gave a second or third probation in hope that a girl could pull
herself together after all— and often enough she did, with massive help
from friends and faculty.35 A determined girl could win an exception
to the rules for almost any reasonable request, or could choose a dorm
known for its laissez-faire atmosphere, like Cutler House, where for at
least a year, none of the residents even realized that those Phillips boys
in and out of the Common Room all day weren't supposed to be there.
(To be fair, a few dorms up the Hill were much the same.)36 Or she
could sit back and take a Sherman House letter-writer's advice: "Just
take it easy. ... If you're smart, you will find that most everything is
permitted."37

Abbot had all but given up trying to prohibit smoking; Phillips
boys smoked often but illegally. Phillips had late afternoon and Satur-
day classes, while Abbot weekends began at 3:30 on Friday afternoon.
There were genuine differences in the two schools' approaches to
teaching and departmental organization, all of which would have to be
resolved, even if the Trustees stopped short of merger and settled for
joint instruction. The same was true of dorm life, which was supervised
by teacher-housemasters on the Hilltop and by the full-time resident ad-
visers at Abbot. "Abbot took House-counseling far more seriously than
Phillips does," says one woman who has run a dormitory in both
schools. On the other hand athletics were central to Hilltop life. Down
the Hill, now that ballet was no longer required for ninth graders,
sports and dance periods were half the length and twice the fun for most.
"You could play basketball because you liked it," says one alumna,
"the average height of the team was 5' 6". We lost every single game."38
A few Abbot students roundly protested any competitive sports pro-
gram for girls, insisting that life was now so rich on Andover Hill that
such outlets were no longer needed.39 One other stereotype was large-
ly accurate: many Phillips boys did escape to Abbot as they were
accused of doing. But it was not just to breathe in the smoke from the
Abbot Seniors' cigarettes. "What makes Abbot so much better than
the conventional girls' boarding school?" a Phillips swain queried.
"One of the extended attractions for P.A. people is that those down
here are human and enjoy it."40

A "human" community was desperately wanted by many of the
Hilltop residents. Historian Frederick Allis testifies that the years 1971
and early 1972 were the most difficult in the history of Phillips Acade-
my. Student frustration over the war, the draft, and the pace of

42 2

THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

60. The butt room.

change on Andover Hill reached a peak; two years of protests and
Memorial Day fracases seemed to have accomplished nothing, and a
large minority were now embittered, ready to back rebellious student
leaders, ready, even, to participate in senseless, capricious acts of van-
dalism that appalled the adults.41 There was a species of hope in some
teachers' growing sympathy for the antiwar cause, but this solidarity
bred complications too, for it intensified already serious splits within
the Phillips faculty.42 A pro-Abbot faction developed out of those
who admired Abbot's response to the confusions of the age and to
student desire for authentic communication with adults, and an anti-
Abbot faction sprang up to oppose it. A large middle group cast about
for new directions. The Phillips Seniors would put a seal on their own
discontent in June 1971, when nearly two thirds of the class signed a
statement expressing their "lack of confidence in the administration
and faculty of Phillips Academy." Many faculty were at a loss how to
cope with the impasse.

They were all the more anxious because John Kemper had become
seriously ill with lung cancer. When the one person who could talk
with everyone dropped out for an operation and convalescence, a few
Phillips teachers simply stopped speaking to one another. It was the
worst possible time to arrive at conclusions about the complex issues
raised by the prospect of coeducation. Yet discussions were held, some
of them involving every Abbot and Phillips teacher and 150 Abbot-

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 423

Phillips students as well. The Community Organization group made
one of the most attractive proposals: that Phillips' experimental system
of self-governing residential "clusters"— about 180 students and twenty-
five faculty each— be extended to the new 1200-student school that
would result from merger, in order to give all students the kind of
home base that Abbot students valued so much. The Abbot-Phillips
Curriculum Committees were searching the literature of learning theo-
ry and discovering how difficult it was to find any solid rationale for
the course requirements that had been traditional to Andover Hill.
They were preparing a bombshell: the recommendation that students
be allowed to design their own course of study according to their own
interests and college plans. All the planners began to assume eventual
merger as they made their way through the tangle of basic educational
questions. Dean John Richards II found himself telling West-coast
alumni forums that coeducation was the least difficult of all the de-
cisions facing Phillips Academy. The ferment only heightened anxiety
on the Hilltop, however, for most of Phillips was stunned by events,
rudderless in spite of Simeon Hyde's able leadership as Acting Head-
master during Kemper's absence. Hyde's open commitment to merger
with Abbot set the hold-outs against him as they had never stood
against Kemper. It seemed impossible to move ahead, easier far to do
nothing.

Just before he went to the hospital, Kemper had invited the anti-
coeducation minority to speak their case. They did, and forcefully,
through Mathematics Chairman Richard Pieters, who argued in March
that girls would seriously distract boys from Phillips' heavy academic
demands. The decline in applications may be a result of "concessions
we have already made" to prevailing fads, wrote Pieters. The sexual
"immorality" and "precocity" in the larger society only confirmed
the wisdom of single-sex education: "the stormy emotions of adoles-
cence need restraint, not stimulation." If anything, Andover should be
working to retard the erosion of "the natural distinctions between
men and women." Pieters' last plaintive question suggests a conviction
that sexual distinctions included intellectual ones: Even if Phillips
were to put Abbot aside and create an independent, coeducational
Phillips Academy, "Where are we to find the 300 or 400 qualified girls
for a coed school of the quality we want?"43

The division within the Phillips faculty was just what the antimerger
members of the Phillips Board needed. Considering merger for the
second time at their spring meeting, they looked at Abbot's continu-
ing (though diminishing) deficit and at the Phillips 1970-71 deficit of
$165,000; at the financial consequences of stretching the Phillips en-

424

THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

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ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 425

dowment over 1200 students (it would mean raising Phillips tuition at
least $600); and at the "decision tree," which their financial consultants
had provided. Even this simplified "tree" made Phillips Academy's
problem clear: like most rich white males of the time, Phillips had
too many options. Choice seemed impossible: this great boys' prepara-
tory school was Absalom, suspended in mid-air from its decision tree.
The Trustees voted to stay suspended, determining that "financial
considerations make a merger with Abbot impractical at this time."44

Issues Joined and Unjoined: Summer, 197 1

Once more a summer group of administrators convened at both
Boards' behest: for Abbot, Gordon, Goodwin, Johnston, and Sheahan;
for Phillips, Kemper, Hyde, Richards, and Frederick Stott. They were
to meet under the chairmanship of Philip Allen, "double agent,"45 to
clarify all the issues and devise a workable scheme for long-term
coordination. Allen had tried to persuade his fellow Phillips Trustees
of what his fellow Abbot Trustees had already accepted: that merger
offered both schools the best chance of survival in a new age. How-
ever, he strove as hard as anyone that summer to design a coordinated
academic program that would overcome the two schools' philosophical
differences and would avoid duplications and inequities. The latter
seemed almost inevitable, given the disparities in size and economic
power. The budgets in hand for the 1971-72 school year made these
disparities all too clear.

The summer group decided it couldn't be done: coordination was
neither a practical nor a desirable arrangement for the long future.
You could have a single dean, you could even (God help you) try to
combine Abbot and Phillips academic departments and equalize teach-
ing loads, but the wide differences in teachers' salaries and in resources
available for male and female students would remain, grating all the
more as teachers' responsibilities approached parity. And who would
hire whom? How would the two schools calibrate the relationship be-
tween students' out-of-class lives and their academic work? Was it fair
to hold all students to common academic standards when they entered
through two different admissions offices?

Now that Abbot had abandoned its age-old policy of charging
minimal tuition (to balance its budget, Abbot's tuition had to be $4100,
or half the income of the average American family), the disparities
between the tuition bills issued to the males and the females of An-
dover Hill looked grossly discriminatory. Finally, there was the num-

426

THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

Table i.
Budgets and Resources, Abbot and Phillips Academies, 1971-1972

Abbot Academy,

Phillips Academy,

316 Students

904 Students

Per Student Total

Tuition income

$4,100 $1,230,000

$2,700 $ 2,490,000

($2,400 day)

($2,100 day)

Endowment income

60,000

2,221,000

Gifts

100,000

514,000

Other

75,000

129,000

Total income

1,465,000

5,354,000

and expense

Operating Deficit

108,000

Market value of Endowment

June 1 97 1

1,772,784

54,746,060

June 1972*

2,360,922

64,673,311

Median teacher salary
Housing

( 1 ) for dormitory faculty

(2) for nondormitory
faculty

Size of campus, plus
other acreage owned
Market value of campus
acreage, plus all buildings

(Abbot only) Total

value, plant and

equipment

(6/72 figures for
replacement value)

(Phillips only) Total

value of plant

(6/72, estimate of re-
placement value. No
equipment figures
available)

$8, 1 00.00

provided

not provided

(though apartments

were made available

at a reasonable rent)

45 acres

$11,600

provided
provided

1 1, 1 00,000—
1,900,000 (est.)

|.,ooo,ooo

600 acres
unavailable

$100,000,000

*Phillips endowment had risen 18 percent in value between June 1971 and
June 1972, while Abbot's rose 33 percent.

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 427

bers problem. The conservative members of the Phillips Board found
coordination attractive because it preserved 825 Hilltop beds for boys,
yet the Abbot-Phillips planning committees were convinced that an
equal number of boys and girls was a precondition for a natural com-
munity. How could two coordinate schools move toward such equality?

Ultimately, the group decided, the only arguments for coordination
were economic ones that favored Phillips Academy: the closer the two
schools drew under a coordinate arrangement, the more Phillips' raw
power would be felt by the smaller one. Abbot would be dismantled,
piece by piece, and would lose its chance to deal from its unique
strengths in helping create a new totality.46 As a weary Kemper wrote
his Trustees, the choice for Phillips was now clear: a commitment to
merge with Abbot as soon as financial and legal difficulties could be
resolved, or a determination to pull away from Abbot altogether, re-
maining a boys' school or becoming coeducational on its own.47

In September 1971 the Phillips faculty were asked to make a choice
between these alternatives. Now Richard Pieters, acknowledging that
some form of coeducation was inevitable, took leadership of the anti-
merger group and introduced his own motion on September 28 for
gradual, independent coeducation within Phillips Academy. Given the
majority that had favored independent coeducation the spring before,
the resolution seemed likely to pass.

John Kemper was ill the night Pieters' motion was scheduled for
faculty action, so the discussion was deferred. A few days later, real-
izing that his health was broken, Kemper submitted his resignation.
But he had one last thing to say to the faculty at his final meeting with
them on October 12: reject the Pieters motion and go through with
the Abbot-Phillips merger. All feasible alternatives denied the two
schools' historical ties and obligations to each other. Abbot's plant and
equipment were valuable, he argued; its experience in educating girls
was priceless. At the least, the new headmaster, whoever he is, must
have a say in the matter. The faculty voted to table the Pieters resolu-
tion, and Pieters withdrew his motion.

Two weeks later, the Phillips Trustees met in gloom and uncertainty
to make their final decision for or against merger. Kemper's plea
haunted them, but who now would lead the school to carry it out?
Philip Allen spoke for merger, but he was the double agent. The three
Alumni Trustees finally persuaded the assembly not to adjourn before
it had listened to their arguments for merger, but they could not vote.
Allen left the meeting to fling away his own frustrations and to free
up discussion. The Trustees couldn't say yes to Abbot, but they
couldn't bring themselves to say no either. The alternative was limbo.

428 THE FIN AL DECADE, 1963-1973

The Phillips Board "voted that a merger at this time or in the foresee-
able future would not be in the best interests of Phillips Academy";
they resolved to go on with coordination, and to enter limbo.48

Coordination

"That was the year we put the whole merger thing in mothballs," says
Carolyn Goodwin. But teachers and students returning to Abbot in
September 197 1 found so much novelty and promise in the Abbot-
Phillips academic program that ultimate questions of the two acade-
mies' future receded before present urgencies. There was much to do.
One hundred courses invited cross-enrollment, forty at Abbot, sixty at
Phillips. The Phillips- Abbot Art departments, experienced in coordina-
tion, offered a richer program than ever before. The Music and Mod-
ern Language departments had combined forces in planning all their
courses, and the hard-working Summer Coordinating Committee had
put on the finishing touches. Now Abbot girls might take Italian as
they had done in the 1830's. Abbot's Modern Language Chairman,
Georges Krivobok could teach French, German, and Russian with
equal ease; Phillips was glad to have his skills and those of others to
enrich its own program. The students voted for joint classes with their
feet: 193 girls enrolled in 302 courses at Phillips, and 327 boys entered
376 courses down the Hill.

"Carolyn Goodwin was the effective implementor of coordination
at Abbot," says Simeon Hyde.49 Imperturbable, she led teachers through
the intricate mechanics of academic coordination: report forms and
deadlines, a number-grading system from o to 6 which Phillips had
initiated two years before, and a trimester system, new to both schools,
which made possible a blizzard of ten-week electives.

Abbot had to give up its penchant for dropping everything now
and then and devoting a whole school day to some urgent public issue
or school government need. Both schools did some adjusting, planning
complementary offerings and adapting work schedules to allow for
joint department meetings. Members of the three fully coordinated de-
partments proved that friction and distrust between the two faculties
could be overcome— and also demonstrated the imbalances built into
every joint planning effort. Abbot teachers were not merely out-
numbered. Departmental organization had never been a formal affair
at the smaller school. "When does the English Department meet?" a
novice teacher remembers asking Alice Sweeney. "Oh, whenever you
and I happen to see each other in the book closet," was the reply.

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 429

Outside the pioneer departments, most coordinate courses were open
only at the nth and 12th grade level. They included, however, a
wealth of Advanced Placement courses and Senior electives, especially
in science.

It was a heady beginning. Abbot student pioneers probably exagger-
ated the stares and sneers they got from Hilltop skeptics, but there
was no doubt that coordinating a course sometimes took guts. What a
relief to come back to dormmates and Draper corridors and describe
one's trials and triumphs to understanding friends! Cynosure offered
space for gripes and counsel. About a Phillips teacher:

Don't let him get you like that, please! He doesn't really want
to humiliate you. He just has never had to deal with women
before.

"Chins up, Ladies!" the reporter finished, "P.A. teachers may even
like you, once they no longer have to dislike you on principle."50

The two schools' 1971-73 course catalogues reveal by their omis-
sions where problems lay. Phillips students were allowed to take exact-
ly one ten-week Abbot mathematics course, and only three Senior
math courses out of all of Phillips' rich offerings were open to Abbot
girls. "What would I do with a girl in my A.P. Calculus class?" an old-
timer is said to have asked a Phillips Trustee. "Teach her, I suppose,"
was the answer. He need not have worried, because Abbot students,
with two exceptions, were effectively excluded from Advanced Place-
ment Calculus by an intricate web of prerequisites. One Senior who
did take it was refused admission to an advanced Computer Course,
so she did the problems on her own, and helped the boys with their
computer programs. Nor were boys encouraged to leave the sacred
precincts of Pearson Hall even though Abbot's classics courses were
officially open to Phillips boys. Weren't Cicero and Horace taught in
translation down there? (They weren't.) Great was the consternation,
says Mrs. Susan Clark, when it was discovered that two of Phillips'
top students had made their way into Abbot's Latin IV course, were
delighted with it, and were urging friends to join them. The bluster
from the Hilltop over issues like these came perilously close to come-
dy—and perhaps, after all, that is what it was meant to be. But Abbot
teachers never knew quite how to take it. When one of the Abbot
classics teachers showed up at a pre-merger Classics Department party
and asked for Bourbon instead of sherry, the reaction from the Grand
Old Man of the Phillips department was instantaneous: "Saeva Fem-
ina!" (Savage Woman!) he growled, and handed her the drink.

Another place where no female might enter was History 40, that

430 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-I973

rite de passage which for decades had made men of mewling boys.
Phillips had softened a bit of late and allowed i ith grade students who
wished to do so to fulfill the history requirement by combining a less-
demanding U.S. History course with a second year-long course in
Senior year. It was O.K., the chairman decided, for Phillips students to
take U.S. History at Abbot— but take care not to overdo it! So many
boys signed up for the American Studies Course described in the last
chapter that Phillips decided something was wrong. Sherry Gershon,
the teacher, was too attractive, she made the course "too easy," (or
was it "too much fun"?) and failed to come to grips with tariffs and
treaties as she should do. "Sherry was a wonderful, imaginative teach-
er," Mary Minard counters. But Phillips held the latch strings to her
course, and boys were discouraged from enrolling.51 They were flatly
forbidden to take another Abbot history course because the readings
looked "too difficult" for nth graders, as Phillips' Acting Chairman
told its teacher. Perhaps he was just being tactful. Abbot threw up no
such barriers before girls who wished to take Phillips courses. Phillips
seemed to know all about the more mediocre teachers at Abbot, yet
there was barely a whisper about the few incompetent or impossibly
rigid teachers up the Hill— not even in the Abbot faculty room.
Though coordination allowed many friendships between individual
teachers to blossom on Andover Hill, it tended to push the Abbot
faculty on the defensive.

During the first year there was no way of knowing that coordina-
tion was serving as an essential bridge to merger, and from time to
time Abbot wondered whether it was worth the trouble. For about a
month in the early spring of 1971, Gordon and his chief financial aides
seriously considered the idea that Abbot should sell its buildings and
land and relocate far from Andover, where it could enter a new phase
as a coeducational country boarding school, free to realize the promise
of its best new ideas. Gordon and Stapleton made a day's visit to Har-
risville, New Hampshire, eight miles north of Mt. Monadnock. Most
of the town was being offered for sale to a charitable corporation for
about half a million dollars: why not Abbot? But the Trustees, com-
mitted to Andover and Phillips Academy, showed no interest, and the
idea died.52

The Board was cool to alternatives partly because coordinate edu-
cation was proving so successful for Abbot's students. In many ways
the girls had the best of both worlds: a secure, relatively small resi-
dential community and a host of academic opportunities. Cynosure,
the Abbot drama course, the soccer and lacrosse teams, and Abbot
town meeting were all-female institutions where young women could

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

431

62. Coordination: "The Gates Ajar" 1972-1973.

432 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

play their parts and try their skills with no males to intrude. Mean-
while, Phillips classes stood open for the bold. If faculty were battling
in the background, they concealed it from students pretty well. There
were disjunctions and annoyances: no reserve books could leave the
Hilltop Library until 9:00 p.m.; Phillips stage crew and art studio
work went on until 10:00 p.m.; yet Abbot girls must sign in at 8:00.
(Conscienceless, Abbot intellectuals and artists walked down the Hill
at 8:00 to sign in, and turned right around to climb up again the
back way.) But there were also some wonderful successes for Abbot.
By winter of 1971, faculty discovered what Phillips students had long
known: coordination, like the Army, lives on its stomach. The Bondes
dished up such delicious food in the Abbot dining room (and at only
75 percent the food cost of Hilltop fare) that boys hungered to enroll
in the noon and late afternoon Abbot classes which entitled them to
eat down the Hill. For this reason among others, Phillips enrollment in
Abbot courses continued to rise until Abbot teachers were teaching an
entirely disproportionate share of the cross-enrolled students. In 1972-
73 more Phillips courses were added to the mix to alleviate the prob-
lem; that second year of coordination, Abbot girls had 240 different
courses to choose from. Although the two years of coordination were
difficult and inefficient, they opened up an extraordinarily varied aca-
demic program to students of both schools. No Abbot girls were heard
to complain. "I felt very jortunate to be living in the loose, happy, re-
sponsive Abbot environment and to take classes at both places," writes
one. "I enjoyed the freedom and the double standard that worked in
my favor."53

"The time is now"

Abbot students returned to Andover for the 1972-73 school year ex-
pecting more of the same. What was their surprise when Donald
Gordon called the school together to announce that Abbot and Phil-
lips Academy would become one school in June 1973. All Abbot
buzzed with speculation. Why would the Phillips Board deny merger
three times, then suddenly accept it?

Most of Andover's advocates of coeducation had left with relief in
June, the Phillips and Abbot Boards having agreed that summer work-
ing parties could accomplish nothing more. But one thing was new:
The Phillips Trustees were full of hope and pride in their Headmaster-
elect, Theodore R. Sizer, scholar of educational history and former
dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who would

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 433

shortly move to Andover with his wife Nancy Faust Sizer and their
four children. Here was an experienced, articulate leader who might
break the impasse, since it was now clear that neither Phillips faculty
nor Trustees could do so. As Sizer has described his Trustees' conflict-
ing desires:

We want coeducation.

We'd like to do it with Abbot.

We can't afford to expand the school.

We don't want to cut the number of male students.

But we want coeducation.

The longer the Phillips Trustees lived with coordination, the more
keenly they saw the effects of their indecisiveness on their school. The
Phillips Admissions Office reported that prospective parents were put
off by the Academy's apparent inability to make up its mind on co-
education. The Phillips faculty was— as Sizer puts it— "a proud, wounded
bear, uncertain how to heal," tired of its divisions and longing to close
them. Time had also wrought good things. One was a deeper trust of
the Abbot Board. Melville Chapin, one of that group's newer members
and a Phillips alumnus, became a crucial link between Abbot Academy
and the warier Phillips Trustees. A first-rate lawyer with a high repu-
tation for caution and skill, he stood in their eyes for the Old Andover
virtues at the same time that he sensitively, quietly persuaded them to
look toward the future of both academies.

The Phillips Trustees knew Sizer's commitment to full coeducation—
they had hired him partly because of that commitment— and now all
but a handful of them were ready to welcome a leader who would
show them how to settle this issue so they could go on to other chal-
lenges. "Meet with Gordon and bring us a plan," they told Sizer. For
the first time, the Phillips Headmaster was empowered to work for co-
education as decisively as the Abbot Principal had been for years.

It was Don Gordon who initiated the conversation in mid-June,
shortly after Sizer settled in. "Let's talk," Gordon suggested. Some-
thing has to give.

Our position has been and continues to be that the schools should
merge, and that until we do, we waste ourselves and our staffs
disproportionately on day-to-day mechanics . . . On balance I
guess we've accomplished much, but "much" is a relative term.
JMK was a superb staff man and administrator who basically
didn't see why boys and girls needed to mix it up in schools. We

I at least are anxious for some clear resolution of basic structures

434 THE FIN AL DECADE, 1963-1973

"So am I," Sizer replied, gratified by Gordon's initiative and uninter-
ested for the moment in arguing the intricacies of J. M. Kemper's role
in preparing Phillips Academy for change. The status quo looked as
unstable to him as it did to Gordon— unfair to Phillips and impossible,
in the long run, for Abbot. "Coordination is real," Gordon wrote.
"It's also a drag, as long as department heads rule the process. I would
favor across-the-board coordination of all departments" as soon as we
can manage it. "As it is now, faculty coordination and non-coordina-
tion bears a vague resemblance to a civil conflict in the banana re-
public of your choice. ... If the two of us take a fresh look at all
the accumulated data," Gordon finished, it may "be possible to move
together, sharing the flak."55

To Sizer, a bit of flak was all in a day's work. He had visited Abbot
in the spring, had liked most of what he saw, and wasn't afraid to say
so. Abbot's long academic tradition appealed to the historian in him as
much as its present bumptious optimism resounded with his own. An-
nealed in the fires of the sixties— and Cambridge had been a hot spot
indeed— he was as impatient with complacencies as he was with "self-
indulgent, self-proclaimed extremist (s)";56 he believed that the truly
liberating environment combined rigorous academic training with a
challenging, variegated social milieu. On the whole, he admired Ab-
bot's responses to the genuine needs of adolescents in the seventies,
and as husband, parent, and educator he had thought deeply about one
of Abbot's major concerns: the rights and responsibilities of women.
Conversations with Hilltop teachers and their wives had convinced
him that Phillips' "male chauvinism" was in reality "tissue thin," a poor
disguise for honest confusion about sex roles, behind which his new
colleagues— like himself— were groping for new definitions.57 The same
conversations revealed how much good will Abbot enjoyed among the
Phillips faculty, however perplexed they felt about coeducation. Sizer
agreed with Gordon that swift action on merger was needed to keep
Abbot from being "nibbled to death."58 He had watched Harvard and
RadclifTe trying for years to pretend that they could negotiate merger
as equals, and was "horrified by the charade. It was corrupting to both
institutions," no matter how worthy the goal.59 Finally, he welcomed
the evidence that the two schools had already learned something from
each other, for it suggested the potential of full merger. Coed athletics
programs were still small, but expanding. Phillips' experimental cluster
system already was demonstrating that a supportive residential com-
munity could prosper on the Hilltop much as it did at Abbot's lower
altitude. Though the Phillips faculty would not accept the Phillips-

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 435

Abbot Curriculum Committee's devastation of the traditional course
requirements, Phillips' new curriculum, like Abbot's, had greatly ex-
panded students' academic choices. As his Board Chairman, Donald
McLean, had also done, Sizer had taken the trouble to inspect the
"stupid Abbot girl" stereotype. True enough, Abbot's students scored
lower than Phillips' on some achievement tests and on the few Ad-
vanced Placement exams they took, but their grades in coordinated
courses, their aptitude scores, and Abbot graduates' success in college
convinced both men that all but a small minority were fully as able as
Phillips boys.60 In spite of surface differences, Sizer concluded, "an
outsider . . . finds . . . the two schools more similar than not."61

Sizer would report his conclusions to Phillips Academy in September,
but he had tentatively drawn them by the time he and Donald Gordon
sat down together in July to talk, and those summer conversations
with a man who had thought deeply about coeducation would make
them firm. For his part, Gordon was determined to lead from Abbot's
strengths. The school's hard-won financial equilibrium was promising,
especially in that halcyon summer of rising stock-market values and
general prosperity among Abbot's newly enlarged constituency (winter
would embrace Andover Hill all too soon). Richard Griggs judges
that Abbot was in a stronger financial position than for many years,
its plant refurbished and considerably expanded, its investments doing
well under new consultant management, its endowment more than re-
plenished, after a decade of depletion, by the largest fund-raising oper-
ation in Abbot's history, its services in high demand, as evidenced by
a 22 percent increase in applications for 1972-73. All this is accurate,
agrees Treasurer Dow. "We had brought Abbot to the point where
we could truthfully say 'this is not a bankruptcy sale.' " Dow was
more pessimistic about Abbot's future. According to him and his col-
league, Melville Chapin, Abbot had only reached a "safe, short-term
plateau." Much overdue maintenance was in the works, but the
original wings of Draper Hall were deteriorating still faster. Abbot
had had to delay its much needed Arts building, that "showpiece of the
New Abbot Fund,"62 $40,000 worth of plans and models having been
regretfully scrapped once it was clear that the fund's goals had indeed
been overambitious.63 Furthermore, it was clear that at least a portion
of Abbot's success was owed to coordination with Phillips. What
would happen to Abbot if Phillips pulled back and began recruiting
its own girls? Abby Kemper thought she knew: Abbot would gradually
die out. An ominous sign of applicants' preference for more thorough
coeducation appeared in the acceptance-of-admission figures for spring

436 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-I973

1972: just 53 percent of those admitted decided to come to Abbot, in-
stead of the usual 80 percent.64 Some superior prospects chose St.
Paul's and Exeter and their bargain tuitions, tokenism be damned.

Gordon and Sizer agreed that merger would o'erleap tokenism,
bringing three hundred girls to a new school, benignly forcing the
two faculties to share responsibility for a single group of students, and,
in one dramatic move, releasing the energy and the generosity that
had been spent for two years on intricate half-way accommodations.
The same result could be accomplished by the legal absorption of Ab-
bot by Phillips Academy— and this was the form of merger Sizer pro-
posed. Phillips' lawyers had stated in 1970 that only thus could the
Phillips Trustees be reasonably sure that their ancient charter and their
$70,000,000 worth of assets would remain intact after merger proceed-
ings in the state legislature.65 Here was a tough problem for Donald
Gordon, and for all those to whom symbols shape realities: Abbot
would lose its name. "Phillips-Abbot Academy" was already anathema
to a few Abbot alumnae; Abbot's corporate disappearance might be
absolutely unacceptable to the many. Gordon and Sizer spent several
of their hours of talk upon the problem of guaranteeing some kind of
significant continuation of Abbot's corporate identity within Phillips
Academy. The lawyers had already advised this as a practical way of
assuring that the Abbot endowment could be transferred to a coeduca-
tional Phillips Academy. A residential cluster might be "Abbot Clus-
ter," a new student center might be "Abbot Hall." Still, thought
Gordon miserably, the symbol would be all but lost. Could not the
Phillips Board be persuaded to bend?

Symbols aside, the two men worked their way toward a plan to
combine the two academies, happy that they could agree on so many
of the essentials of a good education. Sizer began preparing a proposal
for the Phillips Board, basing it on the specifications he and Gordon
had drawn together. The new "Andover" would open on September 1,
1973, with all Abbot students in attendance as well as newly admitted
girls (the Admissions Offices would be combined in the fall of 1972);
about 300 girls altogether and 900 boys, only slightly fewer than both
schools had enrolled for 1972-73. The total number could be brought
down toward 980 within four years and the male-female ratio lowered
to 2:1; meanwhile the new school would continue Phillips' traditional
low-tuition-high-scholarship policy for both boys and girls, covering
deficits as effectively as possible through the sale of unneeded prop-
erty and by borrowing from the bank. Two new residential clusters
would be established; all or most clusters would be coeducational.
Sizer's proposal outlined staffing policies, questions of law, and, finally,

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

437

63. The last board of Trustees, 1972-1973. Top Row: Leonard Kent,
Melville Chapin, Donald Gordon, Philip Allen, Benjamin Redfield,
Grenville Benedict, Guerin Todd. Second Row: Elizabeth Eaton, Abby
Kemper, Anne Russell Long, James K. Dow, Jr. Front Row: Mary Howard
Nutting, Sidney Lovett, Caroline Rogers, J. Radford Abbot, Beverly Floe,
Aagot Hinrichsen Stambaugh, Mary Dooley Bragg.

all those problems of governance, job definition, and school organiza-
tion that would have to be solved in the year to come if both Boards
agreed that the schools should be joined.

The chances were fair. Subgroups of the two Boards had agreed
fervently on merger for two years; with Sizer's appearance, they took
heart once again and made plans for one more push. Abbot Trustees
might balk at the idea of legal incorporation into Phillips, but the
group was skilled at resolving internal conflict and fearless of tough
decisions. "I've never been on a board that worked so well together, so
given to good, straight talk by strong people, both men and women,"
says Leonard Kent, a new Abbot Trustee in 1972. On the other
hand, the Phillips Board was still bruised by the conflicts of recent
years. A cabal of anti- Abbot Trustees had boycotted the joint dinner
party Board Presidents McLean and Allen arranged on the Phillips
campus in January 1972; the cabal invited all red-blooded Phillips
Trustees to join them for dinner at the Andover Inn instead. The same
men walked out of another joint gathering as soon as the Abbot Trust-
ees arrived. Fending off their anger with one hand, and fielding the
anxieties of Abbot faculty and alumnae with the other, Phil Allen felt
by winter 1972 (he says) like some tall partition between the two
schools, a handball court on the Phillips' side, a wailing wall on the
Abbot one. Few of the Phillips Trustees had even set foot on the Ab-
bot campus since their own school days on Andover Hill. In spite of

438 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

the progress toward amity made that spring and summer, it was hard
to imagine the two Boards being able to settle anything together.

During the last week of July 1972 Gordon's and Sizer's "Specifica-
tions for a Possible Andover-Abbot agreement" made the rounds of
the Abbot Trustees. Baldly they began: "P.A. would absorb Abbot,
i.e., Abbot as a corporate entity would cease to exist and its assets
would be transferred to P.A." Though Abbot's name could be per-
petuated in some way within the new school, that school would be
named "Phillips Academy." This was almost too much for the faithful
alumnae Trustees, whose letters to each other and to Gordon and
Allen crisscrossed the country for a month. But by mid-September,
when the Abbot Trustees met to consider Sizer's more detailed plan
for coeducation, nearly all had become convinced, with Mary Howard
Nutting, that "the time is now."66 "This is the time and the only time
[wrote Beverly Floe] in which Abbot will have the leverage" to ac-
complish Gordon's and Sizer's resolve "that Abbot's interest and
strength [in] educating capable young women ... be fully reflected
in the enterprise."67

The Principal himself felt "torn between the great substantive pos-
sibility" of Abbot's being part of a new school68 and irritation over the
"implacability" and "smallness" of the Phillips Trustees' stand on the
school name.69 In his most discouraged mood, Gordon felt that he and
his Board were "being stampeded." We are dealing "with fiduciary
minds"— he told the Abbot Trustees— with men stuck in "middle Amer-
ican cultural values." All our "work to rejuvenate Abbot" is about to
be "annulled by a less imaginative, fat institution."70 Treasurer J. K.
Dow tried to cheer him by reminding him what Phillips wealth could
mean to Abbot girls. To him, as to several other Trustees, the loss of
Abbot's name seemed unimportant beside the opportunity that "incor-
poration" promised 300 girls and young women, who would draw on
the vast scholarship and teaching resources that a new Phillips Acade-
my could offer.71 Thus debate proceeded in that suspenseful period be-
fore and during the early fall meetings of both Boards.

Ultimately the Board would accept the loss of Abbot's name because
Phillips was fifteen times richer than Abbot. This was no Northfield-
Mount-Hermon, nourished by the same endowment, or Choate-Rose-
mary Hall, which combined far smaller and far less disparate resources.
Given that American women as a whole contributed but $1.00 to their
schools for every $25.00 men gave to theirs, the ratio of Abbot's to
Phillips' wealth was not likely to change very fast.72 The Board would
accept it because Abbot's five-year financial projections showed that

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 439

the smaller school had only two alternatives: an ever-increasing deficit
or an ever-increasing tuition— and several Trustees felt that Abbot's
tuition had already brought Abbot too far from the spirit of its found-
ers, whose original Abbot was inexpensive enough for almost any
frugal Yankee family.73 If Abbot refused the Phillips terms and the
larger school backed away from coordination to take in its own girls,
the future looked grimmer still. Finally, the Board accepted the loss
of Abbot's name and corporate identity because of their faith in
Theodore Sizer. "In his deep and penetrating questioning of P.A.'s style
. . . he is a friend, an educational comrade," wrote Gordon.74 "He was
the key," Allen confirms. They accepted the terms in a spirit of cour-
age and hope because, as Gordon had foreseen, such acceptance proved
to be the only way "of achieving the outcome, educationally, that
we've sought all along: a new coed school in which the role of capable
women would be equal to that of men in framing the institution."75

On September 15, 1972, the Phillips Trustees met and made clear
their willingness to turn Sizer's "Speculations on Coeducation" into
policy if Abbot would agree; the same day, the Abbot Board voted

That the goal for Abbot Academy of coeducation can be best be
accomplished by a combination of this school with Phillips
Academy. That in any such combination the spirit and dignity of
the current educational scene at Abbot, of the history and
tradition of the school, of its students, faculty and alumnae be
preserved to the fullest extent possible.

The Board sent back by Phil Allen their willingness to negotiate, and
made the first of a series of proposals to ensure that Abbot's basic
purposes would be built into the new school. The Phillips Trustees
responded immediately to the most concrete of Abbot's suggestions by
voting to close their "exclusive men's club":76 three Abbot Trustees,
two of them women, would be invited to join the Phillips Board with
the same rights and duties as Phillips Alumni Trustees, and the first
of several female Charter Trustees would be elected in the near future.
As a further earnest of their intentions, they agreed to Sizer's resolu-
tion that Carolyn Goodwin be elected Dean of the new Phillips Acad-
emy, and they ratified one by one the major proposals on which
Gordon and Sizer had agreed in July.

A week later, the Abbot Trustees were ready. With one abstention,
they voted

To approve and endorse in principle a combination of Abbot
Academy and Phillips Academy upon the basis of the resolutions

44-0 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

adopted by the Trustees of Phillips Academy at their meeting of
September 16, 1972, and, therefore, the Trustees of Abbot
Academy propose such a combination.77

The Phillips Trustees' response to Philip Allen's presentation of the
fateful resolution made clear what was to happen:

Voted, that this Board welcomes and accepts the proposal of the
Board of Trustees of Abbot Academy ... to transfer to Phillips
Academy the educational undertakings and assets of Abbot,
and instructs the President and Headmaster to accomplish this
incorporation effective 1 September, 1973.78

So, after all, the "combination" was to be an incorporation, not a
merger of equals. "Merger it was not," Jane Baldwin has written,
"rather a complete take-over, lock stock and barrel."79 Legally and fi-
nancially, this is exactly what the Phillips Trustees had in mind. Now
that the commitment was made, however, legal strictures— even the
"care and feeding of the merger imagery"80— receded before the
broad, human challenge of planning and staffing the coeducational
Phillips Academy for the long future. As Gordon would say to the
Phillips Trustees when both Boards met together for the first time in
history: "The leap of faith we're making, by extinguishing our school's
life, can be made precisely because we believe that with us lodged
firmly within your corpus, you will be incapable of remaining the
same."81

Plots and Plans

The Principal called the Abbot faculty together to describe these
momentous events to them in detail. "Any questions?" he wanted to
know. "Yes," said Steve Perrin from the back of the room. "Do I
plant my garden for next summer?" "You do," answered Gordon, re-
assuringly. The two Boards' agreements promised that "Andover and
Abbot personnel will be treated equally" in hiring faculty and staff
for 1973-74, and that all decisions would "be made in close consultation
with Mr. Gordon and Miss Goodwin."82 A "working party" on Faculty
Appointment Policy began meeting before September was out, includ-
ing five members of the Phillips faculty (one of them the younger of
Phillips' two female teachers), and Richard Griggs, Jean St. Pierre
and Anne Bugbee from Abbot, all under the chairmanship of Simeon
Hyde. The group sifted a mountain of advice from teachers and
students up and down the Hill advocating or attacking Phillips' "triple-

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 441

threat" system, which had the men of the Hilltop moving between
classroom, athletic field and dormitory, with their wives (unpaid)
picking up the pieces. On October 25, the Abbot town meeting held
schoolwide group discussions in order to ask both faculty and students
what should be expected of teachers in the new school. Already, stu-
dents were getting anxious. "If they keep the old P.A. system, my
houseparents will have to go," said one.83 Phillips teachers lived and
breathed Andover Hill, while ever since Mary Crane had adapted Ab-
bot workloads to women's needs, many Abbot teachers had lived miles
away and pursued their own out-of- Abbot responsibilities— enjoyed
also the chance to invite students to their homes and introduce them
to Cambridge or Boston. Phillips must have housemasters (or "house
counselors," as they now began to be called), but the new Phillips
badly needed women teachers too. The working party devised an
extraordinarily flexible policy that allowed a large minority of teachers
to work as "double-threats," or even, simply, as classroom teachers, if
that was where their strongest interest lay.

But people, not policies, choose teachers, and a few Abbot teachers
were fighting for their jobs. Though polite, the battle was messy.
Neither school had a systematic faculty evaluation policy. Theoretical-
ly, every Phillips and Abbot teacher was under scrutiny, but actually,
Phillips' policy of granting three and five year appointments to experi-
enced teachers meant that only a minority of Hilltop teachers were
due to have their contracts reviewed for 1973-74. Abbot had no formal
tenure system: everyone was up for grabs. Equally important, many
of Abbot's teachers were at early stages in their careers. Donald Gor-
don and Carolyn Goodwin had already advised several to get further
graduate training; had not merger plans posed the possibility of work
at Phillips, these might well have left of their own accord— but their
relative lack of experience made them anxious for a chance to get more
of it in a Hilltop job even while it made them vulnerable in the hiring
process. Phillips department heads, accustomed to power, visited Abbot
teachers' classes, but no Abbot chairman climbed the Hill to evaluate
Phillips teachers, though the original plan had called for close con-
sultation between each pair of department heads. One Abbot chair-
man, already invited to teach at Phillips, found herself "suffering acute
Phillipsphobia" after a deadening Abbot-Phillips discussion of inter-
disciplinary courses during which the men introduced "rudimentary
ideas" "as though they were revolutionary break-throughs," and her
own wide if brief experience was ignored "as if there was nothing

I much to be learned from other schools. Provincialism, backwardness,
naivete, smugness, male chauvinism, rudeness— all these . . . come to

442 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

mind as I continue to think of this meeting," she wrote. "Was it a
microcosm of next year's Phillips Academy? If so, I want no part of
it personally and professionally."84 Faith Howland Kaiser had been
eager to combine Abbot-Phillips admissions operations, but it seemed
to her now that Phillips was calling the shots, and that the special
needs of female applicants and their families might be getting lost.85
Eventually, Faith would opt out; so would several others who could
not accept the conditions of working for Phillips Academy. Three
years before, Rennie McQuilkin had come down from the Hilltop to
teach English at Abbot after a particularly distressing decision by the
central Discipline Committee concerning one of his dormitory boys;
he had gladly accepted Abbot's lower salary in exchange for the chal-
lenge and fun of working there. Now Phillips wanted him to return
to "house counseling," and he would not. A few other young teachers
made the same response, and still others were not invited to return.
The deans and heads of the two schools labored long over the hiring
task; department chairmen also struggled to be as fair and attentive
to individual aspirations as possible. "There was agony both up and
down the Hill," says Sizer. In the end just a handful of Phillips teach-
ers were let go that year, while fifteen Abbot teachers were denied
jobs in the new Phillips Academy.86 Nine others decided not to apply
for positions, or refused those offered them. Over the next few years,
several other Phillips teachers were scrutinized as their contracts came
up for renewal, and were released as part of the effort to reduce the
combined Abbot-Phillips faculty in the new coeducational school.
There was justice here, but Abbot teachers hoping to stay on at Phil-
lips in 1973 could not know it would be done.

It hurt. Steve Perrin did plant his garden, but that was because his
wife was asked to stay. There was no room for his special brand of
Humanities course at Phillips Academy, or for a man who wanted to
stay out of a dormitory until his baby son was older. Now he and
others unchosen could only feel depressed as they withdrew from the
fray and watched their thirty-four favored friends attending Phillips
faculty meetings and planning courses with their Phillips colleagues,
working out rules for next year's school, or extending and refining
Phillips' new residential cluster system— for the promise that Abbot
and Phillips would create the new school together was truly being met
in most respects. Abbot Seniors also felt detached, sometimes cynical.
They wouldn't be going up the Hill next year. Senior Mids watched
organizations they had hoped to lead either being dissolved or choos-
ing male presidents and editors-in-chief. The finest achievements of
Abbot town meeting, including the schoolwide work program that

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 443

town meeting and its committees had planned and instituted for 1972-
73, seemed destined to be short-circuited, and school government re-
duced to haggling over parietal rules.

At first it looked like a miserable contrast with the past, when Ab-
bot had coped with clashes in student-faculty values so openly and, on
the whole, so well: typically, the original arguments over intersex
room visiting had been accompanied by publication of opinion polls
in Cynosure and lively debates on the appropriate roles of sex and
privacy in a boarding school. The students had failed to get the open
visiting policy they wanted, but at least they had known exactly why.
Where else but in a Draper Hall art class could a teacher (Virginia
Powel, of course) walk in for the fourth time on an Abbot-Phillips
couple locked in embrace and deal with the problem by saying, "Hey,
you're not being fair! Have you thought about how the rest of us
feel? We're not being kissed." (To be sure, the young rake henceforth
celebrated his entrance to class with a kiss for Mrs. Powel, then one
for each girl!) By mid- winter of 1973, town meeting had little to do
but react to proposals from the Hilltop. Students wondered what
would become of school government at Phillips, where— according to
one Hilltop observer— "the outcome of all debate is predetermined by
a higher authority";87 they complained in Cynosure that already rules
were "being imposed on them by an insecure administration" just to
impress Phillips Academy. "Girls don't require all this surveillance," an
editor insisted. "We do not feel the need to prove our maturity in the
same ways that boys do."88

Nevertheless, they were proving themselves in other ways, and there
was hard work done. Like many other Abbot institutions, town meet-
ing handled what business it had with a determination to show Phillips
Academy how responsibly students (and girls) could conduct their
affairs. One Senior got tired of watching her friends moon around.
She hauled them up the Hill to the Phillips woodworking shop, and
together they designed and built an enormous geodesic dome as a
shelter and exhibition for that spring's Bradley Arts Festival. Several
Abbot teachers decided it was now or never for academic projects
that could thrive only in Abbot's flexible work schedule. The last
Spanish students headed for Costa Rica under Dorothy Judd's ex-
change program. Two U.S. History classes spent eight weeks conduct-
ing research and field study on federal and state compensatory educa-
tion programs in the Greater Lawrence area, and writing a sixty-page
report on their work for the Fifth District Congressman and the
House Education and Labor Committee on which he served. The
year's Phillips-Abbot musical was a smashing success. And Donald

444 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

Gordon, who carried a burden of sorrow far greater than he had ever
expected to feel over Abbot's demise, spent hours helping jobless
teachers find places in other schools for the year to come. The quality
of the positions that most of these rejects gained testified both to their
worth and to Gordon's effort. Gordon also worked with Phillips and
Abbot staff to plan a responsive counseling system for the new school.89
Two teachers became engaged to each other, to the joy of all Abbot.
The more these two saw of Phillips, the more they decided it was not
for them; they would kick off the dust of Andover Hill together.
Other teachers saw signs that the new coeducational school, large and
unfamiliar though it appeared, would be carrying forward the best of
the old Abbot's academic traditions and picking up much of the new
Abbot's sensitivity to human needs, and they threw their energies into
making it happen. As Richard Pieters said for almost everyone after
the question of merger had been finally settled: "Now let's make this
the best damn coed school in the country!"

Last Things

The "Articles and Agreement of Association," ratified in January 1973
by the two Academies, reflected the Abbot Trustees' labor to build
into the contract the assurance that their school's historic mission
would not be abandoned:

The Trustees of both Abbot Academy and Phillips Academy are
desirous of accomplishing an Association of the two schools for
the education of young persons, both female and male. . . . The
said Trustees of Abbot Academy and of Phillips Academy are
mindful of the distinguished history of education at Abbot
Academy . . . and wish to further the educational purpose and
tradition built up over many years at Abbot Academy.

The document continued: "Abbot and its counsel will promptly pre-
pare and file with the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts a peti-
tion for the dissolution of Abbot." Abbot would give Phillips all its
assets and properties for the sum of $1.00, and Phillips Academy would
assume all of Abbot's obligations and responsibilities. How could Phil-
lips and Abbot together ensure that these responsibilities were faith-
fully met? Here was a crucial test for the "merger"— as it began again
to be called, with a fine disregard for the legal terminology.

Once the hiring and firing of next year's teachers was done, it was

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 445

easier to see how hard most Phillips men were working to live up to
the spirit of the Agreement. Administrators from both schools occu-
pied high ground in their negotiations concerning pensions and non-
teaching staff, determining to meet moral obligations even when no
legal ones existed. Early on, it had been assumed that pensions promised
would be sustained; now, with the Phillips Trustees' approval, Abbot
doubled some of the lowest ones to provide a dignified living for long-
tenured retirees. Cooks and maids and groundsmen were transferred to
the Phillips payroll; in the process they joined an annuity plan simi-
lar to the one for which a few Abbot Trustees had been lobbying
since the mid-sixties, and Abbot made the initial payments into it from
its own funds. Long-tenured secretaries and administrative assistants
were also guaranteed jobs, although Abbot's pay scale had improved
so much and so many jobs had been upgraded in the last decade that
several would have to work for lower wages on the Hilltop,90 in con-
trast to the teaching faculty, whose salaries went up.

Abbot also had special obligations to its students, who had come ex-
pecting to meet Abbot's requirements and gain an Abbot diploma.
Gordon and Sizer had agreed during the summer that Abbot girls
transferring to Phillips could continue to work for an Abbot diploma
if they chose. Now Carolyn Goodwin worked out the process in de-
tail, and sixty-three underclasswomen declared themselves Abbot di-
ploma candidates. Some of them could not have met the Phillips aca-
demic standards, but a large minority were strong students who had
thrived on Abbot's opportunities for independent work and vigorous
extracurricular involvement, and would take Mathematics 30 because
they wanted to, not because Phillips demanded it.

The last Abbot girls would graduate in 1976, but the Abbot Trust-
ees had been searching all fall for some tangible means of assuring the
welfare of females over the long future of Phillips Academy. In their
turn, the Phillips Trustees had promised that the Abbot name would
somewhere be embedded within the new Phillips Academy, and in the
Agreement the major device for accomplishing both these purposes
was unveiled. The planned Abbot Academy Association was much
more than a symbol.91 It was an internal foundation whose directors
would control a million dollar endowment for the purposes of ad-
vancing within the new school those causes Abbot had made its own
for many years: skillful counseling, careful experimentation with peda-
gogical innovation, and attention to the special needs of female stu-
dents and to the task to which Abbot's founders had pledged them-
selves of "enlarging] the minds and form[ing] the morals of the

44<5

THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

youth" under the school's care.92 Like Samuel Phillips, the Abbot consti-
tution-makers had not distinguished between male and female "youth."
The Abbot Academy Association was designed to benefit both.

The student-faculty Residential Planning group drew the boundaries
of the projected new Abbot Cluster around the Abbot campus and
made ready to settle Carroll Bailey, Dean-elect of the Cluster, and his
wife Elaine in Abbot's "French House" up School Street, soon to be
named Bertha Bailey House. Meanwhile the Baileys themselves were
deciding how to take maximum advantage of the Abbot Cluster's own
library, dining room, and recreational facilities.93 But no one knew
what would eventually become of Abbot's land and buildings. There
was a special poignancy to that last lovely spring as leaf buds opened
on the Maple Walk and on the copper beech and the linden tree
which had been planted by Miss McKeen's and Miss Means's gradu-
ating Seniors so long ago. Flowering shrubs bloomed everywhere,

}

64. An Abbot birthday party, Jes Bonde presiding: the 100th Anniversary
of the Alumnae Association, 1971.

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 447

ignorant of sadness. Alumnae arrived to help arrange the last all- Abbot
reunion— for the Abbot and Phillips Alumnae Association were to com-
bine the next year— and found themselves mourning more than a
school. It seemed to them that some priceless piece of the New En-
gland conscience and character had fallen away.94 Perhaps, after the
sixties, it could be found nowhere anyway— but this only made Abbot's
demise the more devastating. Abbot girls also began to understand
what they were about to lose. Friends walked hand in hand, as they
could comfortably do within the gates, and wondered about the new
Phillips Academy girls who were now visiting Andover Hill to decide
whether to accept admission. Boy-hungry they seemed, overambitious,
foreign.95 Each traditional event was a final celebration of Abbot's
excellence: the year's Bazaar, the last Spanish Club Yom-Yom, the last
Abbot Gilbert and Sullivan performance, with Richard Sheahan as the
Mikado. Nevertheless, when it was time to choose dormitories and
clusters for 1973-74, every single Abbot underclass student chose the
Hilltop. Three all- Abbot teams joined the Hilltop stickball league and
reveled in their several near-wins. Sadly, interest in the Gargoyles and
Griffins was falling off,96 but Phillips had invited Abbot to participate
in several formal Hilltop sports as well as its "Search and Rescue"
groups, and nearly a hundred girls got a heady taste of Hilltop sports,
while Miss Ritchie worked with the Phillips athletics department to
plan still more. Female swimmers, oarswomen, and cross-country skiers
and runners left behind the "big pick-up scene"97 and found real
friends among their fellow athletes at Phillips. If Abbot was to be
Phillips Academy, the girls would plunge in and make k their own.

"So long as Abbot's future coincided with mine, I could work my
heart out for the place," says one teacher who was not re-hired. Now
the community was about to break; lives diverged as never before.98
The divisions made Abbot strange. "Abbot was home. The whole
school was closer than most dormitories are up here," a '76 graduate
would say after two years on the Hilltop.99 Along with Abbot's last
Senior Class, thirty-five teachers and key staff members were to leave
Andover Hill for good.100 Donald Gordon's "private rage" at Phillips
had abated once the name battle was finally lost and the agonies of
hiring and firing were over,101 but he decided not to pursue the pos-
sibility of a position at Phillips Academy, wishing to take the salaried
leave the two Boards had offered him and start fresh elsewhere. Re-
grets nagged him: if Abbot was good enough for Phillips Academy,
mightn't it have been good enough to go it alone? And as if his own

448 THE FINAL DECADE, I963-I973

sorrows were insufficient, some alumnae were excoriating him as "the
destroyer of Abbot Academy," little recognizing that the Trustees
were at least as deeply implicated as he. "Some of the lightning he
brought on himself," says Philip Allen, "but most of it he took because
we asked him to take it."102 To this day Gordon will not accept the
role of "tragic figure" in which some colleagues have cast him;103 nor
will two former Abbot Trustees, who still feel that "his vision and his
persistence" were largely responsible for the success of the merger.
Yet, says Gordon, it was terribly difficult to have been asked first "to
lead Abbot forward towards a new identity as a vital, modern school,
and then suddenly, to take a 900 turn toward Phillips ... I discovered
that Abbot meant almost too much to me." It was harrowing for him
to realize that in the moment of agreement with Ted Sizer, July 1972,
his power to sustain hk particular Abbot Academy had vanished.104
Nevertheless, in their sadness, Gordon and the others who would leave
were not alone. As one of its groundsmen has said of Abbot, "This
place had a great heart."105 Whether or not they had been kept on by
Phillips, custodians and switchboard operators and teachers alike recog-
nized the disintegration of a community that had brought them to-
gether as friends.106 Next year, boys would live in Draper and only
the Art and History departments would be teaching down the Hill.
For those who collected and sorted long-valued Abbot goods— includ-
ing Abbot's magnificent art history equipment (kept), its shell collec-
tion (moved to the Phillips science building) and all the portraits and
antiques which had adorned Draper Hall and other treasured spaces-
dismemberment was a tangible, material affair. Through their own
votes for merger, even the Trustees would be severed from Abbot.
Though Philip Allen, the "architect of merger," belonged to the new
school as a Phillips Trustee, he felt these many partings as deeply as
anyone. "Don Gordon was just like a son to me," he says; "not way-
ward, but interesting and mercurial ... It was a marvelous relation-
ship."107 Some means to comfort— if not to heal— had to be found.

Depressed though he was, Perrin set the faculty looking, and the
faculty found it. A winter night's party became the first of at least
four dozen gatherings devoted to writing and rehearsing a Faculty
Follies more grand, more ridiculous, and more marvelous than any
Andover Hill had ever seen. "My Fair Lady" provided the music, but
the theme— the marriage of two historic schools— burst the bonds of
the original plot. Staid department heads turned out to be smashing
actors; rusty dancers kicked heels that hadn't left the ground for years.
Everyone helped, all in secret. By the time the curtain opened on May

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 449

27 to a packed Davis Hall, the students were breathless with curiosity
and the Phillips faculty members as eager as they were wary— for
every man of the Hilltop who was to be made sport of that night had
been specially invited. The show's title provided a hint:

Pedagogical Philanderings

Woman-Child on the Promised Hill

A salacious satire in two acts

Professor Malaprop Chipps (Marion Finbury) appeared in academic
gown and sneakers with spectacles askew, and introduced mayhem:
Samuel Phillips and Sarah Abbot rising from their graves on being
disturbed by a necking Phillips-Abbot couple, and vowing in operatic
tones to get uncouth youth back in the classroom where they be-
longed even if they had to join hands in marriage to do it. There fol-
lowed a Phillips faculty meeting— grey flannel suits, shining briefcases,
discussion pursued with military precision; then the Abbot "f acuity
womb," filled with flower children; then ribald scenes of the trium-
phant invasion of Hilltop classrooms, gymnasiums, and dormitories
by FEMALES.

I have often been in this dorm before,

But I always came through a window on the second floor;

Now I find my way

By the light of day
Through the halls of this dorm on the hill,
And oh, the towering feeling,
Just to know I'm finally here;
That overpowering feeling,

Of being part of Teddy Sizer's New Frontier . . .
People stop and stare; they don't bother me,
'Cause there's nowhere else on earth that I would rather be . . .

The audience roared, stamping its glee with such abandon that sections
of the ceiling fell down in two of the basement classrooms below.
"Teddy" Sizer asked to have the whole thing repeated in George
Washington Hall the following weekend.108

"I guess they did it to make us feel better about coming to P.A.,"
says a 1976 alumna.109 She was half right. They did it for themselves
and for one another as well, much as founder Samuel Jackson had
vaulted rail fences. It was Abbot at its funniest and most energetic and
best. And the solemn Commencement that soon followed was Abbot

450 THE FINAL DECADE, 1963-1973

for the last time. James Rae Whyte— Abbot father, Abbot faculty
spouse, and Phillips Chaplain— prayed the school out with a hope and
reverence not unlike that with which it had first opened in 1829.

Almighty God, unto us a child was given

and we called her name Laura or Lucinda,

Robin or Julia,

Kristin or Jane.
We called her name Claudia or Barbara,

Virginia, Ellen or Anne.
We called her name Elizabeth or Dorothy or Diana.
We called her name "Daughter."
We called her name "Love."
We thanked Thee in time past for Thy unfailing mercy,

grateful for her days,

and for her years.
Now the harvest of our hearts are grown,

we ask that Thou will consecrate these lives,

their strength, their knowledge,

their vision, their sense of justice,

their regard for the worth of other people.
Those of us who have labored in this growth,

parents, teachers, friends rejoice, O God,

and give praise for this school,

this place, this time,

these persons.

Amen.

"I loved Abbot so much as it was; I didn't see how it could possibly
change so much. But it did— and so did Phillips," says Marie Baratte,
who has known Abbot Academy— and now Phillips— for over thirty
years. As an independent school Abbot Academy had been as free to
change, however difficult the process, as it was to conserve all that
seemed valuable in its long heritage, no matter what the tides of
change outside the gates. "Abbot really hasn't disappeared," Mile.
Baratte finishes. Indeed not. An old school is made of thousands of
people, and of the ideas and the works they engender. All these have
shaped the present.

APPENDIX A

Constitution of Abbot Academy

Pursuant to the authority vested in us by the foregoing subscription,
and in execution of the trust thereby committed to us, We, Mark
Newman, Milton Badger, Samuel C. Jackson, Samuel Farrar, Amos
Blanchard, Hobart Clark, and Amos Abbot, all of Andover, in the
County of Essex, and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, have pro-
ceeded to frame a Constitution for the perpetual government of the
Female School or Academy endowed and intended to be established
by the said subscription, which Constitution is in the following words,
which we hereby adopt and establish as the basis of said Academy, and
as containing the fundamental rules for its regulation in all future time.

The Board of Trustees shall consist of not more than nine nor less
than five members, all of whom shall be professors of religion of the
Congregational or Presbyterian denomination. They shall meet once
in every year, on such a day as they shall appoint, also upon special
occasions when called thereto as hereafter directed; and a major part
of the Trustees shall, when regularly convened, be a quorum, of which
quorum a major part shall have power to transact the business of
their trust. The said Board shall perpetuate its own body by filling
all vacancies.

There shall be chosen annually, by ballot, a President, Clerk and
Treasurer, as officers of the trust, out of their own number, who shall
continue in their respective offices till their places are supplied by a
new election; and upon the decease of either of them another shall
be chosen in his room at the next meeting.

The President shall give his voice and vote in common with any
other member; and whenever there shall be an equal division of the
members on any question it shall determine on that side whereon the
President shall have given his vote; and in his absence at any meeting
of the Trustees another shall be appointed, who shall be vested with
the same power during such absence. He shall call special meetings

452 APPENDIX A

upon the written application of any two of the Trustees for that
purpose.

The Clerk shall record all votes of the Trustees, inserting the names
of those present at every meeting. He shall keep a fair record of every
donation, with the name of each benefactor, and the purpose to which
it is to be appropriated, if expressed. If he shall be absent at any meet-
ing of the Trustees, another shall be appointed to serve in his room
during such absence.

The Treasurer shall keep fair and regular accounts of all monies
received and paid by him, and his accounts shall be annually audited
by a committee of the Trustees appointed for that purpose. He shall
also, if required, give bond for the faithful discharge of the duties of
his office, in such sum as the Trustees shall direct, and with sufficient
sureties.

The Trustees shall appoint such Principal Instructor, whether male
or female, and such assistants, in and for the service of the Academy,
as they shall judge will best promote its usefulness, and as its funds
may permit. They shall also have power to remove any instructor or
assistant when, in their judgment, the good of the school requires it.

The Principal Instructor, whether male or female, shall be a pro-
fessor of the Christian religion, of exemplary piety, of well-bred man-
ners, of a cultivated taste, of a natural aptitude for government and
instruction, and of good natural and acquired abilities.

It shall be the duty of the Trustees, at least as often as once a term,
either as a Board or by a Committee, to visit the Academy, and inquire
into the state of the school, the conduct of the instructors, the pro-
ficiency of the students, and to suggest such means as they think
proper for improving the system of female education. The Trustees
shall also determine the qualifications requisite to entitle youth to an
admission into this Seminary.

As the manners and improvement of the scholars are liable to be
much affected by intercourse with the families in which they board,
and as it is important that they should be conversant with persons of
good character only, no members of the School shall be permitted to
board in any family which the Trustees disapprove.

The Principal Instructor, whether male or female, shall, in the man-
agement of the School, conform to the regulations established by the
Trustees, and shall have power from time to time to make such other
consistent rules as shall be found necessary for the internal manage-
ment of the School, which rules shall always be subject to the revisal
and approbation of the Trustees.

The primary objects to be aimed at in this School shall ever be

ABBOT ACADEMY CONSTITUTION 453

to regulate the tempers, to improve the taste, to discipline and en-
large the minds, and form the morals of the youth who may be mem-
bers of it. To form the immortal mind to habits suited to an immortal
being, and to instil principles of conduct and form the character for
an immortal destiny, shall be subordinate to no other care. Solid ac-
quirements shall always have precedence of those which are merely
showy, and the useful of those which are merely ornamental.

There shall be taught in this Seminary Reading, Spelling, Chirogra-
phy, Arithmetic, Geography, Composition, History, Geometry, Alge-
bra, Natural Philosophy, Grammar, Rhetoric, Chemistry, Intellectual
Philosophy, Astronomy, Sacred Music, and such other Sciences and
Arts, and such of the languages, ancient or modern, as opportunity
and ability may permit, and as the Trustees shall direct.

Trusting to the All-wise and Beneficent Disposer of events to favor
this our humble attempt to advance the cause of human happiness, we
humbly commit it to his patronage and blessing.

In witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands, this Fourth
day of July, in the year of our Lord, One thousand eight hundred and
twenty-eight.

Mark Newman
Milton Badger
Samuel C. Jackson
Sam'l Farrar
Amos Blanchard
Hobart Clark
Amos Abbot

APPENDIX B

Trustees of Abbot Academy

Amos Abbott 1828-1853 (Clerk 1 828-1 847, President 1847-1853)

Rev. Milton Badger 1828-1834
Amos Blanchard 1828-1847 (President and Treasurer 1843-1847,

Treasurer 183 2-1 842)

Hobart Clark 1828-1848

Samuel Farrar 182 8-1 850

Rev. Samuel C. Jackson 182 8-1 878

Mark Newman 182 8-1 842 (President 1 828-1 842)

Rev. Aaron Green 1 829-1 836

Rev. Elias Cornelius 1 834-1 835

Rev. Horatio Bar dwell 1 834-1 838

Rev. Lorenzo L. Langstroth 1 836-1 839

Lyman Coleman 1 838-1 843

Rev. Samuel Fuller 1 838-1 842

John L. Taylor 1 840-1 850 (Clerk 1 848-1 849)

Rev. Amos Blanchard 1 843-1 869

Rev. Bela B. Edwards 1 843-1 850

John Smith, Esq. 1 843-1 844

Alpheus Hardy 1 845-1 848

Henry B. Holmes 1848-1855 (Clerk 1850-1855)

Hon. Simon Greenleaf 1 849-1 850

Deacon Peter Smith 1 849-1 859 and 1 870-1 880 (President 1 854-1 858)

William B. Brown 1 851-1855

Rev. Edwards A. Park 1851-1900 (President 1850-1900)

Miner G. Pratt 1 851-1868

Nathaniel Swift 1 851-1878 (Treasurer 1 855-1 876)

Edward Buck 1854-1876 (Clerk 1855-1876)

Caleb E. Fisher 1855-187 3

Samuel Gray 1 855-1 858

George Lucian Davis 1 859-1 892

TRUSTEES OF ABBOT ACADEMY 455

Edward Taylor 1 859-1 869
Warren Fales Draper 1 868-1905 (Treasurer 1 876-1900)
George W. Coburn 1 870-1 890
Rufus S. Frost 1 870-1 894
Col. George Ripley 1 870-1908 (Clerk 1 878-1900,
President 1 901- 1902, Treasurer 1901-1902)
Egbert Coffin Smyth 1 870-1 888
Rev. J. Henry Thayer 1870
Hiram W. French 187 3-1 879
Rev. Francis Howe Johnson 1 877-1 889 (Clerk 1 877-1 878)
Edward G. Porter 1 878-1900
John Wesley Churchill 1 870-1900
William H. Wilcox 1 870-1 882
James White 1 882-1 886
JohnByers 1 884-1 889
Mortimer B. Mason 1886-1908
Arthur Stoddard Johnson 1 890-191 2
Henry H. Proctor 1 890
' Horace H. Tyer 1 890-1900
Mrs. John M. Harlow 1 892-1904
Henrietta Learoyd Sperry 1 892-1901
John Phelps Taylor 1892-1916 (Clerk 1901-1902)
Marcus Morton 1 896-1935 (President 191 3- 19 17 and 19 19-1935)
John Alden 1900-1916 (Clerk 1902-1916)
Mary Donald Churchill 1 900-1 930
E. Winchester Donald 1900- 1904
Daniel Merriman 1900-1912 (President 1902-1912)
Samuel L. Fuller 1902- 1906 (Treasurer 1 903-1 906)
George H. Gordon 1904-19 12
Edward C. Mills 1904-19 13
George Ferguson Smith 1905-193 8
Burton S. Flagg 1906-1964 (Treasurer 1906-1964)
Rev. Markham Winslow Stackpole 1908-1930
George Gilbert Davis 19 10-192 1
Charles H. Cutler 191 3-1940
Albert Fitch 1914-1920
Charles H. Oliphant 1914-1926 (Clerk 1917-1919)
Grace Carleton Dryden, '86, Alumnae Trustee 1915-1921
Edward Barton Chapin 1920-1952 (Clerk 1920-1935,
President 193 5-1 95 2)
Anna Nettleton Miles, '93, Alumnae Trustee 1921-1927
Bertha Bailey 192 3-1936

45<$ APPENDIX B

Irving Southworth 1923-1950 (Clerk 1936-1950)

Ellen Fitz Pendleton 1924- 193 6

Dr. Jesse B. Davis 1920-1927 and 1928-1929

Dorothy Bigelow Arms, '11, Alumnae Trustee 1927-1933

Margaret Shove Morriss 1930-1952

Constance Parker Chipman, '06, 1931-1952

Mira Bigelow Wilson, '10, 193 3-1 95 2. Alumnae Trustee 1933-1939

Rev. Sidney Lovett 193 3-1958 and 196 3-1965

George Ffrost Sawyer 193 5-1 970

George E. Abbot 1936-1952 (President 10/52-11/52)

Winona K. Algie, '00, Alumnae Trustee 193 6-1 939

Marguerite C. Hearsey, 1936-1955

Dorothy Taylor, '08, Alumnae Trustee 1 939-1 945

Margaret Van Voorhis, '18, Alumnae Trustee 1942- 1948

Stoddard M. Stevens 1944- 1966

Mrs. Wilbur K. Jordan 1945- 1970

Helen Allen Anderson, '32, 1945- 197 3. Alumnae Trustee 1945-195 1

Philip K.Allen 1948-1956, 1958-1973 (President 1966-1973)

Jane B. Baldwin, '22, 1948- 1970. Alumnae Trustee 1948- 1954

Robert I. Hunneman 1951-1965 (President 1952-1965)

Donald B. Smith 1951-1959

Louise Risley Stever, '37, Alumnae Trustee 1951-1957

J. Radford Abbot 195 2-1 968

Margaret Clapp 1952-1964

Gardner Sutton 195 3- 1970 (Assistant Treasurer and Clerk)

Pauline Humeston Carter, '27, Alumnae Trustee 1 954-1 960

E. Benjamin Redfield, Jr., 1955-1973

Caroline Stevens Rogers 195 5- 1969

Mary Hinckley Crane 195 5- 1966

Virginia Gay d'Elseaux, '28, Alumnae Trustee 1957-1963

G. Grenville Benedict 196 3- 197 3

Helen Ripley, '30, Alumnae Trustee i960- 1966

Alice Sweeney, '14, Alumnae Trustee 196 3- 1969

Abby Castle Kemper, '31, 1964-197 3

Everett Ware Smith (Treasurer 1964-1970)

James K. Dow, Jr., 1965-1973 (Treasurer 1970-1973)

Donna Brace Ogilvie, '30, Alumnae Trustee 1966- 197 2

GuerinTodd 1967- 197 3

Donald A. Gordon 1968-1973

Melville Chapin 1969- 197 3

Mary Howard Nutting, '40, 1969- 197 3

Lovett C. Peters 1967-197 3

TRUSTEES OF ABBOT ACADEMY 457

Aagot Hinrichsen Stambaugh, '44, Alumnae Trustee i960- 197 3

Beverly Brooks Floe, '41, 1971-1973

Mary Dooley Bragg, '36, 197 2- 197 3

S. Leonard Kent 197 2- 197 3

Anne Russell Loring, '36 (Alumnae Association President 1972-1973)

Betsy Bruns Eaton, '62, Alumnae Trustee 197 2- 197 3

APPENDIX C

Faculty of Abbot Academy, 1936-1973

Name

Rebekah Munroe
Chickering

Laura Keziah
Pettingell

Bertha Morgan
Gray (Mrs.
Chester)

Octavia Whiting
Mathews

Degrees and Colleges
AB Bryn Mawr College

AB; MA Smith College
Ed.M. Harvard U.

Artistic Diploma, Curry
School of Expression

AB Colby College
Studied at Mt. Holyoke
Studied at Madrid Centro

de Estudios Historicos y

Cientificos

Dates of

Abbot

Subject

tenure

English

1898-1937

Head, Classics

1916-1918

Dept.
Substitute and

ass't teacher
Latin
Froblems of

1922— 1924
1936-1940

Democracy

Dramatic In-

1917-1948

terpretation

Spoken

English

Spanish

1917-1940

Helen Dunford
Robinson

AB Smith College

Latin

1918-1945

Ruth Stephens
Baker

AB Smith College
MA Columbia Univ.

French and
German

1920-1941

Helen Dearborn
Bean

AB Wellesley College
Studied at U. of Oxford

History

1920-1939

Marie DeLa
Niepce
Craig (Mrs.)

Couvent du Sacre Coeur
Brevet d'Institutrice

French

1920-1939

]

FACULTY OF ABBOT ACADEMY

459

Alice Sweeney

AB Vassar College

English

IQ20-I022

Acting

1935-1956

Principal

IQ46-IQ47

Director of

Studies

I938-I956

Fanny Bigelow

AB Mt. Holyoke

Biology

Jencks

Sec'y to
Principal

I92I-I932

Registrar

I932— I936

Acting Head

I936-I937

of School

Kate Friskin

Studied at Glasgow

Pianoforte

I922—I961

Athenaeum and with

Theory of

Sophie Weisse and

Music

I 948- I 96 I

D. F. Tovey and

Choral Music

I 948- I 96 I

Tobias Matthay

Walter Howe

BM Va. Institute of

Choral Music

I922-I948

Music

Pianoforte

A.A.G.O. American

Organ

Guild of Organists

Theory of
Music

Mary Carpenter

Graduate of the Boston

Physical

I925-I945

School of Phys. Ed.

Education

B.S. Ed. Boston Univ.

Mary Gay

Graduate Boston Museum

History of

1933-1953

of Fine Arts

Art
Art

Eunice Murray

AB Tufts College

Business

1934-1942

Campbell (Mrs.)

Studied at Harvard Grad.
School and Simmons
Col.

Principles

Evelyn Mann

AB Russell Sage College

English

1934-1939

Rumney

MA Columbia Univ.

Gertrude Tingley

Studied with Mme. Povla
Frijsh, Percy Rector

Singing

I934-I964

Barbara Humes

Sarah Lawrence College

Assistant to

1935-1950

Katherine Gibbs School

Principal

Gladys Brannigan

AB; MA Geo.

Drawing

I936-I937

Washington U.

Painting

Graduate Nat'l Academy

of Design

460

APPENDIX c

Mary Elaine

AB Mount Allison Univ.

Household

1936-1956

Dodge

B.H.S. McGill Univ.

Science

Isabel Maxwell

AB Hollins College

Mathematics

1936-1963

Hancock

Studied at Univ. VA.

Director of
Admissions

1956-1963

Jeanne Vical

B.Ph. (Langues Vivantes)

French

1936-1940

Miller (Mrs.)

Universite de France
Diplome de L'Institut de
Phonetique, Paris

Roberta Gilmore

AB Swarthmore College

Physics

1936-1944

Poland

MA Univ. Penn.

Biology

(Mrs. Burdette)

General
Science

Winthrop Horton

AB Brown Univ.

Bible

1936-1941

Richardson

BD Andover-Newton
Theological School

Virginia Paine

AB Wheaton College

Spoken

1936-1942

Rogers

Studied Speech and
Dramatic Technique at
Marie Ware Laughton

English

Eleanor Morin

AB; MA Smith College

Chemistry

1936-1969

Tucker

Mathematics

1956-1966,

Ena Marston

Gertrud Rath

AB; MA Mills College
MA Radcliffe College

AB Hollins College
MA Texas Univ.

M. Dorothy Baker St. Mary's College

Cheltenham, England
Member of the Royal
Society of Teachers

Director of

Studies
Acting

Principal

English

Assistant to
Principal

English

Lydia Glidden
Ciullo (Mrs.)

Marjorie Hill

BS Jackson College

AB Mt. Holyoke College
MA Radcliffe College

Business
Principles

History
Office

Assistant

1 968-1 969

1 966-1 968
1937-1938

1937-1945

1938-1950,
Feb. 53-
June 53

Jan. 1938-
June 1939

1938-1939

FACULTY OF ABBOT ACADEMY

461

Francis Merritt

Studied w/ Alexandre
Jacobleff, Edwin C.
Taylor, Eugene Savage,
Anthony Thieme,
Richard Andrew,
Robert C. Vose, Charles
F. Connick

Painting

Modelling

Drawing

1938-1941

Rowena Lincoln
Rhodes

Grad. of Bouve-Boston
School of Phys. Ed.

Studied at Conn. College
for Women

Physical
Education

1938-1942

Laura Huntington
Smith

AB Vassar College
MA Radclifle College

History

1938-1943

Hilda Ruby
Baynes

B.es L. U. de Paris
Diplome de L'Ecole de

French

1939-1949

Preparation des Pro-
fesseurs de Francais,
Sorbonne. Certificat de
Phonetique, U. de Paris

Constance Clark

U. of Prague

History

1939-1940

Summer Study,

Office

Cambridge U.

Assistant

Harriet E. McKee

AB Vassar College

Latin

1939-1961

MA Columbia U.

Greek . . .
History

Anne Rechnitzer

Ph.D., U. of Vienna

French

German

History

1939-1945

Catherine Jane

AB Wheaton College

Remedial

1939-1958

Sullivan

Grad. Study at Boston

Reading

U. and Harvard Univ.

Alumnae
Secretary

1952-1973

Lucile Burdette

AB Denison Univ.

English

1939-1944

Tuttle

Grad. Study at Radcliffe

Co-Acting
Principal

1947-1948

Director of

1946 and

Residence

J947

Dorothea

U. of King's College

English

I939-I952

Wilkinson

Woodford School for
Teachers, Southsea,
England

462

APPENDIX c

Helene M. Crooks

Baccalaureat, Sorbonne

AB Vassar College

AM Columbia U.

Graduate Study at the
Sorbonne & the Middle-
bury French School

French

1940-1941

Brainard F.
Gibbons

BS Colgate U.

FDNYU

BD St. Lawrence U.

Bible

1 940-1 942

Anna Elizabeth
Roth

Barnard College
Ph.B. Syracuse Univ.
MA; Ph.D., Radcliffe
College

History

1940-1952
and

*955-l95*

Justina Ruiz

MA Madrid Central U.

Spanish

1 940-1 942

Mary Mills Hatch
(Mrs. Harold
Marnham)

Studied at Cal. Col. of
Arts & Crafts. Atelier
de Paul Bornet, Paris.

Painting
Drawing
Modelling

1940-1943

Ruth Louise
Elvedt

Irene Nechama
Fischer
(Mrs. Eric)

Etiennette Reine-
Marguerite
Trouve

Mathematics 1941-1942

1941-1945

Estrella Fontanals
de Baldi
(Senorita Paul)

Ecole de L'Arts et
Decorative, Paris.

Studio of Charles Wood-
bury, Boston, U. of
London, England

Bouve-Boston School of Physical 1 941-1944

Phys. Ed. Education

BS Simmons College

U. of Vienna
Institute of Tech.,
Vienna

B.Es L. Sorbonne French

Licence es Lettres

Sorbonne
Diplome de L 'Ecole

Nationale des Langues

Orientales Vivantes

Baccalaureat, Madrid Spanish 1 942-1 943

central Col for women.

Madrid "Centro de
Estudios Historicos"
(Spanish History, Lit-
erature, Art)

Graduate Study at the
Sorbonne and at
Columbia U.

FACULTY OF ABBOT ACADEMY

463

America De

Escuela De Education,

Spanish

1942-

1943

Alonso

Montevideo, S.A.

(Senora Juan)

Minna S. Calhoun

BS; MA Northwestern U.

Mathematics

1942-

!945

(Mrs. Alex-

U. of Chicago

ander D.)

Mary Dooley

AB Wellesley College

Business

1942-

1944

(Later Mary

Principles

1948-

1949

Dooley Bragg)

Speedivriting,
Typing

Bernard T. Drew

AB Bates College
MA; STB Boston U.

Bible

1942-

1944

Lucretia Lawrence

AB Mount Holyoke

Librarian

April.

Hildreth

College

1942-

1944

Vera Fisherova

AB Rockf ord College

Spanish

1943-

1944

Beck

Ph.D. Charles IV U.

Prague
Research Fellow,

Harvard Univ.

Louise Loring

AB Radcliffe College

Biology

1943-

1957

Coffin

Grad. Study U. No.
Carolina and Harvard
Univ.

General
Science

Maud Cabot

BA Barnard College

Painting

1943-

•1945

Morgan

Cours de Civilization,

Drawing

anc

(Mrs. Patrick)

Sorbonne, Paris
Art Students League,

N.Y.
Hans Hofmann
Art School, Munich

and New York

Modelling
Art

1951-

•1962

Edith Hedin

AB Radcliffe
MA Yale Univ.

English
German

1944-

■1945

Arnold M. Kenseth

AB Bates College

Bible

1944-

-1946

(The Reverend)

STB Harvard Divinity
School

Eleanor Ninas

AB Univ. of Kansas City;

Librarian

1944-

-1946

Little

BS in L. S. Columbia
Univ.

Katherine

Bouve-Boston School of

Physical

1944-

-1948

MacDonald

Phys. Ed.

BS Ed. Tufts College

Education

464

APPENDIX c

Marion Russell
MacPherson

Business
Principles

Executive
Secretary of
Alumnae
Relations

1944-

■1947

Jean Katherine
Nevius

AB Wheaton College
Grad. study at Columbia

English

1944-

■1945

Catherine Padwick

BS Boston Univ.
MA Middlebury College
Grad. Study at Toronto
Univ.

English

1944-

■'945

Germaine Arosa

Prix d'excellence de
diction et Comedie,
Paris;

Middlebury College
School of French

French

*945"

-1969

William Abbott
Cheever

Gwendolyn Elroy

Boston Museum School
of Fine Arts; Paige
Travelling Scholarship

Bouve-Boston School of
Phys. Ed.; BS. Ed.
Tufts College

Art

Physical
Education

1945-
1945-

■195 1
-1950

Gerda Ruth Kaatz

AB Univ. of Kansas

City;
MA State Univ. of

Illinois;
Ph.D. State Univ. of

Iowa

Spanish
Assistant to
the Principal

1945-
1951-

-1956
-1957

Edith Hilliard
Prescott

AB Radcliffe College;
Grad. Study at U. of
N.H.

Latin

1945-

■1946

Ruth Crupper
Reeves (Mrs.)

AB Hollis College

Administra-
tive Asst.

1945-

■!954

Marjorie Faunce
Stevens
(Mrs. MervinE.)

AB Boston University

Mathematics

1945-

.1958

Elinor Litchfield
Strickland

Leland Powers School
Recreation Training

Dramatics

1945-

-1946

School of Chicago

FACULTY OF ABBOT ACADEMY

465

Pauline H.
Anderson

Marthe Marie
Baratte

AB Keuka College
BS in L. S. N.Y. State

College for Teachers,

Albany

Baccalaureat es-Lettres-

Latin-Langues-

Philosophie, Universite

de Rennes, France;
AB Connecticut College;
MA Cornell University;
Diplome de Phonetique;
La Sorbonne, Universite

de Paris

Raymond H. Coon N.E. Conserv. of Music;

Studied with Heinrich
Gebhard, Boston.

Librarian

1946-1950

French

1946-1973

Piano j one 1946- 196 3

Edith A. Grassi

AB Tufts College
MA Wellesley College

History,
Latin

1946-1952

Mildred Althea
Hatch

AB Boston Univ.
Grad. Study at Boston
Univ.

Latin

Administra-
tive Assis-
tant

1946-1961

Oril Lucille Hunt

BS Univ. of Arizona;
Grad. Study at Syracuse
Univ.

Physical
Education

1946-1947

Landelle Sam
McMurry

AB; MA Vanderbilt

1 946- 1 960

Rev. Alfred
Warren Burns

AB Bowdoin College;
BD Episcopal
Theological School

Bible

1947-1948

Gladys Morley
Ortstein (Mrs.
Frederick W.)

Lawrence Commercial
School

Typing

1947-1952

Katherine Peterson
Wieting (Mrs.
Gilbert W.)

B.R.E. Boston Univ.
School of Religious Ed.;
MA Boston University

Bible

1947-1949

Carolyn Goodwin

AB; MA Smith College

Mathematics
Director of
Studies

1948-1973
1970-1973

466

APPENDIX c

Emily Hale

Leland Powers School,

Dramatic In-

1948-1957

Boston;

terpretation

Cornish School, Seattle;

Spoken

Speech Institute, London;

English

Univ. of Wisconsin

Summer School

Adele D. Bockstedt

AB Mt. Holyoke College;
MA Columbia

French

1949-1954

Dorothy Y. Judd

BS William & Mary

Physical

1940-1973

School of Physical

Education

Education;

and Spanish

BS Ed. Tufts College

Rev. Hans Sidon

AB; BD Univ. of
Dubuque;

Ph.D. Grad. School,
Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary

Bible

1 949- 1 966

Mary Howe Baker

AB Vassar College

Librarian

Dec,

(Mrs. Robert H.)

AM Radcliffe College

1950-1965

Virginia Peddle

BS Bouve-Boston School

Physical

1950-1954

of Physical Education

Education

Elizabeth Rohr-

AB Meridian College;

English

1950-1952

bach (Mrs.)

MA Columbia Univ,
Grad. study at Bread
Loaf School of English

Barbara Madison

AB Bates College;

English

1950-1952

Stanhope

MA Univ. of Maine;
Grad. study at Bread
Loaf School of English

Lola Monbleau

Jackson College;

Singing

1951-1955

(Mrs. Charles)

Julius Hart School of
Music, Hartford, Conn,

Studied with Rhea
Massicotte

Shirley J. Ritchie

BS State Teachers

Physical

i95M973

College, Trenton, N.J.

Education

Mary L. Spurway

The Dragon School,

Latin

1951-1952

(Mrs. Kenneth)

Oxford, England;
Malvern Girl's College

Barbara Ann

AB Boston Univ.

Spanish

1952-1953

Buckley

FACULTY OF ABBOT ACADEMY

467

Howard A. Coon

R.I. School of Design

Art

1952-

-1956

Marion G.
DeGavre (Mrs.

Paul C.)

AB New Jersey College
for Women

Latin

i952-

-1970

Patience Hunkin

AB; AM Cambridge U.
Docteur de l'Universite
de Strasbourg.

English
History

Oct. 52-
Feb. 53

Eleanor Victoria
Jennings

AB William Smith Coll.
MA Smith College

History

1952-

-1955

Marguerite Jupp

AB; MA Radcliffe Coll.

English

1952-

■1953

Ingrid Agnette
Wulff

AB London Univ.
Grad. study: Zurich
Univ.

English

1952-

-1954

Jean Elizabeth
Johnson

AB Wisconsin Univ.
MA Univ. of Hawaii

English

1953-

-1956

Elizabeth Miller
Pratt

AB Smith College
MA Columbia

History
Admin. Asst.

1953"

-1956

Lucette Bowers

AB Wellesley College;
MA in Modern Dance,
Sarah Lawrence College

Physical Ed.
(Dance)

1954-

-1955

Margaret R.
Cassidy

AB Vassar College

English
Mathematics

1954-

-1957

Violet F. Edmonds

AB Girton College,
Cambridge Univ.
Oxford Diploma in
Education

English

1954-

■1955

Edith Temple
Jones

AB Middlebury College
Grad. study at N.Y. State

College for Teachers;
McGill Univ. &,the

Sorbonne.

French

1954-

-1967

Mar j on Bertha
Ornstein

AB Guilford College;
MA Middlebury College

French

1954-

■1957

Grad. School of French
in France;

Studies at Sorbonne;

Brevet de 1' Aptitude a
PEnseignement du
Francais hors de France.

468

APPENDIX C

Ellen Stahle

Piano Pedagogy w/ Dr.

Piano

1954-1969

(Mrs. Charles)

Nagy at Boston Univ.;

Studied with Frances
Mann, Julliard School

Jane D. Baker

AB Middlebury College
Grad. study at Boston
Univ.

English

I955"I958

Mary Hinckley

AB Bryn Mawr College

English

1955-1956

Crane

History of
Art

Principal

1956-1966

Gertrude Ehrhart

Studied with Isidore

Singing

I955"I958

Luckstone.

1958-1962

Solo appearances with

Boston Symphony &

Handel & Haydn

Society;

Joint recitals with

Nicolas Slonimsky,

Carol Salzedo and

Eugene Goosens.

Ella O. Greenall

BS Boston University

Remedial

1955-

Reading and

Feb. 69

Language

Training

Franey Jensen

AB Bombay University;

Physical

1955-1956

Grad. of the State

Education

Gymnastic Inst.

Copenhagen & of the

Central Gymnastic Inst.,

Stockholm

Donald Outerbridge

AB Harvard Univ.

History of
Art

i955"I958

Louise Tarr

AB Vassar College;

English

1955-1956

Stockly

MA Columbia Univ.

Joan Adaskin

BA Western Reserve
Univ.

Mathematics

1956-1959

Janet Bolen

BS Madison College

Physical
Education

1956— i960

Cynthia Burns

AB Stanford University
MAT Radcliffe

English

1956-1958

Patience Haley

AB Oberlin College

Art

1956-1959

FACULTY OF ABBOT ACADEMY

469

Mary Boosalis

Women's College of

Physical

1956-1957

Nagler

Univ. No. Carolina;
Martha Graham School

of Dance;
American School of

Ballet

Education

Jirina Anna Stacho

MA; Ph.D. Charles Univ.

of Prague;
Diploma of the Univ. of

Grenoble;
Certificat de I'Ecole su-
perieure de preparation

et de perfectionnement

des professeurs de Fran-
caise a I'etranger,

Sorbonne;
Columbia Univ.

History

1956-1958

J. Pamela Tinker

BS Sheffield, England;

Chemistry

1956-1965

Diploma in Administra-

Biology

1952-1953

tion, University of

(Fulbright

Leeds.

Exchange
Teacher)

Ann Sanf ord

AB Bryn Mawr College

English

1956-1962

Werner (Mrs.

Grad. study at Columbia

Latin

Paul)

Paul Werner

BS Lafayette

MA Univ. of Pennsyl-

Mathematics

1956-1958

vania

Paula Betinchamps Fulbright Exchange

Teacher from Belgium
Ecole Normale
Moyenne de L'Etat,
Liege, Belgique;
British Council Summer
School, Brussels.
Casa de la American
Latina, Universite Libre
de Bruxelles, Universi-
dad Menendez Pelayo,
Satander, Espafia. In-
stituto di Cultura di
Bruxelles, Universita di
Perugia, Italia.

French

I957-I958

470

APPENDIX c

Carolyn Butler
(Mrs. J. Konrick)

AB Wellesley College

Physical
Education

1957-

1970

Janet Fraser

AB Wellesley College

History

'957-

1959

John S. Iverson, Jr.

AB Yale University
MA Univ. of No.
Carolina

History
English

1957-

■1958

Marion McEnery

BA Wellesley College
MA Boston Univ.

History

1957-

■1961

Elizabeth Anne
Quimby

AB Jackson College;
Grad. Study at Chicago
Conservatory

English

1957-

■i960

Sylvia Seldon

AB Univ. of Wisconsin;
MA Hartford School of
Religious Education

Bible

1957-

■i960

Olthje Christine
von Erpecom

Studied with Mme. Paula
Frijsh, Percy Rector
Stephens, Isidore Luck-
stone

Speech &
Drama

Dean of
Students

1957-1969
1966— 1969

Grace Whitney

AB Smith College

Language
Training

1957-

■1964

Hilary Andrade-
Thompson

AB Honors London
Univ.
Certificate in Education

English

1958-

•i960

Dorothy Dains

AB Pembroke College

Mathematics

1958-

■1964

Margaret G.
Howland

AB Barnard College
MA Bryn Mawr College
Grad. study at Radcliffe

History
History of

Art
Curator, John

Esther Art

Gallery

1958-

•1963

Virginia Kroenlein
McKinley (Mrs.
George E.)

BS Boston Univ.
AB Barnard College

Physical
Science
Chemistry

1958-1959,
1 960-1 963

Ann Norwood
(Mrs. Richard)

AB Wellesley College

History

1958-

•1961

Suzanne Tallot
(Mme. Jacques)

Licencee es Lettres
University at Rennes

French

1958-

■i960

Kathleen Von
Tress

AB Univ. of Pennsyl-
vania

English

1958-

■1959

FACULTY OF ABBOT ACADEMY

471

Yi-an Rosita
Chang

Louise Courtois

Julliard School of Music Piano

Studied with Madame
Olga Samaroff and
James Friskin.

Solo appearances with
the Los Angeles Phil-
harmonic and Holly-
wood Bowl Symphony
orchestras, Concerts in
Europe and the Far East

Baccalaureat es lettres French

Certificat d'aptitude a
l'enseignement de
l'anglais Sorbonne;
Episcopal Training Col-
lege;
Edinburgh;
AB Mt. Holyoke

I Barbara Blagdon
Sisson

AB Vassar College
MA Wellesley College

Residence
English

1959-1962

1959-1960

Georgia Anne
Mcllwaine

AB Univ. of Chattanooga

Mathematics

1950-1960

Margot Warner

Studied with Nadia
Boulanger, Hilda
Roosevelt, Von-
Warhlich, Marie Sun-
delius, Olga Averino &
Fritz Lehmann

Choral music
Singing
Music
Theory

1950-1969

Frances Burns
(Mrs. James)

AB Trinity College
A.M.T. Radcliffe

Mathematics

1 960-1 962

Gwen Ferris
(Mrs. Gerald D.)

AB Smith College
AM Middlebury;
Sorbonne

French

i960— 1962

Louise G. Lewis

AB Barnard, MA Colum-
bia Univ;

Grad. study at the Univ.
of Montpellier, the
Sorbonne; Bryn Mawr

English

1060-1962

Dorothy Potter
(Mrs. Bruce)

Secretary
Director of

1960-
1962-1963

1960-1973

47 2

APPENDIX C

Blair Harvie
Danzoll

AB Wheaton College

Latin &
Greek

1961-

-1966

Anne Harriss
(Mrs. Bruce
Bugbee, in 1962)

AB Bennington College

English

1961-

-1973

Virginia Powel
(Mrs. Har-
ford, Jr.)

Harriet Sophie New-
comb College

Art

1061-

-1973

Caroline Bridgman
Rees

AB Smith; MA Yale

History

1961-

-1963

Judith Bratt

AB Vassar College

Mathematics

1962-

-1965

Jorunn Lita Buzzi

Studied at Sonderborg
Idratshojskden, certifi-
cates from Snoghoj
gy mnastikho j skole,
Denmark and Statens
Gymnastikkskole,
Norway.

Physical
Education

1962-

-1963

Elizabeth George
Foulke

AB Bryn Mawr
MA Univ. of Pennsyl-
vania

History
Admin. Asst.
Director of
Studies

1962-1965
Jan. 63-
June 63

Janice Fukushima

BA Radcliff e College

English

1962-

-1963

Georgiana
Mathews
(Mrs. JohnM.)

AB Wheaton College
AM Middlebury College
Universite de Paris

French

1962-

-1963

Mary Sophia
Minard

AB Smith College
MALS
Wesleyan Univ.

History

1962-

■1973

Erika Maria
Niemann

Diploma in Math &
Physics from Free Uni-
versity in West Berlin,

German

Physics
Mathematics

1962-

-1963

Carolyn C. Pike

Diploma in Education
from the Studien semi-
nar in West Berlin,
Zehlendorf

Phys. Educ. Diplomas
from Dalhousie Univ.
Nova Scotia, Memorial
Univ. of Newfoundland

Physical
Education

1962-1962

FACULTY OF ABBOT ACADEMY

473

Lily Siao

BS & MS. Julliard School
of Music; Fulbright
Grant to Paris 1961-
1962.

Piano

1962-

•1965

Ruth Stevenson

AB Smith College

MA Univ. of Richmond

English

1962-

-1965

Margaret Graham
Way

BA Honors, University
of Cambridge, England

English

1962-

-1965

Anne Lise Witten
(Mrs. Oscar)

Univ. of Frankfort;
The Sorbonne; Grad.

French
History

1962-

■1973

Edwina Frederick
(Mrs. Wayne)

BS in Education
Southeast Missouri Coll;
MA Columbia Univ. &
Sorbonne

French

1963-

■1973

Frances Howard
(Mrs. Lynwood)

BS Farmington State Col.

Dietitian
House Super-
intendent

1963-

-1970

Barbara Dorothy
Keener

BA Science, BA Science
Teaching, Gordon Col-
lege

Physical
Education
Biology

1963-

■1964

Jean Mary St.
Pierre

AB Wheaton College
MA Columbia Univ.

English

1963-

■1973

Ruth Ford Duncan
(Mrs. Ford)

BA Connecticut College

Dir. of
Admissions

1964-

■1969

Sylvia Kuzminski

BA Merrimack College

Mathematics

1964-

■1967

Louise Shaw

BS Tufts College

Physical
Education

1964-

-1967

Helen Smith

BS Central Conn. State
Col
MS Cornell Univ.

Physics,
Science

1964-

•1967

Madge Baker

MA Vassar College

History

1965-

•1968

Jonatha Ceely
(Mrs. Robert P.)

BA Vassar College;
MA University of
Michigan

English

1965-

■1969

Margaret Couch

BA Wheaton College

Librarian

1965-

•1973

Georgina M. Huck

BA Vassar College;
Yale School of Grad.

German,
History

1965-

1969

Studies; N.Y. Univ.;
Univ. of Breslau

474

APPENDIX c

Carolyn Johnston

BA Radcliffe College;
Tufts University

English
Dean of
Students

i 965-1 970
1970-1973

Carolyn Kellogg

BA Reed College

Biology

1965-1970

Christina A. Rubio

Studied under Marina
Noreg, Birger Bartholin,
Olga Preobrajenska,
and Egarova

Dance

1965-1973

Elizabeth Sargent
Roberts (Mrs.)

B. Mus. Boston Univ.
College of Music;
Piano with Gregory
Tucker;
Ensemble with Wolfe

Piano

1965-1973

Linda Sevey

BA Pembroke
MAT Harvard

History of
Art

1 965- 1 967

Mrs. Harry
Vickers

BS, M.I.T.

Mathematics
Chemistry

1 965-1 968

Rae Anderson

Home

(Mrs. Timothy)

BA Vassar College, MAT
Stanford Univ.

English

1966-1971

Faith Howland
Kaiser

BA Wellesley College;
Harvard Univ. Grad.

School Arts and

Sciences

Latin, Greek
Admissions

1966-1973

Mrs. Richard
Merrill

U. of Guanajuato

Spanish

1 966-1 968

George Edward
Andrews II

BA Trinity College;
Boston University
Graduate School of
Theology

Religion
(jointly
appointed
with P. A.)

1 967- 1 968

Carole Buhler

Beloit College

Spanish

1 967-1 968

Ruth Harris
(Mrs. Peter
Hayne)

B. Ed. Keene State
College; M.A.L.S. Wes-
ley an Univ.; State Univ.
of N.Y., Buffalo

Mathematics

1967-1971

Marianne Branch
Kehrli
(Mrs. Peter)

BFA Moor College of
Art; Beaux Arts, Paris;
Columbia Univ. Teach-

History of
Arts

1 967-1 969

ers College; Smith Col-
lege Grad. School

FACULTY OF ABBOT ACADEMY

475

Wendy Snyder
(MacNeil)

Meriby Sweet

Hilda Whyte
(Mrs. James)

Joy Renjilian
Burgy
(Mrs. Donald T.)

Donald Gordon

Marjorie Harrison

Marilyn Hoyt
(Mrs. Robert)

Garrett Kaufman

Catherine Seanne
Kirkland

James Frederick
Lynch

Frederick
Pease, Jr.

Stephanie Blake
Perrin
(Mrs. Stephen)

Audrey Bensley
(Mrs. Gor-
don G.)

Susan Clark
Brian Davidson

Paul Dyer

BA Smith College;
M.A.T. Harvard Univ.;
M.I.T.

BA Univ. of Maine

Visual Per- 1967-1973
ception,
Photography

Speech, 196 7- 1969

Drama

BS Michigan State Univ. Physics

Mt. Holyoke BA, Spanish

Middlebury College

Graduate Work (no

degree)

BA Yale; MA Univ. Principal

Penn.

BA Conn. Coll. for
Women

BS Denison Univ.,
M.I.T.

BA Univ. of Arizona; English

MA Stanford Univ.

License Sorbonne; French

Matrise Sorbonne

BA Amherst

BA Yale; BD Union Religion

Theological Sem.

Barnard; BA Boston
Univ.
M.A.T. Harvard

Hood, Jackson, Univ. of
New Hampshire

BA Swarthmore; MA
Yale University

BA Tufts University;
University of Southern
California

Washington & Jefferson English

Univ.
Indiana Univ.

1967-1973

1968-1971

1968-1973

Physical 1968- 197 3

Education

Chemistry 1 968-1973

1 968- 1 969

1968-1973

Mathematics 1968-1973

1 968- 1 969

Art History 1968-1973
Curator, John

Esther Art

Gallery

Ceramics 1 969- 1973

Latin, Greek i960- 197 3

Speech & 1 960-1 971

Drama

1969-1970

476

APPENDIX c

Ronald G. Giguere

BA Assumption College;
MA Trinity College;
Certificat: Sorbonne;
University of Massachu-
setts

French

1969-1973

Stephen Graham

BA Princeton University

History

1969-1972

Ulrich Hepp

University of Zurich

French,
German

1960-1973

Susan Hosmer

BS Univ. of Vermont

Philosophy

1969-1972

Georges N.
Krivobok

BA Swarthmore; MA
Middlebury

French

1969-1973

Stephen Perrin

BA Columbia University

Humanities

1960-1973

Priscilla Peterson

B. of Music, Lawrence

Music

1960-1971

University

Admission

Peter T. Stapleton

BA Yale University;
MAT Harvard Univer-

English;
Asst. to the

1960-1973

sity

Principal

Rowland Sturges

BA Harvard

Music

1969-1971

Patricia Edmonds

BA Mount Holyoke;
MAT Harvard Univer-
sity

English

1970-1971

Patricia Freund

BA Smith College;
MFS Yale School of
Forestry

Biology,
Ecology

1970-1972

Sherry Gershon

BA University of
Missouri; Wesley an
Univ.

History

1970-1973

Robert Horvitz

Yale

Arts

1970-1971

Christine Marie
Kalke

BA Wayne University;
MA Columbia University

Latin, Greek

1970-1973

Frances N. Ladd

BA Connecticut College

English,
Speech

1970-1973

Robert T.
Laurence

BS Ohio State University

Mathematics

1970-1972

Michael F.
McCann

BA Middlebury College

Biology

1970-1973

Robert R.
McQuilkin

BA Princeton University;
MA Columbia University

English

1970-1973

David S. Tower

BA Williams College

Mathematics

1970-1973

FACULTY OF ABBOT ACADEMY

477

Adele Babcock
Andrew Johnston
Nancy Price

Andrew Strauss
Philip R. Trussel

Keder Bayard

Patricia Corkerton
Barbara Hawkes

Donald R.
Parkhurst

Alexandra K.
Rewis

Theodore J.
Warren, Jr.

BA RadclirTe College

BA Yale University

BA Mount Holyoke
College; MAT Harvard
University

BA Dartmouth College;
JD New York University

BFA University of Texas;
MFA Yale University

School of Art and

Architecture

MS, LLD University of
Haiti, MA Wesleyan
University; Fairfield
University

BA Skidmore College;
Boston University;
Middlebury College

BS Tufts University;
MS Northeastern Univer-
sity

BD Purdue University;
MAT Harvard Univer-
sity

BA Smith College;
MAT Yale University

BS Paul Quinn College;
diploma, Lincoln Busi-
ness College; BD Payne
Seminary, Wilberforce
University; Boston

Voice

1971-1972

English

1971-1973

English

1971-1972

Mathematics

1971-1973

Visual
Studies

1971-1973

Mathematics

1972-1973

bpamsh

1972-1973

Biology,
Ecology

1972-1973

Chemistry

1972-1973

English

1972-1973

History

1972-1973

Notes

I. Early Days, 1 828-1 852

I . OF TIMES, TOWN, AND FOUNDING FATHERS

i. Phebe and Philena McKeen, Annals of Fifty Years: A History of Abbot
Academy, Andover, Mass., 1829-1679 (Andover, Warren F. Draper,
1880), I, 3. (Philena, who was Phebe's sister and Abbot Academy's
longest tenured principal, 1 859-1 892, wrote only the first and last
pages.)

2. Claude M. Fuess, An Old New England School: A History of Phillhs
Academy, Andover (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 191 7), 55-56.

3. Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations: population, land, and family
in colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, Cornell University, 1970),
222—289.

4. Joseph Kett, The Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the
Present (New York, Basic Books, 1977), 14—37.

5. Abiel Abbot, History of Andover from Its Settlement to 1829 (An-
dover, Flagg and Gould, 1829), 63.

6. Fuess, New England School,i 10.

7. Quoted in Sarah Loring Bailey, Historical Sketches of Andover, Massa-
chusetts (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, 1880), 129.

8. From Abigail Foote's diary, quoted in Thomas Woody, A History Of
Women's Education in the United States (2 vols., Science Press, 1929;
rep. Octagon Books, New York, 1966), I, 161-162.

9. See Eleanor Flexner's discussion of women's opportunities during the
colonial period, in Century of Struggle (New York, Atheneum, 1973),
3-22.

10. Conversation with Kathryn Sklar, based on her research in progress on
the genesis of "higher" education (beyond grammar school) for young
women in New England.

11. "The Direction of Feminine Evolution," in The Potential of Woman,
ed. Seymour M. Farber and Roger H. L. Wilson (New York, McGraw
Hill, 1963), 258. In 1 8 10 96 percent of all woolen cloth produced in the
United States was made in private homes. By 1830 half of it was fac-
tory made; by 1840 there were 800 cotton factories in New England.

12. Quoted in a paper by Scott Paradise on the history of Andover, Massa-
chusetts, read before the Bay State Historical League at the meeting of

480 NOTES TO PAGES IO-I4

the Andover Historical Society on 3 October 1931.

13. Records of Andover Town Meeting, 7 January 1787.

14. Quoted in John Demos, "The American Family in Past Time," Amer-
ican Scholar, 43, No. 3 (Summer 1974), 427.

15. See Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: ''Women's Sphere' in
New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1977),
1 01-103; Kenneth Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England: An
Enquiry into the Social Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West
(New York, Norton, 1974), 38-43, 140-14 1. Andover women's illit-
eracy is discussed in Bailey, Historical Sketches, 550.

16. Anonymous poem read by Professor Calvin Stowe at the opening of
Smith Hall, Abbot Academy, 1854. This piece of doggerel "made a
deal of sport," said witnesses; quoted in Abbot Academy Bulletin (No-
vember 1930), 22. It was later discovered to have been written by Sam-
uel Gray "Esq.," who was elected to the Abbot Board of Trustees the
next year.

17. Quoted in Frederick S. Allis, Youth from Every Quarter (Andover,
Phillips Academy, distributed by the University Press of New En-
gland), 109.

18. Reverend Justin Edwards, quoted in Bailey, Historical Sketches, 473.

19. Bailey, 87; Abbot, History of Andover, 194-195.

20. Abbot, History of Andover, 147.

21. Quoted in Bailey, Historical Sketches, 558-559.

22. Abbot, History of Andover, 3. The entire book is a paean to Andover's
virtues and a near- whitewash of its faults.

23. Thomas Houghton, Esquire, who came to Andover in 1789. Quoted in
Claude M. Fuess, Andover: Symbol of New England (Andover His-
torical Society, 1959), 207.

24. Greven, Four Generations, 269.

25. Quoted in Fuess, Andover, 272.

26. An often-used book in early female seminaries was an English text
containing not a single word about the United States, reissued in this
country in 1799 by a leading Hartford citizen. Its title: A Mirror for
the Female Sex: Historical Beauties for Young Ladies Intended to Lead
the Female Mind to the Love and Practice of Moral Goodness. A typi-
cal passage: "Politeness and good breeding are such requisite introduc-
tions into genteel society that its is absolutely astonishing anyone can
gain admittance into it who are deficient either in the one or the
other." Quoted in Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in
American Domesticity (New Haven and London, Yale University
Press, 1973), 75.

27. Catharine Beecher, Educational Reminiscences and Suggestions, (New
York, J. B. Ford, 1874), 25.

28. Unsigned article in Journal of American Education, 4, No. 2 (March

NOTES TO PAGES 15-18 48 1

and April 1829), 127. Originally printed in the Boston Advertiser.

29. Rush's Commencement Address at the Philadelphia Young Ladies
Academy given in 1787. In 1792 this academy became the nation's first
incorporated girls' school.

30. Quoted in Alma Lutz, Emma Willard (Boston, Beacon Press, 1964), 25.

31. Ibid., 27.

32. Catharine Beecher, "Female Education," in American Journal of Edu-
cation, 2, Nos. 4 and 5 (April and May 1827), 265. Beecher's biblical
reference is to Ezekiel's vision.

33. Barbara M. Cross, in an article on Catharine Beecher in Notable Amer-
ican Women, ed. E. T. James, J. W. James, P. S. Boyer (Cambridge,
Harvard University Press, 1971), I, 121.

34. Beecher, "Female Education," 221.

35. 16 November 1839, quoted in Sklar, Beecher, 94.

36. The editors of American Annals of Education 6, 137) wrote that the
closing could be partly explained by the fact that "a single school of
this description would not accommodate more than one fourth of those
who ought to attend such an institution." Two years later, the school
reopened to become the most faithfully attended high school in Boston.

37. Jane Brodie Carpenter, Abbot and Miss Bailey, and Abbot in the Early
Days (Andover, Abbot Academy, 1959), 282-283.

38. Records of South Church, Andover, Massachusetts. The elders set up
this system in 1757 to replace the "most pious" standard because the
earlier criterion sowed so much ill feeling among those not chosen.

39. Kett, Rites, 85.

40. Most of the evidence is circumstantial. For example, Jackson did more
work to carry forward the founding of Abbot than any other person.
Furthermore, his wife Caroline was a forward-looking and liberal-
minded person who was likely to have pushed as hard as she dared on
the subject of women's education (she assumed a much more radical
stance on the slavery issue than did her husband, but they worked
together to salve the Parish's wounds on this subject). Most important,
Phebe McKeen concluded to her satisfaction during her research into
Abbot's history in 1879 that the couple had indeed been the initiators
of the plan. Phebe McKeen knew Jackson personally, and had access
to Abbot friends who were Jackson's colleagues and acquaintances back
in 1827 and 1828. We have no direct evidence, however. Jackson is
known to have kept a diary, but it is either hidden from historians or
simply lost. All we have from Jackson family records are reminiscences
of a great-granddaughter, Sara Knowles Jackson Smith, who wrote in
1944 that "it was chiefly through his efforts and influence that Abbot
Academy was founded."

41. A helpful account of Jackson's background and education has been
assembled by Eleanor Campbell in her book about the West Parish

482 NOTES TO PAGES l8-20

Church, West of the Shaivsheen (Andover, West Parish Church, 1975),
71-72, 105-110.

42. See Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York,
Alfred Knopf, 1977), chapters 1 and 2.

43. The original membership in 1826 was 41 males and 82 females. During
Jackson's tenure, 107 males joined the Church, while 214 females did so.
Much the same ratio held at South Church, Andover's largest parish.
In a single decade (1828-38), 230 females joined South Church, while
only 136 males did so. (Records of South Church, Andover.) Just as
in West Parish Church, however, men kept formal control of all South
Parish business till well into the twentieth century. Women were not
admitted as members of the South Parish, even though they were wel-
comed in the South Church, a corporately distinct organization.

44. See Campbell, West of the Shaivsheen, 61.

45. Edwards A. Park, Memorial to Samuel C. Jackson (1879).

46. The West Parish Church records reflect the energy and legal acumen
Jackson gave equally to the resolution of problems brought to him by
men and those brought by women. As Parish Clerk and minister,
Jackson functioned as a kind of benevolent trial judge for the disputes
and charges brought by the deacons or by one parishioner against an-
other. The scope of problems given formal hearing is somewhat nar-
rower than in the eighteenth century, when Reverend Phillips held
sway— most of those recorded in the official record comprise individual
offenses against a church member's responsibility (Sabbath breaking, or
"neglecting worship") but men are occasionally charged with drunken-
ness by one of the "brothers," and women with adultery. Only men
might speak in church or bring charges or make defenses; of one
woman offender it is written that "her burden was double: she was a
sinner and a woman" (Campbell, West of the Shaivsheen, 33), thus
must find a brother to speak for her at the hearing. Jackson heard and
decided some of these cases in consultation with the entire congrega-
tion. He was also invited to many a home to adjudicate complex civil
disagreements before they came to county court, and to help draw
documents of trust, some of these making him guardian of minor chil-
dren or trustee. See also Campbell, West of the Shaivsheen, 32-33, and
chapter on Jackson, in West Parish Church, Historical Sketches (An-
dover, West Parish Church, 1906).

47. Characterization of Farrar by Professor Edwards Park in his address to
the graduating class of 1878, quoted in McKeen, Annals, 11.

48. Claude Fuess says of the "Latin Commons" that they lined up "like a
row of tenements," reflecting Farrar's character as a "frank utilitarian,"
and preserving "in their general outlines that unadorned simplicity
characteristic of the packing box." Fuess, New England School, 229-
230.

NOTES TO PAGES 2 I -3 ° 4^3

49. Sarah Stuart Robbins, Old Andover Days: Memories of a Puritan
Childhood (Boston, Pilgrim Press, 1908), 42-43.

50. From a penciled draft of a talk probably given by Jackson at the open-
ing of Smith Hall, 1854.

51. From Reverend Park's address to Abbot's graduating class of 1878.
Quoted in McKeen, Annals, 11.

52. Robbins, Old Andover Days, 1 1 7.

53. Marion Edwards Park, in a speech to the Abbot Academy Alumnae
Association and Boston Abbot Club, 15 February 1938.

54. Quoted in Leo Kanowitz, Women and the Law, the Unfinished Revo-
lution (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1969), 35. See
also Douglas, Feminization, 5 1 .

55. Quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 157.

56. Ibid., 159.

57. Quoted in a speech by Marguerite C. Hearsey, 1954, manuscript in
Abbot Archives. The reader may assume that unpublished material on
Abbot, including manuscripts, letters, journals, scrapbooks, minutes and
reports to the Trustees, and special files are kept in the Abbot Academy
Archives, Oliver Wendell Holmes Library at Phillips Academy, unless
otherwise noted.

58. In a letter written 16 March 1916, N. C. Abbott, Superintendent, Ne-
braska School for the Blind. After 1830 the name is often spelled with
two t's.

59. Abbot, History of Andover, 8.

60. Trustee Minutes, 7 November 1828.

61. Trustee Minutes, 21 May 1829.

2. PIOUS PIONEERS

1. The "foregoing page" mentioned in the* first line of Jackson's letter was
the first Abbot Female Academy prospectus, which Jackson enclosed
with his message to his sister. "The deacon" is a Mr. Solomon Holt,
friend and landlord of the young Jackson and pillar of his new parish;
"Phebe" is Holt's daughter.

2. The five lay Abbot Trustees were to help drive Captain James Stevens
off the Board of Directors of the Andover Bank because he voted for
Jackson in 1832. (Bankers, of course, were in the hot seat in 1832, while
ministers occupied more neutral ground). See "A Sketch of the Early
Days of the Woolen Industry in North Andover, Massachusetts," ad-
dress delivered before the North Andover Historical Society, 13 Feb-
ruary 1925.

3. Federal Writers Project for the State of Massachusetts of the Works
Progress Administration, Massachusetts (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin,
1937), 48.

484 NOTES TO PAGES 32-34

4. McKeen, Annals, 18. Although there were no "graduating classes" un-
til 1853, each of the early alumnae is designated by the year she left
Abbot. Mrs. Bullard actually attended Abbot for five years: 1829, 1832,
and 1834-1837.

5. Ibid., 20.

6. Ibid., 31.

7. Ibid. "

8. Ibid., 19.

9. From oral reminiscences of one of M. C. Thomas' students and Bryn
Mawr Trustee Emeritus, Class of 1920.

10. Letter written in 1837 by Phebe Chandler (no recipient recorded in
Abbot Archives copy); and Mrs. Bullard quoted in McKeen, Annals,
26.

11. Phebe Chandler, 1836, quoted in Bulletin (November 1928), 11-12.

12. Unsigned article, "The Education of Females," American Journal of
Education, 2 (1827), 339.

13. Alumna reminiscence quoted in McKeen, Annals, 32.

14. Nathan Lord, Memorial to Samuel Gilman Brown (New York, Trow's,
1886), 68.

15. Original manuscript of Chandler letter, 1837.

16. William J. Bacon, in Lord, Memorial, 32.

17. Quoted in McKeen, Annals, 26.

18. See Charles D. Stewart, "The Pastor of the Bees," Atlantic Monthly
(July 1928), 92-103.

19. Alumna accounts may have exaggerated Abbot's virtues, but at least
until Farwell's administration one gets the strong impression that adults
gave orders and students sat up and took notice. This was the behavior
expected of girls and young women in the these times; exceptions ap-
pear to have been rare.

20. Recollection of Captain John Codman, Phillips Academy Class of 1823,
quoted in Fuess, New England School, 168.

21. Recollection of Gen. H. K. Oliver, ibid., 167-168.

22. See Kett, Rites, 46—47.

23. Asa Farwell to Phebe McKeen, 8 February 1879.

24. It is almost certain that the "canny Squire," as Jane Carpenter calls
Farrar (see Abbot, 170), originated this arrangement. It was identical
to the one he urged on Phillips Academy's new Teachers Seminary,
founded the year after Abbot's opening, and on Phillips Academy it-
self when the sensitive and scholarly Osgood Johnson took over from
Adams. By 1834, Johnson had decided it was too much for him, and
refused to stay unless the Trustees would guarantee him $1000 a year
and a house to live in. This they promptly did, but Johnson soon died
anyway. Phillips Academy salaries provided a discouraging contrast to
Abbot then as in more recent times: Headmaster Samuel Taylor's sal-
ary stood at $1200 from 1838 to 1885— and ne received free housing in
the bargain.

NOTES TO PAGES 34-39 485

25. Farwell to Phebe McKeen, 8 February 1879. The most eloquent de-
scription of a principal's financial desperation can be found in God-
dard's letter to the Trustees, 16 February 1831.

26. Reverend Leander Thompson, quoted in Courant (January 1889) 17.

27. McKeen, Annals, 42.

28. "Memorialists' Petition," printed by the Trustees of Abbot Academy
with their reply of September 1848.

29. Recollections of Miss Hannah Kittredge, 1849, reported in Bulletin
(November 1928), 12.

30. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Chapters from a Life (Boston, Houghton
Mifflin, 1896), 62.

31. Susanna Jackson to Phebe McKeen, 1879.

32. See Trustees Minutes, 23 October 1863; McKeen, Annals, 61. In 1865
Farwell sold his house to the Abbot Trustees for $4,500, a tidy sum
for those days.

33. Catharine Beecher, "Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Female
Education" (Hartford, Packard and Butler, 1829) 61.

34. In his final Report to the Trustees, 1852. Quoted in McKeen, Annals, 16.

35. Woody, History, I, 357.

36. Quoted in McKeen, Annals, 16.

37. Robbins, Old Andover Days, 4.

38. Ibid., 4.

39. Phelps, Chapters, 25-26.

40. Quoted in McKeen, Annals, 17-18.

41. Henrietta Jackson to Margaret Woods Lawrence, 1837. Quoted in Mar-
garet Woods Lawrence, Light on the Dark River (Boston, Ticknor,
Reed, and Fields, 1853), 80.

42. Ibid., 44.

43. Robbins, Old Andover Days, 3.

44. Quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 188.

45. Bailey, Historical Sketches, 569.

46. Ibid., 586.

47. Phelps, Chapters, 56.

48. There are two sets of population figures for Andover in 1850: one for
population within the original boundaries, including the modern And-
over and the modern North Andover (6,945), tne other for population
in the original South Parish alone (4900). By the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury, the area of the township as originally laid out had proved too
large to be manageable, and town leaders began to plan its division into
Andover (the original South Parish) and North Andover (the original
North Parish). The formal division took place in 1854.

49. The few early alumnae whose fathers' occupations are known list them
("farmer," storekeeper," "minister") in ways that make analysis of fam-
ily wealth difficult if not impossible. An examination of tax records each
fifth year from 1830 to 1850 reveals that only about one third of the

486 NOTES TO PAGES 39-41

Abbot parents who lived in Andover paid "Town and County" (prop-
erty) taxes at all. Of course, some of the non-taxpayers were Seminary
professors or others living in buildings owned by the Trustees of Phil-
lips Academy (Professor Austin Phelps lived in one of the most elegant
houses on the Hill, yet paid only $2.67 tax in, 1850); a few others were
probably renting houses or farms. Still, the data tend to confirm the
image of the early Abbot which its nineteenth-century admirers pro-
ject: a frugal enterprise accessible to applicants from a wide range of
economic circumstances. The taxes parents paid Andover in 1850
ranged from $1.85 (parent-Trustee Samuel Fuller) to $302.69 (parent
John Smith). The average tax bill for nineteen parents was $54.00, the
median $14.35. Three fathers paid over $163.00; all the rest paid less
than $50.00. Of the last group four paid less than $5.50.

50. Henry Ward Beecher, Norwood, or Village Life in New England, ca.

1867, 1892. (New York, Fords, Howard, and Hulbard), 3.

51. It must be remembered that children ten to nineteen years old provided

a substantial proportion of family income. A daughter in school could
mean factory wages forgone as well as tuition fees paid for. According
to Daniel Webster, however, a male workman in 1843 could save $12.00
a month after paying essential expenses— and would continue to do so
as long as the Whigs kept the protective tariff high. (Speech in And-
over, 5 October 1843, to 5,000 Essex County Whigs, see Fuess, And-
over, 278.)

52. Quoted in McKeen, Annals, 164. Brown was speaking at Abbot's 50th
anniversary and describing the past. A letter to the Trustees, 25 July
1836, explained his desire to leave Abbot and return fulltime to And-
over Theological Seminary and gave "The wants of the Academy" (a
better heating system, proper equipment for teaching physics, more
books, a boarding-house, etc.) as his chief reason for resigning.

53. Ibid., 147.

54. Letter to the Misses McKeen, Annals, 31.

55. T. D. P. Stone, "Boarding House Regulations of the Abbot Female

Seminary."

56. Mary Lyon in her paper addressed "To the Friends of Female Educa-
tion," quoted in McKeen, Annals, 22.

57. "K" in article memorializing Emma Taylor, C our ant (June 1887), 23-
Zilpah Grant was the other "nursing mother."

58. C. Beecher, "Suggestions," 1829, 68.

59. Mary Lyon, quoted in McKeen, Annals, 23.

60. McKeen, Annals, 23.

61. Already there were numerous brother-sister pairs at Phillips and Abbot

Academy. A careful comparison of names and home towns for 1846,
for example, shows that roughly one sixth of Abbot girls had brothers
at Phillips. Not surprisingly, a majority of the sibling pairs came from
Andover. Families who had to pay board as well as tuition were much

NOTES TO PAGES 42-47 487

more likely to spend their money on their sons.

62. Quoted in Sydney R. MacLean, "Mary Lyon," in Notable American
Women, 445, from ML's letter to Zilpah Grant, 4 February 1934.

63. United States Commissioner of Education (USCOE), Reports for 1887-

1888, 598.

64. Typed transcript of manuscript account of "Commons life," Abbot

Academy Archives. See also Carpenter, Abbot, 226-230.
6$. Julia Pierce, letter to her mother, 21 April 1840.

66. Emma Williard's appeal to the New York Legislature for funds to help

support Waterford Academy (made before her final move to Troy,
New York). A $2000 subsidy passed in the Senate, but was defeated in
the House. Though many privately operated boys' schools received
state aid, Mrs. Willard's academy was allowed only a pittance from
the state Literary Fund— and even this was soon ended by the N.Y.
Board of Regents. Quoted in Woody, History, I, 311.

67. Kett, Rites, 61.

68. H. W. Beecher, Norwood, 26.

69. Letter to Mary Dutton, 8 February 1830, quoted in Sklar, Beecher, 96.

In Massachusetts at least, women seem to have taken this advice. Mavis
Venovskis, a student of demographics and educational history, found
that one in four Massachusetts women alive in i860 had taught school
at some time during her life. Women in Education in Ante-Bellum
America, University of Wisconsin Monograph, 1975.

70. See Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy (New York, Harper and Row,

i933)i *-"•

71. See Laura Ingalls Wilder, These Happy Golden Years (New York,

Harper and Row, 1943), 1-10.

72. Letter to her mother, 21 April 1840.

73. Fuess, New England School, 204.

74. See Abbot Academy Catalogues, 1842-1852.

75. Letter to "the Misses Marland," 1833.

76. Abbot Archives.

77. Alumna letter, Abbot Archives; Pierce letter, Abbot Archives.

78. See also Kett, Rites, 102. Kett adds that boarding school also served to
keep the attractions of mill work beyond reach, and generally dam-
pened "the tendency of young people to push too quickly into active
life."

79. Cyrus Hamlin, My Life and Times (Boston, Chicago, Pilgrim Press,

1893), 187-188. I am indebted to Professor Cyrus Hamlin of Toronto
University for information about his family, and for several biblio-
graphical suggestions.

80. From letter to MWL, 1841, quoted in Lawrence, Light, 169.

81. Quoted ibid., 1842, 190.

82. Quoted ibid., 192.

83. Ibid.

488 NOTES TO PAGES 49-54

3. A VERY LIBERAL SERIES OF STUDIES

i. From a circular advertising the opening of Oberlin, 1833.

2. Quoted in Francis Wayland, The Elements of Moral Science, ca. 1835,

2nd ed. 1837; ed. Joseph L. Blau (Cambridge, Harvard University Press,
1963), x-xi.

3. Quoted in Fuess, New England School, 243.

4. Mrs. Almira Hart Lincoln was Emma Willard's sister. For years she
served as Mrs. Willard's assistant principal at Troy Academy, and her
texts are consciously designed for the use of young ladies.

5. Unsigned article on the "Hartford Female Seminary," American Journ-

al of Education, 4 ( 1829), 261-265.

6. Quoted in McKeen, Annals, 18.

7. Quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 186.

8. Quoted in Lutz, Emma Williard, 91.

9. Recollections of a Phillips Academy alumnus, Class of 181 1. Quoted in

Fuess, New England School, 1 70.

10. Charles H. Burroughs in a widely read address first given at Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, and reprinted in pamphlet form, as well as in the
American Journal of Education, 3 (1828), 53-58.

11. Almira Hart Lincoln (Phelps), Lectures on Botany (4th ed., Hartford,

F. J. Huntington, 1835), 14.

12. From preamble to "fathers'" resolution introducing music to Fryeburg
Academy, Maine, 1803. Quoted in Harriet Webster Marr, The Old
New England Academies (New York, Comet Press Books, 1959), 223.

13. Published in 1854, quoted in Woody, History, I, 407-408.

14. Unsigned article, "The Education of Females," American Journal of
Education, 2 (1827), 485.

15. "Thoughts on the Education of Females" by "H." in the American

Journal of Education, 1 (1826), 402.

16. William Russell, The Education of Females, an address read at the close

of the term at Abbot, 21 November 1843, printed at the Abbot Trust-
ees' request, (Andover, Allen Morrill and Wardwell, 1843), 16.

17. Lincoln, Botany, 2.

18. Carpenter, Abbot, 276. In a letter written in 1834, a Teachers' Seminary

student described an evening lecture and its aftermath: "We had our
room pretty well filled & to crown the climax, some of the fellows
gallivanted the ladies home."

19. Ibid., 186.

20. Lincoln, Botany, 15.

11. William Paley, Natural Theology (New York, the American Tract
Society, n.d.), 34. The complexity of Paley's language is a tribute to
Abbot Seniors' reading vocabulary. For example, in his chapter on "The
Human Frame," Paley writes, "The nerves which supply the fore-arm,
especially the inferior cubital nerves, are at the elbow conducted by a

NOTES TO PAGES 55-60 489

kind of covered way between the condyles, or rather under the inner
extuberances of the bone" (83).

22. Unsigned article (probably written by Woodbridge or Russell), "Meth-
od of Teaching Geography and History," American Journal of Educa-
tion, 2 (1827), 520-521. It is also possible that the piece was written by
Samuel E. Hall, whose Lectures on School-keeping contained similar
instructions: begin with the neighborhood.

23. Unsigned article, "Suggestions to Parents," in American Journal of Edu-

cation, 2 (1827), 548.

24. Quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 189.

25. Richard Benson Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson (New York, Far-
rar, Straus and Giroux, 1974), I, 22.

26. Abel Flint, Murray' 's Abridged English Grammar (Hartford, Peter B.

Gleason, 1818).

27. Unsigned book review in American Journal of Education, 2 (1827), 743.

28. In William Russell's Address (1843), 12.

29. Ibid.

30. Quoted in Marr, Academies, 187.

31. Letter to the McKeen sisters, quoted in McKeen Annals, 27.

32. Quoted in Marr, Academies, 262.

33. Ibid., 276.

34. Originally published in Harper's Neiv Monthly Magazine, reprinted in
American Annals of Education, 17 (1858), 445.

35. Elizabeth Emerson, quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 187.

36. Ibid.

37. Mrs. Griggs to Phebe McKeen, 1879.

38. Quoted in Brown Memorial, 20-21.

39. Anonymous, The Pastor's Daughter: a Memoir of Susan Amelia W ,

Who Died January 20, 1843, Aged 19 Years (New York, American
Tract Society, n.d.), 6.

40. Ibid., 40-41,44, 57, 83.

41. Sklar, Beecher, 12-13. Sklar quotes a letter written by Charles Beecher
to his brother Henry Ward in 1857, to show how deeply entangled
with family relationships the conversion process could be: "How can
we affect our children as Father did us, if we have not the same con-
cern for them, the same sense of their awful danger?" (231).

42. See Kett, Rites, 63, 68-70.

43. Letter from Jonathan French Stearns, Phillips Academy class of 1826,
in Fuess, New England School, 150, 251.

44. McKeen, Annals, 34 and S. E. Jackson, Reminiscences of Andover

(Andover, Andover Press, 19 14), 10.

45. Sklar, Beecher, 80.

46. Unsigned article in The Biblical Repository (January 1840).

47. See Sklar, Beecher, 143. Catharine Beecher's early articles were un-

signed; thus Woods in his reply referred to their author as "he."

490 NOTES TO PAGES 60-62

48. See Kett, Rites, 68. Abbot's Trustees recognized this blurring of sec-
tarian divisions in their alteration of the Academy constitution. They
asked the Massachusetts General Court in 1838 to strike the original cri-
terion for membership on the Board— that all "be professors of religion
of the Congregational or Presbyterian denomination"— and substitute
the requirement that all be "professors of religion of some Evangelical
denomination." The General Court complied.

49. Sklar, Beecher, 27.

50. "Women and Revivalism, 1 740-1 840" (Barbara Easton's study of wo-
men's conversion journals, in a paper presented at the Third Berkshire
Conference, June 1976) suggests a reason: considered inferior by men,
feeling vaguely victimized themselves, women found that the concept
of the depravity and helplessness of the sinner seeking conversion
matched their experience more neatly than did men's. See also Barbara
Sicherman, "American History," in Signs (Winter 1975), 476.

51. Unsigned article, American Journal of Education, 1 (1826), 401-402.

52. From Ladies Magazine, 1830, quoted in Douglas, Feminization, 57.

53. Mary Ryan, A Woman's Awakening: Revivalist Religion in Utica, N.Y.,

1800-183$, Paper delivered at Third Berkshire Conference of Women
Hitsorians, June 1976.

54. Douglas, Feminization, 11-12, and entire section, "Imitation and Rivalry:

Pulpit Envy," 103-109.

55. See Kett, Rites, 84, 1 19.

56. Quoted in Douglas, Feminization, 112. Other critics worried about the

"saccharine simplification of dogma" that the Sunday School movement
appeared to encourage. (Ibid., 5.)

57. Quoted inFlexner, Century, 61.

58. JAP to her mother, 24 January 1841. See also letter from E. P. Blod-

gett to Phebe McKeen, 10 April 1878.

59. Francis Wayland, Occasional Discourses, 323. Quoted in Blau, ed., Mor-
al Science, xxv.

60. Wayland, "The Dependence of Science on Religion," quoted ibid.,

xxviii.

61. Blau, ed., Moral Science, xxi.

62. Russell, Address, 7-8. See Douglas, Feminization, 58, for confirmation of

Abbot's singularity as compared with the more superficial foci of the
average female academy.

63. Quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 19.

64. Farrar to the Trustees, 12 June 1851.

6$. The only mention of all this in the Trustees' Minutes is made when the
claim was first entered by Mrs. Johnson, 25 August 1848.

66. "Points" written in Samuel Jackson's hand, a summary of the claim and
of the depositions of witnesses made (one assumes, though there is no
mention of a court) to the probate judge.

67. See Fuess, New England School, 235.

NOTES TO PAGES 63-7 I 49 1

68. "Points."

69. Testimony of Samuel Farrar, Mary Griffin, neighbor, and Mrs. George

Abbott. It is interesting that Farrar, being a thoroughly interested party,
should have been allowed to bear witness in favor of Madam Abbot.

70. See "Statistics on School Attendance and Number of Schools, Massa-

chusetts, 1 83 7-1 880," in Alexander James Field, "Educational Expan-
sion in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts: Human-Capital For-
mation or Structural Reinforcement?" Harvard Educational Review
(November 1976), 527, for statistical evidence of the incorporated aca-
demies' success in holding students as compared with that of unincor-
porated academies.

II. Solid Acquirements

4. MID-CENTURY TRANSITIONS

i. Phelps, Chapters, 133.

2. Fuess, New England School, 308.

3. Unsigned tribute in Abbot Archives. The context suggests it is written
by a contemporary teacher. The following two quotes are from the
same source.

4. Andover Advertiser, I (23 July 1853), 2-

5. The Experiment, I, No. 1, 8 June 1853. The title of this "publication"
was probably not original. The Putnam Free School in Newburyport
also "published" an Experiment. Such student newsletters were widely
encouraged by progressive pedagogues of the nineteenth century.

6. Ibid.

7. The figure can be accounted for in part by the preponderance of wom-

en over men in Massachusetts, but it also reflects a nationwide trend
for teachers.

8. On the face of it, this removal of responsibility looks like as nice a piece
of male chauvinism as one could ask for. However, the Phillips Acade-
my Trustees had long since done the same for their Principal, Osgood
Johnson, at Johnson's urgent request. Johnson insisted that he was too
busy to be Phillips Academy's personally liable business manager as
well as its headmaster. In the larger world of academies and seminaries,
it was becoming increasingly common to separate financial responsibil-
ity from daily educational concerns. On the other hand, practical con-
siderations also made it easier for Abbot's Old Guard to accept the
Trustees' new commitment once a woman was chosen principal. Miss
Hasseltine's salary of $500 was about half of what a man would receive
for similar work, and in addition she had to pay her own room and
board. Bradford's Abigail C. Hasseltine received $500 in 1847; Phillips'

492 NOTES TO PAGES J 1-J 2

Samuel Taylor $1200 in the same year, when Phillips Academy's Clas-
sical Department enrollment (141) was lower than Bradford's. (True,
Taylor was responsible for student discipline in the English Department
as well, even though he was not involved in English Department teach-
ing or curricular planning. The combined enrollment of English and
Classical departments was 303 in 1947.)
9. Annie Sawyer Downs's reminiscences of Miss Hasseltine, Abbot Ar-
chives. Two of the "three valuable teachers" were Miss Hasseltine's
sisters; it was common for sisters to take teaching posts together.

10. In a letter to the McKeens, Annals, 47.

11. Quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 186.

12. Letter to Phebe McKeen, undated.

13. Bulletin (April 1931), 13-14; letter to J. Carpenter from Charlotte H.
Swift, '58, written in 1921; letter to Phebe McKeen from Elizabeth
Emerson, '$6, written in 1878.

14. Unsigned report. At this time examiners usually came from outside the
school. Occasionally the Trustees Minutes note appointees to the Ex-
amining Committee, as in 1840 when all four ministers on the Board
did the job (Minutes, 3 December 1840), and 1855, wnen tne Examiners
were "Professor Haven of Amherst College, Reverend George B. Jew-
ett of Nashua, and Charles K. Dilloway of Roxbury" Minutes, 9 No-
vember 1855.

15. Peter Byers died in 1856 before Punchard School actually opened. Pun-

chard started with two transient principals, but was by 1858 (and until
1886) in the highly competent hands of William G. Goldsmith, Har-
vard A.B., who had been for several years before 1858 a much respected
teacher in the Phillips Academy English Department.

16. Fuess, New England School, 316.

17. Theodore Sizer, in his book The Age of the Academies (New York,

Teachers College, 1964), dates the end of the age in the 1880's, when
enrollment in public schools passed that of private academies. It came
earlier in Massachusetts, the first state to support private secondary
schools widely and the first to initiate public ones on a large scale.
Woody, (History, I, 393), says that "the great day of the female sem-
inary" ended in i860. From 1830 to i860 the Massachusetts General
Court passed 21 acts of incorporation for female seminaries; after i860
there were almost none. Of course, private academies flourished longer
in the post-bellum South. The national figures are interesting. In i860
there were no more than 40 genuine public high schools in the whole
country. In 1870 there were 160 high schools and 1400 private acade-
mies with a total enrollment of about 18,000 students 15 and over. By
1900 the number of public high schools had grown to 6005 while the
private academies increased only slightly, and the total secondary school
enrollment was 1,174,520 males and 1,268,684 females.

NOTES TO PAGES 72-74 493

18. Trustee Minutes, 13 October, 1853.

19. Quote from Jackson's sermon, "Religious Principle— A Source of Public
Prosperity," Election Sermon delivered before the Massachusetts legis-
lature, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Governor's Council fol-
lowing the 1842 election, 7 January 1843. ^ was a great honor for
Jackson to have been invited to give this sermon, as well as one more
indication of his stature among his contemporaries. Though he resigned
from the West Parish Church partly out of discouragement over his
failure to mediate the "schism" between the abolitionists and the more
moderate antislavery faction in his congregation, he seems also to have
made the move for positive reasons— a sense of the wider horizons and
larger work awaiting him outside the West Parish. After his resignation,
he moved to a house on School Street next door to both Abbot and
Phillips Academy, joined the Seminary Church, and never again at-
tended services at West Parish so far as is known, in spite of the keen
regret his parishioners felt upon losing him.

20. See Patricia Alb j erg Graham, Community and Class in American Edu-
cation 1865-1918 (New York, John Wiley, 1974), especially 21, 225.
Graham carefully demonstrates the flaws in the myth of equal educa-
tional opportunities of which late 19th century Americans became so
fond.

11. Park served from 1851 to 1900 and was president 1 859-1900, Smith
from 1849 to 1859 and president 1854-59.

22. Douglas, Feminization, 148; Reverend Williams S. Hubbell on Park's
90th birthday, E. A. Park folder.

23. Obituary in New York Christian Advocate, 1900. According to J. Earl
Thompson, Jr., Andover Newton Quarterly (March 1968), 208, Park
was "Andover's most original thinker and stimulating teacher" during
the mid-century period. While Park was wielding his "tremendous
power" (Fuess, Andover, 346) in New England's pulpits and the semin-
ary classrooms, no one seems to have dared oppose him in print. After
his death, his dogmatic, emotional nature was better documented. "He
loved the men who agreed with him, and dropped them when they
differed from him." (New York Christian Advocate, 1900.) Jonathan
Edwards' insistence on each soul's responsibility for its own salvation
became for Park at times a merciless demand. (His wife was Edwards'
great grand-daughter.) Small wonder that he was in his last years "driv-
en in upon himself, a solitary figure" (except for Philena McKeen's
loyal friendship) "with much bitterness in his heart for the new An-
dover." (Daniels Evans in "A Giant of Yesterday," a review of Frank
H. Foster's biography of Park, Advance, March 1937.) Park was father
of Agnes Park, Abbot 1850-52 and 1856-58. (Abbot's Preparatory De-
partment was extant in those years.) He was also a Trustee of Smith
College and a Fellow of Brown University.

494 NOTES TO PAGES 74-76

24. One of the wealthiest people in mid-century Andover, Smith was a man
of great benevolence, active with his brother John (also an Abbot
parent) in the founding of Andover's Memorial Hall (public) Library
(1870) and other local institutions. At the Smith brothers factory, later
Smith and Dove Co., Peter Smith was Superintendent of Works. John
Smith, the firm's president, was Andover's richest citizen. So much did
his workers revere John Smith that they once re-roofed his large house
as a surprise for him while he was away in Scotland on one of his re-
cruiting trips— an interesting gesture, considering that his annual earn-
ings were about $50,000, while his workers earned an average of $409
a year (1875 figures: the average for Massachusetts linen workers was
$417). See Mary S. Minard, "Immigrants from the Scottish Lowlands:
Their Life in Andover, Mass.," M. A. thesis in Liberal Studies, Wes-
ley an University, 1970, Wesley an University Library. Both men were
parishioners and devoted admirers of Samuel Jackson; they stayed loyal
even after John Smith left the West Parish following the members'
"schism" over abolition to help found the Free Christian Church in
1846, an abolitionist institution.

25. Alpheus Hardy in Memorial to Peter Smith, (Andover, 188 1).

26. See letter of 15 June 1849, to Reverend J. L. Taylor, President of the

Abbott Trustees (the handwriting is almost unreadable).

27. Sewall, Emily Dickinson, 447. Dickinson heard Park's sermon in 1853.

Just afterward she wrote, "I never heard anything like it, and don't
expect to again."

28. Jackson, West Parish Sketches, 29.

29. A precise accounting of the gifts for Smith Hall can be found in Mc-
Keen, Annals, 60-62.

30. Quoted in McKeen, Annals, 5 1 .

31. Phelps, Chapters, 134.

32. The Weekly Picayune, New Orleans, 30 August 1852.

33. Phelps, Chapters, 134. Mrs. Stowe's high-spirited children added to the

gaity of the levees. An Abbot girl kept a journal in 1861 (hereafter
called Student Journal, '61; the journal is unsigned as well as unpagi-
nated). She wrote that she "hardly knew whether to go" to one of the
Stowes' levees. "I have heard it said that Harriet and Eliza Stowe, the
twins (Abbot alumnae of the class of 1855) are great hands to make
fun of people. They will stand by the door and laugh at anyone they
happen to see." (She did go, and had a "pleasant time" after all.)

34. McKeen, Annals, 51.

35. Bulletin article (November 1930). 25.

36. Alumna reminiscence, McKeen, Annals, 124.

37. In Annie Sawyer Downs's news article on Abbot's Semicentennial,

Lawrence American, June 1879. Philena McKeen's scrapbook, pp. 38-40,
Abbot Archives.

38. Joseph Kett's study of adolescence in the nineteenth century suggests

NOTES TO PAGES 76-79 495

that Abbot's transformation was typical of a general trend toward
structured learning environments for youth 1 840-1 880. See Rites, in—
112.

39. Minutes, 31 (sic) June 1859.

40. Alice G. Emerson to Philena McKeen, 14 January 1878. Miss Emerson
arrived at Abbot in i860.

41. Minutes, 2 March 1854.

^i.Courant (January 1898), 42, an account of Susannah E. Jackson's rem-
iniscences of her childhood.

43. Ellen Punchard may have tried Punchard under its first and most dis-

organized principal, but if he kept any records, none have survived.

44. Did Abbot undermine the support of Andover's prosperous and influen-

tial citizens for public schools, as Horace Mann accused all private
schools of doing? (See Graham, Community , 10.) The answer is un-
clear. Founder Jackson seems to have worked as hard for public educa-
tion as for private. Clearly Abbot's example stimulated some of the local
interest in a free high school. And the small number of day scholars
attracted to Abbot from 1859 to 1892 suggests that the Academy had
little interest in competition with the public schools once Punchard
High School was well under way and Abbot had become a full-fledged
boarding school.

45. Quoted in Jean Sarah Pond, Bradford, a New England Academy. Ses-
quicentennial Edition. Revised and supplemented by Dale Mitchell
(Bradford, Mass., 1954), I34-

46. From "Mrs. Professor Hitchcock's" letter to the McKeens, McKeen,
Annals, 48.

47. Speech by Marion Edwards Park at the dinner of the Abbot Academy

Alumnae Association and Boston Abbot Club, Hotel Somerset in Bos-
ton, 15 February 1938, Abbot Archives. Marion Park, the President
of Bryn Mawr College from 1922 to 1942, was Edwards and Ann Maria
Park's only granddaughter. Though she did not grow up in Andover,
she visited often until her grandparents' death. She and her brother
Edwards both found their grandfather Park terrifying, according to
friends.

48. The First Convention Ever Called to Discuss The Civil and Political
Rights of Women (Seneca Falls, New York, 1848), 6.

49. Jackson, Reminiscences, 27.

50. See Gerda Lerner, "The Lady and the Mill Girl," Mid Continent Ameri-

can Studies Journal (Spring, 1969, 5-15), also Sklar's discussion of the
same topic in Bee c her, 192-195.

51. Bushnell, speech quoted in Douglas, Feminization, 52.

52. Reverend Bushnell's book was first published in 1847. It was revised

and reprinted numerous times through 1861. See also Reverend James
P. Hoppin, address to Abbot Female Academy, July 1856, on "The
Relations of Christ to Education" (Andover, Warren Draper, 1856).

496 NOTES TO PAGES 79-82

53. In "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," in The American

Family in Social and Historical Perspectives, ed. Michael Gordon (New
York, St. Martin's Press, 1973), 224-225.

54. Fredrika Bremer quoted in Oscar Handlin, ed., America (New York,

Harper and Row, 1949), 221.

55. I. Lowenstern, (1866) quoted ibid, 181.

56. See Sklar, Beecher, 33-35, 158-159.

57. John P. Hale, speech (1858).

58. Maria J. B. Browne, Address to the Graduating Class of 1857, 5, 7. The

Address was printed as a keepsake for alumnae.

59. Maria J. B. Browne described herself as "Teacher of Abstract Sciences

and Belles Lettres" in the 1856-57 Catalogue, the first such designation
found in Abbot documents.

60. Emma Taylor to Phebe McKeen, 3 February 1878.

61. Later Western College for W^omen. The "Holyoke Plan" involved a

missionary commitment to education of young women from a broad
spectrum of income groups. See Woody, History, I, 458.

62. E. A. Park in memorial to Phebe McKeen; Philena McKeen, Sequel to

Annals of Abbot Academy (Andover, Warren F. Draper, 1897), 47.

63. Ibid.

64. Speech by Anna L. Dawes, '70, after the Alumnae Association Lunch-

eon, 6 June 192 1.
6$. Quoted in Henrietta Learoyd Sperry, "Miss McKeen as a Teacher,"
Courant (June 1892), 7.

66. Katherine Roxanna Kelsey, Abbot Academy Sketches 1892-1912 (Bos-

ton and New York, Houghton, Mifflin, 1929), 8.

67. Professor John Phelps Taylor, quoted in Memorial to Warren Tales

Draper (Andover, Andover Press, 1905).

68. Sperry in Courant (June 1892), 6; see also Blanche E. Wheeler Wil-

liams, Mary C. Wheeler (Boston, Marshall Jones, 53-54), reminiscences
of Mary C. Wheeler, '6^. MCW received "an extraordinary training
in logic and argument" at Abbot, writes Mrs. Williams.

69. Dawes, Speech, 1921.

70. Phebe McKeen's published works include numbers of magazine stories

and articles written during the 1850's and '6o's under the name "Jenny
Bradford," and the following books:

Thornton Hall; or, Old Questions in Young Lives, New York,

Randolph, 1872.

Theodora: A Home Story, New York, Randolph, 1875.

Annals of Fifty Years: A History of Abbot Academy, Andover,

Mass., 1829-1879, "by Philena McKeen and Phebe F. McKeen. With

an introduction by Edwards A. Park, D.D.", Andover, Warren F.

Draper, 1880.

The Little Mother and Her Christmas and Other Stories, Boston,

Lothrop, 1 88 1.

NOTES TO PAGES 83-86 497

Sketch of the Early Life of Joseph Hardy Neesima, Boston, Loth-

rop, 1890.
The published Theodora lacked one chapter that Phebe McKeen had
included in her original version, a long and suspenseful account of the
heroine's passage through New York City during the draft riots of
1863. The publisher feared to lose his Southern audience, which might
reject the chapter's sympathetic treatment of the Negro. It is a pity, for
this section is especially eloquent of Phebe McKeen's own understand-
ing of complex interracial and ideological conflicts. Fortunately, it can
still be read; the Abbot C our ant editors obtained a manuscript copy
and printed the entire chapter in their January 1898 issue.

71. Abby Wood Collins, '71, to Phebe McKeen, 28 February 1879.

72. Dawes, Speech, 1921.

73. See The Congregationalist, 8 July 1875; also alumna recollection of the

joint rule of the McKeen sisters, Bulletin (April 1931 ), 17-28. The Con-
gregationalist, a denominational periodical published in Boston, often
carried news of Andover Hill's three educational institutions.

74. Quoted in McKeen, Annals, 218. The student editors of Courant, Ab-
bot's twice-yearly magazine published from 1873 to J974> referred to the
McKeens as Abbot's "double star" (June 1892, 10).

75. Marion Park, Speech, 1938.

76. McKeen, Sequel, 159.

77. Alice G. Emerson letter (1878).

78. Phebe McKeen, Theodora, 98.

79. Ibid., 333.

80. Ibid., 136.

81. Alice G. Emerson letter.

82. Letter to "Carrie Felton," 29 December 1863, from Judiciary Hospital,

D.C., Abbot Archives. Another soldier's letter (1865) is in the form of
a long moral poem, probably copied by numbers of convalescents who
could think of nothing original to say to their benefactors. It ends with
this verse about the yarn with which the socks were knit:

It measures too, the thread of life,

Which may be smooth or rough;

You are just narrowing for the heel

While I am toeing off.

83. McKeen, Annals, 194-195.

84. Phebe McKeen, Theodora, 358.

85. Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Chimney Corner, by Christopher Crow-
field, pseud. (Boston, Ticknor and Fields, 1868), 30.

86. Quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 252.

87. Ibid., 252. It is interesting that Bradford's enrollments continued to drop

during this time. Only seventy girls in all attended in 1862, sixty-eight
in 1863. The faculty had been reduced to four.

88. Alumna quoted in Com ant (June 1890), 19-21.

498 NOTES TO PAGES 88-QO

5. ABBOT IN THE GOLDEN AGE

i. Phebe McKeen, Theodora, 98.

2. See Francine duPlessix Gray, "Women Writing about Women's Art,"

in the New York Times Book Review (4 September 1977), 3, 18.

3. See the "Literary Exercises" prepared for '87's Class Supper, 8 June 1887,
at French Hall (Davis Hall). This seventy-two-page manuscript ac-
count (unpaginated) is a kind of yearbook, with Class History, Poem,
statistics (extremely helpful to the historian), descriptions of favorite
teachers and courses.

4. See Sewall, Dickinson, 237.

5. The 1863 booklist for this course (and its later printed syllabi) make
clear that it was a combined History and Literature course. For ex-
ample, students read Hume's History of England Volume I, covering
English history through the year 12 16; Tennyson's Idylls of the King
and Morte d' Arthur; and Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear, along
with older versions of the same legends and several novels by Sir Wal-
ter Scott. Later Chaucer in the original Middle English is included. The
topics covered such problems as "Number VIII: Nature, Extent, and
Causes of the Change which Developed English from Anglo-Saxon."

6. Written in May 10, i87-(no year given on original letter).

7. See Abbot Female Academy Catalogue, 1852.

8. The average age of the Seniors of 1885 at graduation was twenty -two,
the oldest twenty-four ("Perce Ad Majora," the manuscript class book
of 1885), that of the Seniors of 1887, twenty-one ("Literary Exer-
cises"). A spot check of birthdates for day scholars from the town of
Andover suggests an average of twenty-one for Seniors of the McKeen
period. See also Harvard Catalogues, 1 858-1 859, 1 865-1 866. Harvard re-
quired French for three terms out of eight, and offered French, Ger-
man, and Spanish as electives in the junior and senior years. Harvard
was more advanced in its modern language offerings than most colleges,
thanks to the improvements introduced by George Ticknor during his
tenure as Professor of French and Spanish Languages and Literatures
and Professor of Belles Lettres during the years 18 19 to 1835. Ticknor
had studied abroad, and was determined that Harvard should be more
than a glorified secondary school, in spite of the age group it served
at that time and its long tradition of mechanical recitation of grammati-
cal rules, of reciting verbatim rather than oral exchange. See David B.
Tyack, George Ticknor and the Boston Brahmins (Cambridge, Har-
vard University Press, 1967), 92-94.

9. McKeen, Annals, 85.

10. The first native German teacher, Fraulein Adelheid Bodenmeyer, actual-
ly made some attempt at expurgation, but it was too feeble and too late.
When the students' texts of Der Neffe als Onkel arrived, the fraulein

NOTES TO PAGES QO-93 499

took a red pencil and (according to one alumna's recollections) showed
each girl how to bracket the "objectionable phrases" that they "might
be omitted. The result, of course, was that we learned those phrases at
once. I still know a few mild curses in German. But Fraulein was a real
teacher." Quoted in Bulletin (April 1932), 24.

11. A phalanx of costume- and scenery-makers must have had to accom-
pany the actresses themselves in production of extravaganzas like Schil-
ler's play Die Huldigung der Kunste, performed in 1891.

12. Andover Townsman, 13 February 1891.

13. Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, The Making of a Feminist: Early Journals

and Letters of M. Carey Thomas, (Kent, Ohio, Kent State University
Press, 1979, in press). A few boys' preparatory schools, Exeter and
Round Hill among them, offered French and Spanish (Round Hill
taught German and Italian also); but these were exceptions to the rule.

14. I am indebted to Stephen Whitney, teacher of French at Phillips Acad-

emy since 1936, and to Hale Sturges, Chairman of the Phillips French
department, 197 3- 1978, for their assistance in making these comparisons
over time. See also Theodore Sizer, Secondary Schools at the Turn of
the Century (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1964), 67. In nine-
teenth century schools and colleges, "languages were taught to be read,
not spoken."

15. Fuess, Old New England School, 263.

16. In 1865 four of Taylor's assistants petitioned the Trustees to strengthen
the feeble mathematics course offered by the Classical Department, and
after this, Phillips' mathematics gradually improved. Catalogues show
that Phillips' "English Department" took mathematics more seriously.
Its curriculum throughout this period was much like Abbot's except
for the dearth of modern languages and the addition of Bookkeeping and
Surveying. There was also much overlap in book lists, though Way-
land, Smellie, Upham, Paley, and Lincoln remained English Department
offerings for some time after Abbot had dropped them. However, the
English Department remained the Phillips Trustees' neglected stepchild
during the Taylor era in spite of its relatively large enrollment.

17. Pond, Bradford, 203.

18. Phebe McKeen gives a lively account of these dead bones in chapter 6

of the Annals, p. 79. They were not "as one of our Hibernian friends
fancied, the cherished relics of the founder" but the remains of a Prus-
sian mercenary shot by his British superiors for desertion, probably
during the Revolution. The bones were acquired by a Vermont physi-
cian and medical teacher, who sold them to Abbot when he retired.
The bones are now part of the Art Department's equipment at Phillips
Academy.

19. Letter to Trustees, 13 November 1879.

20. Philena McKeen in Courant (June 1893), 3-

500 NOTES TO PAGES 94-99

21. Larcom, A New England Girlhood (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1889),

200.

22. From an unsigned article in The Ladies Wreath, III, 1852.

23. Abby Wood Collins, '71, letter to Phebe McKeen, 28 February 1879.

24. Student Journal, 1861.

25. From three manuscript sources, all in Abbot Archives:
Emma P. Meacham, Composition Book, fall 1873.

Harriet Wetmore Chapell, Journal 1874-77, hereafter referred to as

Chapell, Journal.
Sarah R. Coburn, Composition Book 1859-60.

Emma Meacham's notebook also contains two short plays, entitled
"Charades."

26. Courant (June 1873), 8-10. Miss Twichell tendered no apologies to
Edgar Allan Poe.

27. A June '91 clipping on p. 129 of McKeen Scrapbook.

28. Courant (November 1881), 33; (June 1892), 33.

29. Young's involvement with Abbot demonstrates the benefits of the Acad-

emy's Hilltop connections. From 1853 to 1855, at the beginning of his
distinguished career in astronomical research and teaching, Young
taught in the Phillips Academy English Department, which offered all
science courses taught at Phillips. Doubtless one of the Trustees or
another of Abbot's friends remembered him and suggested he be in-
vited to return.

30. The Congregationalist, 1879, McKeen Scrapbook, p. 54.

31. From student letter, Courant (June 1891), 36.

32. Chapell, Journal (11 February 1874), 63; (21 May 1874), 146.

33. Catalogue of Abbot Academy, 1869-70, p. 21.

34. Courant (June 1890), 28. "Do you remember," an alumna asked Miss
Phebe, "how we all went into Boston for a concert and some of us
missed the train and came back in a great covered wagon and you
tucked us all into bed— and went flitting about from one to the other
with little doses of Sconiti and Bryonia? " Collins letter.

35. Phebe McKeen reported that the Abbot library had grown to 1880 vol-
umes in 1879. She does not apologize for the small numbers of books
but says instead that because the library "has been gathered under a
sense of actual need, it has a goodly proportion of books in constant
use." McKeen, Annals, 92.

36. McKeen, Annals, 95.

37. See letter written by Herbert D. Russell, Phillips Academy Class of

1890, to his "Mamma," 8 February 1888, Phillips Academy Archives.
After describing the wag's exploit, Russell says: "The P.A. faculty are
considering his expulsion." In the end he and the Abbot girl who in-

NOTES TO PAGES QQ-IOO 5OI

vited him were dismissed. See letter from Barbara Moore Pease, Class
of 191 1, to her granddaughter, Carlie Pease, Class of 1975, 6 April 1974.
Mrs. Pease's mother lived in the same Smith Hall room with the girl
who invited the boy.

38. H.G., A. A. '81, in the Phillipian's Abbot column, October 1879.

39. See Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Female World of Love and Ritual:
Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America," Signs:
Journal of Women in Culture and Society, I, No. 1 (Autumn 1975), 3.
The entire article is of interest.

40. See also ibid., 17-18.

41. The number of births for each married woman was 7.04 in 1800, 5.42
in 1850 and 3.56 in 1900.

42. Over the long run, this constitutes a sharp rise in real costs, not just a
reflection of inflation. Prices were quite stable throughout the years
from Abbot's founding through 19 14, except for the Civil War period.
There was a deflation of all commodity prices during the last two
decades of the nineteenth century. Representative figures from the
wholesale price index (1910—14 = 100):

1835 — 100

1843 — 75 (the lowest figure for the period
1830— 1914)

1860-84

1864— 193

1869— 151

1876— no

1880— 100

1890- 82
Much of the cost increase at Abbot is a reflection of raises in teachers'
salaries. Teachers-as-colleagues were more expensive than teachers-as-
assistants. According to Warren Draper's Treasurer's Accounts (1876—
1901) teachers earned $400—1500 a year plus room and board, roughly
comparable to the wages of highly skilled male factory hands and fore-
men. This was a great improvement over the $i.oo-a-day of Abbot's
early decades, though less than an experienced woman could earn in
Boston public high schools ($1000 after 1880). Money bought more in
those days, but it often bought different things; thus cost-of-living
comparisons over a long time period are difficult to make. Thanks to
Abbot's penury, however, we have one source that shows what An-
dover citizens paid for transportation at mid-century: Nathaniel Swift,
Treasurer from 1852 to 1876, kept the Abbot accounts for 1 857-1 865
in the unused portion of a livery stable account book. It is interesting
to see that in 1852, Fiske Abbott took Lady and a chaise to Lawrence
and back for 75^, and Warren Barnard paid $1.50 to use Jim along

502 NOTES TO PAGES IOO-IOI

with a rented saddle for "4 ours". In 1970, when wholesale prices were
on the average about eight times the 1852 level, an Andover inhabitant
could take the bus to Lawrence and back for 700.

43. Richard Sennett, "Middle-Class Families and Urban Violence," in Gor-
don, Family, 128. See also Kett, Rites , 60, 143.

44. John and Virginia Demos, "Adolescence in Historical Perspective," in
Gordon, Family, 214. See also James McLachlan, American Boarding
Schools (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), 93. About twice as
many Abbot students came from cities (population over 50,000) during
the years 1 861-1890 as in the school's first thirty years, a change that
was undoubtedly hastened by the boarding arrangements. However,
girls from smaller towns and rural areas still predominated, outnumber-
ing city students a little more than two to one. From 1891 to 191 3
about 600 came from towns, 290 from cities; the predominance thus
continues into the twentieth century. Thus "the whole hot-bed system
of city life" (J. Stainback Wilson, i860) propelled fewer students to
Abbot than to more isolated boarding schools. See Kett, Rites, 136.

45. Courant (June 1887), 26. See also Sewall, Dickinson, 121-123. As Austen
Dickinson, Emily's brother, grew older, it saddened him that towns
like Amherst were being abandoned for the rush and excitement of the
cities.

46. Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, 3 vols.
(New York, Harcourt Brace, 1927-30), III, 48. The attraction Western-
ers felt for eastern New England can also be explained by their ances-
try, for 90 percent of the migrants to the Ohio valley before 1850 had
come from New England.

47. Undated letter.

48. Courant (November 1879), 13.

49. Class of '87, "Literary Exercises."

50. The following undated summary was found in the McKeen Scrapbook,
last page, part of a four-page circular on Abbot or pp. 1-4 of an early
Sargent's Handbook-type publication. The date must be between 1870
and 1876 to fit tuition board figures ($276 for the English course). Yet
the total number of those attending is far higher than the number
counted by Jane Carpenter in 191 3 (4638). The phrase "number of
pupils connected with the school" probably should read "number of
pupils plus number of years beyond one that each was connected with
the school." The compiler apparently went through each catalogue and
counted names listed from each state without regard for repetiton of
names in subsequent catalogues. Because several of the earliest cata-
logues are missing entirely, this listing, read with the above qualifica-
tions in mind, may well be the most accurate available.

Table, taken from the annual catalogues, showing the number of

NOTES TO PAGE

1 0 1

5°3

pupils connected with the school j

since May 6th, 1829

, and the

States and countries from which they came.

Maine,

278

Michigan,

New Hampshire,

542

Illinois,

Vermont,

134

Missouri,

Massachusetts,

4427

Iowa,

Rhode Island,

Wisconsin,

Connecticut,

California,

New York,

122

Minnesota,

New Jersey,

Oregon,

Pennsylvania,

Indian Territory,

Delaware,

Colorado,

Maryland,

Nova Scotia,

District of Columbia,

Canada,

Virginia,

England,

South Carolina,

New Brunswick,

Georgia,

South America,

Florida,

Persia,

Alabama,

Turkey,

Texas,

Africa,

Tennessee,

China,

Kentucky,

Total,

5927

Ohio,

51. Unsigned article

on the goals of education, "Protest from

the Rank

and File," Courant

(January 1884), 17.

52. See Graham, Community and Class, 37-46.

53. See U.S. Commissioner of Education, Reports, 1872, 798-799,

"Statistics

of Institutions for the Superior Instruction of Females"; ibid., 1889-90,
752-753, "Courses of Study Leading to the Degree of A.B. in 15 Col-
leges and Seminaries for Women."
54. Chapell, Journal (24 April 1874), 118. Fortunately for the Abbot his-
torian, Harriet wrote what she pleased— "after all, what is the good of
a true journal if it is not egotistical" (p. 135)— and illustrated her en-
tries profusely. The six pages torn out (29-30, 129-130, and 237-238)
are tantalizing (pages 237-238 apparently describe a trip to Martha's
Vineyard with her fiance, and page 239 finds her "thoroughly alarmed"
with herself), but their absence little mars the whole. Harriet Chapell
Newcomb brought the Journal back to Abbot in 1926 at the request
of her classmates, so that the Alumnae Association might publish ex-
cerpts. While it was in Abbot's possession, someone, probably Flora L.
Mason, editor of the Journal of an Abbot Academy Girl (Taunton,
Massachusetts, Charles W. Davol, 1927), tore out, then tore in half,
about a quarter of the pages. Were they thought irrelevant or offen-
sive? Perhaps the deed was done to prepare the original Journal for

504 NOTES TO PAGES IOI-I06

exhibition at Abbot in 1927. Fortunately, the destroyer thought better
of throwing the torn pages away— except possibly for the six mentioned
above— and in 1976 they were restored.

55. Ibid., (4 May 1874), "4-

56. Ibid., 102-103, 7 April 1874.

57. Ibid., 88, 23 February 1874.

58. Abbot Academy Catalogues, 1 884-1 887.

59. Chapell, Journal (4 January 1874), 5, 6. Andover's mud impressed many
students. The Courant editors of 1874 found it worthy of a poem. "The
Last of the Sidewalks," describing a Rip Van Winkle character who
goes to sleep in the seventeenth century and wakes in the nineteenth
to find all his favorite walk-ways covered with "heartless stones"—
except in Andover:

. . . when he got to Andover

His joy I can't repeat
To find that mud two inches deep
There covered every street.

Courant (spring term 1874), 71
The students of all three Andover Hill institutions raised enough funds
through musicales and readings to contribute substantially to the build-
ing of sidewalks. By 1880 the Andover selectmen had authorized a "rib-
bon of concrete" up School Street and along Main Street to serve the
three campuses.

60. Chapell, Journal (19 April 1874), 112; (24 April 1874), 117; (20 Feb-
ruary 1874), 2I7-

61. Ibid. (1 January 1874), 2-

62. Ibid. (1 January 1874), 2-3; (17 February 1874), 73; (6 September

1874), I94-J95-

63. Ibid. (14 January 1874), 15.

64. Ibid. (4 April 1874), 100; (26 April 1874), I1[8.
6$. Ibid. (1 January 1874), 3.

66. Ibid. (17 September 1874), I97-

67. Ibid. (22 April 1877), 247.

68. Ibid, (n March 1877), 244.

69. Ibid. (22 April 1877), 245-246.

70. Conversation, 25 March 1976.

71. Quoted in Nancy Sahli, "Changing Patterns of Sexuality and Female
Interactions in Late Nineteenth Century America." Paper given at
Third Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, 11 June 1976, 8.

72. Quoted in Edith Finch, Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr (New York,
Harper and Bros., 1947), 47.

73. Quoted in Sahli, "Changing Patterns," 15.

74. Ibid.

75. Letter, December 1881.

76. See Woody, History, II, 201. No list of Abbot rules seems to have

NOTES TO PAGES I06-I IO 505

survived from the McKeen years, but there are continual references in

Courant and in alumna reminiscences to their abundance and strictness.

The 1874 Seniors' own rules for graduation attire may reflect their

character in some measure:

"Rules of dress for Graduation. Passed, Jan. 7, 1874. Muslin dresses
to trail not more than eight inches. No lace on them. No lace
handkerchiefs. Overskirts perfectly plain. No jewelry. No feathers.
Not more than 3 buttons on gloves— color, white, or pearl or cream
tint. The expense is not limited, but try to dress as simply and
economically as possible."

77. Alumna of the 1880's, quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 265.

78. Student Journal, 10 September 1861 entry.

79. Student letter, 7 October 1888, quoted in Bulletin (April 1932), 19;
Carpenter, Abbot, 265. The rest of Miss McKeen's "lecture":

She said we ought not to eat between meals at all, except just
before or just after a meal. She said our moral condition and spir-
itual life were lowered by the pickles we ate. Said we would not
be permitted to go to other rooms if we went to eat and drink.
Then she said we reminded her of the Israelites in the wilderness,
longing for the something and onions they had in the land of
Egypt. Quite a pat illustration, only I don't long for onions. She
reminds me of the headings of some of the pages in Exodus, viz.
"Divers laws and ordinances."

80. James Fullerton Muirhead, quoted in Gordon, Family, 109.

81. Larcom, Girlhood, 166.

82 . Student Journal, 1 86 1 .

83. The Trustee Minutes record that Miss Merrill's salary was set at $700
on 13 June 1888. There is no mention of any raise before this, but her
compensation may have been gradually increased from $400 in 1881.

84. Alumnae quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 255, and in Kelsey, Sketches,

38,43-

85. "Literary Exercises," 1887.

86. Ibid.

87. Chapell, Journal (7 January 1874), 9-10.

88. Ibid., 205; sketch from same page; (17 October 1874).

89. "Nor should we forget the tents," wrote the Courant editors (Novem-
ber 1879), "and the coming of those sons of Ham, with their songs and
merry laughter, who, by some magic art, converted one of those tents
into a dining hall for the hungry multitude."

90. Frances Swazey Parker, A. A. '86, quoted in the Abbot Bulletin (April

193O1 27-

91. In its day, at least one reviewer considered Thornton Hall "the most
graphic and telling picture of school-girl life we have ever read." "The
Contributions of Abbot Academy," Literary World, 21 June 1879.

92. Thornton Hall, 267.

506 NOTES TO PAGES I IO-I I 7

93. Alumna recollection, letter to Phebe McKeen, Abbot Archives, un-
dated. Miss Wardwell taught at Abbot from 1859 to 1864.

94. Thornton Hall, 44, 48.

95. Ibid., 56-58.

96. Chapell, Journal (19 April 1874), 114; (4 October 1874), 202; (17 Oc-
tober 1874), 2°5; (9 December 1874), 207; (9 December 1874), 2°8-

97. Ibid. (3 February 1874), 51; (24 April 1874), 118; (21 May 1874), 145;
(1 August 1875), 225.

98. Courant, June 1879, 27.

99. Letter to Phebe McKeen, February 24, 1879,, Abbot Archives. The
Moores soon moved from Ypsilanti and the Commercial to bigger
things in Detroit, but while Alice Moore was there, she was lyrical.
She rejoiced to Miss Phebe that her work gave her "as wide an out-
look" as her husband, and that "he is just as much and more my lover
than ever." (Moore was an 1874 graduate of Phillips Academy: the
two had found time enough in Andover to fall in love, in spite of
Abbot's rules.)

100. Courant (June 1873), 25.

101. Ibid. (June 1874), 73.

102. Ibid. (November 1873), I0-!1-

103. Ibid., 27.

104. Phillipian, 13 January 1883.

105. Courant (January 1888), 1-2.

106. Courant (June 1890), 1.

107. Mary Gorton Courant (June 1892), 21.

108. The disappearance of the flitting scholar also explains apparently re-
duced enrollments: 184 different students attended Abbot in 1854-55,
but the average enrollment for each of the three separate terms was
only 106, close to the yearly average (108) from 1875 to 1885.

109. The grade and age distribution in public high school enrollments of
this period also shows a preponderance of students in lower grades.
Nationally, in 1892, 49 percent of fifteen-year-olds were enrolled in
high school, while 25 percent of seventeen-year-olds were so enrolled,
the majority of them girls. Abbot's Junior Middle and Senior Middle
(second and third year) classes were usually the largest; the age of
these students was probably sixteen to nineteen until 1878-79, when a
fifth year "Graduating Class" was set above the Senior class (though
still called Seniors everywhere but in the catalogue, just to be con-
fusing) to accommodate those students who wished to study music or
art, along with the regular studies, and to spread the whole course
over an extra year. After 1879 they were a little younger.

no. Courant (June 1873), 19.
in. Marion Park, Speech, 1938.

112. "Literary Exercises," 1 887.

113. Courant (June 1891), 16.

NOTES TO PAGES I I 7 — I 2 O 507

114. The following entry in the Class of '86 Tree Song competition sug-
gests that Seniors had not entirely lost their senses of humor over these
solemn traditions:

As round this stately twig we draw,

No joy our hearts doth move,
For we know well the winter's spell

To it will fatal prove.

And though perchance it 'scapes the blast,

It will grow scant and scanter,
For creeping things, with teeth and wings,

Will eat it up instanter.

Courant (June 1868), 39.

115. Boston Daily Advertiser, 18 June 1890.

116. Composed by Samuel Morse Downs in 1876.

117. 4 July 1878.

6. PROGRESS OF A VICTORIAN SCHOOL

i. Chapell, Journal (11 February 1874), 61.

2. In remarks made at the Abbot Alumnae Association's Jubilee luncheon,
1921.

3. Caroline S. Rogers recalls that her mother, Lucy Amelia Abbot, dis-
liked her stay at Abbot in the 1880's partly because she wanted to be
married instead— and "they kind of frowned on that." Some of the
reasons for the McKeens' anxiety about hasty decisions are perhaps
demonstrated by German historian Karl T. Griesinger's observations
of American courtship, published in Lebende Bilder aus Amerika, 1858.
The following passage is quoted in Handlin, America, 252. Griesinger
recounts the careful arrangements that accompany a German couple's
engagement and marriage, then exclaims,

How far different in America! The American is abrupt; he has no
time to beat around the bush. He meets a girl in a shop, in the
theater, at a ball, or in her parents' home. He needs a wife, thinks
this one will do. He asks the question, she answers. The next day
they are married and then proceed to inform the parents. The
couple do not need to learn to know each other; that comes later.
While Theodora is thinking that the dashing Colonel Bell will do quite
well as a husband, Phebe McKeen as narrator and guardian angel can-
not resist warning her: "Take care, Theodora! Will he do to rest on
for life?" McKeen, Theodora, 363.

4. See Carpenter, Abbot, 264.

5. McKeen, Annals, 216.

6. Sklar, Beecher, 321.

508 NOTES TO PAGES I 2 O - I 2 4

7. From Beecher, "Letters to the People on Health and Happiness,"
quoted ibid, 321.

8. Undated letter, Abbot Archives. A. Bancroft graduated in 1883.

9. Fuess, New England School, 261-262.

10. Emily Means in McKeen Memorial.

11. Chapell, Journal (31 May and 4 June 1874), 153-155.

12. Phillipian, 2 November 1878. See also ibid., 11 November 1882, when
the Cads invited Abbot girls to come to another football match but
"the fates otherwise decreed."

13. Philena McKeen, Letters to Bancroft, Summer 1885 (undated) and 14
September 1885 (Phillips Academy Archives). See also McKeen Letter
to Irene Draper, 24 August 1888, Abbot Archives, asking that she make
sure the "Misses Gilette do not rent their house to anyone who plans
to put a boy in any room which looks out over our grounds, north,
east or south."

14. Stearns's letters to his sister Mabel, 22 June 1890, Phillips Academy
Archives.

15. Ibid., 14 June 1890.

16. Courant (February 1876), 13.

17. Courant (November 1873), 2: "Our afternoon walks are enlivened by
the playful gambols of the younger and more sprightly sojourners in
the classic shades of Andover. Oh Phillipians, how long will you abuse
our patience? . . . Are you nothing daunted by our nightly guards—
the shades and shutters . . . nothing by the frowning dignity of us all?"

18. Stearns to Mabel, 15 June 1890.

19. See letters of Charles Phelps Taft in Scott Hurtt Paradise, Men of
the Old School: Some Andover Biographies, Andover, Mass., Phillips
Academy (1956), 201.

20. The average in the 1880's was five brother-sister pairs a year, as far as
can be told from a matching of names and home towns.

zi. Courant (November 1876), 32; (June 1877), 22.

22. Chapell, Journal (24 May 1874), 146-147.

23. Abby W. Collins to Phebe McKeen.

24. Stearns to Mabel, 20 March 1887. In 1889 Abbot again attended the
Phillips Academy "Winter Tournament," but this time "Some of the
wrestling and sparring was, by previous arrangement, over before we
arrived on the scene. Those not afflicted with too tender hearts thor-
oughly enjoyed the skill displayed in the few contests we saw." Cour-
ant (June 1889), 34-

25. Phillipian, 6 December 1879, 25 November 1882, 13 January 1883.
"Frolicsome Fem-Sems" had to go to Pomps Pond in 1 882-1 883 be-
cause the "Cads" skating rink was closed.

26. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 16, 73, quoted in Woody, History ,
I, 105.

27. Fuess, New England School, 254.

NOTES TO PAGES I 2 4 - I 2 5 509

28. See especially Herbert D. Ward, Phillips Academy Class of 1880, The
New Senior at Andover (Boston, Lothrop, 1891). Though Ward at-
tended Phillips under Bancroft, the forbidding Principal of his book is
generally recognized as Taylor— in spirit if not in flesh.

29. Chapell, Journal (18 January 1874), 2I> (27 May 1874), I5I-

30. McKeen, Sequel, 153. Quoted by Professor Churchill.

31. Pond, Bradford, 185.

32. Congregationalist, September 1878.

33. Oberlin was the first coeducational college; however, appearances de-
ceive, for until 1852, fewer than a quarter of Oberlin's 369 women took
the regular B.A. The rest took the "literary course," and all were
scoffed at as "maids" by many of the men students, who thought them
only good for housework. Oberlin's overall success encouraged Antioch
to open as a coeducational college in 1852. In 1858, Iowa State became
the first state university to accept women; Boston University and
Cornell became co-ed in 1869 and 1874; Swarthmore was founded as a
co-ed college in 1869. Men students resisted coeducation in several
state colleges and universities, but it was implemented anyway as the
most economical way to offer higher education to women.

34. Henry Barnard, ed., America?! Pedagogy (Hartford, Brown and Gross,
1876), 389. The Boston School Department conducted a survey of
physicians in 1890 to gain the benefit of their opinions before making
a decision on high school coeducation. Thirty physicians were for co-
education, seventeen against. One proponent, a Dr. Otis, agreed with
the opposition that girls needed "partial rest once a month ... at the
menstrual epoch," but since girls work faster, he felt they could afford
to relax and give the boys time to catch up with them. Albert Blodgett,
M.D., argued against coeducation, because "certain functions which
have lain dormant until this time are awakening into life, and arouse
new and unknown sensations and emotions." This could cause "vast
harm" in high schools, since they draw on such a variety of neighbor-
hoods. United States Commissioner of Education, Reports, 1891-92,
pp. 854-856.

35. Miss McKeen's niece, Mrs. Charles McKeen Duren, wrote the follow-
ing in answer to inquiries about McKeen Family Papers from Alumnae
Secretary and record-keeper Jane Carpenter: "All letters of her own
she burned, i.e., what she wrote, and if there were letters of pupil
friends to her they would be private. Her letters to us are personal, of
course." ( 20 December 191 o). Mrs. Duren mentioned "copious out-
lines for chapel talks" given by Philena McKeen, but says nothing of
Phebe's letters, nor of the journal she reputedly kept. The tendency to
destroy private papers which Abbot principals seem to share is an
impediment for the historian; it is, however, common among women.
Fortunately, trustees and friends saved some letters from Miss Mc-
Keen and others, and donated them to the school.

5IO NOT ES TO PAGES 125-128

36. Abbot Archives. During the last half of the nineteenth century, Abbot
was frequently spelled with two t's. The practice waned through the
Bailey era from 191 2 to 1935, but it was not until 1935 that the Trust-
ees arranged to put Abbot's legal name in line with twentieth-century
usage. By act of legislature April 4, 1935, Abbot dropped the extra t
which the Academy had officially carried ever since the turn of the
century, when the corporation's title, changed in 1879 from the orig-
inal "Trustees of Abbot Female Academy of Andover" to "Trustees
of the Abbot Academy" was changed again to "Trustees of the Abbott
Academy." The reason for the switch to the double-* Abbot remains
a mystery; there is no mention of it in the Trustee Minutes or in other
sources. Sarah Loring Bailey in her Historical Sketches of Andover
provides one possible explanation: many of the Andover Abbots, de-
scended from the two related George Abbots who were among An-
dover's earliest settlers, began adding t to their family names in the
1820's and '30's. According to one genealogy, Nehemiah Abbot, Madam
Sarah's husband, used an extra t for a while. (Abbot Archives.) Perhaps
"Abbott" looked more fashionable, and the Trustees of the McKeen
era, loyal to Sarah Abbot's relatives, wished to stay in step. Whatever
their motives, they sowed a vast if petty confusion. From 1879 to 1935
the Academy was referred to indiscriminately as Abbot and Abbott in
news columns, parent letters, even in its own official publications. It is
Abbott on the 1860—78 catalogues and Abbot on the catalogues from
1 878-1 879 on. It is Abbott on some late McKeen era diplomas and
Abbot on others, Abbott on pages 2-14 of the November 1879 Courant
and in the Advertising section, Abbot on pages 1 and 16-40 of the
same issue. The Act of 1935 finally settled this trivial matter by re-
turning to the spelling Sarah Abbot used at the time the Academy
was founded.

37. McKeen, Annals, 73.

38. I. J. Benjamin (1862), quoted in Handlin, America, 273.

39. Student Journal, 1 86 1.

40. Lectures by George Burnap, The Sphere and Duties of Women, 5th
ed. (Baltimore, 1854), 47-

41. Thornton Hall, 8-9.

42. Dobkin, Feminist (in press).

43. Theodora, 243.

44. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (Boston, Little Brown, 1946), 431;
originally published in 1869.

45. Theodora, 384.

46. Letter to Anna Dawes, 1876.

47. Chapell, Journal (28 December 1875), 227.

48. Qouted in Courant (January 1892), 31.

49. Chapell, Journal (3 February 1874), 49~~5°-

50. Quoted in McKeen, Annals, 221. Interestingly, Peabody himself saw

NOTES TO PAGE 128 5 1 I

no reason why men and women should not share classrooms even
while they pursued different educational goals.
51. It is difficult to trace the political attitudes that were evolving within
the Abbot community during the last half of the nineteenth century.
There was no local Woman Suffrage league that students or faculty
might join until after 1900; in fact the entire Merrimack Valley area
seems to have been dry soil for the Woman Suffrage movement, even
though Massachusetts as a whole was considered the "nerve center"
and "home of the Woman Movement" after the Civil War. See Lois
Bannister Merk, "Massachusetts and the Woman Suffrage Movement,"
unpublished dissertation on file in the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe
College, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Woman Suf-
frage Association introduced a full or partial woman suffrage act to the
General Court almost every year after its founding in 1870, but the
most suffrage advocates could get was the School Suffrage Act in 1879,
allowing women the vote on local educational matters. After this, oppo-
sition hardened. The fate of the Municipal Suffrage Act of 1889 was
typical: the House defeated it 139-90, with members from North An-
dover, Lawrence, Methuen, and Lowell all voting nay, and the member
from Andover failing to vote at all.

Suffrage organizations themselves became riddled with disagreements
over strategy: should they try for a federal amendment, or concentrate
on state or municipal suffrage? Should they welcome the help of the
Massachusetts WCTU members (12,000 in the 1880's to the MWSA's
400) in pushing "license suffrage," whereby women could vote only on
liquor issues, or refuse to divert their energies into such narrow chan-
nels? Andover's Temperance Movement was no help at all when the
MWSA introduced its local suffrage resolutions of 1882 and '83, for
these were soundly defeated by the Town's male voters.

The Abbot record is ambiguous. Several leaders of the MWSA
were familiar to Abbot girls: Wendell Phillips, John Greenleaf Whit-
tier, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Bronson Alcott— although there is no
record during the McKeen era of any lecture that specifically urged
woman suffrage. Congregationalist Abbot tended not to attract femi-
nist students or teachers, in contrast to schools founded by the Society
of Friends or other denominations that welcomed a female ministry.
Andover's November Club, founded in 1889 with much help from
Philena McKeen, Annie Sawyer Downs, Emily Means, and other Abbot
women, had a "Social Science Department," a serious study group that
held prepared monthly discussions on issues of government, law, poli-
tics, money, and banking and presented one program a year to the full
membership. Agnes Park, and later teachers Rebekah Chickering and
Katherine Kelsey, took turns as chairmen of the Social Science Depart-
ment through 1907; indeed, most of Abbot's teachers were founding
members or officers of the November Club. One of the organization's

512 NOTES TO PAGES I 28-1 29

first and most memorable events was a visit by Julia Ward Howe
(later made an honorary member) during which she spoke of "woman
suffrage in such a winning, womanly way as to rob the movement of
half its terrors" (ms. History of the November Club, 1959). The Social
Science Department ceased to exist after the passage of the XlXth
Amendment in 1920, for most of its members had joined the League
of Woman Voters.

52. Courant (January 1887), 25-

53. From speech by Asa Farwell at the Semicentennial, quoted in Mc-
Keen, Annals, 1 70.

54. Undated letter but almost certainly spring 1892, Abbot Archives.

55. There was one woman of Philena McKeen's traditionalist faith who
did become an ordained minister. Antoinette Brown completed the
theological course at Oberlin in 1850, and though she and her one
female classmate were refused permission to graduate with their class,
a New York state parish admitted her to its pulpit in 1853. She lasted
a year, being dismissed "at her own request" in 1854. (Quoted in Bar-
bara M. Coleman article, Notable American Women.) She was an ex-
ception to the overwhelming exclusion of women from the traditional
Protestant ministry. It is true that a few unordained women ministers
preached to frontier congregations, and that sects which had traveled
farthest from the conservative Congregationalists and Presbyterians of
Andover Hill occasionally ordained women during the last half of the
century. Abbot alumna Mary Hannah Graves, '58, became a Unitarian
minister in 1871, the year Anna Howard Shaw received her license to
preach to Methodist congregations. Many women served as Elders in
the Society of Friends. But A.T.S. never had a woman student, and
Andover Hill's Protestants would not even acknowledge Quakers or
Unitarians as fellow Christians.

56. Quoted in J. Earl Thompson, Jr., "The Andover Liberals as Theolog-
ical Educators," Andover Newton Quarterly, (March 1968), 8, No. 4,
209. Original quote from F. H. Foster, The Life of Edwards Amasa
Park (New York, Fleming H. Revell, 1936).

57. Philena McKeen, letter to Mary Belcher, 29 November 1890.

58. The two men had published Review articles which, said the Visitors,
were "not in harmony with sound doctrine as expressed in" the Sem-
inary's original Creed with its stringent conditions for personal re-
demption, and its injunctions against Atheists, Infidels, Jews, Papists,
Mohemetans, Arians, Pelagians, Antinomians, Socinians, Sabellians, Uni-
tarians, and Universalists. (Andover Theological Seminary professors
were obliged periodically to renew the oath in public.) Following the
trial, Churchill was exonerated, but Smyth's answer that the Creed
"may be adjusted to a larger knowledge and life than were open to its
framers" (The Andover Case, Boston, Stanley and Usher, 1887— a 194-
page hearing transcript— pp. xii, xxii) was not good enough for the

NOTES TO PAGES 130-132 5 I 3

Visitors. He was formally removed from his Chair in Ecclesiastical
History. Yet ultimately the Visitors and old soldier Park lost the war:
Smyth's appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Court took so long that
the sound and fury had disappeared by the time his case had been
referred back to the Visitors on technical grounds; he never actually
stopped teaching. It was the proud, eloquent Park who found when
the time came to write his final Book that the old doctrines interested
practically no one anymore: "He had nothing to say," wrote Fuess,
perhaps a bit harshly (p. 346). Fuess said of Park's career, "In retro-
spect, Professor Park seems to those who knew him to have been far
greater than anything he ever did" (p. 319). Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
was kinder. "He was unquestionably a genius," she wrote of him in
his old age. "There is something sad and grand about his individualism,
as there is about . . . the last king of a dynasty." (Phelps, Chapters, 38.)

59. Phelps, Chapters, 60.

60. Dawes, (Class of '70), Speech, 192 1.

61. Douglas, Feminization, 149. Historian Ann Douglas describes Edwards
Park as both a "superb scholar" and a master of "the sentimental ap-
peal, which he endowed with an intellectual integrity and conviction
it was seldom to display again." Park brought Protestantism "one step
nearer to the feminine subculture it both courted and feared," writes
Douglas (ibid., 148, 151). All the evidence we have suggests that the
McKeen sisters brought Abbot forward to meet him.

62. One of the two class surveys we have, recorded by the historian of '87
in the "Literary Exercises," gives us these figures on seventeen Abbot
students' opinions of the McKeen strictures. Cards: "5 for [in favor of
playing cards], 2 against, the rest in moderation." Theatre: "10 for,
2 against, the rest in moderation." Dancing: "8 for, the rest do not
dance." Drinking: "all but 3 have signed the temperance pledge."
These students' church affiliations suggest the distribution of sects at
Abbot: 10 were Congregationalist, 3 Presbyterian, 2 Baptist, one "New
Church," and one undeclared.

63. Letter to Mrs. Draper, 24 August 1888.

64. Dawes, Speech, 192 1.

6$. See Courant (June 1885), 30.

66. Emily Means, '68, in McKeen Memorial.

6j. J. P. Taylor, Draper Memorial, 7.

68. Ezra Abbot to Draper, 9 January 1875, Cambridge.

69. Sklar, Beecher, 82.

70. Taylor, Draper Memorial, 7.

71. Letter, 16 March 1864.

72. The Andover Press and Bookstore closed in 1866, and Draper took the
business downtown, a better site in any case for his reform activities.

73. Into his house Draper built the first bathroom in the town of Andover,
and fitted it with a copper bathtub.

514 NOTESTOPAGES I 3 2 — I 36

74. Sklar, Beecher, 78.

75. Ibid.

76. In The Western World, or Travels in the United States, (1849), I,

I34"I35-

77. Volume I, No. 12.

78. Courant (January 1890), 29.

79. Welter, in Gordon, Family, 226.

80. Abbot Catalogue 1873—74, P- 2I-

81. K. T. Griesinger (1858) in Handlin, America, 261.

82. Chapell, Journal (4 January 1874), 8.

83. Ibid. (25 January 1874), 33~ 34-

84. Taft, in Paradise, Men, 202.

85. Student Journal, 1 86 1.

86. Helen M. Copeland to Phebe and Philena McKeen, 15 April 1879,
Abbot Archives. Mrs. Copeland suffered through a marriage with a
"professing Christian . . . whose conscience and religious education"
turned out to have been "entirely neglected." This did not trouble her
at first, for "my delight was in his smile and favor, to gain which I
often sacrificed my faith and duty." Finally, at age 33, mother of five
children and "feeling utterly wretched and helpless, I gave up my will
into His hands, crying 'Lord, save or I perish'. . . . And in that hour
I was healed, body and soul!" Though her husband and children "re-
sisted and rejected that blessed Master" for over a year, she won them
to Christ at last, showing them that it was no longer enough to "live
for self." Thus did the McKeens help to inspire a conversion in one
who had long since left the Family.

87. See Theodora, 198-199.

88. James McLachlan describes the appeal of the boys' boarding schools
which assumed the religious functions of the ideal nineteenth-century
family {Boarding School, 134). Vassar College in its early advertise-
ments made certain to refer to its students and teachers collectively as
"the family."

89. Kett, Rites, 116.

90. E. S. Phelps Ward, quoted in Fuess, New England School, 319.

91. Marion Park, Speech, 1938.

92. Marginal notes facing p. 2 of the Syllabus, published by Warren
Draper (Andover, 1879).

93. See Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle; The Woman's Rights Move-
ment in the United States (New York, Atheneum, 1973), 220. Flexner's
Quaker forbears were heavily involved with women's rights. Sarah
Grimke in The Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women
(Boston, 1838), 9-10, asserted that the Scriptures were not divine;
instead, they "reflected the agricultural, patriarchal society which pro-
duced them." Such relativism appalled the Congregationalists and other
Protestant conservatives of the time.

NOTES TO PAGES 136-14.I 515

94. Clipping pasted in Church History Syllabus, p. 23.

95. Courant (December 1880), 20.

96. Ibid. (June 1890), 37; (June 1881), 26.

97. Phelps, Chapters, 42. It is interesting that the Seminary liberals even-
tually gained enough strength and support to found South End House
in Boston in 1891.

98. EL A, '87, in Courant (June 1887), 22.

99. Letter, 22 January, 1879.

100. A characterization found repeatedly in news articles (see Boston Ad-
vertiser and Congregationalist) after 1875.

10 1. In Park, Speech, 1938, Marion Park told of her Aunt Agnes' gradual
repudiation of the Congregationalist Phillips Academy Church; it is
possible that Miss McKeen went to Episcopal services with Agnes,
who was a close friend. Agnes Park's explanation, according to Marion
Park: "she was tired of being told for seventy years how to be a
good boy and had decided to leave the Academy Chapel." Interest-
ingly, Both Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister Catharine became
Episcopalians toward the ends of their lives.

102. Changes in Abbot's charter reflect this shift, which continued after
Miss McKeen's retirement. In 1838 the Trustees and the General Court
substituted for the stricture that all Trustees be "professors of the
religion of the Congregational or Presbyterian denomination" the
requirement that they be uprofessors of Religion of some Evangelical
denomination a Majority of whom shall be Trinitarian Congregation-
alists." Thus Baptists and Methodists could be included. By 1902 the
wording had changed again: "At least two-thirds [of the 12 member
board] shall be members of some evangelical church." Finally, in 1941,
"any provision as to church membership or other qualification hereto-
fore established" was "expressly revoked."

103. John Phelps Taylor's address to the Class of 1891.

104. Courant (February 1876), 36; (November 1878), 32, (November
1876), 35-36.

105. See paper given by Barbara Welter at the Third Berkshire Confer-
ence, 10 June 1976, "Defenders of the Faith: Novels of Nineteenth
Century Religious Controversy"; also Douglas, Feminization, Chapter
III, "The Domestication of Death," especially pages 200-207.

106. McKeen, Annals, xvi, xvii.

107. Letter, 31 August 1890.

108. Andover Townsman, 20 April 1898.

109. Professor Churchill in McKeen Memorial, 13.

no. Alumna letter, "F.S.P."; quoted in The Abbot Bulletin (April 1931 ),
26—29.

in. Darwin himself was conservative enough about women. In the section
on Sexual Selection in The Descent of Man, he wrote: "The chief dis-
tinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man's

5 16 NOTES TO PAGES I4.I-I43

attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can
woman— whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or
merely the use of the senses and hands. . . . We may also infer, from
the law of the deviation from averages, so well illustrated by Mr.
Galton in his work on 'Hereditary Genius,' that if men are capable
of a decided pre-eminence over women in many subjects, the average
of mental power in man must be above that of woman." And two
paragraphs later, "These . . . faculties . . . will have been developed
in man, partly through sexual selection,— that is, through the contest
of rival males, and partly through natural selection,— that is, from
success in the general struggle for life. ... It is, indeed, fortunate that
the law of equal transmission of characters in both sexes prevails with
mammals; otherwise it is probable that man would have become as
superior in mental endowment to woman as the peacock is in orna-
mental plumage to the peahen." Quoted in Ruth Hubbard, "Sexism
in Science," Radcliffe Quarterly, 62, No. 1 (March 1976), 10.

112. Courant (January 1881), 16.

113. Quoted in McKeen, Annals, 183.

114. Courant (January 1881), 18.

115. Stowe, Chimney Corner, 108.

116. Thornton Hall, 261.

117. Massachusetts passed a law allowing women attorneys to practice in
1882. There were 9,015 woman physicians and surgeons in the U.S. in
1 910. The number of patents taken out by women increased from 965
in the decade ending in 1865 to 21,784 in the period 1886-1894. There
were fifteen professional nursing schools in 1880 with 157 graduates
and thirty-five in 1890 with 471 graduates. In 1880 the total number
of women employed was 14.7 percent of the female population; in
1890, 17.4 percent. Wages and salaries ranged from 40 to 80 percent
of men's pay for the same work.

118. Courant "Editors' Drawer" (January 1875), 27.

119. Courant (November 1873), 39. Prudence Palfrey also contrasts sadly
with Aldrich's resourceful boy urchins in Story of a Bad Boy and
even with the Irish cook in A Rivermouth Romance. It was all right
to be an eccentric woman if you were a foreigner.

120. Quoted in a speech by Marguerite Hearsey at the 125th Anniversary,
8 May 1954.

121. Speech reported in the Marysville Daily Appeal, 26 April 1878, Abbot
Archives. Mary Belcher's statistics may have come from Catharine
Beecher's informal survey of American women.

122. Courant (June 1879), 7.

123. Courant (January 1884), 17.

124. Quoted in Handlin, America, 244.

125. Marion Park, Speech, 1938.

126. Letter to Treasurer Nathaniel Swift, 9 March 1875.

NOTES TO PAGES 144-151 517

127. MPK, '84, in Cour ant (June 1882), 21.

128. Henrietta Learoyd Sperry, in Cour ant (June 1892), 8.

129. Semicentennial speech of President Paul A. Chadbourne of Williams
College (Abbot parent), quoted in McKeen, Annals, 224.

130. Ibid.

131. See McLachlan, Boarding School, 180-218, and Kett, Rites, 183-189.
McLachlan dates this change about a decade earlier than Kett; the
difference seems to be a function of McLachlan's concentration on
developments in the private education for boys.

132. Kett, Rites, 231.

133. Ibid., 102, in, 137, 143, 152.

134. Ibid., 138.

135. Between 1870 and 19 10 the number of positions in the service sector
and the professions increased fourfold from 230,000 to 1,150,000, while
manufacturing jobs were two and a half times greater (2,250,000 to
6,300,000).

136. In return, the sisters wrote hundreds of encouraging, interested letters
to alumnae, and welcomed them warmly back at the school. "My dear
little schoolmistress" one of Phebe's letters to Julia Twichell, '79, began,
and went on to bring comfort and sympathy to this young graduate
much tried by her job in a district school. (Manuscript of a talk by
Katherine Kelsey, 28 February 1932.

137. Emily Means, McKeen Memorial.

III. Forth and Back, 1 885-191 2

7. EXPANSION

i. For example, Vassar admitted girls fifteen years of age and older.

2. Or, as a speech given by college president R. H. Jesse in 1896 was
entitled, "What Constitutes a College and What a Secondary School?"
The question was still a live one in 1896, even though the Report of
the Committee of Ten, which both Jesse and Commissioner W. T.
Harris helped to write, had been in circulation over two years, sup-
posedly settling the matter. Jesse asserted that "the chief aim of the
private secondary school is to get students ready for college, its subor-
dinate aim to fit them for life," a conclusion that the Abbot faithful
were doing their best to disprove. See Sizer, Secondary Schools, 34.

3. U.S. Commissioner of Education, Reports, 1889-90, II, 746.

4. Letter, July 1877, Abbot Archives. Miss McKeen's new salary was
$1100, Miss Phebe's, $900. The salaries were actually somewhat larger,
since both women received room and board, considered to be worth
$200-300 per person. Miss Johnson's salary was later reduced to $2500,

5 I 8 NOTES TO PAGES 152-155

a match of that awarded Phillips Academy's Bancroft in 1873 an^ still
a handsome sum for a woman educator.

5. Courant (June 1877), 4.

6. Semicentennial program, transcript, unpaginated, Abbot Archives.

7. The charts contained in the U.S. Commissioner of Education's annual
Reports comparing curricular offerings and facilities (libraries, obser-
vatories, etc.) at leading women's schools and colleges are excellent
sources for the reader concerned with Abbot's place in the realm of
secondary and higher education. Judged according to the Commis-
sioner's criteria, Abbot's facilities in 1876 were superior to those of
ninety-nine of the 147 degree-granting "colleges" on the Office of
Education's list. Only twenty -five of the 147 had larger libraries. Just
sixteen of all 225 colleges and seminaries had any income from en-
dowment at all. (Median income for these endowed institutions was
$900 per year. USCOE, Reports, 1876, 690-696.) Even after Abbot had
disappeared from the list of institutions for the "higher education of
women," comparison of curricular offerings (1889 Reports) suggests
that Senior-Middle and Senior Abbot students read most of the same
philosophy history and mathematics books as did upperclasswomen stu-
dents at about half of the fifteen "leading colleges," including Albert
Lea College in Minnesota, where Abbot's Principal-to-be, Laura Wat-
son, was teaching in 1889. Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Vassar, Smith, Rad-
cliffe, and Barnard, however, were clearly offering more advanced
work.

8. McKeen, letter to Trustees, 24 April 1879.

9. Ibid., 13 November 1879.

10. Quoted in Handlin, America, 100.

1 1 . Abby Wood Collins letter.

12. McKeen, Report, 15 January 1884.

13. See McKeen Scrapbook, p. 93, Boston Journal article of 1885.

14. McKeen, Sequel, 7.

15. Quotes from letters written by alumnae in 1879 to Phebe and Philena
McKeen. The letters are overwhelmingly discouraged and discour-
aging.

16. Letter to Miss McKeen, 10 June 1884.

17. Indeed, Miss McKeen disliked any traveling beyond her familiar
haunts. "How does a body go from Andover to Burlington, and when
does she get there, if no evil befalls her?" Miss McKeen asked her
teacher-friend Emma Meacham in a letter written 25 April 1879. See
also McKeen Memorial.

18. Means, in McKeen Memorial; McKeen, Sequel, 8.

19. Commencement was nostalgia itself, as can be seen on pages 26-27 of
Courant (November 1878), "Soliloquy of an Old Scholar":

I see the long procession
Still passing to and fro;

NOTES TO PAGES 156-163 519

The Juniors hot and restless,
The Seniors subdued and slow.

And a mist obscures my vision;
And a sigh escapes my heart.

Alas! among these numbers
I have no lot, nor part.

Luckily, merry class parties and reunions always followed this teary

occasion.
20. McKeen, Sequel, 10.
zi. Ibid., 13, 14.

22. Ibid., 14.

23. Ibid., 18.

24. Phelps, Chapters, $6.

25. Miss McKeen, letter to Warren and Irene Draper, July 1888.

26. Courant (January 1891), 4.

27. Courant (January 1889), 8.

28. McKeen, Sequel, 2 1 .

29. Ibid., 23.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid., 26.

32. Mr. Richardson, the architect, quoted in McKeen, Sequel, 31.

33. Rosamond Randall Beirne, Let's Pick the Daisies: The History of the
Bryn Mawr School, 1885-1967 (Baltimore, Maryland, 1970), 17.

34. Phelps, Chapters, 14.

35. Letter to the Trustees, 6 November, 1891.

36. Courant, editors (June 1892), 45.

37. Bulletin (April 1926), 17.

38. Trustees' Memorial Minute written by Bertha Bailey at Miss Watson's
death, 5 December 1924.

39. Courant (January 1875), 27.

40. All figures on alumnae before 1871 are approximate, because records
were incomplete until the Alumnae Association was organized in spite
of prodigious efforts made after 1871 to learn about early alumnae.

41. When the political world began to take interest in Calvin Coolidge, a
friend wrote Miss Watson asking her about him, for he had been her
contemporary at St. Johnsbury Academy. She replied that she had not
known him well. He was "occupied solely with his Latin and Greek,
in which branches he was rather weak." Letter to Catherine Sandford,
October 1920.

42. Arthur Drinkwater, Phillips Academy Class of '96, in conversation, 28
December 1976. Drinkwater knew Miss Watson through his mother,
who had been her roommate at Mt. Holyoke, as well as by her repu-
tation on Andover Hill during his four years as a student at Phillips.
She came often to visit the Drinkwater family, and in that easy setting

520 NOTES TO PAGES 164-167

he found her "friendly" and good humored. Mary Byers Smith, '04,
reports that her brother at age sixteen was one of Miss Watson's favo-
rite companions on her frequent geology field trips. Many of Miss
Watson's woman associates recognized and admired her drive, but
remember her as being rather reserved, except with close friends.

43. See Kathryn K. Sklar, "The Founding of Mount Holyoke Seminary—
A Case Study in The History of Female Education in New England,
1 790-1 83 7," unpublished paper.

44. See Sizer, Secondary Schools, 34.

45. C our ant (June 1879), 5, 6. Anna Dawes was a particularly colorful
alumna. As a U.S. Senator's daughter and hostess she knew and reveled
in state affairs during her long residence in Washington. She wrote
many magazine articles, served as trustee of Smith College 1 889-1 896,
and back at home in her native Massachusetts became a director of the
state Child Labor Commission and the Massachusetts Prison Associa-
tion. She was also President of the Abbot Academy Alumnae Associa-
tion from 1910 to 1914.

46. The cost of Bradford's inertia is suggested by its enrollment figures
around the turn of the century. The student body declined from 107
in 1898 to 48 in 1901, when Bradford announced a college preparatory
course, adding it to its five-year course much as Abbot had done ten
years earlier. After this, enrollments climbed again. In 1920, the Col-
lege Preparatory and the "Junior College" course had equal numbers,
but by 1932 the Junior College students so outnumbered College Prep-
aratory students that Bradford applied for a Junior College charter,
and Abbot took Bradford's place as New England's oldest incorporated
boarding school for girls.

47. Quoted in Sizer, Secondary Schools, 55.

48. Quoted in David Tyack, ed., Turning Points in American Educational
History (Waltham, Ginn-Blaisdell, 1967), 375.

49. Harvard's admissions figures for 1889 are instructive: of 352 students
admitted only 97 (27 percent) had prepared at public high schools.
Twenty-three of the thirty public schools from which this minority
came were New England institutions.

50. National Education Association, Report of the Committee of Ten on
Secondary School Studies, with the Reports of the Conferences Ar-
ranged by the Committee (New York, 1894), 63-64, 73~74' Q0-^1,

163,175-

51. Alice Whitney in conversation with Helen Eccles, 8 April 1977.

52. Quoted from the Committee of Ten Report, 1893, m Sizer, Secondary
Schools, 117.

53. Eleanor Thomson Castle, interview, 18 June 1974-

54. See Sizer, Secondary Schools, 45-47.

55. Report on Thanksgiving 1892 by editors in Courant (January 1893), 44.

NOTES TO PAGES 167-170 521

§6. Schedule for 1 892-1 893 as described in Courant:
Up 6:30, breakfast 7:00
Silent Hour 7:45-8: 15 (meditation)
8: 30 to Hall for prayers
Classes till 3:30 then walks to Indian Ridge,

Sunset Rock with study afterwards.
5:30 dinner.

"half hour" meditation, then study till 9.
Lights out at 10.

57. Courant (January 1898), 42.

58. Laura Watson, Report to the Trustees for 1893-94.

59. William James, Psychology (New York, Henry Holt, 1892)— a 478-
page abridgment of the monumental Principles of Psychology which
James himself made for college use, adding chapters on the physiology
of the senses.

60. Ibid., 1,3.

61. Ibid., 189-216.

62. Ibid., 467.

63. Private school attendance began declining in 1894 after years of steady
rise in enrollments. The average school lost 10 percent of its enroll-
ment a year from 1895 to 1898, when applications began rising again.

64. Miss McKeen had alerted the Trustees to the gravity of these problems
in a letter to the Trustees, 16 June 1891: "The evil was serious and
many rooms were unfit for use. The same persons are unwilling to
risk their health and comfort there another season. The supply of hot
water was quite insufficient. Bathing in tubs had to be given up for the
most part till warm weather." Little could be done, however, to per-
manently remedy the situation at the time.

65. The Trustees also did their part to help Miss Watson deal with trou-
blesome "Cads" and their relations with the Abbot students. Noting
"certain matters of discipline and conduct" with which they felt Dr.
Bancroft should be dealing, they appointed a Trustee committee to
talk with him and Mr. Hardy of the Phillips Board. Was it just the
ordinary refusal of Andover Hill's boys and girls to stay in their as-
signed spheres, or something special? (Minutes, 14 February 1894.)
Arthur Drinkwater, only surviving member of the Phillips Class of
1896, remembers a decorous form of panty raid which the "Cads" made
once every spring during his four years at Phillips Academy in defi-
ance of all attempts to foil it: large numbers of "Cads" crept through
the Grove or climbed the fence on a Wednesday washday and stole
all the girls' clothes off the clothesline. The clothes would eventually
be returned with equal stealth to odd places on the Abbot campus.
This could have been the problem these dignified gentlemen were
addressing. On the other hand, a fire was set in vacant Smith Hall at

522 NOTES TO PAGES I7O-I73

about this time, and the special committee may have been a response
to that.

66. See Laura Watson's reports to the Trustees, 1 893-1 897.

67. One result of the increase in day students was a sharp rise in the num-
bers of Abbot-Phillips sister-brother pairs to about a dozen a year
through the 1890's.

68. Conversation, 29 April 1977.

69. McKeen, Sequel, 160. Perhaps because of this pressure, College Pre-
paratory students were not recognized as graduating Seniors at Com-
mencement time until 1899.

70. From M. B. Ripley's lecture in the Town of Andover course, 1941.

71. Kelsey, Sketches, 51.

72. Henrietta Learoyd, '68, later Henrietta Sperry, taught five years in the
1870's, serving as acting Principal the year the McKeen sisters went
abroad. She was elected Trustee of Abbot Academy in 1892.

73. In Education (March 1894), quoted in Sizer, Secondary Schools, 153.

74. "Literary Exercises," 1887.

8. FUTURES

1. The American Mind, quoted in Lawrence Cremin, The Transforma-
tion of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876—1957
(New York, Knopf, 1961), 90.

2. Courant ( June 191 1), 6.

3. Undated letter to "Mary." As Abbot record-keeper and historian Jane
Carpenter put it in a letter to Markham Stackpole, 1 November 1922,
Miss Means "was not especially careful herself about dates." This
carelessness hampers writers of footnotes, if no one else.

4. Harriet Martineau, quoted in Woody, History, II, 8, had observed in
1836 that American women were "free to engage in only seven occu-
pations, teaching, needlework, keeping boarders, working in cotton
mills, book binding, type-setting, and housework." Woody comments
that exceptions could be found to this statement, but finds it essentially
valid. For fifty years after this, men preferred not to notice the women
who did achieve distinction. Of 633 entries in Appleton's Cyclopedia
of American Biography (published in 1886), nineteen describe women.

5. In 1 910, 19 percent of college professors were women, 93 percent of
nurses, 79 percent of librarians and one percent of lawyers and clergy.

6. Edward Sanford Martin, The Unrest of Women (New York, Apple-
ton, 191 3), 5; first serialized by Curtis Publishing Co. in 191 2.

7. Barbara Cross, ed., The Educated Woman in America: Selected Writ-
ings of Catharine Beecher, Margaret Fuller, and M. Carey Thomas
(New York, Teachers College Press, 1965), 38.

8. Cremin, Transformation, 89.

NOTES TO PAGES 173-178 523

9. Beirne, Daisies, 26.

10. From American Traits, Professor Hugo Munsterberg, quoted in
USCOE, Report (1900-01), 1 299-1 300.

11. Dobkin, ed., MCT, Unpublished journal, 2 January 1872, and 8 Jan-
uary 1 87 1.

12. Cross, Educated Woman, 34. A visit to Vassar in the early 1880's when
Dean-elect Thomas was collecting ideas for the organizing of Bryn
Mawr only confirmed her earlier images. To her adult eye, Vassar
looked like no more than a "glorified boarding school." Smith was a
little sounder, having better teachers than Vassar, thought Carey
Thomas. (Finch, Carey Thomas, 47.)

13. Quoted in Beirne, Daisies, 3.

14. Quoted by Dobkin in a talk given at the Third Berkshire Conference
of Woman Historians, 10 June 1976.

15. E. Clarke, in "Sex in Education," USCOE, Reports, (1900-01), 1276-
1277. See also article by M. C. Thomas, "Present Tendencies in Wom-
en's College and University Education," Educational Review (1908),
64-85, excerpted in Cross, Educated Woman, 162.

16. Quoted in Cross, Educated Women, 36.

17. Godey's Lady's Book, April 1870.

18. Helen Ekin Starrett, After College What? For Girls (Boston, Thomas
Y. Crowell, 1896), 5-27; see also "What Becomes of College Women?"
North American Review (1895), 546—553.

19. "Professor Moore" (no first name given), quoted in Bulletin (Febru-
ary i960), 11.

20. See Courant (June 1896), 24.

21. Joseph Gilpin Pyle in "Should Women Vote?", quoted in Lois W.
Banner, Women in Modern America (New York, Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1974), 89.

22. Courant (January 1907), 35. A Miss Bissel rang changes on the same
theme at an assembly held 30 January 1904, adding this further argu-
ment:

Only a small proportion of women are well educated, and if the
ballot were granted (to women) it would simply increase the
number of ignorant voters, while the vote of the colored women
in the South would double the troubles of the government.
Courant (June 1904), 31.

23. Interview with Mary Byers Smith, '04, 15 April 1975.

24. True, Abbot alumnae benefited, as did all women, from the "femini-
zation of teaching" that drove men from the profession as the century
wore on. We have already seen how cynical were many schoolboard
members' motives in hiring women teachers for the subsistence wages
men refused. By midcentury a penny-pinching Massachusetts school
committee was even screening women for a superintendency, explain-
ing that "As there is neither honor nor profit connected with this

524 NOTES TO PAGE I 7 8

position, we see no reason why it should not be filled by a woman."
Quoted in Woody, History, I, 516.

25. These and other statistics in this section were derived as follows: For
the earliest period (1829-92), a random sample of 500 was drawn from
the 2741 alumnae files. For the later period (1 893-1 91 2), I and my stu-
dent research assistants used a larger sample (one in three folders) for
alumnae occupations. To obtain data on husbands' occupations, we
checked every folder from 1893 to 1912-> ana< in addition cross-checked
Phillips Academy records wherever there was a Phillips-Abbot or
A.T.S.-Abbot marriage. Where the expression "all alumnae" is used,
the information given has been obtained from a direct count from the
191 3 Catalogue, not from a sample of folders. One must still be wary
of any tabulation of occupations. Social scientists have found that the
same individual is likely to describe his or her occupation differently
at different times (See Michael B. Katz, "Occupational Classification in
History," Journal of Interdisciplinary History [Summer 1972]). For
example, a college professor may call herself a "teacher" in one ques-
tionnaire, a "scholar" in another, a "professor" in a third. A small con-
tractor may say he is a businessman but may also call himself an
"artisan," a "carpenter," or simply "self-employed." We have used
four occupational categories similar to those Katz employs in his 1970
study of Hamilton, Ontario, in classifying occupations according to a
simple income and social status hierarchy. Two further difficulties for
the Abbot historian are that some alumnae did not return the ques-
tionnaire, and only 227 out of a sample of 327 married alumnae filled
in the answer to the question on "husband's occupation." We tried to
get reliable figures on parent occupations in order to see whether
these showed social mobility by way of an Abbot education or through
marriage from "lower" to "higher" status, but the data here was so
incomplete that no conclusions could be drawn about Abbot Acad-
emy's capacity to confer increased status and social eligibility on po-
tential brides. At the least, one can surmise from 1890-1913 figures
that an Abbot education did not lower social status for eligible women.
The overwhelming majority of fathers had to be fairly wealthy to
send daughters to Abbot after 1890. (A number of studies of private
school families suggest that family income must ordinarily be at least
ten times the tuition if the parents are to consider private school for
their children. Abundant scholarship aid can alter this picture some-
what—but not much.) And over 80 percent of Abbot alumnae married
into income and status groups similar to those comprising the parent
group for 1 892-191 3 as a whole.

26. 18 June 1879. At the Semicentennial celebration, Trustee-Professor
Edwards Park remarked that "it is natural for a young divine to be
attracted to a scholarly woman; 179 such cases have occurred in An-

NOTES TO PAGES 178-182 525

dover since the founding of Abbot Academy." This is much lower
than the 25 percent derived from a direct count. We assume from the
context that Park was referring to the number of alumnae who mar-
ried Andover Theological Seminary students or graduates.

27. Mary R. Kimball, '43, to Phebe McKeen, 15 March 1879.

28. Title of lecture at Abbot, 22 January 1916.

29. This is what Kate Wiggin says about Abbot in her autobiography,
My Garden of Memory (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1923), 53: "I, still
'uneducated,' strange to say, having sipped momentarily at five founts
of learning, was left behind for six months at Abbot Academy, An-
dover, Massachusetts, one of the best boarding schools for girls in New
England. I was a sore trial to the Faculty for I was, in a manner of
speech, a senior in Literature, a junior in French and Latin, a sopho-
more in Grammar, a freshman in History, and a poor risk for the
preparatory department in Mathematics! It was a good atmosphere for
a girl; simply and sincerely religious, refined and gracious in its social
life. Punctuality, decorum, studious habits, good manners and speech,
obedience to rules— these were all presupposed and they actually ex-
isted."

30. 1892 figures. By 1894 when Mrs. Brown's term ended, membership
had more than doubled.

31. Numbers of these late brides, about whom the tradionalist women's
magazines fretted so, may simply have been following Miss Phebe's
advice to choose a husband with the greatest care. Divorce was legally
difficult and socially devastating, though more frequent all the time.
The divorce rate doubled in the fifteen years after 1890.

32. Abbot Alumnae files, Before 1900 section.

33. See Abbot Bulletin, May 1936.

34. "Octave Thanet" took "Octave" from her Abbot Academy roommate,
named Octave, and "Thanet" from a message written on a freight car.
She wrote fifteen books and many stories and articles under her pen-
name.

35. "Blythe Halliday's Voyage," in Anna Fuller, A Bookful of Girls (New
York, G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1905), 62.

36. Courant (January 1897), 49.

37. George McMichael, Journey to Obscurity: The Life of Octave Thanet
(Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 38.

38. Alice French to Anna Dawes, 4 July, 1868, quoted ibid., 39.

39. From E. S. Phelps, The Silent Fanner (1871), quoted in Parrington,
Main Currents, 62.

40. Review of article "The English Workingman," in Lippincotfs, prob-
ably April 1879, McKeen Scrapbook, 54.

41. Alice French, The Man of the Hour, by Octave Thanet, pseud. (New
York, Grosset & Dunlop, 1905), 437.

526 NOTES TO PAGES 183-185

9. A NEW ENGLAND ARISTOCRAT

i. Letter to author from Dorothy Bigelow Arms, 'n, 4 December 1975.

2. Interview, Mary Byers Smith, '04.

3. Ibid.

4. Miss Means could find plenty of outside support for her disdain of
"useless degree-getting," as M. B. Smith terms her attitude. It is quite
likely that she knew the opinions of G. Stanley Hall, the "father of
modern psychology" (a designation of approval or opprobrium, de-
pending on one's point of view) whose work was becoming as influ-
ential as that of his fellow university president and intellectual adver-
sary, Charles W. Eliot. Hall in his widely read Adolescence (1904)
declared that college preparation standards "as now enforced, are al-
most an unmitigated curse to high schools"; they have imposed a "uni-
formity" that is "dear to the inert mind." Because of them, schools
have changed in fundamental ways. "There is no more wild, free,
vigorous growth of the forest, but everything is in pots or rows like
a rococo garden" (pp. 508-514). All gatherings of educators end in
anxious discussion of the technicalities of college admission, protested
Hall. Secondary school textbooks are written by college professors;
courses and methods, and even sports and student life are "made at
Harvard or Yale" (p. 520). Hall declared that the secondary school
"should primarily fit for nothing, but should exploit and develop to
the uttermost all the powers, for this alone is liberal education" (p.
525). All pages are of the 1916 reprinting of Adolescence: Its Psychol-
ogy, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education, 2
Vols. (New York, D. Appleton).

5. Six of the thirty first CEEB exam readers were women, including
Helen Jackson, Abbot '95, B.A. Mt. Holyoke, 1900, who took part in
the readings for 1901, held at Columbia University.

6. Quoted by Banner, American Women, 38.

7. Although there was puffery in Abbot's claim that the final two years
of its Academic Course equaled the first two years of the best colleges,
there was no doubt about the requirement that students entering this
two-year course come with high school diploma in hand. An able stu-
dent could find challenging work at the "Academy." One young
woman (Mary Katherine Woods, '05) studied a year at Abbot after
a year at Mt. Holyoke, and became a prominent journalist soon after
her graduation.

8. Interview, Mary Byers Smith.

9. Trustee Minutes, 1 9 June 1 899.

10. Interview, Alice Sweeney, '14.

11. C our ant (January 1923), 27.

12. E. A. Means, letter to Burton S. Flagg (undated).

13. Jews "would not be admitted to the best Saratoga hotels, not even

NOTES TO PAGES 185-188 527

were they the Rothschilds in person. In the land of democracy ... I
would have thought such restrictions fantastic. However, these were
the facts," wrote Italian traveler Carlo Gardini in 1891, quoted in
Handlin, America, 349.

14. M. C. Thomas, press release to the Baltimore American, 1890, quoted
in Beirne, Daisies, 6.

15. Barbara Moore Pease, 'n, letter (undated, 1975). A graduate of the
Means years tells of a Senior who got on the train for New York and
home as usual, but disembarked at New Haven to visit a young male
friend for two days. Parents and Principal were frantic; once found,
the young woman was suspended for spring term. However, Miss
Means allowed her to graduate with her class, and won admiration for
her fairness thereby, as well as gratitude from the Senior's family, to
whom Emily Means had shown great compassion.

16. Recollections of Mildred Brvant Kussmaul, '13.

17. Ibid.

18. Interview, Mary Byers Smith, confirmed in Castle interview.

19. Quotations from a letter written by Delight Gage, 'oi, to Miss Hear-
sey about the Abbot Hall portrait of Miss Means, painted at last in
1954 from a photograph, since she would allow none to be painted
from life.

20. M. B. Smith, Courant (June 1929), 12.

21. Emily Means's summer island was more than a refuge. It was a place
where she could exercise her talent for design on the building of her
two houses, and generally live a life uncluttered by social pressures.
Local people admired her independence; they enjoyed the unusual
sight of a diminutive woman rowing her guests between island and
shore. Their attitude and Miss Means's sense of humor are wonder-
fully expressed in Mary Byers Smith's favorite Means story, passed on
to her by Emily Means herself:

Miss Means and Miss Root often used to stay together on her
island in Maine. At one time they had Mr. Downs, the music
teacher, visiting them. It was a very cold day, and they had given
him a shawl and left him standing with the shawl on the point. A
few days later, two fishermen spoke to her. "Miss Means," they
said, "we were out on our boat the other day and we saw some-
thing strange that you had put over there on the point. We rowed
ourselves up a little closer and a little closer, and we was saying,
'She's got her a scarecrow on the island.' Finally we got up close
to the point and we saw what it was and we says to ourselves,
'Them women has made themselves a manY '"

22. M. B. Smith, Courant (June 1929), 12, 13.

123. Interview, A. C. Sweeney.
24. Interviews with Mary Byers Smith, '04, Mildred Bryant Kussmaul, '13,
and Constance Parker Chipman, '06. On the other hand, younger alum-

528 NOTES TO PAGES 188-192

nae remember her vividly as a patient, competent assistant principal.
She seems to have become a more effective msth teacher with age.
(Letter from Cynthia James Tharaud, '32, among other sources.)

25. Jane Carpenter in Annals of the Alumnae Association, quoted in Car-
penter, Abbot, 309.

26. Constance Chipman, interviewed by B. Floe and Margot Kent, '75.

27. Flagg reported in the 5 June 193 1 Treasurer's report (p. 4) that "the
enclosed letter was recently discovered inside of the chimney in the
basement of Draper Homestead":

Andover, Mass.,
November 29, 1899
My Dear Nephew,

If anything should happen to me whereby I should not be able
to give information you will find the Academy account books and
other valuable papers down cellar in the back side of the brick
closet by the furnace. Take a hook or big nail and stick it into
one of the nail holes in the board next to the bottom one on the
east side (outside) of the closet and pull towards the south. The
board will slide and you will see an iron handle. Pull on that and
you will find the papers.

Yours

W. F. Draper (Signed)
Draper was nothing if not thorough.

28. The Trustee Minutes contain Draper's carefully penned offer for this
gift, (Minutes, 3 December 1902) as well as this characteristic dedica-
tion of one of the Drapers' many smaller gifts:

Recognizing the Divine goodness and mercy that have followed
us all the days of our life, and desiring to give some expression of
our gratitude to the Lord for all his benefits, we have decided to
celebrate the 54th anniversary of our marriage on this 24th day of
May 1902, by a gift to Abbot Academy of $1000 for the founding
of a Library Fund. . . . (June 24, 1902)

Warren F. Draper
Irene P. Draper
The Drapers donated over $80,000 to Abbot during WFD's lifetime.
"Abbot Academy was his child," the Trustees wrote of Draper on his
death (Minutes, 8 March 1905); "by [his] will he made her his heir,"
leaving $41,880 worth of printing equipment and hundreds of back
copies of Biblioteca Sacra, unwanted by most of the world by the time
Irene Draper died in 191 6.

29. Quoted in Courant (June 1907), 8-19.

30. Taylor, Letter to E. A. Means, 21 June 1906.

31. See Trustees Minutes, 1901-04.

32. Not a simple result of the trial, but a symptom— as was the trial's

NOTES TO PAGES IQ4-20O 529

outcome— of the movement away from precise adherence to the old
Congregationalist doctrines and toward the "Social Gospel," the active
implementation of Christian principles through social service.

33. Paraphrased by Hall in Adolescence, 574. Hall records the opinions of
twelve male physicians on the special health needs of young women
and the abuse of health by college women to support and complement
Thornton's view, and of one woman, Dr. Mary P. Jacobi, who dis-
agrees, saying, "there is nothing in the nature of menstruation to imply
the necessity or even the desirability of rest for a woman whose men-
struation is really normal" (p. 586). He then proceeds to refute Jacobi
by citing studies of "irregularity" among high school and college
women, and pointing out that even these results are skewed in favor
of the casual view of menstruation, since few college students will "in-
crease the prejudice" against women's higher education by confessing
weakness on a questionnaire (p. 589). Hall himself thought that girls
should be instructed on menstruation by married instructresses in "a
certain mystic and religious tone which should pervade all and make
everything sacred" (p. 640). The ideal boarding school for girls from
thirteen to twenty should schedule "monthly sabbaths of rest" at "this
time of sensitiveness and perturbation" (p. 639).

34. Kett, Rite s, 174-175.

35. Sara Burstall, citing the NEA inquiry of 1904, quoted in Tyack, Turn-
ing Points, 395-396.

36. The most vivid account of this incident was communicated to the
writer by Barbara Moore Pease, '11, who was "Becca's" roommate.

37. In 1908, for example, no C.P. Seniors appeared in The Tempest, nor
did any take part in Twelfth Night in 191 1. One of the nine C.P.
Seniors was a servant in the 1907 play; fourteen of the sixteen Aca-
demic Seniors made up the rest of the cast.

38. Frances Cutler Knickerbocker, '05, in Bulletin (February i960), 10.

39. Courant (February 1905), 33-36.

40. Ibid., 7.

41. Interview, Helen Abbott Allen Anderson, '32.

42. Phillips Academy Trustee Minutes, 30 April 1900 and 14 May 1900.

43. Interview, Constance Chipman.

44. Interview, Ruth Newcomb, '10.

45. We are indebted to Barbara Brown Hogan, '40, for preserving her
aunt's scrapbooks and lending them to us.

46. See letter from Father, 18 March 1907, Brown Scrapbook.

47. Letter to Mrs. Brown from Emily Means, 10 April 1909, Brown Scrap-
book.

48. Written next to a theatre program offering "the Best in Vaudeville."

49. Here is most of the rest of the "slush."

Darling,

530 NOTES TO PAGES 201-209

As I sat here all alone trying to study, I could not make my
mind stay on my book. It was always upstairs and wondering dear
what you were doing, and when a little tap came at the window,
my heart flew up in my mouth for I knew dearest by some little
feeling way down in my heart that it was from you.

50. The Phillips Academy Catalogues for 1 906-1 908 list no J. W. Scott,
nor is his name on any of the alumni lists. R. T. Tree, however, was
a Scientific Course student in 1906-07, who graduated in 19 10. Tree
lived at a popular boarding house, "Mrs. Tree's" (perhaps one run by
a relative— Tree himself came from Ithaca, N.Y.) and it is possible that
J. W. Scott was boarder in the same house even though not a member
of the Academy or the Theological Seminary. It also may be that
Scott's name is missing from the lists because his stay at Phillips Acad-
emy was so short lived (for reasons that may already be evident).

51. June Wermers in conversation, 8 December 1976. She knew Miss
Brown as teacher and dean during her four years as a student in Law-
rence High School.

52. Courant (January 191 2), 21.

53. Woody, History, II, 202.

54. From the Report to the Trustees of their Nominating Committee,
John Alden, Burton Flagg, Donald Merriam, and Markham Stackpole.

55. Reverend John Calvin Goddard, Secretary, Maria H. Hotchkiss School
Association, letter to M. Stackpole, 29 June 191 1.

56. Mrs. Clara Martin Poynter, letter to M. Stackpole.

57. B. Bailey, letter to M. Stackpole, 18 September 191 1.

IV. Against the Tide, 19 12-1954

1. Joseph K. Hast, A Social Interpretation of Education (New York,
1929), quoted in Kett, Rites, 237.

2. Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916) and The School and Society
(1899), quoted in Cremin, Transformation, 118, 124.

3. See U.S. Census figures from Historical Statistics, Series E, 135-166,
183-186, Consumer Price Index figures.

4. Sara Burstall, 1908, quoted in Tyack, Turning Points, 394.

5. See Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in
the 1920^ (New York, Oxford University Press, 1977), 25.

6. Observations of Dr. Joseph Rice, 1892, quoted in Tyack, Turning
Points, 315.

7. Interview, Mary Byers Smith.

8. Interview, E. T. Castle.

9. Observations of Peter A. Demens, a turn-of-the-century Russian visi-
tor, and Giuseppe Giacosa (1908), quoted in Handlin, America, 335,

397-

NOTES TO PAGES 2IO-215 531

IO. THE LADIES STAND FAST

i. Kelsey, Sketches, 113.

2. B. Bailey, letter to Mr. Stackpole, 18 September 1911.

3. Evelyn M. Walmsley to Mr. Stackpole, Wellesley, Massachusetts, 31
August 191 1.

4. As Marion Park put it (Speech, 1938), "Miss Bailey was the kind of
person who ... is perhaps most useful in the work of the world,
because she took no time in establishing or underlaying her own posi-
tion or her own contribution. All her time was put into the work
itself."

5. Walmsley to Stackpole and Nominating Committee, 191 2.

6. Interview, Mildred Bryant Kussmaul, also testimonial after Miss Bail-
ey's death made in Cow ant (December 1935), 22, by Charlotte Morris
Perot, '15. Miss Bailey "probed my soul ... I was an open book to
her— but she read that book with understanding and love."

7. B. Bailey, Chapel talk, 7 January 191 7.

8. Ripley, lecture, 1941. See also letter of advice from outgoing Student
Council president Eleanor Harryman to 1934-35 president Cecile Van
Peursem: "Above all, don't try to keep anything from Miss Bailey.
She'll find out anyway and it doesn't do any good."

9. Finch, Carey Thomas, 47-48.

10. Report to the Trustees, 22 February 1922, signed by Nellie M. Mason,
Chairman, Alice C. Sweeney, Ruth E. Marceau, Ruth S. Baker, Doro-
thy Hopkins.

11. The Trustees' Minutes record an I.Q. ranking of new students for the
fall of '26 as follows:

Exceptionally High: 1
High: 29
Normal: 33
Low: 16
The faculty also administered placement tests for specific subjects, such
as French, German, Math, and English grammar. In 1927 some enter-
ing students scored "almost zero" on the latter two. Bertha Bailey to
the Trustees, October 1927.

12. B. Bailey to Markham Stackpole, 22 June 191 1, introducing herself to
the Abbot Trustees.

13. Undated speech, Abbot Archives.

14. Christmas sermon, 13 December 1914.

15. Kett, Rites, 196, 210.

16. Chapel talk, 27 January 191 8.

17. Summary by Carpenter, Abbot, 18.

18. Quoted from the Pledge, Patriotic League.

19. Courant (June 1920), 28, 29.

20. Quoted in Abbot Bulletin (April 1932), 16.

2 1 . The exact date and occasion for this speech are unidentified. The con-

532 NOTES TO PAGES 215-217

text suggests it was given before some professional educators' associa-
tion in winter or spring 191 8.

22. Historian Lois Banner in Women, 137, demonstrates how broadly
shared was this sense that "men (through their disastrous wars) were
threatening to destroy the social order," and the women of the world
must become the builders and the peacemakers.

23. Chapel talk on "Leadership," 27 January 1918 (Exodus 3:1-12, 4:1-12).

24. Fass, The Damned, 23.

25. B. Bailey, speech, "After Victory— What? " (undated).

26. A typical menu: Toasted and buttered English Muffins, cocoa, dark
bread and butter, celery, cheese and baked apples. Bulletin (April
1926), 3.

27. The order in which this sermon (undated like many of Bertha Bailey's
talks) appears in the files suggests that it was made before the XIX
Amendment granting women suffrage was passed. It is the only evi-
dence that Miss Bailey was Abbot's first suffragist principal.

28. Martin, Unrest, 26. Some women of conservative Andover finally
came around to founding a Suffrage League in 191 3, following much
polite debate. They rallied, they paraded (though quietly) through
191 6, by which time most local leagues had combined with the Na-
tional Association, the General Federation of Women's Clubs (a last
hold-out), and numerous male Progressives and Wilsonian Democrats
to push the XIX Amendment through Congress and the states.

29. Vida Scudder and Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, quoted in William H.
Chafe, The American Woman, 1920-1970 (New York, Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1972), 92-93.

30. Memorial Minute, in Trustee Minutes, 23 October 1922.

31. In 1890 there were 10 divorces for each 100 marriage licenses issued;
in 1924, 42.

32. Lewis Terman study, 1938.

33. Quoted in Banner, Women, 145. See also Christina Simmons, "Sexual
Options of the New Woman: the New Sexuality of the 20's," paper
given at the Third Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Bryn
Mawr College, 11 June 1976. Ms. Simmons describes the reification of
psychoanalysis as a prime source of authority in intellectual discourse,
the widespread use of Freudian terms, and the influence of newly re-
ported investigations in the fields of biology and anthropology on the
social expectations and behavior of educated Americans. Judge Ben
Lindsey's Companionate Marriage (1927) was serialized for the masses
in Redbook magazine. Far from being an energy-draining activity, as it
was perceived to be in Victorian times, sexual expression was seen as
increasing physical and psychic power. As Margaret Sanger put it in
her widely read Happiness in Marriage (1926), "to be strongly sexed
means that the life force can suffuse and radiate through the body and
soul. It means radiant energy and force in every field of endeavor."
Quoted in Simmons manuscript, p. 3.

NOTES TO PAGES 2 17-222 533

34. See Fass, The Damned, 120— 121, and chapter 6 in its entirety, "Sexual
Mores in the World of Youth."

35. Many alumnae (a few still simmering) have described this practice.
The most graphic account comes from Alexina Wilkins Talmadge,
'22, whose aunt, wanting to send a bit of home food to her faraway
niece, made her a whole box of beaten biscuits, a Southern specialty
for an Alabama girl who missed Southern food. "I was called into the
office and Miss Bailey said 'Now you have this package and we'll let
you look at it to write and thank whoever sent it to you, but you
can't have the food.' And I said, 'Well thank you very much. I hope
the maids enjoy eating it.' ... I don't know where I found the nerve
to say that." (Interviewed by Beverly Floe, 19 June 1977.)

36. Interview, Frances Flagg Sanborn, 6 November 1976, and with teacher,
4 February, 1975.

37. Courant (January 193 1), 56.

38. Interview, Constance Chipman.

39. Interview, M. B. Smith.

40. Letter to author, 16 April 1976.

41. Letter to author, 29 April 1976.

42. Published in 1907 and quoted in Cremin, Transformation, 109.

43. All quotes from talk on "Manners," undated, about 1923.

44. Letter to author from Cynthia James Tharaud, '32, 8 January 1976.

45. Alumna letter to Jane Carpenter, Bulletin (April 1932), 25.

46. Courant (January 192 1), 33—34.

47. Fass, The Damned, 25.

48. Quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 5.

49. Interview, Helen Allen (Henry) Anderson, '32.

50. Interview, Alan Blackmer, Phillips Academy English Department 1925-
1968, Dean of Faculty 195 5- 1968; and letter to the author, John Barss,
Phillips Academy Physics Department 1923-65, Chairman 1948-65.

51. Bertha Bailey reported proudly in a letter to anxious parents, 28 Oc-
tober 1927, that there would be no danger to Abbot students from the
1927 polio epidemic, in spite of four cases having developed at Phillips,
because "There is ordinarily no communication between the students
of the two schools. We will take further measures to prevent contacts
between them."

52. The age of menarche had decreased about 4 months each decade since
the 1850's when Abbot first began providing day-and-night supervision
for girls and young women.

53. Quoted in Kett, Rites, 224. Puffer's book was published in 191 2 and
introduced by G. Stanley Hall.

54. Alfred E. Stearns, in The Challenge of Youth (Boston, W. A. Wilde,
1923), 159.

$$. Educational Review, February 1914, quoted in Woody, History, I, 513.
Male public school teachers were equally concerned for their image
and their profession. "A boy needs forceful, manly control," read the

534 NOTES TO PAGES 222-225

1904 report of the New York Male Teachers Association in justifying
its proposal that all boys over ten be taught by men. In vain. Pressured
by women's rights and Progressive lobbyists, New York equalized sal-
aries for men and women teachers in 1920, and men nearly ceased ap-
plying to the New York system in protest or resentment.

56. See Claude M. Fuess's schoolboy novel, The Andover Way (Boston,
Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1926), a marvelous story of virility gained.

57. Stearns, Challenge, 28.

58. Ibid., 128.

59. Ibid., 132.

60. Stearns, letter to Hopkins, 23 February 1931, Phillips Archives; also
interview, Philip K. Allen, P.A. '29.

61. Among other sources, interview, George Sanborn, 6 November 1976.
These games had been going on for some time before Phillips Acad-
emy teacher Sanborn began courting Frances Flagg, '26, during calling
hours. Ruth Newcomb, '10, well remembers the high demand for the
calling-parlor's only "bathtub," a window seat where you could sit
right next to your caller until the chaperone noticed and shooed you
into separate chairs.

62. C our ant (February 1932), 3.

63. Interview with E. Barton Chapin, Jr., P.A. '36, 20 December 1976.

64. Phelps, Chapters, 25.

65. In 1 924-1 92 5, students came from 19 different states, China, Japan,
Korea, and British Honduras. The New England states and New York
continued to be most heavily represented.

66. Interview, Abby Castle Kemper, '31, 8 November 1976. Mrs. Alexina
Wilkins Talmadge, '22, originally of Selma, Alabama, confirms the
welcome afforded to the few deep South students who came to Abbot
in her time.

67. According to Jane Sullivan, '31, Miss Bailey forbade admission to
Lawrence day scholars for two years after a series of disturbances
which Abbot girls created on the electric cars that ran south from
Lawrence.

68. At the Trustees' meeting of 3 October 1930, Miss Bailey reported that
the new "Hebrew student . . . seems happy and well-liked."

69. Helen Epler, '24, in Bulletin (April 1930), 15.

70. A few one-year C.P. alumnae dispute the welcome. Jane Sullivan, '31,
remembers these students being considered "poison" at worst to the
close, established school community. "At best you were just there,"
says Miss Sullivan. "The faculty were glad to have us because of the
money," but they certainly didn't put themselves out for the one-year
girls, whose main purpose was college preparation. (Interview, 19 Feb-
ruary 1977.) A minority of faculty feared that one year was simply
not enough for students to gain what Abbot had to offer, or to accus-
tom themselves to the school's routine.

NOTES TO PAGES 225-228 535

71. See especially E. B. Von Weber interview.

72. Miss Chickering became, if anything, more absent-minded with time.
The Class of '29 elected her Secretary of the Navy in its Yearbook,
because "she's so often in a fog." A famous tale of this era describes
her walking past the Draper laundry chute on the way to Chapel,
books in one hand, laundry in the other. Supposedly, she stopped,
deposited her books in the laundry chute, and carried her laundry bag
to the Chapel. This seems far-fetched, but several alumnae swear it's
true, and one remembers seeing her in Chapel that day, holding her
laundry bag in her lap. Interview, E. B. Von Weber.

73. In Adolescence, 562, 561, 589, 533, and 610, the chapter entitled "The
Education of Girls." Hall's book was reprinted three times in its com-
plete and abridged versions before its author's death in 1924. Kett
(Rites, 228, 235), points out that Hall was most influential among par-
ents and teachers, having founded the "child study" movement in the
1880's, and lectured to countless lay audiences, including the National
Congress of Mothers in 1897, where he gave the major address. Psy-
chologists like James, Dewey, and Thorndike grew skeptical of Hall,
and largely ignored him.

74. Harriet Murdock Andersson, '17, letter to author, January 1976.

75. Undated speech cited above, note 13. See also American Quarterly,
December 1975, special issue, "Victorian Culture in America," for an
excellent general reference.

76. It was typical of Abbot faculty to hold off the use of an innovation
like "intelligence" testing until it had been proven in other schools.
Experimental "Progressive" schools— Dalton was one— and adventurous
traditional shops such as the Bryn Mawr School had been testing stu-
dents since the first decade of the century. By 191 8 there were over
100 different standardized achievement tests available and several ver-
sions of mental ability tests. Americans' enthusiasm for the quantitative
led to abuses almost immediately. For example, with the World War
Army classification tests in mind, President George Cutten of Colgate
stated in 1922 that only 15 percent of American youth had IQ's high
enough to profit from college education.

77. Abbot played host to librarians' organizations for at least two confer-
ences; as one of the most extensive libraries to be found in any girls'
school, it was an appropriate and much appreciated site for meetings.
By the mid-twenties the Abbot Library contained 6000 volumes, and
Miss Hopkins' reputation had enlarged as well. She was President of
the New England School Library Association for several years during
her fourteen-year stay at Abbot, and in some demand as a lecturer on
the educational uses of book, periodical, and painting collections. She
left Abbot in 1934 to organize a teaching library at St. Paul's School,
Concord, New Hampshire.

78. Miss Bailey's concern with behavior as the proof of learning suggests

53^ NOTES TO PAGES 228-2 35

she may have read the writings of psychologist Edward L. Thorndike
as well as those of William James.

79. Courant (March 191 8), 38.

80. Lucy Drummond, quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 125.

81. Quotes from Kemper interview. Further data from brief talks with
members of Classes of 1925, '26, and '27 at their 50th reunions. One
1928 graduate who went on to agricultural school says that Abbot
prepared her well in chemistry and geology.

82. See Principal's Report, 1912-15.

83. Undated clipping in Bailey era scrapbook, unpaginated.

84. Courant (January 1922), 35.

85. Interview, Abby Kemper, '31.

86. Kathryn Whittemore Knight, '33, letter to "Dear Abbot Friends," 8
April 1949, Alumnae files.

87. Bulletin (April 1924), 6.

88. See Cremin, Transformation, 189.

89. Bulletin (April 193 1), 9.

90. Courant (June 1929), 19.

91. From Rebekah Chickering's student examination folder.

92. Kett, Rites, 236.

93. Courant (January 1922), 37, 38.

94. Interview, Mary Carpenter Dake, teacher from 1925 to 1945.

95. A small residue of nineteenth-century strictures on women's physical
activity remained through the Bailey era. Miss Bailey only permitted
riding after assuring herself that Mr. Cross at the Salem Street Riding
Academy "took the greatest care in the selection of horses and
grooms." (Principal's Report, 191 2-1 5, p. 13). Most track events short
of shot putting and javelin throwing were part of the array of physical
activities, but high and broad jumping must be practiced only in mod-
eration, and "contests in high or broad jumping are not permitted,"
Miss Bailey assured the Trustees in 191 5 (Principal's Report for 19 12-
15, p. 8). Dancing was always encouraged— single-sex dancing, that is.

96. See Cremin, Transformation, 184.

97. Courant (January 1922), 33.

98. Jean Pond, in Bradford (2nd edition) disputes this, contending that
Bradford began a Cum Laude Chapter under Marion Coates, whose
tenure ended in 1927. Conversation with a Bradford archivist in De-
cember 1976 suggests that the seeming conflict hangs on a question of
definition. Bradford held its first Cum Laude Chapter meeting as an
"honor society" early in 1926 before that society was officially regis-
tered with the national organization. Abbot's Cum Laude Chapter was
chartered on 10 May 1926.

99. Conversation, spring 1969, with a girl wishing to enter an elective for
which 55 upperclassmen had applied.

100. See Kemper interview, 8 November 1976.

NOTES TO PAGES 2 3 6-2 3 8 537

1 01. Two members of 50-year class reunion, 1976.

102. New Year's sermon, 1934.

103. Courant (December 1935), 35, 31. The respect she commanded among
co-religionists outside of Abbot is suggested by her frequent talks to
South Church women's groups and, most dramatically, by an invitation
in the spring of 193 1 from the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions
to join a Commission to travel to the Orient and study and report on
Christian education there. She never did take the trip, being too much
involved with Abbot.

104. This and the following quotations are from B.B.'s handwritten notes
for her Theism course, 1925-26.

105. Miss Bailey kept all the students' answers to this problem folded in
her Theism syllabus.

106. See interview with A. C. Kemper, who did not feel this way but
knew students who did, and for the following incident, conversation
with alumna, Class of 1932, 2 May 1976.

107. Letter to "Dear Abbot Friends," note 86 above.

108. Courant (December 1935), 23.

109. See also Ripley, lecture, 1941.

no. Class Book, 1913, characterization of the Student Council.

in. Among other sources, interview with Frances Flagg Sanborn, '26, 6
November 1976, and a letter from Jane Baldwin to the author, 1975.
Mrs. Sanborn says that Student Government at its best was strong.
Jane Sullivan, '31, remembers Miss Bailey "playing favorites" some-
times, however. One episode in particular continues now and then to
haunt Jane Baldwin '22: "During my senior year when I was president
of Student Government, one of the younger girls, cute and attractive
with great big, soft brown eyes, broke a rule which came under the
category of a report to Miss Bailey. When I asked Miss Bailey what
should be done about the child's invitation to the P.A. prom the fol-
lowing week, Miss Bailey said, 'I leave that entirely up to you, Jane.'
I don't know whether that was for character building for me or just
'passing the buck.' After much agony I told the child she could not
attend the prom. She was shattered and so was I, but eventually she
married that P.A. boy in spite of missing the prom and so my entire
life was not ruined."

112. Edie Damon, '32, to Polly Bullard, '24. Every year from 1922 on, each
President wrote a lengthy set of suggestions and instructions for the
succeeding one.

113. See Mary Carpenter Dake interview (among other sources), and
Courant (December 1935), 35: Rockwell testimonial quoting Miss
Bailey's letter to a girl whose mother had died.

114. There are but a few references in available sources to "Miss Morse,"
whom Burton Flagg termed Miss Bailey's "intimate life friend" (Trea-
surer's Report to Trustees, 2 June 1938.) She died soon after Bertha

538 NOTES TO PAGES 238-242

Bailey came to Abbot. Before this final separation, the two women
had been close companions, often sharing an apartment.

115. There was, as far as can be discerned, only one other person besides
Miss Bailey who knew about this student's condition. Though this ex-
teacher prefers to remain anonymous, she provided a first-hand ac-
count of Miss Bailey's calm and sympathetic handling of the girl and
her parents.

116. Courant (June 1920), 40. The taxicab story was told me by Mrs.
Helen Barss, who was serving as Assistant to Principal Marion Coates
of Bradford at the time (192 1). Mrs. Barss was in the taxicab.

117. E. Boutwell Von Weber interview. This role as organizer for others'
ideas was one Miss Bailey had played for years. W. T. Chase, who
knew her work at Taconic, described her in a letter to Flagg (29 Au-
gust 191 1), as "the balance wheel" of that school, rather than the initi-
ator.

118. Burton Flagg, speaking before the Alumnae Association and Boston
Abbot Club, 8 February 1936.

119. See Carpenter, Abbot, 104. The Infirmary building fund was anony-
mously begun by Professor Taylor's great friend Melville Day, one of
Phillips Academy's major benefactors, who made a $5000 gift with the
condition that the building be named for Taylor's wife, Antoinette
Hall Taylor. The building was completed in the spring of 19 14.

I I . HIGH AND LOW

1. Elizabeth Davis, quoted in Bulletin (November 1924), 10.

2. Figures from U.S. Office of Education, Biennial Survey of Education,
1932-1934, Bulletin No. 2 (1935), 19.

3. Miss Hopkins encouraged faculty and students to leave behind nine-
teenth-century prejudices against the reading of fiction and magazines.
Miss Watson's librarian, the gifted Mabel Bosher, '94, had greatly
helped Abbot over this hump by enlarging the lending library of "good
fiction" originally begun by the students in 1892. Still Courant editors
felt they must warn every girl in 1894 to "guard especially against the
sensational novel. It directs attention from studies [and] indulges a
taste for excitement" (January 1894, 22) and then shuddered in 1897
to think that "never has magazine literature been more alluring than it
is today" (January 1897, 34). But when Miss Bosher made newspaper
subscriptions a regular library responsibility, even these conservative
youngsters could allow that "the daily newspaper is conceded to be a
teacher of morals," besides giving worthy religious, political, and
philosophical news (June 1894, 32).

4. Flora Mason, '89, Fund Chairman, Bulletin (November 1924), 13.

NOTES TO PAGES 242-247 539

5. "Those who will make women of power," added the Alumna Loyalty
Pledge (April 1924, p. 1).

6. A full account of Abbot's Centennial celebration can be found in Jane
Carpenter's Abbot and Miss Bailey and in the Bulletin of November
1929.

7. It is true that Markham Stackpole had been associated with Phillips
from 1907 to 1922 as school minister, but this was not the role in which
he addressed the assembly.

8. Bulletin (November 1929), 29.

9. Ibid., 16.

10. The Trustees entered the new assets in their books as "the Centennial
Fund for Teaching." The word "Endowment" reappeared in 1929
when the Trustees determined to continue the loyalty drive in an at-
tempt to build endowment after the Centennial was over.

11. Sixty percent of the total alumnae body contributed. This total in-
cluded all nongraduates as well as recipients of the Abbot diploma.
The holdouts tended to be older alumnae who had left the school after
a year or so.

12. See letters to Miss Bailey from Dr. Jane Greeley, '84 ,and Marcia East-
man, among others, quoted in Reports prepared for the Trustees meet-
ing, 5 December 1929.

13. This was book value: the market value was considerably greater in
June 1929.

14. Letter to Miss Bailey, quoted in Reports submitted at Trustees' meet-
ing, 5 December 1929.

15. Quoted in Carpenter, Abbot, 131.

16. Page 189 of the first volume of Trustees' records. This was the recon-
vened December Board meeting. The Executive Committee meeting
of 5 December 1929 could not be officially convened either, since only
Miss Bailey and those indefatigable gentlemen Flagg and Stackpole
were present.

17. A brief market recovery was just around the corner: by May 1930 a
few Harvard experts were assuring a grateful nation that the worst was
over. Not till late summer of 1930 was it clear how serious the situa-
tion was.

18. Treasurer's Report (6 March 1930), 8, 10.

19. Executive Committee Minutes, 6 March 1930.

20. Ibid.

21. Bulletin (November 1930), 32.

22. Jane Carpenter's dedication to Burton S. Flagg, The Bailey Years.

23. Treasurer's Report, 1 June 1934.

24. Treasurer's Reports, June 193 1 and 1932. By 1932 the market value of
several Abbot securities had fallen to one fifth of their book value.

25. Biennial Survey (1932- 1933), *9-

54° NOTES TO PAGE 248

26. Interview, 14 March 1977, with Louis Finger, Andover Savings Bank
President 195 8- 1963. Flagg was still quite young when he accom-
plished this in 191 7. It is impossible to detail all the extra duties Flagg
took on, but one example is suggestive: whenever a secretary at Merri-
mack Mutual became engaged, Flagg took her aside and taught her
how to draw up a family budget.

27. See especially Burton Flagg's article, "Serving Two Masters," origin-
ally an address to the Mutual Convention in Savannah, Georgia, pub-
lished in Mutual Insurance Bulletin (November and December 1934),

5-9-

28. Research on Flagg is confounded by the conflicting views one hears
from townspeople. It is not so hard to learn what he did: of the eight
citizens contacted, each from a different segment of the Community,
both his friends and his critics agree on this, and likewise agree on the
practical importance to Abbot of his business and town connections.
The effect on Abbot of the image he presented is far harder to calcu-
late. Humility is in order.

29. The only clue to this invitation is the copy of an undated letter Flagg
wrote— refusing election— to Frederick Harlan Page, President of the
Andover Theological Seminary (later Andover-Newton Theological
School) from 1928 through the 1940's. There is no record in the
Andover-Newton Trustees' minutes of invitations to prospective Board
members tendered and refused, only of invitations accepted. Thus the
exact date of Flagg's honor cannot be known.

30. Anne Flagg was also an accomplished, generous person, though her
influence was much more quietly exercised than was her husband's.
She was a Trustee of Danvers Mental Hospital, active in the November
Club, and in South Church where she was both deaconess for many
years and president of several Church societies. The hostess and the
house at 22 School Street were considered worthy to provide hospi-
tality for five headmasters who came to celebrate Phillips' Sesquicen-
tennial.

31. Trustee Minutes, 30 June 1940.

32. This move caused not a little comment in the town: a man of Flagg's
stature and comparative wealth becoming a $2.00 taxpayer? The Abbot
Trustees' rejoinder: "he deserves it." (Louis Finger interview.) Flagg's
frugality was legend. When on business in Boston or New York, he
could rarely bring himself to take a taxi, no matter how inconvenient
the subway. He made croquet wickets for his children out of the
hoops of his mother's worn-out skirts. After his death in 1971, friends
who helped clean out his house found an entire storage room filled
with nested cardboard cartons, scraps of string, and carefully folded
paper bags. This very conservatism in personal spending was (in part)
what gave him the wherewithal to be so generous to others— such ac-

NOTES TO PAGES 2 5 0-2 5 I 541

tions as supporting deserving young men in college, providing mainte-
nance jobs to Kennebunkport neighbors during the worst of the
Depression even when they didn't need doing. Louis Finger, interview;
Frances Flagg Sanborn, letter to the author, i August 1977.

33. I am indebted to Barton and Melville Chapin for many of their recol-
lections about Flagg's appearance and manner. In almost every case
their memories have been confirmed by other observers also, including
Adeline M. Wright, William Doherty, and Louis Finger.

34. Interview with Mary Carpenter Dake.

35. See interview with Eleanor Tucker, July 1975, and with Frances Flagg
Sanborn, '26, 6 November 1976.

36. Bulletin (May 1936), 7.

37. Treasurer's Report, 3 December 1931.

38. OI E3>IKNOYMENOI (The Achievers), Worcester Academy Bulle-
tin, ca. 1937, p. 90. See also interview with William Doherty, 1 March
1977. Doherty says that Phillips Headmaster Alfred Stearns and An-
dover High School Principal Nate Hamblin were also part of the
group.

39. Interview, 1 March 1977. Doherty's information dates in part from his
thirty-nine-year tenure as School Committee member beginning in
1935. One of Doherty's teacher-friends had the job of quietly inform-
ing new teachers of this "requirement." Confirmed by Frederick S.
Allis, Andover School Committee member 1956-59, and in part by
Adeline M. Wright, elementary school teacher in Andover 193 7-1 976.
The year before being permanently hired (shortly after Flagg resigned
from the School Committee), Mrs. Wright was approached by Super-
intendent Henry Sanborn, who asked, "By the way, where do you go
to church?" The answer was "South Church." His rejoinder: "Well,
that's fine then." She had heard talk of the old Smart & Flagg require-
ment, but said that in her day it no longer obtained. Pressures on
Andover teachers were far kinder than those brought to bear in Law-
rence, where Catholic Church membership was one prerequisite for
all teacher candidates and a $2000 payment to three School Committee
members was the other, according to two Andover School Committee
members, and five teachers who applied for jobs in both systems be-
tween 1930 and 1952.

40. William Doherty, 1 March 1977, and Louis Finger, 14 March 1977,
the day before his sudden death. Doherty was more friendly with
rival insurance brokers than with Flagg, and soon to become involved
in the insurance business himself. Finger, Flagg's long-time friend and
colleague, served as full-time Vice President and Treasurer of the
Savings Bank 1 934-1 958 and was President after Flagg's resignation in
1958 (until 1963). Philip K. Allen, Trustee of Abbot 1948-1973, says
of this "patriarch of the town" and the tales both likely and unlikely:

542 NOTES TO PAGES 2 5 I — 2 5 3

"I'd heard the stories told by those who envied his enormous success.
I just put them on the back burner."

41. Irene R. Draper, quoted in 50th Anniversary Tribute to Burton S.
Flagg, p. 30.

42. Treasurer's Report, 6 March 1936. Flagg reported to the Trustees that
Miss Helen Robinson, Latin teacher, was "recovering steadily," but
would be absent at least six weeks. "In view of her mental and physical
condition, I took occasion, as Treasurer to assure her that . . . there
would be no discounting of her compensation while she was away
from school in attendance upon recovery, with the hope that she
would secure full relaxation and added strength. I trust the Trustees
will approve of this action." At this point, how could the Trustees
refuse? It is interesting that Flagg took this kind of job onto himself
with no evident effort to consult either the Executive Committee or
Esther Comegys, then Acting Principal of the school. Apparently, his
colleagues were glad to have him do it.

43. Margaret Van Voorhis, 14 December 1947.

44. Interview, Melville Chapin.

45. Treasurer's Report, 5 December 1929.

46. Ibid., 4 March 1938.

47. Conversation with F. F. Sanborn, 31 January 1977. There are many
other evidences of Flagg's attitude, including his memorial of Lauren
Dearborn to the Trustees on 27 January 1921 as a "master workman,"
of Michael Scannell to the faculty on 2 March 1933 as a "noble and
beautiful spirit."

48. Treasurer's Report, 6 June 1930.

49. I am grateful to Wayne A. Frederick and Professor Roger F. Murray
for advice in judging the character of Flagg's investments. Though
small, the endowment helped to keep tuition from rising even higher
than it did in the mid-twenties: Flagg calculated that Abbot's costs
per pupil were three times as great in 1926 as they were in Miss
Means's day, but tuition only doubled (from $600 to $1200) for
boarders. Day student tuition went from $100 to $300; both tuitions
rose again, to $1400 and $350, the following year. It is interesting that
in the year that Flagg made his analysis (1926), national public school
costs per pupil averaged $102.05, an(^ tnat t^ie increase in Abbot costs
so far outdistanced the cost of living, even when schools' needs are
made a primary criterion for "living" expenses. See above, Chapter
9; also consumer price index figures, Historical Statistics, Series E,
135-186. Abbot's endowment at this time was larger than that of many
boys' schools of similar size, including Pomfret, Taft, Deerfield, St.
Marks, and Hotchkiss.

50. "50th Anniversary Tribute to Burton S. Flagg," compiled for a cele-
bration which took place in 1956, p. 30.

51. Treasurer's Report, 6 June 1930.

52. April 1924, p. 9. Jane Sullivan, '31, who later became Alumnae Secre-

NOTES TO PAGES 253-255 543

tary, says that Abbot's annuity plan was one of the first among all sec-
ondary schools in the nation.

53. Ibid., 28 May 1940. It is possible that Flagg spread Abbot's deposits
around to avoid any appearance of collusion with the Andover Savings
Bank. Some deliberate division of deposits was necessary after the es-
tablishment of Federal Deposit Insurance in 1933, but Flagg followed
the practice for years before FDIC began insuring deposits up to
$5000. By 1934 the Andover Savings Bank held $46,000 of Abbot's total
$178,000 of savings bank deposits (26 percent). The amount did not
afterward increase, even though the percentage did (to 40 percent in
1937, for example) as Flagg renewed his search of the securities market
for bargains.

54. See Treasurer's Report, 6 December 1934.

55. Flagg cautiously bought and sold securities throughout the Depres-
sion, always looking for a sound bargain. In spring 1931, for example,
he sold a $3000 Pennsylvania Light and Power bond and bought a
$3000 Pennsylvania Power and Light bond, "an even exchange for a
stronger bond" (Treasurer's Report, 5 June 193 1), though few but
Flagg could know the difference. For the most part, however, the
1929-30 portfolio was sound enough to be worth hanging on to. Of
the 35 bonds Abbot held in 1930, only 7 had been replaced by 1932,
and only 4 more by 1934. Abbot's 16 stock holdings did not change at
all between 1930 and 1932; in the next two years only 3 purchases and
one sale of stock were made.

56. Treasurer's Reports and Frances Flagg Sanborn, conversation of 31
January 1977. A "staunch Republican," Flagg had plenty of company.
In 1928 almost every Abbot student "voted" for Republican, Protes-
tant Hoover over Democrat, Catholic Al Smith (Bulletin, November
1932, 14, 15), doubtless a mirror of their parents' political leanings, and
supported Hoover again in 1932. See also interview with Alexina Wil-
kins Talmadge, '22 19 June 1977, by Beverly Floe.

57. Public school teachers had also made gains: the average U.S. teacher
made approximately $1500 per year in 1926, whereas in 191 5 it had
been $543 ($328 in the South for white teachers, about $160 for
blacks). Inflation had canceled out about half of the increase, however.
Rural teachers fared worst (their high school salary average was nearly
$1000 lower than that of urban teachers); the Abbot Trustees did not
use them as a basis of comparison.

58. Treasurer's Report (5 December 1940), 6.

59. In "Serving Two Masters," article in the Mutual Insurance Bulletin
(November-December 1934), 8.

60. See Treasurer's Reports, 2 March 1934, 27 May 1935; and Flagg, ibid.,
6-9.

61. Treasurer's Report, 7 December 1933.

62. Principal's Reports to Trustees, 10 November 1930, 5 June 193 1.

63. See Treasurer's Reports, 5 December 1935, 3 December 1936.

544 NOTES TO PAGES 255-258

64. Treasurer's Report, 3 March 1933.

6$. Among other tuition reductions, the Trustees established three regional
tuition grants ($400 each) especially for the daughters of alumnae, or
for candidates recruited by alumnae, to encourage alumnae efforts.
Alumnae continued to give to the Alumnae Fund throughout the De-
pression. (There were 69 new donors in 1933.) Since half of the Fund
supported the Emergency Tuition Fund (the other half went to the
alumnae office and Bulletin), some alumnae were in effect paying for
others' daughters to attend A.bbot.

66. See alumnae records for 1932-35. Of the 80 percent of alumnae who
answered the alumnae office's questionnaire item on parent's occupa-
tion, 18 percent had fathers who were physicians or lawyers; 20 per-
cent were involved in relatively small and essential local businesses
(such as "apple growing"). Twenty-four percent were working for
or running large national concerns or were bankers and brokers and
presumably vulnerable in ways the above were not. Seventeen percent
were unclassifiable (e.g. "manufacturer"). See also survey made by
Tamblyn and Brown in 1937-38, Report to Trustees, p. 32. This pro-
fessional fundraising firm concluded that Abbot had few if any chances
to draw on "outstanding wealth."

67. Treasurer's Report, 3 March 1933.

68. USCOE, Bulletins, 1934-1936.

69. Bulletin (November 1933), 22.

70. The competition worsened as the decade progressed. Gone were the
days when nearly every C.P. Senior could be certain of admission to
her college of first choice. (See Principal's Report, October 1926.) Miss
Bailey described to the Trustees how difficult it was to help the one-
year C.P. Specials of 1935 gain admission. Several of them waited all
summer before finally being accepted. "It does not seem to me either
necessary or desirable to go through such a period of strain in order to
be 'educated,' " she wrote. (Principal's Report, 4 October 1935). At the
same time, hard-pressed small colleges were compounding the schools'
enrollment problems by "raiding the secondary schools" for 17-year-
olds able to do their freshman year work, as Boston's Porter Sargent
wrote Flagg. (Letter, 6 January 1933. Sargent was "School Advisor"
for many parents seeking private school placement for their children.)
Their success is borne out in U.S. Office of Education figures on post-
graduate pupils in private schools. There were 666$ in 1928 and only
2458 in 1933.

71. USCOE, Bulletins, 1 930-1 934. Constance Chipman, in her Report to
the Trustees, 5 October 1934, wrote that "the crowded high schools,
and premature social life fostered there," were among her most per-
suasive arguments in her drive for new enrollees among alumnae fam-
ilies and acquaintances.

NOTES TO PAGES 258-266 545

72. Jane Sullivan, interview with Ruth Newcomb; and interview with
Abby Kemper.

73. Student Government records, 1933, 1934.

74. Field Secretary's Report to the Trustees, 4 December 1934.

75. Treasurer's Report, 1 June 1934.

76. Ibid., 1 March 1934.

77. Quoted in Courant (June 1932), 46.

78. Letter, 8 January 1976, from Cynthia James Tharaud, '32.

79. In Report to Trustees, 5 December 1935.

80. Undated speech given to the Wellesley alumnae, "Preparing the Un-
dergraduate." The context suggests 1934.

81. Mary Crane, Abbot Principal 1955-1966, in conversation 29 April 1977.

82. Eleanor Wells, '36, Courant (December 1935), 2.

83. Ibid., 9.

84. "Our Miss Bailey" by Frances Swazey Parker, '86, Bulletin (May 1935),
11.

85. Principal's Report, 5 December 1935.

86. Kemper, interview.

87. Chipman, interview.

12. SINGULAR WOMEN

1. In conversation, December 1976. All further references to Marguerite
Hearsey's statements not otherwise attributed come either from con-
versations held with the author or from written responses to the au-
thor's questions made between March 1975 and December 1977.

2. Alumnae and faculty recollections.

3. See especially Christmas sermon, 1950, and prayers on VE Day, 1945,
Abbot Archives. Many alumnae speak of how moving they found
MCH's prayers, and mourn the fact that so few of them have been
preserved.

4. Letter from Mary Gorton Darling, '86, to Burton Flagg, 23 April 1936.
The letter described the despondent gatherings of her classmates in the
winter of 1936 and the elation they all felt at MCH's appointment.
Mary Darling lived near Hollins and knew her work there. She told
Flagg she wished her husband had not sunk all his pre-cash "gold into
N.Y., N.H. & Hartford stocks and U.S. Steal [sic]" and thus prevented
the Darlings from making a whopping contribution to Abbot.

5. M. C. Dake, interview, and letter, 27 March 1977; news release April
1935 and recommendations collected by RadclirTe College from Sophie
Hart, Professor of English Composition, Wellesley, and Professors
Robert J. Manner and Karl Young, Yale University.

6. Alumnae and faculty recollections.

54<$ NOTES TO PAGES 2 6 6-2 J I

7. Melville Chapin, Alice C. Sweeney, and M. C. Hearsey, in conversa-
tion or interview, or both.

8. At least three of those leading lights of Andover who were well aware
of Bertha Bailey hardly remember MCH at all. Interviews with Louis
Finger and William Doherty, among others.

9. Alumnae and faculty recollections. The dates of Miss Sweeney's ser-
vice on the faculty: September 192 1— June 1922, substituted for Re-
bekah Chickering; September 1922— December 1922, substituted for
Martha H. Howey. September 1935— June 1956, member of English
Department, Chairman 1938-56. Director of Studies, 1938-56. Acting
Principal, 1946-47.

10. Letters to parents from ACS 12 February 1948 and 25 February 1943.

11. Miss Hearsey became a director of the Headmistresses Association just
two years after arriving at Abbot; she was later nominated for Presi-
dent, but declined. She became director of the NAPSG in 1940, and
was President for two years during the War. A colleague from a
Maryland school remembers the awe in which she was held by the
other heads. "She was the intellectual— she was too busy with her com-
mittee work to have a drink with us. But such a nice person!" MCH
was also a member of the committee that edited the College Entrance
Examination Handbook after 1944. She gave a Commencement address
or two each year, and was a member of the NAPSG School and Col-
lege Conference Committee.

12. Interviews, Alan Blackmer, Louis Finger; conversation, John M. Kem-
per (1970), among others.

13. Alumnae and faculty recollections.

14. Interview, Alan Blackmer.

15. Alice C. Sweeney, A Brief Account of the Years When Miss Hearsey
was Principal of Abbot Academy and Selections from her Speeches
(privately published, 1957), 36.

16. Interview, M. Chapin.

17. Interview, C. Chipman. Miss Hearsey affectionately puts it this way:
"He grew more leisurely in his visits to the school as he grew older-*-
he was full of anecdotes. His love for the school and his knowledge of
every detail of it inside and out [were] phenomenal."

18. Letter from MCH, 9 February 1950.

19. Faculty, alumnae, and Trustee recollections. Interview, Melville Chapin,
Barton Chapin, Jr. Miss Hearsey served on the Executive Committee,
the Committee on Educational Policy, and the Committee for Planning
of the Future.

20. Interview, M. Chapin.

21. Quoted in Principal's Report, 8 April 1949.

22. Katherine Stirling Dow, '$5- Her recollection is one of many similar
ones offered by alumnae of the Hearsey years' religion program. From

NOTES TO PAGES 2 J 2-2 J 6 547

all accounts, the reverends Winthrop Richardson and Graham Baldwin
were equally successful.

23. Twenty-seven of the thirty-six 1936 Seniors were CP students; seven
others went on to professional schools and just one finished her edu-
cation with Abbot in the time-honored Academic Course manner.
Subsequent years show the same pattern.

24. Private schools in general gained 12.5 percent in enrollment over
1936-37, and Abbot's gain was just about proportionate. Miss Hearsey
reported the school at "maximum capacity" with all available cottages
in use in the fall of '37 (Report to Trustees, 16 October 1937), though,
as will be seen, the Principal's idea of "maximum capacity" changed ac-
cording to the number of good applicants available. The rise failed to
continue for 1938-39 after the national economic relapse, but Abbot
held its own, losing just four students for that year and staying at 160
for the following two years. Enrollment began to rise again in 1940-41.
By comparison, a survey of girls' schools reported by Flagg in succes-
sive December Treasurer's Reports from 1937 to 1939 noted that the
percentage of schools with full or near-full attendance fell from 68 in

1937 to 53 in J939-

25. Hale Sturges, Chairman of the Phillips Academy French department,
points out that it is difficult to make precise comparison of texts used
in the nineteenth century and those read today, because so many of
the earlier, more complex texts were not read as literature but labo-
riously decoded line by line, much as Latin or Greek texts tend to be.

26. Principal's Reports, 10 June 1937 and 2 December 1937.

27. Faculty recollections.

28. Martha Hale Shackford, 9 November 1934, in recommendation of
MCH.

29. Bulletin (October 1938), 8.

30. Faculty recollections.

31. Sweeney, Brief Account, 16-1 7.

32. Alumnae recollections, and for the most positive comments of all,
Student Council President letters sent to MCH in honor of her retire-
ment, spring 1955.

33. Two Student Council secretaries' accounts of typical Student Council
meetings: January 11, 1938— "Instances of flirting with clerks . . . were
mentioned. Miss Carpenter will speak with her corridor." October 21,
1942— "Pett called a meeting to say that Gym suits must be worn for
tennis; more speed in getting to chapel in morning; no sweaters in the
diningroom; no suits or reversibles to Vespers, also no suits to lectures.
Table manners, running in corridors and confusion in Tiffin room
brought up."

34. Principal's Report, 2 March 1934.

35. Opening Chapel speech, 30 September 1937.

548 NOTES TO PAGES 277-284

36. Faculty recollections.

37. Circle (1939), 74.

38. Recollections of a Homestead resident, Class of '47, and of a later
alumna, '62.

39. Alumnae recollections.

40. Circle (1940), 57.

41. "Abbot in Our Day." Account written in the winter of 1976.

42. Alumnae and faculty recollections. "You are always running," Miss
Sweeney observed to Beverly Brooks. "There's no other way I can do
everything I want to do," was the reply.

43. Undated memo from MCH (probably late 1940's) which describes her
own and her teachers' largely futile attempts to help an unstable stu-
dent during the school year, and the girl's resort to summer psycho-
therapy. MCH wonders in print whether Abbot's resources are ade-
quate to such students' needs, but there is no discernible action to
create new ones. See also Principal's Report, 8 December 1953.

44. Tribute written for Flagg's 80th birthday.

45. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (New York, Harcourt, Brace,
1929), 91.

46. For this and the foregoing quote, MCH in Opening Chapel services, 26
September 1940 and 24 September 1952. Many other Chapel talks reit-
erate the theme.

47. Beverly Brooks Floe, '41; Carol Hardin Kimball, '53 (who arrived at
the very end of this "little golden age"); Mary Howard Nutting, '40;
Genevieve Young, '48 (Alumna Trustee).

48. This is not to say that all schools involved in the Eight Year Study
abandoned their traditions. Winsor School took rich advantage of the
stimulation offered by the requisite visits to far-flung laboratory
schools, the faculty work to devise alternative curricula, and the em-
phasis on projects and field trips, without sacrifice of its emphasis on
basic academic excellence. (Valeria Knapp, interview, and recollec-
tions of a member of the Headmistresses Association who observed the
results of the Eight Year Study.)

49. Interview, A. C. Sweeney.

50. Cremin, Transformation, 184-185.

51. Principal's Report, 16 April 1948.

52. See Barbara Moore Pease, '12, to her granddaughter, 6 May 1974, and
other alumnae recollections.

53. Trustee Minutes, 7 March 1905, following Draper's death.

54. See Principal's Report, 10 June 1937. "Pure Bulfinch!" exclaimed Larson
on his first visit to the Abbot Chapel.

55. Trustees' Proposal to Harkness, May 1938; typed carbon in Abbot
Archives.

56. See also Courant (June 1938), 5, 6, for an optimistic student view of
these radical building plans.

NOTES TO PAGES 284-288 549

57. Harkness did make some small donations to Lady Margaret Hall Col-
lege in Oxford University (1930) and to Barnard and Sarah Lawrence
Colleges (1939), but his only other gifts to secondary schools were
made to boys' prep schools. The bulk of his money went to Exeter,
Yale, and Harvard.

58. In one article, (Bulletin, May 1941) 3, Miss Hearsey quoted A. E.
Housman to the Dear Old Girls to invoke the Abbot of their time:

That is the land of lost content
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

59. Report to Trustees from Tamblyn and Brown, 8 December 1938.

60. Quoted by Flagg in Treasurer's Report to Trustees, 8 December 1938.

61. Letter to Flagg reported to Trustees 7 December 1939.

62. Charles Cutler, Trustee, to Miss Hearsey, 18 March 1939; also Alum-
nae Office staff recollections.

63. Fund Office personnel decided, as they mailed off the 8 percent pay-
ments year after year of Mrs. Emily Abbey Gill's long life, that she
was not so eccentric after all.

64. Treasurer's Report 2 June 1938, 2-3.

65. Engineer's Report, quoted in Treasurer's Report, 28 May 1941.

66. This was manifestly an excellent buy in the money market, but it
should be noted that all money was fairly cheap in 1941. Loans aver-
aged 2-3 percent interest.

67. Principal's Report, 7 December 1940.

68. See Principal's Report, 28 May 1942.

69. Interest in the Current Events elective and in foreign affairs debates
was reported at an all-time low in June 1938. Principal's Report, June
1938; also Courant, 1937-39.

70. Principal's Report, 8 December 1938.

71. Circle, 1940, accounts of QED discussions, 61; Courant articles; Bulle-
tin, October 1939, description of student's "desperate desire to be of
service." p. 9. In 1940-41 Miss Hearsey and several faculty worked to
raise money for Chinese Relief, and Fidelio sang for Chinese Hospitals
on the radio.

72. Bulletin (May 1940), 4.

73. Letter to "Dear Madam," Abbot Academy, Andover, Massachusetts,
from Mrs. June Peel, formerly of City of Bath Girls School, 20 Jan-
uary 1976.

74. Letter from alumna, Class of '41, confirmed by other alumnae recol-
lections.

75. A year later, Reverend Winthrop Richardson went to California and
enlisted in the Navy.

76. Faculty and alumnae recollections.

77. Alumna reminiscence, dated October 1977.

550 NOTES TO PAGES 288-2QO

78. Alumnae recollections. The only printed record of this incident is a
brief Courant reference to the students' fund-raising campaign, and
the 1 94 1 Circle characterization of "Courant' 's courageous editor" B.
Brooks. B. B. Floe recalls few of her own activities, but classmates re-
member them vividly.

79. Bulletin (October 1942), 3.

80. Ibid.

81. Principal's Reports, 3 April 1941 (description of NAPSG meetings),
and 7 October 1942. See also MCH Opening Chapel Speech, Septem-
ber 1942:

Art and music and philosophy and literature, Latin and Greek and
even history . . . have been suspended in the colleges for men.
They will have to be sustained largely by women. . . . Here, in
this peaceful spot . . . you are fighting to preserve and pass on
what civilization holds dear.

82. Dewey, quoted by Cremin, Transformation, 220; see also 218-219.

83. Cremin, Transformation, 155.

84. Recollections of alumnae, Class of '41. For students' continuing sense
of the seriousness of these years, see Student Council Presidents' letters
to MCH and all Courants, 1941-1946.

85. Presidents' letters to MCH. Four fifths of all students had summer
jobs during the war years.

86. Christian Science Monitor, 21 August 1943.

87. In one year of the War, the Smith College appointment bureau got
requests for 720 teachers— and could fill only twenty of them.

88. The one exception to the trend was the year 1942-43. Unfortunately,
no precise accounting of the ratio between applicants and places is
available; one must rely on general statements made in the Principal's
and Treasurer's Reports to the Trustees. Too, one must remember in
assessing these matters that most girls' boarding schools of the 1940's
tried to have all applications for the following school year completed
by mid-December; thus a school full of prospective students in March
was not such an accomplishment then as it is in the 1970's.

89. Lower, at least, than Abbot's most direct competitors: Shipley, Dana
Hall, Ethel Walker, Miss Porter's at Farmington, Miss Hall's and Con-
cord. Northfield School's tuition in 1948 was $1050; Putney School's
was $1400.

90. Miss Hearsey reported in May 1943 tnat several scholarship students'
families would need no scholarship help the following year.

91. The author's general reservations about "intelligence" tests have var-
ious sources, but one must be especially careful with the differing re-
sults obtained when different test forms are used for different years,
as they were in the case of the American Council Psychological Ex-
aminations administered in 1938 and 1940. (The "new form" was in use

NOTES TO PAGES 290-293 55 1

in 1940). See also Miss Hearsey's reservations as expressed in her
Principal's Report, 10 December 1954.

92. Principal's Report, 5 October 1944.

93. Principal's Report, 10 June 1946.

94. The Trustees discussed what impact this might have on Abbot, but
"no conclusion was reached." Executive Committee Minutes, 18 Jan-
uary 1946.

95. World Federalists who doubled as C our ant editors spread their views
on the magazine's editorial pages in 1947-48, and a small group pub-
lished a mimeo rag called Peace A Paper in 1948-49.

96. Principal's Report, 17 May 1945.

97. Alice Sweeney opposed the idea of a Parents' Day because it smacked
of "selling the school," a process which she considers a travesty of
good education. (Interview).

98. Alumnae recollections, 1941, 1948.

99. Principal's Report, 5 March 1943, and p. 3 of 2 March 1944, on the
Headmistresses Association and NAPSG subcommittee and plenary
meetings. The Brearley School, the Winsor School, the Bryn Mawr
School (all of them day schools), the Friends academies, and North-
field under Abbot alumna Mira Wilson (Northfleld Principal from
1929 to 1952) were among the few girls' schools to admit blacks. Fac-
ulty at Putney and other outspoken progressive schools scorned most
private schools' racism.

100. Fuess in letter to Winslow Ames, 21 January 1944.

1 01. Since the Japanese student lost all access to her parents' funds, Abbot
kept her on at full scholarship, and two of her classmates— with their
parents— found money to support her freshman year at Barnard Col-
lege. The Youngs were introduced to Abbot by Mrs. Minna Calhoun,
Abbot mathematics teacher, whose husband was held in a Japanese in-
ternment camp in the Philippines throughout the war. Their original
family name was Yun, but their father had dropped it when he left
China.

102. Letter, September 17, 1976.

103. After the war, Oxford gratefully returned Abbot's hospitality and
that of other schools which had taken dons' children by inviting the
principal of each host school to a special summer session held at Ox-
ford in 1947, all expenses paid. Miss Hearsey could not go, but Eleanor
Tucker represented Abbot in her stead.

104. Principal's Report, 2 December 1943; also 2 March 1944, and 17 May
1945. This was in clear contrast to the Bailey era, when with a few
exceptions, the administration and Trustees simply awarded whatever
monies were necessary to fill the school.

105. Andrea Warburg (Kaufman), '40.

106. Beth Chandler Warren, '55, interview, 6 March 1977. The lecturer

552 NOTES TO PAGES 293-303

was apparently Estelle M. Osborne, an instructor at New York Uni-
versity when she came to Abbot in 1948-49.

107. Principal's Report, 8 April 1949.

108. Reported ibid. The one young man who did come to visit for an
evening was carefully seated at the Emma Willard faculty table for
dinner.

109. See especially Principal's Report (7 December 1944), 2.

no. An example from MCH's commencement address to Williston Acad-
emy:

A southern friend of mine tells a story of a young colored girl
who was working for her and who, she discovered, had never
been to school. She persuaded her to go, and made the necessary
arrangements. A short time later she met the girl and asked her
how things were going— how she liked school. "Well, ma'am, not
too good. The teacher she say 2 and 2 am for, but La, Miss Kate,
what am dat to me?"

The contrast between the attitude expressed in that remark with
the attitude of this audience of young people needs no elaboration.
There is no need to impress upon a group like this the value of
learning. There is no danger of such indifference on your part . . .
(Manuscript in MCH's handwriting, Abbot Archives, undated.)

in. Alice Sweeney, 23 May 1977, in conversation.

V. The More Things Change, 1945- 196 3

13. TEACHERS AND STUDENTS AND HOW THEY GREW

i. Miss Hearsey admired Mildred Thompson, Dean of Vassar College,
and listened with care to her address to the Headmistresses Association
on the U.S. Army's experience with language teaching in 1945. The
account of prewar and wartime French at both Abbot and Phillips
Academies derives from conversations with Beverly Floe, '41, Barbara
Brown Hogan, '40, and Stephen Whitney, Phillips Academy French
teacher, 1936-77 (Chairman, 1969-73).

2. Phillips teacher recollection.

3. T. S. Matthews, Great Tom: Notes Toward the Definition of T. S.
Eliot (New York, Harper and Row, 1974), 150.

4. Interviews, Alan and Josephine Blackmer, alumnae and teacher recol-
lections, and Matthews, 148, 149. Emily Hale's Andover years may
have been an especially suspenseful time in her life, because Eliot's
wife Vivienne finally died in 1947, and it was eight years before TSE
surprised almost everyone by marrying his secretary at age sixty-eight.

NOTES TO PAGES 303-306 553

Only then did Emily Hale's "platonic affair" with him end. (See ibid.,
148-151.)

5. Matthews says it is not known whether Eliot actually altered those
poems and verse-plays which he showed to her in manuscript follow-
ing their discussions of them; but one Andover friend whom she had
known since her young womanhood in Chestnut Hill and who visited
with her at least once a week during her Andover years is certain
that the versions he showed her were often early drafts, and that he
did incorporate many of her suggestions. Her letters from him, once
opened, may tell.

6. Matthews says Emily Hale retired "unwilling" from Abbot at age 65
(ibid., 150). An Andover friend vaguely remembers some tiff with
Mary Crane, MCH's successor, but M. Crane remembers no such thing.
Miss Hale's life had changed the year before, when Eliot married his
secretary: "Thus ended Emily's precarious happiness," says Matthews
(ibid.). We do not know how Eliot's remarriage affected her Abbot
career.

7. Ibid., 142. Aunt Agatha functions as wise, nurturing aunt to Harry, the
principal character, and as years-ago lover to Harry's father. Eliot
seems to have incorporated some of his own central qualities in each
man. (Harry was "Eliot's mouthpiece," says Matthews, p. 127.) Was
Emily Hale— Aunt Agatha all these things to Eliot?

8. Interview, '56 alumna.

9. Interview, Mile. Arosa.

10. May Sarton, The Small Room (New York, W. W. Norton, 1961),
203-204; interview, Beth Warren, '55.

11. See also Beth Warren, '55, for a student's perception of the same phe-
nomenon.

12. Marie Baratte, in conversation, December 1976.

13. Alumnae recollections, 1938-48.

14. Eleanor Tucker, interview. Miss Tucker's chemistry lab under the
Chapel in Abbot Hall was one of the few places in the school where
Howe's covert practicing could be heard.

15. Letter, E. M. Thomas to SML, 18 March 1975.

16. This and subsequent quotes from E. M. Thomas, interview, 5 Decem-
ber 1976.

17. This did not mean listening in on calls (though alumnae are sure that
one teacher did so) but receiving the call and ascertaining whether a
male voice went with a Phillips beau or a brother at college before
transferring the call to the Abbot student.

18. Ellen Eaton to Philena McKeen, 30 January 1879.

19. Interview, E. M. Thomas. Genevieve Young, '48, who loved Abbot,
also remembers her own and her friends' perception of the faculty as
"remote beings"— but accepted this as natural.

554 NOTES TO PAGES 306-307

20. Alumnae recollections, including about half the discontented alumnae
queried on this point. When asked how she used her free time, one
early sixties student responded as follows:

I ate. I gained twenty pounds a year. It was disgusting. Lots of
times I felt there was nothing to do but eat. We would get a
gallon of ice cream from down town and a bottle of chocolate
sauce and just gorge ourselves on Saturday afternoon. I had a real
need to do things with my hands, but there was nothing to do.
The art studio was closed on weekends. There were no crafts, no
photography. So we ate instead. I also went on walks. I took all
the approved walks and a lot of unapproved ones as well. Our
Senior year, we'd sign out for a two-hour walk and go swim in
Pomps Pond in our underwear. That was great fun.

21. Letter to the author, 7 January 1976. A '64 graduate "tried out all the
churches in Andover" to relieve Sunday boredom. "That Christian
Science business kind of scared me because they really tried to convert
me," she says.

22. Letters found in a file box in a secret compartment after Sherman
House was closed in June 1977: dated June '63, June '51, June '58,
undated (order and cast of characters suggest about 1953), and June
'58. Because one young teacher who arrived in 1958 and lived in Sher-
man House confirms the co-ed roof parties of her earliest years at
Abbot, the references in the letters to these affairs seem credible. For
twenty-six years, Sherman House residents followed the injunction of
those 1950-51 students who spent three hours carving out the space
under the floor boards: "DON'T TELL ANYONE." One finally did
tell the author in winter '76 when she heard the news that Sherman
would be closed, and the letters came to the Archives in 1977, some
water-soaked, some mouse-eaten, but all readable. The author found a
shiny new marijuana pipe in the hidden compartment after a Sherman
student had moved the letters for safe -keeping in June 1977, and for
all she knows, it's still there.

"Hatchet" is Miss Mildred Hatch, Latin teacher and (most impor-
tantly here) Director of Residence during the 1950's.

23. Principal's Report, 9 December 1949. In 1958, Mary Crane, Miss Hear-
sey's successor, wrote of the "child-centered families of the mid-
twentieth century", and the difficulties their self-centered offspring
caused Abbot. Principal's Report, 5 February 1958.

24. Sylvia Thayer, '54. Sylvia was president of the Student Council in the
year that the council decided to examine the basic question, "If all
rules were abolished, what would be necessary to acheive a good com-
munity life?" They went at the problem hammer and tongs, with
Miss Hearsey sitting in now and then, and finally decided on a set of
standards for behavior fairly consistent with Abbot's traditional rules.
On these, they and the faculty eventually built a new, slightly different

NOTES TO PAGES 307-314 555

student handbook and rule system, and a continuing plan for the
counseling of ninth and tenth graders by Student Council members.

25. The '55 graduate is Katherine Stirling Dow; the older alumna is Doro-
thy Bigelow Arms, 'n, (letter to the author, spring 1976).

26. Conversation with the parent of the girl (the parent was Abbot '23);
Alice Sweeney, interview. One Catholic girl, on the other hand, told
Miss Sweeney that she particularly enjoyed Bible class. "Dr. Sidon
thinks just the way I do," she said.

27. See Courant (May 1948), 7. This is the first recorded protest. The
hymn was sung through 1973, in spite of protests, few of them serious.

28. E. M. Thomas; alumnae of '54, '64.

29. The years 1952, 1956, 1959, 1962.

30. Interview, B. C. Warren; Autobiographies for class of 1961; interview,
E. Tucker.

31. June '64; undated.

32. Teachers and alumnae recollections.

33. A. C. Sweeney, recollections.

34. A. C. Sweeney; M. C. Hearsey; student government records, 1936-

1955-

35. Sweeney, Brief Account, 36.

36. See Student Council Minutes, 1 October 1944.

37. M. C. Hearsey, A. C. Sweeney, student government records.

38. Manuscript of speech to the faculty, MCH; September 1948.

39. Sweeney, Brief Account, 30.

40. Alumnae and faculty recollections.

41. Alan Blackmer also "thought a lot of the native French teachers."
Interview.

42. Interviews, G. Arosa, B. C. Warren.

43. Alumna, '$6.

44. Alumnae and teacher recollections.

45. Alumnae recollections.

46. Student Council president of 1945-46, in letter to her successor.

47. B. C. Warren, '55; Genevieve Young, '48.

48. Joan Van Ness List, '41.

49. Conversation, alumna of y$6; alumna letter to Germaine Arosa. See
also letter from V. ("Teddy") Edmonds to Mary Crane, 11 October
1961.

50. Alumnae recollections.

51. EMT, letter to SML, and interview.

52. The application rate would easily survive a tuition hike to $2000 the
following year.

53. Germaine Arosa; A. C, Sweeney; Sylvia Thayer, '54; M. C. Hearsey;
student government records, 1 946-1 954.

54. 2 March 1949, Abbot Archives; also quoted in Sweeney, Brief Ac-
count, 55.

$ $6 NOTES TO PAGES 3 I 4— 3 I 7

55. MCH, parent recollections. See also parent letters to MCH, 19 June
1950, thanking her for the growth Abbot had fostered in her daughter,
but adding, "Frankly, I think that some of the restrictions are too
rigid." MCH wrote back: "I am eager to know just what you had in
mind" (June 22, 1950). MCH worried now and then "that the rumor
about our being very strict might become a deterrent in enrollment"
(Principal's Report, December 9, 1949).

§6. Letter, Joan Van Ness List.

57. Letter from student, summer, 1949, quoted in Principal's Report, 6
October 1949.

58. Talk to Boston Abbot Club, 2 March 1949. See also letter from MCH
to parent, 22 June 1959.

59. Sweeney, Brief Account, 40; interview, Helen Allen (Henry) Anderson.

60. See especially Miss Hearsey's poem for the school, "These have I
loved . . .", Bulletin (May 1955), 2, 3.

61. Teachers and alumnae recollections.

62. Pamela Daly Vose, The Masters School: A Retrospective Portrait,
1 877-1 977 (The Masters School, 1977); conversations with Valeria
Knapp, Director of Winsor School 1951-63; Virginia Dean of St.
Paul's School; and other school administrators active in the 1950's.

63. Teachers and Trustee recollections.

64. Mary Crane had no graduate degree, but she had studied at the Sor-
bonne and at the Fogg Museum in Cambridge.

6$. Trustees' recollections.

66. Interview, Helen Allen (Henry) Anderson.

67. Paul Werner, letter to MC 31 July 1956, and Ann Werner to MC,
19 May 1956. In another Werner letter (undated, probably fall 1956)
Ann Werner assures Mrs. Crane that she had decided to have their
mail delivered to Ripley house so that her husband "has no occasion to
make himself conspicuous if people still object to men on campus."

68. As one alumna has put it, "They would let you write to boys at other
schools— you couldn't get pregnant through the mails— but not P.A.
because it was too close." According to alumnae ('54, '55), all letters
postmarked "Andover" had to be opened by faculty members and read
in their presence.

69. Principal's Report, 3 June 1957; letter to SML, August 1977.

70. Principal's Report, 2 October 1958.

71. Abbot Academy Handbook for students and their parents, 1964-65,
pp.27, 18.

72. Alumnae and faculty recollections: manuscript copies of M.H. Crane's
Chapel talks, Abbot Archives. These are extraordinary in their warmth
and their use of imaginative metaphors for faith. In general they com-
municate Christian values as well, perhaps, as anyone could to an audi-
ence laced with skeptics.

73. Undated exchange in folder full of Abbot teachers' defense of classics,

NOTES TO PAGES 3 I 7-3 2 I 557

including long excerpt from college Latin teachers defending their
subject. Phillips Academy Archives.

74. See especially Ann Werner, undated letter to Mary Crane.

75. Louisa Lehmann Birch, letter to author, 17 March 1976.

76. Bulletin (October 1964), 4.

77. Mary H. Crane, interview 8 March 1976. Several of her friends and
teachers confirm both her assessments of the Trustees' wishes and her
accomplishment of them.

78. Ibid.

79. See MCH, report to the Trustees on long-range planning, 2 June 1947.

80. Principal's Report, 1 June 1948.

81. Sweeney, Brief Account, 30; interviews, MCH, G. Arosa.

82. Principal's Reports, 2 March 1944, 25 May 1944.

83. G. Arosa. Mile Arosa says that she and her colleagues often discussed
the problem of overwork and privacy, but seldom or never mentioned
it to MCH.

84. Faculty and alumnae recollections. Mary Crane says that the only as-
sured family time that she and her daughters had together all week was
Sunday afternoon, for an hour of tea and cinnamon toast.

85. See Principal's Report, 13 November 1956.

86. Teachers' and Trustees' recollections.

87. Barbara Brown Hogan and many others.

88. Teacher's recollection.

89. Alumnae and teachers' recollections.

90. Mary Crane often conveyed her frustration over the multiple demands
on her time, in Principal Reports and Bulletin notes. See a typical
example in Bulletin (May 1964), 4.

91. Teachers' recollections.

92. Student, parent, and grandparent letters from Dean's files.

93. Interview, Carolyn Goodwin.

94. Principal's Reports 5 February 1958, 7 March i960, 2 June i960, 7
November 1963. After a while, the Board's resistance to Mrs. Crane's
suggestions and requests begins to seem remarkable to the outside
reader of Abbot records. Two recent Abbot Trustees and long-time
Abbot friends are convinced that this resistance centered in Robert
Hunneman, Board President from 1952 to 1965.

95. Interview, Crane era teacher, 14 June 1977.

96. The Abbot tenure figures for teachers during the Hearsey years are
the more striking given the inevitable volatility of the teacher supply
during World War II. Two factors in the rapid national turnover
after the mid-fifties were the high demand for teachers and the near
universality of the TIAA annuity program, Social Security, and state-
mandated pension programs, which meant that by i960 a teacher
could shift from school to school without loss of pension funds. Inter-
estingly, experienced teachers continued to leave the profession alto-

$ $8 NOTES TO PAGES 32 I — 3 2 5

gether in times of both high employment and scarce jobs, at the begin-
ning of a trend that would continue at least through 197$.

Percent teaching with twenty or more years experience:
1961 27.6%

1966 21.4%

1971 18.3%

1976 14.1%

97. Jean Dietel Bennett (Mrs. John), AA 1 963-1 973. Audrey Nye Bensley
(Mrs. Gordon), AA 1965, PA 1973- . Anne Harriss Bugbee (Mrs.
Bruce), A A 1959, PA 1973- . Edwina Frederick (Mrs. Wayne), A A
1962-1973. Faith Howland (Kaiser), AA 1966-1973. Carolyn Lumsden
Johnston (Mrs. Malcolm), AA 1965, PA 1973- . Mary Sophia Minard,
AA 1961, PA 1973- . Virginia Powel (Mrs. Harford), AA 1959, PA
1973- . Christina Alonso Rubio, (Mrs. Angel), AA 1965, PA 1973- .
Jean Mary St. Pierre, A A 1963, PA 1973— . Barbara Blagdon Sisson
(Mrs. John), AA 1964-1973. Anne Lise Witten (Mrs. Oscar), AA 1962,
PA 1973-76-

14. HISTORY IN THE MAKING

i. Quoted in Principal's Report, 2 June 1952. Conant made his speech in
April 1952.

2. Ayer School Survey, quoted in fall Principal's Reports from 1948 to
1951.

3. Principal's Report, 3 December 1948.

4. Ibid., 6 June 1949.

5. James B. Conant, Education and Liberty: The Role of Schools in a
Modern Democracy (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1953), 78.

6. Ibid., 137, 138.

7. Arthur Bestor, Educational Wastelands; the retreat from learning in
our public schools (Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1953); also
Albert Lynd, Quackery in the Public Schools (Boston, Atlantic Month-
ly Press, Little Brown, 1953). The average state department of educa-
tion had two people in i860.

8. Conant, Education and Liberty, 62.

9. Speech to the first faculty meeting, 13 September 1947, manuscript.

10. Quoted in Principal's Report, 6 December 1951. These resolves are all
the more admirable considering that it was the Republican leadership
of Congress that had initiated the loyalty investigations after the war—
and Abbot's constituency, like that of most independent schools, re-
mained overwhelmingly Republican.

11. Ibid., 8 December 1953.

NOTES TO PAGES 325-327 559

12. Ibid., 7 October 1954.

13. Ibid., 8 December 1953.

14. See ibid., 6 June 1949. The nearly universal rumor at the time was
that the two chief organizers of the Putney strike were Communists.
However, not one of several Putney teachers consulted who were
taking one side or another can say with certainty that this was the
case, nor can the daughter of the then-Director or the parent-consul-
tant called in to help mediate the dispute. The organizers' methods,
which would have been familiar enough in a large textile mill, were a
shock to long-time teachers in this small, informal, school community.
Since the principal figures are now dead, we will probably never know
—even if it mattered.

15. Ibid., 7 October 1954, 11 April 1952, 10 December 1954.

16. Twenty-five percent in most women's colleges in the early 1950's.

17. Teachers' recollections; interview, A. C. Sweeney.

18. Dean's files; alumnae and parent recollections.

19. Interview, A. C. Sweeney; Principal's Report, 16 April 1953.

20. In June of the year before the first wave of war babies began applying
to secondary schools, Miss Hearsey reported to the Trustees that
Abbot was "overflowing"; a long waiting list of able candidates had
impelled the school to write over 100 families that further applications
could not be considered. (Principal's Report, 7 June 1954.)

11. Conant, Education and Liberty, 29-54.

22. Flagg's little sermons to Miss Bailey and the Trustees on this subject
(3 December 193 1) are interesting. He doubtless made sure Miss Hear-
sey heard his ideas as well. He believed firmly that the small school
was of most benefit to the individual student. See also Seymour B.
Sarason, The Culture of the School and the Froblem of Change (Bos-
ton, Allyn and Bacon, 1971), 94-103. Sarason reports research begun
in the early 1960's which confirms what Abbot parents seemed to
know without resort to social science: that all students are more posi-
tively involved in the out-of-class life of a small school community
than in a large school, and that the beneficial effect on a student's total
performance is particularly significant for "marginal" students.

23. Parent and alumnae recollections.

24. Interviews and conversations with representative local citizens, includ-
ing three public school teachers. One of the latter says about Abbot
admissions in the late thirties and mid-sixties, "The dumbest kid could
get in if her parents were the right social class."

25. Alumna recollection (graduate of 1955).

26. One fourth to one third of the student body each year was composed
of alumnae relatives. When the admissions office asked new enrollees
why they had come to Abbot in the fall of 1949 and 1950, eighty -three
answered that friends or relatives had told them of Abbot, nineteen
had been urged to apply by college admissions officers or school guid-
ance counselors, six day students said, "I live in Andover," seven

560 NOTES TO PAGES 328-329

boarders mentioned Phillips Academy connections, and just eight had
responded to advertisements or picked up catalogues in school place-
ment agencies.

27. Interviews and conversations with local citizens. Principal's Report,
7 November 1963: "Community relations . . . are still minimal," writes
Mrs. Crane. Tamblyn and Brown in their 1966-67 Report to the Trus-
tees, wrote that community leaders found Abbot Academy rather
removed from the town, as contrasted with Phillips Academy. For
example, Miriam Putnam, Andover's Head Librarian at Memorial Hall
Library for twenty-five years, has said that Abbot was glad to help
out in any emergency (such as Hungarian Relief in 1956) but that
the steady, close relations of earlier years had essentially disappeared
by 1950. "Phillips was much more involved," she says.

28. Interview, Caroline Stevens Rogers.

29. Other hardworking Trustees can be found in this full account of the
Board as it stood in the Spring of '57 when the Trustees were just
beginning to gear up to a new level of involvement in Abbot affairs.
The short biographical sketches make clear how much besides Abbot
the Trustees had in common. From Bulletin (May 1957), 2-3:

The Board of Trustees of Abbot Academy consists of seventeen
members, nine men and eight women; it meets four times a year.
Now serving on the Board are the following:

• Robert I. Hunneman of Boston and Brookline, President of
Board. A graduate of Noble and Greenough School, Mr. Hunne-
man holds an A.B. from Harvard and LL.B. from Harvard Law
School. He is a partner in the law firm of Palmer, Dodge, Gard-
ner & Bradford of Boston. He is a trustee of Radcliffe College,
and Treasurer and Trustee of Noble and Greenough School.

• J. Radford Abbot of Andover. A graduate of Phillips Academy,
Mr. Abbot has an A.B. from Harvard and a M.Arch. from the
Harvard School of Architecture. He is an architect.

• Jane Baldwin '22 of New York City. Since 1930, Miss Baldwin
has been a trust administrator of the Irving Trust Co. She is a
former alumnae trustee.

• Mrs. Herbert Carter (Pauline Humeston '27) of Englewood,
N. J., alumnae trustee. She has an A.B. degree from Wellesley.
She has two sons and a daughter.

• Margaret Clapp, president of Wellesley College. She holds an
A.B. degree from Wellesley and a Ph.D. in history from Colum-
bia. Her biography, Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow, was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1948.

• Mrs. Alexander Crane, principal. A graduate of the Winsor
School, she studied at the Sorbonne for one year as the recipient
of the Nora Saltonstall Scholarship. She received an A.B. degree
from Bryn Mawr, cum laude. She has four daughters.

NOTES TO PAGE 329 561

• Burton S. Flagg of Andover, treasurer of Abbot since 1906. A
graduate of Worcester Academy, he has an A.B. dgeree from
Brown. He has been president of the Merrimack Mutual Fire In-
surance Company since 1923, and president of the Andover Sav-
ings Bank. In addition, he holds office in many civic, financial,
religious and fraternal organizations. Three daughters and two
granddaughters attended Abbot.

• Mrs. Lenert W. Henry (Helen Allen '32) of Hingham, Mass.
She has an A.B. degree from Smith. A former alumnae trustee,
she was chairman of the Gymnasium Fund Drive. She has three
sons.

• Mrs. Wilbur K. Jordan of Cambridge, Mass. Mrs. Jordan re-
ceived an A.B. degree from Vassar and an M.A. from RadclifTe.
Her husband is the president of Radcliffe.

• Rev. Sidney Lovett, chaplain of Yale University since 1932. A
graduate of Browne and Nichols, he received an A.B. degree from
Yale. He holds two honorary degrees, an A.M. from Yale and a
Doctor of Divinity from Dartmouth. He has long been active in
welfare work. His wife is Esther Parker Lovett, 1908.

• E. Benjamin Redfield, Jr. of Swampscott, Mass. He is a spe-
cial agent of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. He is di-
rector of many business and civic organizations. He was chairman
of the Parents' Committee of the Abbot Gymnasium Fund, and is
now chairman of the Abbot Development Fund. His daughter,
Deborah, graduated from Abbot in 1950.

• Mrs. Horatio Rogers of North Andover, Mass. A graduate of
Winsor, Mrs. Rogers received an A.B. degree from Bryn Mawr.
She served overseas with the Children's Bureau of the American
Red Cross in World War I.

• George F. Sawyer, of Andover. He is a graduate of Phillips
Andover, and has an A.B. degree from Yale and an M.B.A. from
Harvard. He is vice-president of the First National Bank of Bos-
ton. His daughter, Elizabeth, attended Abbot.

• Donald B. Smith of Wellesley Hills, Mass. He is a graduate
of Mt. Allison University and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard Grad-
uate School of Arts and Sciences. He is an economic consultant.
His daughter, Cynthia, graduated from Abbot in 1945.

• Stoddard M. Stevens, Jr. of Short Hills, N. J. He holds an
A.B. degree from Cornell and an LL.B. from Columbia. He is a
partner in the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell in New York
City. His daughter, Marion, graduated from Abbot in 1944.

• Mrs. H. Guyford Stever (Louise Risley '37) of Belmont, Mass.,
alumnae trustee. She holds an A.B. degree from Smith and an M.S.
from Simmons College of Social Work. She has two sons and two
daughters.

562 NOTES TO PAGES 329-330

• Gardner Sutton, comptroller and clerk of Board. A graduate
of Noble and Greenough, he holds an A.B. degree from Harvard.
His wife, Elizabeth Southworth Sutton, 1930, and his two sisters
are Abbot alumnae.

30. The planning began in earnest shortly after VE Day, and never really
stopped until Miss Hearsey's retirement in 1955. MCH had hoped to
pick up the Draper Hall project where it had been left off in 1941,
but most of the Trustees found roof revision less than compelling,
and this plan was finally dropped. It is intriguing to watch the Chapel's
"maximum seating capacity" expanding through the fifties. In 1947 the
absolute limit was 200, but need had found a way to squeeze in new
benches and molify the fire department when by 1955, 225 looked like
the magic number.

31. It did not appear suddenly. Barton Chapin's board had been inquiring
of other schools about their salary scales since 1940. In 1942 the Prin-
cipal's salary was raised, along with that of several others, but Miss
Hearsey was still receiving substantially less than Miss Bailey did in
1930. The Trustees asked Miss Hearsey to investigate the possibility
of a published salary scale in 1944. She presented a detailed report (4
October 1945), and they accepted in principle the salary scale idea
(then $1400 to "at least $3000"), but inflation played such havoc with
materials and maintenance costs from 1946 to 1948 that the salary prob-
lem was deferred.

32. Miss Hearsey told the Trustees in the Principal's Report, 17 May 1945,
that "salaries a good deal higher than our present ones have been offered
some of our teachers," this presumably to woo them away from Abbot.
And the shortage of teachers would continue for almost twenty years.

33. This figure includes "living," as nearly as Flagg could calculate it. Com-
plete salary figures were not kept on file between 1936 and 1966. As
early as 1943 Miss Hearsey expressed her concern about the growing
differential between women's compensation inside and outside of teach-
ing, noting that many government jobs gave a young woman just out
of college $2400, twice the cash salary she would then have received
at Abbot. That same year the Headmistresses Association appointed a
Professional Standards Committee to keep member schools in close
touch with the situation. (Principal's Report, 2 December 1943. See
also ibid., 9 December 1949 and 10 December 1954.) In all but starting
salaries for inexperienced teachers, Abbot lagged well behind the sal-
ary scale recommended in the fall of 1954 by the Salary Study Com-
mittee of the Headmistresses Association ($3000 plus living for a ten-
year teacher and $4000-4700 plus living for a retirement-age teacher).

34. Undated Treasurer's memorandum. Its position in the files suggests
that it was written in either March '49 or March '50.

35. The Trustees had instituted Abbot's own retirement fund in 1937,
one year after fixing the retirement age at sixty-five. They built it up

NOTES TO PAGE 3 3 I

563

slowly by applying one percent of the payroll to it each year, an en-
tirely too modest sum which they raised to a less modest 3 percent in
1940. This internal fund allowed the Trustees and Treasurer to con-
tinue to use "special legislation ... to cover individual situations," in
Flagg's words. Its "wisdom [is] clear," Flagg wrote on Katherine Kel-
sey's death. "No system of ordinary accumulated pension payments
could have been so adequate" for Miss Kelsey. (Treasurer's Report, 7
December 1939. See also ibid., 9 April 1937.) No other retirees received
such liberal grants as Katherine Kelsey and Flora Mason, however;
those who left the school before retirement got none at all, no matter
how long they had worked for Abbot, until the school joined TIAA.
In his usual fair-minded way, Flagg allowed his sense of duty to over-
come his personal opinion and launched the initial investigation into
the TIAA plans and procedures. He first laid them before the Trustees
in 1940. (Treasurer's Report, 5 December 1940.)

36. It was bringing Marie Craig through her long old age that finally de-
cided the Trustees on a change. She retired at seventy in 1938; she
required a special bonus of $15 a month in 1940, an "emergency grant"
in 1944, help to pay the premium on her life insurance, the interest on
her loans, the rent for her rooming house, etc. through 1945. (Trea-
surer's Reports, 5 December 1940 and 18 January 1945.)

37. Beverly Brooks Floe '41. Because BBF did not have this teacher in
class, her friends gave her the job of telling Miss Hearsey about her,
which she did, feeling "terribly uncomfortable" over the sad errand.

A. Kubler-Merrill, ^6, and a Crane-era teacher describe two others
of the Crane period as well. See also Principal's Report 7 March i960,
in which Mary Crane describes the older teachers' need for funds to
supplement their pensions, since TIAA and Social Security came so
late in their careers.

38. Miss Hearsey suggested that such a plan be created (Principal's Re-
ports, 2 October 1947 and 8 April 1949) but in vain. Periodically the
Trustees considered it and tabled it.

39. Interviews with Trustees. One long-time faculty member describes a
Mrs. B. who was "a smarty— she invested well. She had something on
which to live and the school didn't have to help her and it didn't."

40.

FIXED

OPERATING

FINAL

INCOME

COSTS

EXPENSES

BALANCE

Tuitions

Investment

Other
(mostly
alumnae

gifts)

Depre-
ciation
+ $500
Summer
faculty
grant

Retire-
ment

and
Pensions

*939
1948

$195,049
265,925

18,409

21,352

1,622

3,557

3,569
6,53*

632

!4,°73

192,565
280,200

+ 18,315
— 9,969

564 NOTES TO PAGES 332-336

41. Principal's Reports, 1 May 1945, 2 June 1947, 2 October 1947, 5 June

1950, 13 April 195 1, 4 October 195 1, 11 April 1952.

42. MCH in letter to fathers of recent graduates, 23 July 1951. See also
Principal's Report, 12 April 1954.

43. Principal's Report, 11 April 1952.

44. Abbot never did get the hoped-for $300,000, but the gymnasium was
fully paid for (total cost, $223,632) and the remaining $10,000 that was
eventually raised (spring 1956 figures) went to its maintenance fund.

45. According to the accounting in a February 1962 Bulletin (pp. 4-6)
based on 2100 alumnae's replies to a questionnaire, (60 percent of the
total), 27 percent from the classes before 1930 had always been single
compared with 23 percent from the after-1930 alumnae. The younger
group included many college-age women who were probably planning
to marry.

46. "Bits from the Treasurer's Desk," Bulletin (February 1955), 8-9.

47. Surveys, 1950-51, 1955-56, 1960-61, from Dean's Office files, Abbot
Archives. The range of IQ scores is interesting: for Seniors, 77-166 in

195 1, 84-175 in 1961. Contrary to what one might expect, the lowest
scores were not made by foreign students.

48. Miss Hearsey, speaking in 1939 on "Women of Tomorrow," became
the first Abbot Principal we know of to support careers for mothers:
"It has been conclusively proved that there is nothing incompatible
between women's work and marriage and motherhood." But the old
Abbot values still held firm. "Far more important (she went on) is
her impact upon tomorrow's world as a stabilizing, humanizing force."

49. Principal's Reports and odd packets of letters record the extraordinary
numbers of faculty leaves taken to care for ill relatives throughout the
twentieth century, tapering off only after the federal Old Age Assis-
tance program was created in 1935. Teachers might suddenly have to
leave Abbot for a week, or for a year. Once large numbers of Abbot
women were living in apartments outside the dormitories, the aged
mothers, sisters, and aunts came to join them in Andover.

50. Delia D. Cyrus in "Why Mothers Fail," Atlantic Monthly (March
1947), 59. Cyrus wrote a reasonably sophisticated version of an issue
much less subtly argued in the pulp magazines and on the women's
pages. See also Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York,
W. W. Norton, 2nd edition, 1963), 288-298.

51. Cyrus, "Why Mothers Fail," 58.

52. E. S. Martin in The Unrest of Women, 9.

53. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York, 1963), 70, 74.

54. Interestingly, a survey of alumnae records for the Class of 1955 shows
that forty-two of the seventy-three members of the class did eventual-
ly take paid jobs. Of these, sixteen have worked five years or more in
jobs that suggest clear commitment to a career. Several others answered

NOTES TO PAGES 336-346 565

the 1974 questionnaire by saying "to work full time beginning 1975."
(These figures are rough, because about 10 percent of the folders are
incomplete.)

55. Friedan, Mystique, 73.

56. See also ibid., 296-297.

57. Teachers' recollections.

58. See William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream (Boston, Little
Brown, 1973), 477-81, and Gael Greene, Sex and the College Girl
(New York, Dell Publishing, 1964). The Greene book is perhaps the
most reliable accounting of a subject endlessly discussed in popular
books and articles.

59. Greene, Sex, 34.

60. Brooks School in North Andover appears far more often than does
Phillips Academy in Principal's Reports and Cynosure accounts of
co-ed plays and clubs during the fifties and early sixties. Brooks boys
became the first to take male leads away from Abbot drama buffs in
1964, a move that stimulated much private regret among the newly
limited actresses.

61. From time to time Miss Hearsey had invited lecturers or psychologists
to talk about sex and hygiene, and to speak privately with any inter-
ested student. Graduates of '41 felt she was doing this "as a matter of
duty" rather than from any sustained conviction on the matter. A Mrs.
Phillips was more successful in 1947, but only returned one year after
that.

62. Alumnae of 1956, i960, 1962, and 1972, and three teachers, 1950-1973.

63. Two alumnae of 1962.

VI. The Final Decade, 1963-197 3

1. Morris Dickstein, The Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties
(New York, Basic Books, 1977), chapters 1 and 2.

15. The Trustees Decide
1. CEEB scores demonstrate an upward trend in tested academic ability
of applicants:
(Range 200-800)

Median Score of Scholastic Aptitude Test of Abbot
Girls Taken in the Spring of nth Year

Verbal Math

Class of 195 1 433 438

Class of 1956 503 515

Class of 1 96 1 533 548

$66 NOTES TO PAGES 346-354

2. From Re -Evaluation Report, written by Valeria Addams Knapp (Win-
sor School), E. Phillips Wilson (Phillips Exeter Academy), and Alnah
James Johnson (Chairman, Dana Hall).

3. Recollections of two alumnae, class of 1962.

4. Alumna, '62, recollection.

5. Alumnae and teachers' recollections.

6. "There's too much to do," she wrote alumnae in the May 1962 Bulletin
(p. 4), a refrain echoed in many a Principal's Report as well— though
usually she couched the observation as a challenge rather than a lament.

7. Alumnae recollections. Among Abbot Seniors, the private women's
colleges were slowly giving way in popularity to a range of coeduca-
tional and public institutions; in 1935, 75 percent of the Seniors at-
tended the traditional four-year women's colleges, most of these (21 of
29) going to Smith, Vassar, or Wellesley. In 1950 exactly half of all
Seniors went to the traditional colleges. In 1962 fewer than one third
of the Seniors went on to these colleges, with just half of the subgroup
attending Smith, Vassar, or Wellesley. That year students applied to 67
different colleges and universities, including junior colleges.

8. Cynosure, 14 April 1961.

9. Ibid., 21 January 1963.

10. Parent of 1959 graduate, in conversation. See also Principal's Report,

5 February 1958, for Student Council complaint over the same issue,
n. Cynosure, 3 June 1961, 1 December 1961.

12. Ibid., 1 June 1962.

13. Ibid., 5 May 1962.

14. Sargent's Handbook of Private Schools, 44th ed. (Boston, Porter Sar-
gent, 1963), 103.

15. Trustee Minutes, 7 February 1963.

16. Trustee Minutes, 25 April 1963.

17. Cresap, McCormick and Paget, Abbot Academy, "A Study of Organi-
zation and Administration" (January, 1964), pp. Ill— 6, III— 7, III— 12,
IV-6, IV-7.

18. Interviews, Allen and Finger. Finger remembered that Flagg was par-
ticularly saddened by having to resign from the Abbot Board because
it was the very last responsibility he had held onto as he gradually
retired from his extraordinarily active life of public service.

19. Cresap Report, p. Ill— 8.

20. Teacher recollections.

21. Two teachers' assessment of the problem.

22. Membership in the three subcommittees was as follows:
Administrative Policies Committee

NOTES TO PAGES 3 5 4— 3 5 5 567

Mrs. Wilbur K. Jordan, Chairman

Mr. Grenville Benedict (Dean of Students, Phillips Academy)
Mrs. Abby Castle Kemper (Abbot, '31, wife of John M. Kemper, Phil-
lips Headmaster)
Miss Alice Sweeney

Buildings and Ground Committee

Mrs. Horatio Rogers, Chairman

Mr. Radford Abbot

Mr. Philip K. Allen

Mr. Gardner Sutton (Ass't. Treasurer)

Flanning and Development Committee
Mr. Robert Hunneman, Chairman
Mrs. Helen Allen Henry
Mr. Benjamin Redfield

23. Mrs. Crane had been recommending increases to the Trustees for years,
but never forcefully enough, she fears. She regrets she did not "take
more of a lead in requiring the Trustees" to raise salaries. (MC, inter-
view.)

24. The largest jump was taken in the two years after Mary Crane left.
Exact percentages of increases:

highest salary 45.5

median salary 33.3

low salary 38.9

25. The Independent School Talent Search Program was begun in 1963
and soon attracted foundation support; its resources were greatly am-
plified after 1965, when the federal Office of Economic Opportunity
agreed to fund up to four students at full tuition for each full scholar-
ship Abbot (and other independent schools) provided for candidates
chosen by ISTS.

26. Muthoni found a special welcome at Virginia Powel's home, where she
went often to get help with her English writing from Harford Powel,
Ginny's husband and an English teacher on leave from Phillips Acad-
emy because of illness. When she left Abbot she gave Harford Powel a
watercolor painting she had made from memory of her village home in
Kenya (she had not been able to return for two years), along with the
poem entitled "My Last Day in Kenya."

27. See Principal's Reports, 25 May 1944, and 2 December 1943. Some of
Abbot's scholarship and recruiting effort was geared to attract students
from different sections of the country. Following are data on geo-
graphical distribution of girls entering in September 1962, when Abbot
accepted 30 percent of its applicants:

568 NOTES

PAGES 356-359

California

New York

Connecticut

North Carolina

Maine

Ohio

Massachusetts:
Boarders

Pennsylvania
Rhode Island

Day

Michigan

Mississippi

Montana

New Hampshire

1
1
2
6

Virginia

Foreign Countries:
England
The Netherlands

1
2

New Jersey

The Philippines

The Principal and Trustees felt that Abbot should be still more di-
verse; they wished to attract black students (there had been none since
1956) and more foreign students. Mary Crane and the Administrative
Policies Committee made this happen.

28. Report of Committee to Study Financial Needs, chaired by Gardner
Sutton, 1964.

29. Jean Bennett and Germaine Arosa served two terms together; Carolyn
Kellogg Salon, Carolyn Goodwin, Dorothy Judd, and Jean Bennett
were a typical 1965-67 roster.

30. Principal's Report, 7 November 1963.

3 1 . Teachers' recollections, especially Virginia Powel, interview.

32. Teachers' recollections. "Some housemothers were extremely stupid,"
says one teacher, who had carried corridor supervision herself and
knew how complex the job could be. "We were [she goes on to ac-
knowledge] super-critical of them, sometimes unreasonably so."

33. Letter, 22 August 1977.

34. Alumnae recollections.

35. Sherman House letter, undated.

36. Sherman House letter, 29 May 1964.

37. Letter to the author, Winter 1976.

38. See Principal's Report, 5 February 1963.

39. Cresap Report, p. IV-17.

40. Principal's Report, 7 March i960.

41. Mrs. Crane in interview.

42. See Cresap Report, pp. IV-16 and IV-17; also Principal's Report, 28
May 1963, with "observations," MC's special report on school needs
attached.

43. Information from author's attendance at trustees' meetings, Putney
School, Putney, Vermont, from 1958 to 1970, as well as from Mrs.
Crane's Principal's Reports to the Trustees (especially 22 April 1965,
a summary of past recruiting problems), including news from the
Headmistresses Association and the NAPSG.

44. Alumnae and faculty recollections. Miss Hatch is remembered as a
demanding teacher and an eminently fair Director of Residence. A

NOTES TO PAGES 359-362 569

typical comment: "Miss Hatch was a favorite person, an angel! For
her to hold that job and be able to keep her sense of humor and fair-
ness was really extraordinary" (alumna, '62).

45. Alumnae and faculty recollections.

46. Account from alumnae, Trustees' and teachers' recollections. See also
Executive Committee Minutes, 18 January 1966, and Principal's Report,
27 January 1966.

47. Observations confirmed by numerous faculty recollections.

48. Report of Tamblyn and Brown, 1966-67, and admissions records. The
quality of applicants held up fairly well. The median for Abbot girls'
scores on CAAT's (Comprehensive Academic Aptitude Test, a kind
of group IQ test) ran at the 66th percentile for the Class of 1967,
still above the independent school median of the 63.7 percentile but
not so impressive as in 1961.

49. Interview, P. K. Allen; see also Executive Committee Minutes, 19 July
1965, when the Trustees considered transferring the Admissions Direc-
tor to a job in the Alumnae Office.

50. Interviews of three Trustees; quotation from P. K. Allen.

5 1 . Interviews of two Trustees.

52. Mary Crane, "The Objectives of Abbot Academy," February 1965.

53. Trustees' recollections. One of the three Trustees who made this ob-
servation feels Mary Crane may not really have had a chance because
"she had the Board Chairman against her from the beginning." A
fourth Trustee thought she was "very good," even though she "hadn't
a great deal of influence with the girls," and was "surprised" when
she was asked to resign.

54. Alumna recollection, townsperson recollection.

55. Principal's Report, 31 May 1964.

56. Mrs. Crane served on several of the NEACSS Accreditation (or "Eval-
uation") committees, visiting other schools as the NEACSS had visited
Abbot to evaluate their programs and their status as member schools
in good standing.

57. A sample of such news from 1961-63:

Reports in the section "What Schools are Doing": of Asian and Rus-
sian language courses and "problem-oriented" social science courses.

A report of mathematics courses guided by the SMSG (the University-
Secondary School teacher-staffed School Mathematics Study Group)
May 1962, January 1963.

Reports of major fund drives in many schools.

A report of an advanced biology course partially taught at a local
medical school.

Reports of institution of humanities courses in several schools.

Reports of school-sponsored field work and travel projects, including
the Abbot NAIS-sponsored tour of Greece co-led by Mary Crane
during the spring vacation of 1962. (Cost: $695.00)

570 NOTES TO PAGES 362-368

58. Bulletin (May 1963), 4. See also ibid. (February 1963), 2, and Mary
Crane, "The Objectives of Abbot Academy," February 1965.

59. Mary Crane, interview, and Principal's Report, 5 November 1964. See
also Principal's Report, 20 October 1962.

60. Trustee Minutes, 3 November 1966.

16. "make no little plans"

1. M. H. Crane interview.

2. Interviews, E. M. Tucker and P. K. Allen.

3. Trustee recollection, teachers' recollections.

4. According to V. Powel, the dark room built next to the fourth-floor
Draper art studios during that exciting "experimental and often fren-
zied first year" (Cynosure, 31 May 1968) had to be moved after stu-
dents twice left water running in and over sinks and down . three
stories onto Eleanor Tucker's desk. Enough was enough.

5. Interview, Eleanor Tucker; alumnae recollections.

6. Interviews, Jean Bennett, Carolyn Goodwin. Germaine Arosa remem-
bers students rather suddenly finding that they could make sense of
writers like George Sand, whose peculiar sexual foci had seemed in-
accessible before.

7. Recollections of alumnae, faculty, and townspeople. Philip Allen, Mr.
Andover Republican himself, had invited Thomas, whose granddaugh-
ter was in the graduating class.

8. Cynosure, 13 October 1967.

9. Alumnae recollections of students of classes of '49, '54, '57, '59, '63, '68.
The '59 graduate shared her friends' feelings even though she felt cer-
tain that "Abbot was one of the best girls' schools available." See also
occasional remarks in publications from about 1935 to 1963. An ex-
ample: The Page, (16 January 1948), a student mimeo rag, described
Abbot French students' experience at a French movie shown on the
Hill. It was so fast-moving that "even the French students at P.A.
didn't understand it." Another: Cynosure (June 1966), projecting the
P.A. prom weekend schedule, told how escorts would take their dates
"up to the great adult world of the P.A. Prom."

10. Mary Crane interview.

11. Summary of discussions on planning the physical plant, 1967.

12. Speech at the annual meeting of the Abbot Alumnae Association, 13
May 1967. Excerpted in Bulletin (May 1967), 3. Allen threw another
smoke screen before Cynosure reporters just after Donald Gordon had
been hired, telling them (by their account) that, "the firm hand of a
man was preferred over that of a woman because of the current diffi-
culty in raising money for such programs as the Building Funds."
Cynosure, 10 November 1967.

NOTES TO PAGES 368-374 57 1

13. Interview, J. K. Dow. Dow was a member of the Search Committee,
along with H. Henry, F. Jordan, and A. Kemper.

14. See Elizabeth B. Hall, "The Vanishing Headmistress," in The Inde-
pendent School Bulletin (October 1966), 39-41, and Cary Potter,
"Some Further Observations on the Vanishing Headmistress," ibid.,
42-43. Hall describes the cultural and ideological roots of the problem,
Potter the practical dimension. In two of the years (1964 and 1965)
during which the NAIS solicited names of potential administrators
from member schools, a list of 145 promising people included only
fourteen women. The disparity could be partly explained by the small
size of most girls' schools and the tendency of public schools to reserve
many administrative jobs for men.

15. Interviews, Allen and Dow.

16. Interview, P. K. Allen.

17. Alumni records, Philips Academy Archives; Donald Gordon in con-
versation and in talks to the Abbot faculty.

18. Donald Gordon and Peter Stapleton, "The Amateur Sandwich," manu-
script, 75 pages (partially unpaginated), and "Toward a Human Head-
master," Independent School Bulletin (December 1970), 22-24. Gordon
acknowledges that "The Amateur Sandwich" "is almost a period piece
now," being a "plainly irreverent effort" to describe the multiple de-
mands on the school head during a time of rapid change, from which
society has retreated part way in the late seventies. (Letter to Beverly
Floe, 6 November 1975, and interview with the author, summer 1975.)

19. "Sandwich," chapter 4, p. 1.

20. Cynosure, 10 November 1967.
ti. Cynosure, 31 May 1968.

22. Principal's Report, June 1967, and faculty recollections. Several faculty
members say that Miss Tucker was "absolutely exhausted" by the
spring of 1968. Gordon LeMayer had taken over some of the duties
of the Director of Studies for 1967-68, but "Tuck" still bore a terrific
load. By 1969 three people were doing the jobs she managed alone
for one of her two years as Acting Principal.

23. Cynosure, 31 May 1968.

24. Donald Gordon in his Installation address, November 1968.

25. Cynosure, 13 December 1968.

26. Nancy Steele in Cynosure, 3 October 1968.

27. And let the traditional dodges cease: no more would parents come to
Abbot to pick up daughters of a Saturday and drop them in Boston
for a day of shopping and fun, as a few had done before to bring them
out of reach of the omnipresent Abbot chaperone. Alumna recollec-
tion, Class of 1968, and interview of alumna, Class of 1970, by Mary
Jean Hu.

28. Cynosure, ^November 1968.

29. Teachers' recollections. Of the latter argument, one teacher who was

572 NOTES TO PAGES 374-379

on the spot in 1966-67 says, "We really did talk about that, really did,"
as though no sane person would believe her.

30. Teachers' recollections.

31. Two teachers' recollections; secretary's recollections.

32. Interview, G. Arosa, and teacher recollection of Arosa's position.

33. Gordon in conversation, recollections of one Trustee and several
teachers.

34. An Arts building was first formally proposed to the Trustees in April
1965, following an extensive faculty-trustee study of building needs.

35. Miss Porter's ($3.8 million), Ethel Walker ($5.3 million), Northfield-
Mt. Hermon ($12.6 million), and several other farther-flung competi-
tors, such as Foxcroft ($3.9 million) and Andrews School ($11 mil-
lion) all had higher endowments than Abbot in 1968-69, when Abbot's
was $2,291,000. Emma Willard, Westover, and the Masters School
stood as $2.3 million, $1.7 million, and $2.4 million, respectively. All
figures represent market value, a volatile index in these years. (Figures
from Voluntary Support of Education, 1968-69 issue. Porter Sargent's
Handbook of Private Schools for the same year records slightly differ-
ent amounts. )

36. It is worth quoting the observer mentioned in the last chapter, a cau-
tious man, a professional fund-raiser, and an Abbot friend, who has
this to say about Abbot's fund-raising efforts before 1968: "I've come
to the conclusion that Abbot was what it was because men always
controlled the finances as trustees, treasurers, and business managers.
They held the lid on but never got very excited about raising money
to improve the status of women, whether students or teachers."

37. From $75,856 to $74,805 in combined alumnae-friend donations. A
minor economic recession during the 1968-69 school year may have
accounted for the slowdown.

38. Conversation, Carolyn Goodwin. Without endorsing his every move
or the speed with which he made them, Miss Goodwin says she can
understand Gordon's reasoning.

39. Interviews, J. K. Dow, Philip Allen, Donald Gordon, Helen (Henry)
Anderson, and Alice Sweeney.

40. The year 1964-65 was right after the Trustees began trying earnestly
to respond to the Cresap consultants' opinion that salaries must go
higher. Meanwhile, the cost-price index had risen by 12 percent be-
tween 1964 and 1969. Some of the salaries were for new positions, some
simply much higher (Gordon's was 40 percent larger than Miss Tuck-
er's had been; a married man with two children, he would be earning
by his third year at Abbot about twice the salary and benefits that
she seemed to require). Total administrative salaries in 1967-68 were
$21,600 (with secretarial salaries, $33,100); in 1969-70, $53,000 (secre-
tarial, $47,000). The average teacher's salary went from $5751.72 to

NOTES TO PAGES 380-381 573

$6656.25 in the same two years. Men's salaries for 1969-70 were $550
higher than the average for longer tenured women, but by 1972, sala-
ries for male and female teachers were, on the average, just about
equal, with the men's slightly lower. Administrative salaries would
take another jump in 1970-71 to $75,700. "What would Mr. Flagg have
thought?" one alumna has asked, knowing the answer. Flagg inveighed
against the tendency of schools to pile on administrators (in one of
his last "Comments of the Treasurer," 4 June 1962), and finished by
quoting an admired college professor: "Someone should rise up and
say, 'We teach'!"

41. Alumna recollection.

42. Alumnae recollections.

43. Abbot's town meeting did not spring from nowhere. Friends' schools
had quietly run school affairs by student-faculty consensus for decades,
and town meetings had been under discussion in some established
independent schools for several years. The Cambridge School, of
Weston, where Philip Allen had taught for two happy years as a
young man, instituted a town meeting in 1967 which was much like
Abbot's later version. Allen and his wife Betty had met periodically
since 1966 with Abbot student government officers, lending encourage-
ment to their bid for more recognition and responsibility. Abbot's new
school government was conservative compared with arrangements in-
vented by some of the "free schools" that included all academic mat-
ters as well as social ones under town meeting jurisdiction, and made
the majority decision final.

44. Interview, Gordon, summer 1975, and Andover Bulletin, Phillips Acad-
emy (November 1963), 4, 5.

45. The first town meeting vote required shirts or dresses for Sunday
dinner, and "left up to the teacher's discretion whether or not informal
clothes should be allowed in the classroom"; but these qualifications
were soon dropped. Actually, the famous "tie shoes" had gone out in
the spring of 1969. Gordon was asking Student Council members why
they objected, and one girl described the process by which girls' feet
were tested each fall, then retested in the spring, telling him that her
feet won an A— for her first fall test, but had deteriorated to a B+
by spring after a year of tie shoes. According to a teacher who was
also there, "Don just exploded at that point. So much for tie shoes."

46. Rev. James Rae Whyte, quoted by F. A. Allis, in Youth From Every
Quarter (Andover, 1978), pp. 660.

47. Like almost all town meeting committees, this one consisted of vol-
unteers; if there were more volunteers than could be accommodated,
the town meeting officers selected the committee, often staffing work-
ing subcommittees with the surplus.

48. A two-thirds quorum rule prevented votes being controlled by aggres-

574 NOTES TO PAGES 382-392

sive minorities but the rule was later changed to allow a vote in the
meeting that followed, after minutes had been published and fair
warning of issues to be decided had been given.

49. Cynosure, 7 November 1969.

50. Teachers' recollections. See also the Acting Principal's Report to the
Trustees, 18 February 1968, concerning teachers who "do very little
work for the school outside of the classroom."

51. Interview, Gordon.

52. Abbot Forum (Fall 1969), 13. See also Stapleton's article, "Make It
Yourself Exams for Do It Yourself English," English Journal, Vol. 62
#2, February, 1973, 275-277.

53. Abbot Forum (Fall 1968), 15.

54. Interview, alumna.

55. Gordon, "If Not Now, When?" Andover Bulletin (November 1969), 2.
$6. Conversation, Marion Finbury, confirmed by alumnae recollections.

57. Conversation, Finbury and Gordon.

58. Conversation, Finbury. An average of one Senior a year from 1966 to
1969 went from Abbot to Radcliffe, slightly more than the average for
1950-66.

59. Interview, Gordon.

60. Abbot Forum. (December 1971 ), 6.

61. Observations of many teachers and of four parents; alumnae recollec-
tions.

62. The Choate News, 25 January 1969, quoted in Alan R. Blackmer, An
Inquiry into Student Unrest in Independent Secondary Schools (Bos-
ton, National Association of Independent Schools, 1970), 20.

63. Address given at M.I.T., 4 March 1969.

64. Report of the Faculty Steering Committee, Volume I (Phillips Acad-
emy, Andover, 15 December 1966), 4.

6$. 7 November 1969.

66. Title of chapter taken from the 24 March 1970 Look article by
"Thomas Doland" (pseudonym), in Marc Liberie and Tom Seligman,
editors, The High School Revolutionaries, (New York, Random
House, 1970). According to Richard Sheahan, the Look issue hit the
newsstands the day the New Abbot Fund opened at the Yale Club in
New York City. "It was awful," he says. A Trustee who was sym-
pathetic to Gordon's efforts remembers being "appalled. Only a trash
magazine such as Look would have published it without verifying it."

67. Ibid., 188, 184, 183.

68. Ibid., 184.

69. Letter to the author, Jane Baldwin.

70. Interviews, Allen and Dow.

71. Cynosure, 12 December 1969.

72. Allis, Youth, 66^-66$; Phillips teacher recollections.

73. Recollections of four students and six teachers.

NOTES TO PAGES 392-398 575

74. Alumni records, Phillips Academy Archives.

75. In a single winter month (February 1973), for example, Gordon trav-
eled to three different conferences (he was on The Independent School
Association of Massachusetts Board of Directors) and spent four days
in South Dakota seeing that all was well with the six Abbot girls there.

76. Gordon, letter to Stapleton, 6 January 1969.

77. "Sandwich," chapter 3.

78. Ibid., chapter 6.

79. Ibid. The Principal's files from the Gordon years are filled with letters
that begin with such phrases as "This has been a wild period, and I am
embarrassed to be delayed" (letter to teacher, 7 May 1969); "June is
ripping . . . and I suddenly remembered that we had never gotten
together to discuss your contract" (letter to teacher, 31 [sic] June
1970); "I feel badly about our delay (letter to teacher, 5 May 1969);
"I still love you— never fear— but the pile on my desk does get in the
way" (letter to teacher, 2 October 1972).

80. Interview, Gordon.

81. Speech presented at "Old Scholars Day," the first day of Abbot's fif-
tieth anniversary celebration, 10 June 1879, quoted in McKeen, Annals,

'73-

82. Alumnae recollections; quotes from 1972 and 1970 graduates.

83. Circle (1970), 3. Charles Dickens' opening passage from A Tale of
Two Cities provided the Class of 1970 with the epigraph, and their
metaphor for the year.

84. Letters from alumnae, Classes of 1970 and 1971.

85. Carolyn Johnston finds it amusing that these magical eyes should have
so utterly failed her one working Saturday, when one independent
character named Tara Sartorius carried the lumber for an enormous
water bed frame past her open office door piece by piece, hammered
it together up on the third floor of Draper, and filled the mattress with
100 gallons of water, all without a trace of suspicion from the Dean's
Office.

86. One consequence of Abbot's enlarged constituency was the smaller
proportion of alumnae relatives that attended in the seventies: an aver-
age of about 10 percent instead of the steady 15-18 percent of the
fifties and early sixties. According to Faith Howland Kaiser, another
group all but ceased to apply: the daughters of Latin American dip-
lomats and businessmen. The "new Abbot" was apparently too liberal
for their parents' tastes.

87. Many day scholars throughout Abbot's history felt they "had the best
of both worlds," but others complained bitterly about Abbot's nig-
gardly accommodations for them and its refusal to invite them to such
special occasions as the Christmas Dinner, etc. "We were treated like
dirt," says a '31 alumna. The low point came when Bertha Bailey
refused "for about two years" [say two alumnae] in the mid-twenties

$j6 NOTES TO PAGES 400-405

to admit any day scholars from Lawrence at all, following several inci-
dents of day-girl misbehavior on the Lawrence-Andover bus.

88. See Minutes, Investment Committee Meeting, 27 February and 12 May
1970; Minutes, Trustees' Meeting 5 June 1970.

89. Recollections, Gordon.

90. "Forum Mail Bag," Forum (March 1970), 10.

91. See, for example, the proposal for a Human Relations Center, Trustee
Minutes, 28 January 1972, and Executive Committee minutes, 19 April
1972 and 17 May 1972.

92. The first year of the exchange, the order was in reverse; but the Abbot
girls felt the Dakota girls would feel more at home at Abbot if they
knew a few Abbot students before they arrived, so the 1972—73 pro-
gram worked as described.

93. Several of the Abbot girls shared their Rosebud experiences with
others in poetry:

THE OCEAN

Flat

rolling flat

reaches out to draw me to those

hills
those hills brown, dusty and

low . . .
this wind
that plays ring-around-the-rosie

with the reeds

That same wind sends prairie

weeds

racing across the bare, dusty

lawns
blowing the dresses of the little

Indian girls
playing hopscotch
in the streets
Yesterday

that wind brought the ice and snow
knives

to slice the house
rattling the window panes.

It powers the long, low barges
loaded with clouds
that sail across the bright blue
sea
each day

NOTES TO PAGES 406-412 577

and sends the high pitched voices

of children
that are churning the settled sands

of my mind

loosening the silt

that had gathered there.

Mary Clements

94. Recollections, faculty.

95. Carolyn Goodwin, "Observations on Indian Exchange after One
Week," 3 January 1972; teacher reports and Dakota students' evalua-
tions of the program, Abbot Archives; and Cynosure, 9 January 1972.
A teacher had commented of one, "I fear she was not overenthused by
medieval history," but the Indian girls said they admired Abbot's
classes and liked the way Abbot students "were not afraid to speak
their minds" in class. One of the shyest girls found Abbot girls "very
nice, a lot nicer than the girls in St. Francis," even though she never
did smile.

96. Interviews, Beth Warren, and Carolyn Johnston, and conversation,
black alumnae of 1973 and 1974.

1 7. ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

i. Phillipian, 17 March 1883.

2. See letter to Mary Lyon, quoted in full in Phebe McKeen, Annals,

3. H. C. Journal (16 May 1874), x38-

4. Phillipian, 27 May 1882.

5. Courant (January 191 3), 20-30.

6. Speech to Boston Abbot Club.

7. Blackmer, Student Unrest, 47.

8. Phillipian, 3 March 1975; headline quoted from interview with Donald
Gordon.

9. Newsweek (27 January 1968), 68.

10. Time (26 September 1969), 43.

1 1 . Saturday Review ( 1 7 May 1 969) , 8 1 .

12. George Gilder, "On Rediscovering the Difference," in National Re-
view; (3 August 1973), 832-833. Excerpted from Gilder's Sexual Suicide
(New York, Quadrangle Press, 1973).

13. Virginia Knapp, interview. See also the interesting volume of letters
on coeducation vs. single-sex schooling collected and published by the
NAPSG, Sharing, ed. Constance B. Pratt (n.p., 1974).

14. Ronny Winchel, Diane Fenner, and Philip Shaver, "Impact of Coedu-
cation on Tear of Success' Imagery Expressed by Male and Female

578 NOTES TO PAGES 4 I 2 -4 I 3

High School Students/' manuscript, 1974, later published in the Jour-
nal of Educational Psychology (October 1974), it summarizes the re-
search on this matter from 1953 through 1974 and adds the authors'
findings. Forty-one percent of females in a coeducational high school
responded negatively to the projective cue, "After mid-year exams
are over, Ann finds herself at the top of her first-year class in medical
school"; that is, they finished the story with a grim ending of some
kind, or an assurance that "Ann" had cheated on her exams and was
therefore not really at the top of her class at all. Just 16 percent of
females in an all-girls' high school of comparable constituency came
to such negative conclusions. The effect of elementary school atten-
dance was most striking: only one of twenty-six girls who had at-
tended non-coed elementary schools showed "fear of success," whether
they were attending a coed or a non-coed high school. Horner's find-
ings indicate that such anxiety becomes more common in college, espe-
cially in coeducational colleges. Increasingly precise use of Horner's
measures of "motive to avoid success" suggests that subjects' answers
reflect not what they feel but what they think women feel or ought
to feel. See Eleanor E. Maccoby and Carol N. Jacklin, The Psychology
of Sex Differences (Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1975),
140-163. The reader must come to her or his own conclusions as to the
difference between the two.

15. Among other sources, Helen S. Astin, The Woman Doctorate in
America (New York, Russell Sage, 1969), and Mary J. Oates, Susan
Williamson, "American Higher Education and the Career Choices of
Women, 1900- 1970," paper delivered at the Berkshire Conference,
June 1975. Some of these findings probably reflect the informal oppor-
tunities open to the girls and women from upper socioeconomic
groups who make up the majority of the students in all-girls' private
schools and women's colleges. A few studies cited by the authors are
controlled for social class, however. In these the beneficial effect of
the single-sex institution still obtains, though not so dramatically.

16. Floyd Allport (1929), quoted in Banner, American Women, 150-151.

17. Quoted in Jean S. Harris, "Let's Hear It for Coeducation, Folks,"
Independent School Bulletin (December 1973), 6.

18. Quotation from M. C. Thomas, "Should the Higher Education of
Women Differ from that of Men?" (1901), in Cross, ed., Educated
Woman, p. 154. Thomas' argument became practical as well as ideal-
istic as she neared the end of her long tenure as President of Bryn
Mawr. She became convinced that the financial resources of the nation
would be made fully available to women only if women and men
attended the same schools and colleges, both public and private.

19. S. Hyde, "The Case for Coeducation," memorandum to the Phillips
Trustees, September 1970.

20. Phillips Faculty Meeting Minutes, 16 April 1967.

NOTES TO PAGES 414-422 579

21. S. Hyde, memorandum to Phillips- Abbot Coordinating Committee, 26
May 1971.

22. Jean Bennett, interview. Phillips Dean of Students J. R. Richards does
not remember this incident. He recalls only his general admiration for
the Abbot sex education course: "She was doing a whale of a job,"
he says.

23. Phillips Faculty Meeting Minutes, 21 April 1970.

24. Phillips Trustee Minutes, 23-24 April 1970.

25. Teachers' and Trustees' recollections.

26. Interview, E. Barton Chapin. See also Kemper's partly humorous letter
to Robert Hunneman, President of Abbot's Board, Bulletin, February
1955, on the occasion of the fund-raising for the Abbot gymnasium, in
which Kemper lists all his Abbot connections and declares his respect
for the school and Miss Hearsey, then goes on to describe an Abbot
principal's special burden: "as if all those girls were not a sufficient
handful, she must struggle with the incredibly difficult problem for a
headmistress, of having all my boys for such close neighbors! They,
not to mention men generally, are little help when one strives to incul-
cate in young ladies some semblance of learning at this all too readily
divertible age."

27. Interview, Barton and Melville Chapin.

28. S. Hyde, "Case for Coeducation."

29. Ibid.

30. Phillips Trustee Minutes, October 30-31, 1970.

31. Carolyn Johnston, memorandum to "the Big 8, re Boy-Girl Relations,"
16 November 1970.

32. Julia Owen, "The Case for Coeducation: A Study of the Phillips- Abbot
Academy Merger," p. 25; teachers' recollections.

33. Cynosure, 5 October 1971.

34. Hyde, memorandum of March 1969: "Some Questions about the School
Program."

35. Recollections of alumnae, 1970-73, and of Carolyn Johnston.

36. Alumnae and alumni recollections.

37. Undated. The location in the box suggests 1969—70 or 1970-71.

38. Interview, alumna Class of 1973.

39. Alumnae recollections. See also a sample protest, Cynosure, 5 October
1 971: "Abbot students aren't apathetic towards sports. No! . . . They
HATE it ... (at least they hate competitive and organized sports.)"

40. Charlie Finch, Jr., Cynosure, 6 June 1969. Many Abbot alumnae have
powerful memories of the difference in tone. A typical graduate (Class
of 1970) does not remember her classes very well, except Joy Burgy's
"superb" Spanish class, but as a whole, "Abbot was bliss, it really was,"
she says. "It was kind of in to be cynical at P.A., but we loved our
school. All my best friends are still the ones I made at Abbot."

41. Allis, Youth from Every Quarter, 666, 668-669.

580 NOTES TO PAGES 422-435

42. Phillips teachers' recollections; see also Hyde, memorandum of March
1969: "Some Questions about the School Program," on the "unpro-
ductive conflict of opposing attitudes" among Phillips faculty.

43. Pieters, "Some Ideas opposed to Coeducation at Andover," 12 March
1971.

44. Phillips Trustee Minutes, 30 April-i May 1971.

45. The favorite epithet-pet name for Philip K. Allen of certain Phillips
Trustees.

46. Report of the July 1971 meetings of the Abbot-Phillips Coordinaton
Committee, p. 5.

47. Kemper in memorandum to the Phillips Academy Trustees, 25 August
1971.

48. Phillips Trustee Minutes, 29-30 October 1971.

49. Hyde in conversation, 13 May 1978.

50. S. J. Gilbert, "Life on the Farm," Cynosure, October 1971.

51. Faculty recollections. Allis says that it was difficult to find out exactly
what this course was really like because the teacher wouldn't allow
Phillips teachers to visit her class when the two departments were
trying to make joint plans. (Letter to author, 28 June 1978).

52. Conversations with D. Gordon, P. Stapleton, and R. Sheahan.

53. Alumnae recollections. See also statistics compiled by Sally S. Warner
from the questionnaire of 8 December 1971 given to all Abbot students
enrolled in coordinated classes in both schools. Thirty-nine students
responded, and although there were many criticisms and suggestions
(e.g., "P. A. should not be allowed to manipulate A. A. A. A. should
not bow to P.A.'s every whim" [two respondents]), there was also
clear, overwhelmingly positive expression of benefits gained.

54. Letter, D. A. Gordon to T. R. Sizer, 16 June 1972.

55. Ibid.

56. T. R. Sizer, "Speculations on Andover, I," memorandum to the Trus-
tees (12-13 July 1972), 4.

57. Sizer, "Speculations, II: The Issue of Coeducation," memorandum to
the Trustees (11 September 1972), 6-8.

58. Report of July 1971 meetings of the Abbot-Phillips Coordination
Committee, 5.

59. T. R. Sizer in conversation.

60. See F. A. Peterson, report to the Phillips and Abbot Faculties on
analysis of the September 1972 administration of QUEST A I to new
students at Abbot and Phillips, 18 January 1973. (Abbot Archives.)
See also Priscilla Peterson, "Report from Boston University Summer
School" to Donald Gordon, 17 September 1969, on the average SSAT
scores of accepted and rejected candidates for 1966-67 through 1969-
70. The average SSAT "total" scores of admittees (63rd percentile in
1963) began climbing in 1969 (71st percentile) and continued to rise
through 1972-73; no records now exist for the 1970-73 period, but

notes to pages 43 5~43 ^ 5^J

F. Howland remembers the 72-73 average as being about the 80th
percentile. Abbot was regaining the position it had held in the 1940's
and the 1957-64 period. Carolyn Goodwin recalls that in the late
1930's and 1940's, when she taught at a "feeder school" for private
preparatory schools, the most able girls were always steered toward
Abbot, the top boys toward Exeter, and the near-top boys toward
Phillips. See statistics of Abbot Seniors' college acceptances, 1965-73,
in Dean's File, Archives. See also Report of Office of Research and
Evaluation, "Fall Term Grades 1972-73," which breaks down grades
by individual course and by sex. High honor grades went more to
boys than to girls, but male-female averages are almost identical. Of
course, the few Abbot students who were not academically inclined
tended to avoid coordinated courses altogether when they had a
choice. In a national measure of academic ability, five 1973 Abbot
Seniors were National Merit finalists (4 percent); nineteen were "com-
mended" (15 percent), and two black students won special achieve-
ment awards. One of the finalists was named a Presidential Scholar,
though she refused to go with the other 120 Presidential Scholars to
the ceremonies at Nixon's White House. Five percent of Phillips Se-
niors the same year were finalists.

61. "Speculations, II," 8.

62. Interviews, J. K. Dow and Chapin. Quotations are from Dow.

63. Donors who had given or pledged money to the New Abbot Fund on
the assumption that half the total would be used for the Arts building
were told that their money would be gratefully added to the general
fund to cover operating costs and add to endowment, and (at Jane
Baldwin's suggestion) were asked if they would prefer to rescind their
donations. Just one donor did so, recalling a $10,000 contribution.

64. According to Faith Howland, 50 percent is about average for girls'
boarding schools and coed boarding schools outside of the most highly
endowed three (Andover, Exeter, and St. Paul's), whose tuitions are
relatively low. This suggests the unusual attractive powers of Abbot
from 1969 to 1 97 1.

65. Letter to John M. Kemper from Brooks Potter, of Choate, Hall and
Stewart (Phillips Academy attorneys), 22 October 1970. Potter pointed
out that Phillips' original Charter of 1780 is legally a "pre-Dartmouth
Charter," established before the Dartmouth College vs. Woodward
case of 1 8 19, and therefore, "cannot be altered or amended by the
legislature without the consent of the corporation." The Phillips Trus-
tees had to be certain to frame the "merger" legislation in such a way
that the risk of losing this "special status" was minimized, Potter wrote.

66. Letter, Mary Howard Nutting to Philip K. Allen, 5 August 1972.

67. Letter, Beverly Brooks Floe to Philip K. Allen, 12 August 1972. Rec-
ord by Gordon's secretary, Molly A. Chamberlain, of the July 17th
meeting of T. Sizer and D. Gordon.

582 NOTES TO PAGES 43 8-444

68. Gordon, notes on report to students, 13 September 1972.

69. Letter, Gordon to Mary H. Nutting, 14 August 1972.

70. Memoranda to Trustees, 11 and 15 September 1972.

71. Interview, Dow.

72. Letter, Guerin Todd to Mrs. Helen Blague Giles, 18 September 1972.

73. Lacking a tuition increase, Abbot's deficit promised to move from a
budgeted $28,200 in 1972-73 to $281,500 in 1976-77 (five-year pro-
jection developed for the Trustees by Griggs and Dow).

74. Gordon, memorandum to Abbot Trustees, 11 September 1972.

75. Letter to Mary H. Nutting.

76. Allis, Youth from Every Quarter, 679.

77. Resolution of the Abbot Trustees, 22 September 1972.

78. Minutes of Phillips Trustee meeting, 23 September 1972. Melville
Chapin, an attorney, confirms that the final arrangement made between
Phillips and Abbot was not legally a merger, but an "Agreement of
Association" made under Chapter 180 of the statutes of the Common-
wealth of Massachusetts. It was effected by a decree of the Supreme
Judicial Court.

79. Letter to the author.

80. Gordon and Sizer took responsibility for this. See "Agenda re T.S.
and D.G., A.A./P.A. Operations '72-73," 9 October 1972, typed by
Gordon's secretary.

81. Manuscript notes of speech to both boards of Trustees, undated.

82. Sizer, "Speculations, II," 19. On 15 September 1972 the Phillips Board
voted nearly all of the proposals Sizer made in this document, and the
Abbot Board agreed to the same terms within the following two
weeks.

83. Notes on Group 3 discussion and Abbot Town Meeting. Report to the
Faculty Appointment Working Party and the Residential Planning
Working Party.

84. Letter to Gordon, 17 October 1972.

85. Interview, F. Howland; confidential memorandum to Gordon, 17 Oc-
tober 1972, on "procedural difficulties at this stage of the game."

86. There was one further reason for the disparity between the numbers
of Abbot and Phillips teachers released. Phillips' custom was to hire
most young, inexperienced teachers on a one-year non-renewable con-
tract as "teaching fellows." Thus eight or ten recent college graduates
came and left each year as a matter of course— and they were not
counted in the number let go in 1973.

87. Roemer McPhee in Cynosure, 20 April 1973.

88. Cynosure, 20 April 1973.

89. QUEST A II of 1972, a questionnaire given to boarding school students
all over the country, showed that Abbot students were the only ones
of those questioned who endorsed their school's counseling system by
a majority of responses. (Records in Dean's office, Phillips Academy).

NOTES TO PAGES 445-447 583

90. See R. Griggs memorandum to Trustees, "Legal and Moral Obligations
of Abbot Academy for Non-academic Staff," 12 January 1973, and
Trustee Minutes, 15 February 1973.

91. Donald Gordon writes that the first person to suggest the idea of an
Abbot Academy foundation or "association" to him was his wife Josie.
(Letter to author, 25 June 1978). He passed it on to the Abbot Board-
several of whose members, he realizes, may well have thought along
similar lines before this.

92. Abbot Academy Constitution. Interestingly, the Phillips Academy's
Constitution contains almost identical language in its description of the
Headmaster's duties. The similarity is probably not coincidental: it is
likely that Abbot's original Trustees read Phillips Academy's constitu-
tion before writing their own. It is of more-than-symbolical impor-
tance, because the charter of the Abbot Academy Association grants
the Phillips Headmaster a veto over its major decisions.

93. Early residents of Abbot Cluster, male or female alike, insist that it
was "absolutely the best Cluster in the School." One male student who
never knew Abbot as a separate school feels that he was nevertheless
enrolled.

94. Interviews by B. Floe and author, and conversations with alumnae
classes of 1926, 193 1, 1938, and 1942.

95. Interviews by P. Marvit and L. Kennedy of former Abbot students
from Abbot Class of 1973 and Phillips Academy Class of 1976. See
also Cynosure, 20 April 1973: "Every day brings a new shower of
facts that destroy the option of closing our eyes to next year."

96. Interviews, five alumnae. Bethiah Crane Acceta, '62, thinks this process
had begun during her last years at Abbot.

97. Interview, alumna, Class of 1973.

98. In November 1976 Stephen Perrin spoke his feelings— still strong— in a
poem of remembrance.

Yes, I do remember Abbot:

that's the school

that burned

—or was consumed (same thing)

down to the ground,

nothing left

but a few aging women

kicking among the bricks

for traces

of the girls they'd lost—

oh, and teachers,

again not many,

the taste of ashes

in their throat.

99. Interview by Louise Kennedy.

584 NOTES TO PAGES 447-449

100. Eight-five adults are listed in the Catalogue for 1972-73, eight as
"administration," fifty-seven as faculty and resident advisers.

1 01. D. Gordon conversation, May 1978.

102. Alumnae recollections; Allen, interview.

103. Teachers' recollections.

104. Gordon conversation, May 1978, and in letter to Hubert Fortmiller,
28 March 1978.

105. Conversation, spring 1976.

106. Conversations, Abbot staff members and faculty, 1975-78, as well as
personal recollections. Typical remarks: "I'd never encountered any-
thing like that extraordinary friendliness in the faculty— not before or
since" (teacher in her 40's). And Marie Bonde at the retirement party
given in Draper Hall for her and Jes Bonde, 1976, to which Marguerite
Hearsey, Mary Crane, and many Abbot faculty and staff came: "This
is the most elite party I've been to since Abbot days." In contrast (and
at an extreme) two former Abbot kitchen workers complained of being
"peasants" under the new regime (fall 1975).

107. Interview, P. K. Allen.

108. Because end-of-term chores intervened, the show was not repeated.
Bruce Bugbee made a video tape, which makes it easy to recapture.
After all, the Follies had not been written primarily for Phillips
Academy.

109. Interview by Louise Kennedy.

Index

The index following is not definitive. Minor references have been excluded;
certain names and titles are omitted because they are listed elsewhere: all
trustees and all teachers from 1936 to 1973 not mentioned in the text, for
example, are listed with their dates of service in Appendices B and C; and
titles of books and periodicals mentioned only in footnotes are not indexed.
Individuals mentioned in endnotes who have provided or confirmed infor-
mation are not listed in the index unless they are also mentioned in the text.
(Names of virtually all these contributors can be found in the acknowledge-
ments.) Numbers of pages with illustrations are set in italic. The following
abbreviations are used: Abbot Academy, AA; Phillips Academy, PA;
Andover Theological Seminary, ATS. Dates immediately following names
of alumnae refer to the year their classes graduated from Abbot Academy.

Abbey House (built 1939), 284.
See also Gill, Emily Abbey

Abbot, Abiel (PA 1783): historian,
7; description of A A (1829), 26

Abbot, Rev. Abiel (PA 1788), Act-
ing Principal of PA (77 93-94), 8

Abbot, Amos. See Abbott, Amos

Abbot, George, one of Andover's
twenty-one original proprietors,

24
Abbot, George Ezra, Trustee,

329,333
Abbot, John Radford (PA '/o),

Trustee, 333, 5607229, 566/222
Abbot, Madam Sarah (Mrs. Nehe-
miah), Founder of Abbot Acade-
my (1828): foster-parent to
Obookiah, Hawaiian heathen, 24,
25; bequest to Abbot Academy,
25-26; legacy to Abbot Academy,
31, 62-63; family connections
with Samuel Phillips, Jr., 156, 410
Abbot Academy: founding, 5-28;
first historian, ^-^, 479^ 1; Main
Street site, 21-22; constitution,
22-23, Appendix A; instructors'
denomination, 2 2 ; first graduating
classes (1853), 484724; male princi-

pals, 31-36; introductory class,
37; first students, 37-43; teachers'
course in the "Fern Sem" (1839-
42), 44-45; personalities of early
students, 45-46; texts (1844-52),
50-51; ante-bellum (1850's), 69-
80; Civil War, 84-86; #7; sched-
ules, 93-95; Semicentennial (June
1879), 108; clubs, 113; rank with
Vassar, Bradford, Mt. Holyoke
(1876), 151; departmental and
housing needs, 151— 152, 16 /; col-
lege graduates (1892), 162; World
War I, 213-217; World War II,
285—290; survey of graduates,
5647245; change in the sixties, 343—
345; organization charts, 350-351;
name loss, 436; last Abbot diplo-
mas, 445. See also Curriculum,
Day Students, Depression, En-
rollment, "Fern Sems," Merger,
Schedules, daily and weekly;
Semicentennial Celebration

Abbot Academy Association, 445-
446, 5837291

Abbot Academy endowment fund,
253, 311, 376-377,426,435,
5427249, 5727235, 5727236, 5727237.

586

INDEX

See also Loyalty Endowment
Fund, New Abbot Fund

Abbot Academy faculty: stable
corps late nineteenth century, 92;
in the Bailey era, 227-235, 258,
277; Cabinet, 356, 5687229; varied
teaching staff ( 1970-73), 358-361,
401-404; appointments at the
new Andover, 440-444

Abbot Academy 125th Anniversary

(*9S4), 329> 332-333

Abbot Academy Trustees: Found-
ing Trustees, 5-14, 17-22, 24, 26,
27; Memorialists' Petition, 34-36,
4857228; proposal for New En-
gland Seminary for Teachers, 41-
42; on flexibility of curriculum
under Farwell, 58; on religion as
criterion for membership (1838),
4907248; take over financial re-
sponsibility of school from Prin-
cipal, 71-72, 491728; initiate fund
drives, 72, 153-157, 189, 282-284,
332-333, 378; Philena McKeen
must be content with low salary
and spartan surroundings, 83; new
Board at turn of century, 189;
agreed all students should have
access to literature on Commu-
nism, 325; Board takes steps to
strengthen school, 328-334; en-
gaged Cresap, McCormick &
Paget (1963) as consultants, 348-
354; views on merger, 413, 430,
437-439, 448; petition for the dis-
solution of Abbot, 444, 446,
5607229

Abbot alumnae: marriages, careers,
and occupational statistics, 1 77—
181,5247225

Abbot Alumnae Association: pledge
$2,000 for building drive (1884),
153; founded by Phebe McKeen
and Susannah Jackson (1871),
155; records incomplete before
1871, 5197240; retirement recep-
tion and breakfast for Miss Mc-
Keen, 161; headquarters in An-
dover, 188; arranged last all-
Abbot reunion, 447

Abbot alumnae authors, 179, 180-
182, 5257229. See also Woods, Mar-
garet Oliver, 1829 (Meta Lander,
pseud.) ; Woods, Harriet Newell,
1832 (Madeleine Leslie, pseud)-,
Stuart, Sarah Cook, 183$ (Sarah
Cook Robbins); Bailey, Sarah
Loring, 18 55; Phelps, Elizabeth
Stuart, 1858; French, Alice, 1868;
(Octave Thanet, pseud) ; Fuller,
Anna, 1872; Smith, Kate Douglas,
1873 (Kate Douglas Wiggin)

Abbot Alumnae Fund. See Loyalty
Endowment Fund

Abbot Battalion, student and facul-
ty drill, 214. See also Abbot
Academy, World War I

Abbot bazaar: first bazaar (29 Sept.
1854), 75; as Centennial fund-
raiser, 242; last bazaar (1973), 447

"Abbot Beautiful," 311, 381

Abbot Charter, 372, 51 572102. See
also Abbot Academy, constitution

Abbot Christian Association, 192

Abbot Christian Workers, 1 79. See
also Abbot Religious Association

Abbot Circle. See "Circle"

Abbot Clubs. See Boston, Connecti-
cut, New York Abbot clubs

Abbot Cluster, 436, 446, 5837293

Abbot "Commons," first Abbot-
sponsored boarding house (1839),
41-43. See also Davis Hall

Abbot Development Fund,
Hearsey era, 332-334

Abbot drama course, 430—432

Abbot fathers, 250, 253, 270, 332

Abbot Female Academy. See Abbot
Academy

Abbot Female Academy prospectus,
terms of instruction (1829), 29,
483721

Abbot Female Seminary for Teach-
ers. See Abbot Academy, Teach-
ers' course

Abbot Forum, 382, 400. See also
Alumnae Bulletin

Abbot Hall: former Academy Build-
ing re-named Abbot Hall, 159,
16 1; featured in prize winning

INDEX

587

exhibit at World's Fair (1893),
1 70; refurbished science labora-
tories (1904), 190; "Pure Bul-
finch," 283, 5487254. See also
Academy Building

Abbot parents: statistics, 256,

5447266; property taxes (1830— jo),
4852249

Abbot Religious Association: for-
merly Christian Workers, 137;
Sunday evening gatherings, 381.
See also Abbot Christian Workers

Abbot seal, 218, 2 19

Abbot town meeting: in Crane era,
316; in Gordon era, 380-382,
441, 442-443, 573w43i 573w45>
5737247

Abbot World Federalists, 291

Abbott, Amos, Trustee, 17-18, 21

Abbot, Helen Alford, '04 {Mrs.
Lawrence Allen), 197

Abbott, Elizabeth Punchard
(Lizzie), 1874 (Mrs. Thomas
Franklin Pratt), 102-105, 107, 112

Abbott, Sarah Augusta, 18 $6 (Mrs.
Albert Gallatin Martin), led all
class parade (1929), 242

Abbott Academy, 5102236. See also
Abbot Academy

Abolitionism, 61

Academic course: traditional course,
165, 183-184, 212, 257, 272,
526724, 526727, 5477223; abandoned
(1944), 282. See also Curriculum

Academically talented. See Stu-
dents, gifted

Academy Building (1828): con-
struction, 26-28; jacked onto
great rollers (1888), 157. See also
Abbot Hall

Adams, Emily Jane, 1829 (Mrs.
Joseph Hosmer Bancroft), daugh-
ter of PA Principal John Adams,
veto of Main Street site, 24-26

Adams, John, Fourth Principal of

PA> 24. 33. 59-^0
Adams, John Quincv, President of

U.S., 30
Adams Academy (Derry, N.H.),

founded 1824, 17, 23, 80; closed

(1872), 100

Addams, Jane, settlement house
movement, 179

Administrative intern. See Staple-
ton, Peter T.

Administrative Policy Committee,

354

Admissions: examinations, 86, 185,
224; applicants increase, 299, 327,
335, 5597220; applicants stagnate,
360-361, 5677227; in Gordon era,
398, 412—413, 434—435, 5807260. See
also Kaiser, Faith Howland

Adolescence: McKeen era, 88-98;
self -reporting, 106; Lucy Lar-
com's New England Girlhood,
107; emotionally sensitive period,
110-113; male and female, AA
helps develop concept of, 120—
125; Catharine Beecher on, 119,
120; PA students had unthink-
able freedom, 1 24; boarding
schools' role in defining, 144—145,
194; M. de Saint Mery on, 152-
153; arguments pro and con
coeducation for adolescent boys,
222, 227, 411-412; critique of
rules designed to control, 357—
358; Boy-Girl Committee, 416,
419, 5797231. See also Hall, Gran-
ville Stanley; Rules and regula-
tions, Victorian values

Adult-student gulf, restive students,
306-311, 347, 367, 5537217, 553^19,
5547220—5547224; Tucker-Gordon
era, 371, 381. See also Revolu-
tion, student

Advanced Placement programs,
325-326, 346,429,435

Aeolian Honor Society, founded
(1921), 229

Afro -x\m eric an Center, 406

Age distribution. See Grade and
age distribution

Agnes Park Chair of History. See
Park, Agnes

Albert Lea College for Women
(Minn.), Laura Watson Prin-
cipal, 163

Alcott, Bronson, 97, 51 1725 1

588

INDEX

Alden, John, Trustee, 190

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 103, 142,
51672119

Allen, Helen Stearns, '52, (Mrs.
Lenert William Henry, Mrs.
Harry Anderson), Trustee, 221,
315, 328, 5607229, 566^222; fund
raising for gym, 333, 348; mem-
ber Rules Committee (1960's),
357; member Search Committee
(1967) for principal, 57172 13,
5727239

Allen, Mrs. Lawrence. See Abbott,
Helen Alford

Allen, Philip Kirkham (PA '29),
Trustee: negotiates merger of
Abbot and PA, 328; force behind
coed school, 348, 5667222; asks
Flagg to retire, 349; leads change
in administration, 361; Trustee
of both Abbot and PA, 362; looks
for principal to bring about
merger, 368-370, 390, 5707212,
5717213; merger and new coed
school, 409, 42 1 ; "double agent,"
425, 427, 437, 5807245; on Sizer as
key to new coed school, 439-
440; "Don Gordon was like a
son to me," 448; "Mr. Andover
Republican," 570727; urges
Student Government officers to
request more responsibility,

573w43
Allis, Frederick Scouller, Jr. (PA

'5/), Instructor in History, 421
Alumna Loyalty Pledge, 539725
Alumnae Advisory Committee, 242
Alumnae Bulletin, founded (25)25),
242, 347, 382. See also Abbot
Forum
Alumnae news. See Alumnae Bul-
letin, Courant
Alumnae relatives, 203, 327, 333,

5597226
"Ajnateur Sandwich," 393, 571/218
American Association of School

Administrators, 323
American Board of Foreign Mis-
sions, 136
American Friends Service Com-

mittee, 389
American Missionary Society, 98
American Socialist Party, 366
American Temperance Society, 98
American Tract Society, 38
Anderson, Mrs. Charles. See Ham-
lin, Abbie Frances
Anderson, Mrs. Harry. See Allen,

Helen Stearns
Andover, town of: family and com-
munal relationships after (/750),
6-14; Town Meeting, 10, 131,
328; elementary education, 11;
intellectual center of New En-
gland, 13; status distinctions, 17,
37-40, /05, 185, 5267213; Mc-
Keens tried to involve Abbot in
community, 88; Victorian matrix,
132-133; Abbot's gradual separa-
tion from town, 223, 327-328;
Great Depression, 246—261;
Burton Flagg's role in, 247-251,
328; public school students attend
Abbot debate, 389, 391; Phillip
Allen's role in, 570725. See also
Andover elite, Andover High
School, "Mill and Till," Punch-
ard High School, South Church,
"Town and Gown"
Andover Advertiser, 70
Andover Case, "heresy trials"
(1886-87), 5127258. See also
"Heresy trials"
Andover elite, bankers, farmers,
professors in town-elected posts,

39-40
Andover-Exeter Washington Intern

Program, 411
Andover High School, 67, 389, 391.

See also Punchard High School
Andover Hill: "Brimstone Hill,"

13; "trinity of Andover Schools,"

91-92; marriage of two Historic

Schools, 413-432, 448-450. See

also "Hill"
Andover Newton Theological

Seminary, 248, 5407229
Andover Press, printed Abbot's

publications, 247
Andover Press and Bookstore, man-

INDEX

589

aged by Warren Draper (closed

1866), 131, 5137272
Andover Review, ATS publication

by Warren Draper, 129, 131. See

also Visitors Committee
Andover Savings Bank, 251, 254
Andover Sportsman's Club, 250
Andover Teachers Seminary, 20,

44-45
Andover Theological Seminary

(ATS), founded 1808, 12, 13, 23,
26, 36, 38; involvement with early
Abbot, 18, 32, 37-38, 40, 410;
"Lord's anointed," 38, 123; opposes
women's leadership in parish af-
fairs, 60-61; "heresy trials," 129-
131, 192, 5127255, 5127258, 5287232;
decline, 138, 192, 5287228; orchard
hill, last gift to Abbot from ATS,
333. See also Andover Newton
Theological Seminary; Churchill,
Rev. John Wesley; Park, Rev.
Edwards Amasa; Stuart, Moses;
Woods, Rev. Leonard

Andover Town Hall, 185

Andover Village Improvement
Society, 170

Andover- Wilmington Railroad bed,
198

Andrade-Thompson, Hilary, In-
structor in English, 321

"Anniversary." See Graduation,
Commencement

Annuities, 253, 5427252

Anti-slavery movement, 70, 78, 84

Anti-suffragists, 128, 176, 177,
5237222. See also Woman suffrage

Antiwar demonstrations. See Faculty
unrest; Revolution, student

Antioch College, coed (18 52),
5097233

Arnold, Matthew, 96

Arosa, Mile. Germaine, Instructor
in French, 301—302, 309—310, 326,
364, 366, 522721, 5577283, 570726;
resigned, 375-376; Faculty Cab-
inet, 5687229

Ashton, Joseph N., Instructor in
Music, 228

Athletics. See Sports

Atwater, Caleb, "religion gives

woman dignity," 132
Austin, Mrs. Amariah Chandler.

See Hall, Susan Elizabeth
Authors. See Abbot alumnae

authors

Bacon, Mabel Ginevra {Mrs. Philip
Franklin Ripley), Instructor, 167,
170; on Miss Means, 185, 186; on
Miss Bailey, 2 1 2

Bacon, Rebecca Tyler, /#57, helped
launch Hampton Institute, 1 78

Badger, Rev. Milton, Trustee,
founding of Abbot, 5, 18

Bailey, Bertha, Principal of AA
(1912-1935): background and
inauguration, 203; co-principal and
co-owner of Taconic School
(Conn.), 203, 210; combines so-
cial standards, college prepara-
tion and missionary zeal, 210—239,
212; rules, regulations, chaperones,
and strict dress code, 217-223,
255, 258-259; changed Abbot seal
(1929), 218; pastor to the school,
235-239; fund raiser and founder
of Alumnae Advisory Committee
with Anna Davies, 240-242; chairs
Headmistress Association Com-
mittee, 256; died November 16,
19S Si 261-262; invoked by Miss
Hearsey, 264; began cutting lines
with PA, 410; "Bertha B."
column, 420, 429—430

Bailey, Carroll Wesley, Dean of
Abbot Cluster, 446

Bailey, Elaine, wife of Carroll W.
Bailey, 446

Bailey, Sarah Loring, author, 479727,
4807219, 4857245

Baker, Mrs. Abijah Richardson. See
Woods, Harriet Newell

Baker, M. Dorothy, Instructor in
English, 286, 5497273

Baker, Ruth Stephens, Instructor in
French, 531 72 10

Baldwin, Rev. Alfred Graham, PA
school minister, 372, 5467222

Baldwin, Jane B., '22, Trustee, 220,

59°

INDEX

328, 377, 390, 401, 440, 5607229

Bancroft, Antoinette Louise, 1883
(Mrs. Wilson Howard Pierce),
100, 120

Bancroft, Cecil Franklin Patch,
eighth Principal of PA (1893-
1901): reforms PA curriculum,
91; assists with Abbot Semi-
centennial preparations, 108;
uncle of Alfred E. Stearns, ninth
Principal of PA, 122; talk of
merger with Abbot, 125-126; rela-
tions between AA and PA, 125-
129; PA Centennial Drive, 152

Bancroft, Mrs. Joseph Hosmer. See
Adams, Emily Jane

Baratte, Mile. Martha Marie,
Instructor in French, 303, 450

"Baronial", 321

Barstow School (Kansas Citv,
Mo.), 368

Bartlett, Ellen Motley, 1869 (Mrs.
Frederick P. Hodgdon), 177

Bartlett, Helen, 1874, 102, 179

Bathrooms, 152

Bean, Helen Dearborn, Instructor
in History, 227

Bebek Seminary (Constantinople,
Turkey), 46-47

Beds: double, 103, 104, 153; single,
155; water, 575/285

Beecher, Catharine Esther, daugh-
ter of Reverend Lyman Beecher
and sister of Harriet Beecher
Stowe, 16, 36, 41, 43, 49, 61;
champion of and author of "Fe-
male Education," 16; co-founder
of Hartford Female Seminary
(1823) with sister Harriet, 16;
fund raising for H. F. Seminary,
23—34; conversions, 60; women's
right to equal education, 79; on
female adolescence, 120

Beecher, Harriet. See Stowe,
Harriet Beecher

Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward, son of
Rev. Lyman Beecher and brother
of Catharine and of Harriet
Beecher Stowe, author (of novel
"Norwood, or Village Life in

New England" (1867), 39, 43;
speech on "Education" criticized
by Courant, 39, 43, 114

Belcher, Mary Justinia, Instructor
in Latin, Astronomy and Physical
Education, 93, 142, 51622121

"Bells," poem, 94-95

Benedict, G. Grenville (PA '5/),
Trustee and PA Dean of Stu-
dents, 362, 366, 5662222

Bennett, Jean Dietel (Mrs. John),
Instructor in Mathematics, 359,
5682229; arranged sex education
courses, 365, 414, 570226

Bensley, Audrey Nye (Mrs.
Gordon G., Instructor in Cer-
amics, 365

Bequest program, 253

"Bertha B." column (Cynosure),
420, 420—430. See also Bailey,
Bertha; Cynosure

Bertha Bailey House, formerly
French House on School Street,
446

Bestor, Arthur, 324

Bible study, required, 307, 5557226,
5552227

Bibliotheca Sacra, theological re-
view, 131, 5287228

"Big Bertha." See Bailey, Bertha

Bigelow, Mrs. Melville James. See
French, Isabella Graham

"Binarv star," the McKeens, 83

Birth rates (1800-1900), 174, 5012241

Bishop Hall (Phillips Academy),

253
Bittinger, Rev. Joseph Baugher,

Acting Principal of Abbot
Academy (1848-49), 69, 394
Black, Mrs. Frederic Morton. See

Hinkley, Alice
Black students. See Students, Black
Blackmer, Alan Rogers, Instructor
in English and Dean of the
Faculty: condenscension toward
Abbot, 222; pushed for advanced
college placement for gifted stu-
dents, 225; new rapport between
AA and PA in Hearsey era, 269,
291; talking coeducation, 413

INDEX

Blackmer, Josephine, wife of Alan
Rogers Blackmer, 291, 552/24

Blackwell, Elizabeth, 78

Blair, Mary Elizabeth, Associate
Principal of Abbot Academy
(i8$4-s6),7i,ri

Blanchard, Amos (PA 1787-88),
Trustee, 17, 21

Blau, Joseph, 62

Blodgett, Albert, M.D., against co-
education, 509/234

Bloomers, 94, 194

Board and tuition. See Tuition,
Tuition and board

Boarders, early: with private fami-
lies, 40-43; Abbot "Commons"
first Abbot-sponsored boarding
dormitory (1839), 41; Smith Hall,

75-77
Boat clubs, Nereids and Undines,

113
Bodenmeyer, Fraulein Adelheid

(Mrs. James Waite Howard), In-
structor in German, first native
German teacher, 4982210
Bonde, Jes, 331; Fast for World
Hunger, 389; delicious food at
Abbot, 432, 446, 58472106
Bonde, Marie, wife of Jes Bonde,

58422106
Bosher, Mabel Ethelyn, 1894, Li-
brarian at AA, Miss Watson's
librarian, 538723
Boston Abbot Club, 188, 314, 410
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 230
Boston Symphony tickets, 197, 218
Boxing exhibition, 123, 5082224
Boy-Girl Relations Committee,

25)70-72,416,419, 5797231
Bradford, Jenny (pseud.). See Mc-

Keen, Phebe Fuller
Bradford Academy (Bradford,
Mass.): founding of (1804) as
coed school, 15; becomes female
academy (1836), 15; boom under
Principal Abigail Hasseltine, 71,
83, 4977287; enrollment com-
pared with Abbot, 76; curricu-
lum, 90; equipment compared, 93;

tuition, 100, 125, 160; attitude to-
ward males, 127; housing, 152;
drop in enrollment, 165, 5207246;
Abbot alumna principal (Rebecca
Ives Gilman, 1840, Principal of
Bradford Academy i8$$-$8), 177;
becomes junior college (25)52),
225

Bradley Arts Festival, 443

Bradstreet, Ann, poetry, writing,
and library of, 8

Bradstreet, Simon, early settler in
Andover, 8

"Brimstone Hill." See Andover
Hill, "Hill"

British ambulance unit, fund-raising
for, 287-288, 5507278. See also
Brooks, Beverly

British War Relief, 286-288

Brooks, Beverly, "41 (Mrs. Carl F.
Floe), Trustee: editor-in-chief of
C our ant, 279, 5487247; funding
for British ambulance unit, 287—
288, 5507278; on AA and PA
merger, 438, 5817267

Brooks, Marion Mather, '75, 245

Brooks, Rev. Phillips: evening lec-
tures, 136; friend of Abbot, 156

Brooks School, coed drama and
singing groups with, 339, 5657260

Brother-sister pairs, 123,4867261,
5087220

Brown, Annie Cora, 1891 (Mrs.
Leonard Herbert Campbell), 178

Brown, Antoinette, Congregation-
alist minister, theological graduate
of Oberlin (7#yo), 5127255

Brown, Helen M. (Mrs. Edward
Copeland), Instructor in Music,
135, 5147286

Browne, Maria Jane Bancroft,
Principal of A A (18 $6-57):
maintains distance between AA
and PA, 78; woman is "a co-
operating power," 80, 117, 128,
4967258, 4967259; leaves AA for
better position, 81

Brown, Marion, '77, 198—202

Brown, Rev. Samuel Gilman, Prin-

592

INDEX

cipal A A (1835-38), the kindest
and best of men, 31-33; AA girls
attend Shakespeare lectures at
Teachers Seminary, 33; reason
for resigning, 40, 486/252; science
courses, 54; education and re-
ligion, 58

Brown, Mrs. William Bryant. See
Emerson, Charlotte

Bryant, Mildred Copeland, '25
(Mrs. Henry S. Kussmaul), 196,

21 1, 53 1726

Bryn Mawr College: M. Carey
Thomas Dean, 90, 101; northeast
prep schools for, 164; qualified
students, 173-174; M. Carey
Thomas first woman President,
174-175, 177; insists on own
entrance exams, 184, 368, 412.
See also Appendix C; Chickering,
Rebekah Munroe; Crane, Mary
Hinckley; Hearsey, Marguerite
Capen; Park, Marion Edwards;
Thomas, M. Carey

Bryn Mawr School, 159, 185,
5357276

Bryn Mawr Summer School for
Women Workers, sends speakers
to Abbot, 175

Buckey, John, Director of Studies
(1969—70): former teacher at
Quaker schools, 383-386; house
in West Andover, 389; Income
Tax Day protest at the Andover
IRS facility, 389, 391-392; clash
with Gordon, 391-392

Budget, deficits, 377-379

Bullard, Mrs. Amos. See Durant,
Mary Ann

Bulletin. See Alumnae Bulletin

Burgy, Joy Renjilian (Mrs. Donald
T.), Instructor in Spanish, Span-
ish class, 5797240

Bushnell, Rev. Horace, 79, 4957252

Byers, Mrs. John. See Smith,
Esther Humphrey

Byers, Peter Smith (PA 2 #47), In-
structor at PA: elected principal
of A A but refused, 69; Fuess on,
69; accepts principalship of new

Punchard High School (18 56),
72, 4927215

CEEB. See College Entrance Ex-
amination Board

C. P. See College Preparatory
Course

"Cads": Abbot nickname for PA
students in 1880^, 123-124,
5087212; visiting went on, 167—
168, 197-198, 223, 5087217, 5217265

Calhoun, Minna S. (Mrs. Alex-
ander D.), Instructor in Mathe-
matics, 55 1721 01

Calkins, Rev. Raymond, 26

Calling hours, 120; PA made the
best of, 222—223, 534^61; ex-
tended, 379

"Calm me, my God," hymn, 123

Calvinism: New England, 7; Rev.
Park as link with Calvinist tradi-
tion, 74. See also Park, Rev.
Edwards Amasa

Cambodia, student response to in-
vasion of (1970), 390

Cambridge Botanical Gardens,
trips to, 98

Cambridge School (Weston), insti-
tuted "town meeting" (1967),

573n43
Campbell, Mrs. Leonard Herbert.

See Brown, Annie Cora
"Cancan, Madame," popular cari-
cature of impracticality of female
academies' course of study, 57
Card-playing, 130,5137262
Careers. See Abbot Alumnae
Carpenter, Jane Brodie, 1892,

Alumnae Secretary, 189; alumnae
secretary, 241; editor Alumnae
Bulletin, 242, 274
Carpenter, Mary (Mrs. Roscoe E.
E. Dake), Instructor in Physical
Education: first fulltime Director
of Physical Education (1925-50),
227; hygiene lectures and athletic
program, 233-234, 537721 13
Carter, Mrs. Herbert. See Hume-

ston, Pauline
Case for Coeducation, Simeon Hvde,

INDEX

593

413-414, 416-418, 423, 5787219

Castle, Abby Locke, '5/ (Mrs. John
Mason Kemper), wife of eleventh
Headmaster of PA: practical
problems, 224, 5347266, 53772106;
"no snobbery, few cliques" during
Depression years, 257-258; Com-
mittee on Rules investigation
1960^), 357; member of Search
Committee, 5712213

Castle, Mrs. Alfred Lucius. See
Thomson, Eleanor Jaffray

Catskill Female Academy, 46

Cecilia Society, 1 1 3

Centennial Celebration, 240—245,
539726

Centennial Fund for Teaching,
5397210

Centennial gift, A A to PA, 125

Certificate privileges, 184

Chadbourne, Paul A., President of
Williams College, Semicentennial
speech, 51 7721 29

Chadwick, F. E., on woman peril,
221

Chamberlin, Mrs. Daniel. See Chap-
man, Abby Wade

Chandler, Beth, 'yj (Mrs. Theodore
John Warren, Jr.), 294-295, 310,
314, 406—408

Chapel, 236; disorder in, 275, 347;
daily, 307, 309; moved to Davis
Hall, 334, 5627230; no longer re-
quired, 379, 381. See also
Religion, Schedules, daily

Chapell, Harriet Wetmore, 7 #76
(Mrs. Frederic Seymore New-
comb): Journal, 95, 98, 1 01-106,
107—108, 109, 112— 113, 5037254,
5047259; PA boys, 119, 124, 127;
horrid Sundays, 134, 153; helped
furnish and decorate guest en-
trance, 158; PA 1872 Reunion, 410

Chaperones, 197, 198, 218, 220, 221,
309, 320-321, 339

Chapin, E. Barton. See Chapin,
Edward Barton

Chapin, Edward Barton (PA '05),
Trustee: Abbot Board Chairman,
250, 269, 285; retires from Board

of Trustees, 328, 5627231; house
offered to school, 378
Chapin, Edward Barton, Jr. (PA

1936), 25°. 54I7233> 579ni6
Chapin, Melville (PA 1936), PA

Trustee, 250, 433, 435, 5417233
Chapin House: offered, 378; opens

(25770), 398
Chapman, Abby Wade, 184$ (Mrs.

Daniel Chamberlin, Mrs. John R.

Poor), Acting Principal of AA

18 S3-, 69-7 1

Chase, Alston Hurd, PA Instructor
in Classics, 325

Chen, Mrs. C. Henry. See Li, Tsing
Lien

Chetlain, Mrs. Arthur L. See
Edwards, Annie M.

Chicago Haymarket riots, 1 15

Chickering, Rebekah Munroe, In-
structor in English, 187, 194, 267,
5 1 1 725 1 ; current events lectures,

2I3i 225, 233, 535^72; edits ^4
Cycle of Abbot Verse, 244; sudden
death (1937), 274

Chipman, Mrs. Reeve. See Parker,
Constance

Choate-Rosemary Hall, 438

Choir, 197, 278

Christian Workers, 137

Christmas, 134, 213, 278—279,577—322

Christmas Vespers, 213, 281

Church History syllabus. See
Syllabus

Churchill, Mrs. John Wesley. See
Donald, Marv Jean

Churchill, Rev. John Wesley (PA
1861, ATS 1868), Trustee and PA
Professor of Elocution: "trinity of
Andover schools," 92; Abbot part-
time elocution teacher, 96; friend
and colleague of Miss McKeen,
129, /30; exonerated for liberal
religious views expressed in An-
dover Review, 129, 5127258;
Memorial to Miss McKeen, 141,
5 1 572 1 09; building committee,
153; died (1900), 189

"Circle," 168, 367, 379

Civil War. See Abbot Academy,

594

INDEX

Civil War

Clapp, Margaret, Trustee and Pres-
ident of Wellesley College, 328,
560/229

Clapp, Prof. William W., winter
series of Shakespearean lectures,

97
Clark, Hon. Hobart, Trustee, 1 7

Clark, Mrs. Rockwell. See Rock-
well, Dorothy

Clark, Susan, Instructor in Latin
and Greek, 387, 429

Clarke, Dr. Edward, 175

Class ceremonies: pins, first (2 #73),
116; tree planting, 1 1 7, 446;
spade, 117; mottoes, 118; poem

^ (1901), 169

Classical languages: 1829-1892, 57,
88-92, 4997216; Greek offered,
165, 168; decline of Latin instruc-
tion, 166; in Means era, 187-188;
in Hearsey era, 271, 272, 317,
5567773; in Crane era, 317, 325;
Gordan era, 429

Clements, Mary E., '75, "The
Ocean" (poem) 5767293

Clubs and sororities, 11 3-1 14, 194-
196, 447. See also Societies

Cluster system, 434. See also Abbot
Cluster

Coasting parties, 123-124

Coed roof parties, 306, 5547222

Coeducation: debate over, (1878-
92), 124-129, 5097234, 5107250,
(25^2-72), 41 1-413; 557727-5577214,
5787215; achievement of on An-
dover Hill, 409-450; in-depth
study voted by PA Trustees on
whether to seek coordinate edu-
cation and/or coeducation at PA
(1970), 415-416, 424; discussions
between D. Gordon and T. Sizer
on merger, 43 5—440. See also
Bradford Academy; Education,
women's; Merger; Quaker edu-
cators

Cole, Mary Jessie, 2 #76 (Mrs.
Charles B. F. Pease), Instructor,

112

Coleman, Rev. Lyman, Trustee,

Principal PA Teachers' Seminary,

College admissions, statistics, 347,
566227

College counseling, 349, 386-387

College Entrance Examination
Board (CEEB): (1901), 184; Ad-
vanced Placement testing, 326;
six of first exam readers women,
526725; Scholastic Aptitude test-
ing, 565721

College Preparatory ( C. P. ) Course,
162-171, 212, 271; students in,
196, 225

Collins, Mrs. Charles Terry. See
Wood, Mary Abby

Comegys, Esther, Dean and In-
structor in Mathematics, 259, 262,
5427242

Commencement: (1858), 80; (1973),
449-450. See also Graduation

Committee of Ten, 165—166

Commons. See Abbot "Commons,"
"Latin Commons" (PA)

Community service groups, 366, 389

Composition Day, 94

Computers, 403, 429

Conant, James Bryant, President
of Harvard University, on public
schools for all, 229, 323—327, 334

Conchology course, 93

Concord Academy, 405

Congregationalism, 58, 136, 137,
138. See also Calvinism; Park,
Edwards A.; Religion

Connecticut Abbot Club, founded
(25725), 242

Constitution. See Abbot Academy,
constitution of

Consumer's League Movement, 179

Conversions. See Religion, Re-
vivalism

Coolidge, Hope, House Superinten-
dent, 288

Coordinate education: early ex-
changes of teachers with PA and
ATS, 32-33, 51; ended by Miss
Hasseltine, 78, 126; "proximate
education" as a "medium course"
(1879), 128; coordination of so-

INDEX

595

cial and extra-curricular life, 316,
320-321, 339, 366, 367, 372, 379;
committees to plan, 367-368, 416,
418, 423, 425; PA- Abbot experi-
ment, 414-419, 43 ^ 433-436

Coordination. See Coordinate edu-
cation

Copeland, Mrs. Edward. See
Brown, Helen M.

Cornelius, Mary Hooker, 1836, In-
structor, 203

Cornell University, 127, 175

Corridor teachers. See Teachers,
live-in

Cost accounting, 353, 379

Courant: Abbot Academy periodi-
cal (1873), 112, 114-115, 123, 132,
142-143, 151, 196; Centennial
Issue, new seal (1929), 218, 242,
277,278

Craig, Madame Marie DeLaNiepce,
Instructor in French, 261, 330,
5637236

Crane, Mary Hinckley, Principal
of AA (1955-1966) and English
and History of Art Instructor:
succeeds M. Hearsey (1955), 31 1,
315-322, 318, 5567264, 5571177;
chapel talks, 316—317; dilemma
over rules, 316, 339, 347, 357;
separate home for her family,
319-322, 557724; teacher recruit-
ing, 319, 321-322, 352, 358-361,
371, 379; member of working
committees of NAIS, NEACSS
and NASPG, 319, 354, 5697256;
adapted workloads to women's
needs, 319, 359, 441; advanced
placement, 325-326, 334, 336-337;
permission for eight AA students
to participate in peace demonstra-
tions, 343-344, 346, 566726; pen-
sions and salaries, 354, 5677223,
5677224; initiated scholarship aid,
354-355, 5677225; Faculty Council
under, 356; resignation (1966),
361-363, 364, 5697253; to serve as
interim Principal for High School
Division Pierce College (Athens),
363; describes older teachers'

needs for funds, 5637237
Crane's Beach, 311, 372
"Crash," 240, 245, 5397216, 5397217
"Creative Days," 372
Cresap, McCormick and Paget,

Report (1963), 348-354, 350, 3$ 1
Cross-enrollment, 432. See also

Coordinate education
Cum Laude Chapter ( 1926), first

official chapter in a girls' school,

235> 53^98

Curriculum: first, 22; (1844), 50-
63; classical, 49; Mass. high
schools, 49; PA during Adams
and Taylor era, 49; (1857), 80;
(i860), 88-99; innovations in
Watson era (1892-98), 162-171;
(1912), 207-209; (1913-1918),
World War I, 212-213; (I920's),
227-233; (i933~l934), 250-260;
(i931-i955), *7i-273; World
War II (1941-44), 288-289,
5507281; (1950's), 325-327; (l955~
1956), 317; (1968-73), the
Gordon years, 387-388, 401-404;
( 1970's), 41 1-419; coordination
and cross-enrollment, 428-432.
See also Abbot Academy, Aca-
demic course

Curriculum Committee, 416, 418,

423
Cutler, Mrs. Abaline Bardwell. See

Nourse, Mary Susan

Cutler House, laissez-faire atmo-
sphere, 42 1

Cycle of Abbot Verse, centennial
publication (1929), 244

Cynosure (i960): new school news-
paper, 347; printed exchange on
rules and educational policy, 358;
proliferation of PA-AA activities,
367, 371, 372; praises D. Gordon,
372-373; "Bertha B." column,
420, 429—430; intersex visiting,
443. See also Gilbert, Sallv Jo

D.O.G.'s. See Dear Old Girls
Dake, Mrs. Roscoe E. E. See

Carpenter, Mary
Dakota Indian girls. See Rosebud

596

INDEX

Reservation (South Dakota)

Dances, 102, 130, 193, 231, 5137262;
with PA, 366

Dane Law of 27^7: land grants to
academies in Mass. and Maine, 23

Danzoll, Blair Harvie, Instructor in
Latin and Greek, 321

Darling, Mrs. Frank Wilkinson. See
Gorton, Mary Mahala

Davis, George Gilbert, Trustee:
contributed $10,000 in honor of
his Trustee father for assembly
hall and gym, 190; entranceway,
223

Davis, George Lucian, Trustee:
silver spoons, 83—84; purchased
Farwell House, 86; tears of joy,
158-159

Davis, Mrs. William Henry. See
Meacham, Emma Priscilla

Davis Hall (1865): George L.
Davis buys old Farwell House
(Abbot Commons) (186$) and
renames it Davis Hall, 86; domi-
cile for French speaking students,
90, 157; retired (1890), 159; re-
named "French" Hall (around
1887), 498/23. See also Abbot
"Commons"

Davis Hall (new lecture hall and
gym, 1904), 161, 190; Christmas
Vespers, 213—215, 234; winter
gymnastics, 332; used for chapel
(zpj-o's), 334; Faculty Follies, 449

Dawes, Anna Laurens, 1870, Presi-
dent of Abbot Alumnae Associa-
tion, 88, 119; quoted, 142, 165,
5207245; founded Alumnae Ad-
visory Committee, 242

"Dawn patrol," breakfast waitresses,
291

Day, Melville Cox (PA 1858), PA
benefactor, gave $5,000 for Abbot
Infirmary to be named after
Antoinette Hall Taylor, 538721 19

Day students (day scholars), 37-
40, 192, 196, 197, 224, 398, 575*287;
tuition, 77, 192, 5427249

Dear Old Girls (D.O.G.'s): news
in Courant, 115; annual gifts,

242~245> 245, 253; funding for

Centennial, 334. See also Abbot

Alumnae
Death, fear and acceptance, 138— 141
Debates and tableaux, 97
Defense courses, home nursing,

motor mechanics, 288
Deficits, 192, 285, 377-378, 401,

423-425, 439, 5827273
DeGavre, Mrs. Marion G. (Mrs.

Paul G), Instructor in Latin, 308
Demerits, for offenses, 238
"Depression, The Great," ( 1929-

36), 240, 246-260, 543*255
Development, Director of, Richard

Sheahan, 377
Devotions, daily ("half-hours"),

94. r34
Dix, Dorothea, pioneer reformer,

128

Dodge girls, 45

Doherty, William, 250-251, 5417233,
5417239, 5417240, 546728

Doland, Thomas (pseud), Look
article on life at PA, 390-391,
5747266

Domestic science course (1913-14),
228

Donald, Mary Jean, 1863 (Mrs.
John Wesley Churchill), Trustee,
189

Dormitory construction, 154, 157—
160. See also Abbey House,
Draper Hall, Smith Hall

Dove, John, protests Farwell ad-
ministration, 36

Dow, James K., Jr., Trustee, mem-
ber of Search Committee (1967),
401,435,438, 5717213, 5717215,
5727239

Downes, Julia Seymore, 1874,
138—140

Downs, Annie Sawyer (Mrs.

Samuel M.), Instructor, 75; liter-
ary lectures, 97; helped found
November Club, 51 1725 1

Downs, Samuel Morse, Instructor
in Music: music teacher, 92, 95-
96, 1 17, 507721 16, 5277221; set
121st Psalm to music, 141; do-

INDEX

597

nated two pianos, 158, 229

Downs Concert Series, 230

Drama. See Abbot drama course;
Draper Dramatics; Faculty Fol-
lies; Hale, Emily; Haymakers;
Howey, Martha M.; Modern
languages

Draper, Warren Fales (PA 184s),
Trustee and benefactor of AA:
initiated prize readings at PA, 96,
5017242; publishes Andover Re-
view, 129, 131; Abbot Trustee
and benefactor, 131-133, 253;
managed Andover Press and book-
store until (1866), 131, 513/272;
grand plans for new buildings,
153, 157, 158; salvages Draper
Hall, 169-170; contributed to
building fund, 189, 190, 197,
5282227, 5282228; introduced Flagg
to Abbot, 248; first bathroom in
Andover, 5137273

Draper, Mrs. Warren Fales. See
Rowley, Irene

Draper Dramatics ( 1924), dramatics
boomed (1920's), 230. See also
Draper Reading Exercises

Draper Hall (1890): named for
Warren Draper, benefactor, com-
pleted (1890), 154, 157-158, 159,
159, 169, 191, 5217264; (1942) ex-
pansion, 283-284, 443

Draper "Homestead." See "Home-
stead"

Draper Reading Exercises: elocution
contest (1868), 93, 96, 96; news
of lectures, 1 14; Draper readings
became Draper dramatics (1924),
230, 252. See also Draper Dra-
matics (1924)

Dress: changes, 174, 183; gym
clothes, 194, 196; "dress simply,"
217, 316; end of dress code, 379,
381

"Driftwood," section in Courant
for and about D.O.G.'s, 1 15

Drinking, 306-307, 311, 5137262,
5547222

Drugs, 365, 367, 388, 391; at PA,

390; searches for, 397. See also

Marijuana
Durant, Mary Ann, 2^57 (Mrs.

Amos Bullard), 32
Dyer, Paul, Instructor in English,

382, 387, 391, 395

Earrings, forbidden, 357

Earth Day, classes outside, 389

Education, women's: girls in An-
dover, 5, 10, 4807226; Bible study
and literary sewing circles, 1 2 ;
educational planning (1828), 14-
17; higher subjects and infertility,
15; Victorian Andover, 1 19-145;
equal to men's, 173-176. See also
Andover, town of; Coeducation;
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques; Winthrop,
John

Educational Policies Committee
(PA), received directive from
PA Trustees to study coeduca-
tion, 415-416

Edwards, Annie M., 2 #55 (Mrs.
Melancthon Smith, Mrs. Arthur
L. Chetlain), first Postmistress,
U.S.A. (1863-6$), 178

Edwards, Mrs. Bela Bates, wife of
Rev. Prof. Bela Bates Edwards,
Trustee: ran exclusive seminary
on Main St. (1832—64) dubbed
the "Nunnery," 40; took in AA
boarders, 40

Edwards, Rev. Jonathan: grand-
daughter marries Samuel Farrar,
2 1 ; terrifying sermons, 61 ; great
granddaughter marries Edwards
A. Park, 4937223

Edwards, Rev. Justin, President of
Andover Theological Seminary,
1 1

Eight Year Study, compared rec-
ords of students in private
secondary schools to those in tra-
ditional high school, 280-282

Elections, mock (1876), 141

Eliot, Charles William, President of
Harvard University: chairs Com-
mittee of Ten, 165—166; women
different from men intellectually,

598

INDEX

175; spoke at dedication of John-
Esther Art Gallery, 190— 191; on
public education, 323

Eliot, Thomas Stearns, Emily Hale
his lifelong friend, 302-303,
552724, 553725, 553726

Ellsworth Guards, soldiers (PA), 84

Emerson, Charlotte, 18 $7 (Mrs.
William Bryant Brown), first
President and founder of General
Federation of Women's Clubs
(1890), 178-179, 180, 5257230,
5322228

Emerson, Elizabeth, 1856 (Mrs.
Simon James Humphrey, II), In-
structor, 58; teacher at A A ( 1856-

5*)* 80

Emerson, Joseph, schoolmaster in

Saugus, Mass., 16

Emma Willard School: founding of
school (1814) Middlebury, Vt.,
15; Troy Academy (N.Y.)
(1821), 16; black students after
World War II, 293. See also
Willard, Emma

Enrollment: (1829), 28; under Far-
well, 34; of boarders in early
Abbot, 37; (1856), 76; (1890-97),
160— 161; Watson years (1892-
98), 170; (1903-04), 191-192;
(1924-2$), 224-225, 5347265;
(1930-34), 246-247, 255, 260;
(1931-41), 272, 5477224; World
War II, 285, 290; (1945-54), 299^
311; (1950's), 307-308, 327,
5597220; (1959), 334; (1966-67),
360-361, 5697248, 5697249; (1972-

13), 398> 435~436i 581^64. See
also Abbot Academy, Bradford
Academy
Eusten, Mrs. Alexander. See

Humes, Barbara
Evening School (Andover, Mass.),

free, 185
Examinations, oral and public, 56-57
Exeter. See Phillips Exeter Academy
Experiment ( 1 8 $3 ) , Abbot news-
paper, 70

Faculty appointment policy, Abbot
and PA, 441

Faculty Cabinet, under Mary

^ Crane, 353, 356, 5687229

Faculty Council, under Mary
Crane, 356

Faculty Follies, 448-449

Faculty unrest, over antiwar move-
ment: AA, 390-391; PA, 422

Farrar, Samuel ('Squire), founding
Trustee and Treasurer of Abbot,
PA and ATS, 5, 17, 20-21, 31, 44,
62; advice to Madam Abbot, 25-
26; devises financial arrangements
for A A principals, 71, 4847224;
helps draw up plans for high
school, 77

Farwell, Mrs. Asa. See Sexton,
Hannah

Farwell, Rev. Asa, Principal of AA
(1842—52), 34, 36; anti-Farwell
petition, 34-36, 39, 4857232; bought
Abbot "Commons" for his own
residence, 42-43; on teacher
training, 45; curriculum under,
50-51, 58; replacement, 69, 70;
town and gown, 88; compared
with Bertha Bailey, 203. See also
Davis Hall

"Fear of success," anxiety common
in bright women attending coed
schools, 412, 5777214, 5782215

Fellows, Emily Putnam, 1867 (Mrs.
Edwin Reed), 180

"Fern Sem," pet name for AA and
the Abbot student, 45, 91; toast,
120, 122, 124; sleighride (1883),
409. See also Abbot Academy

"Female Education." See Beecher,
Catharine Esther

Female seminaries: end of "age of
the academies," 72; great day of
(1830-60), 4927217. See also Phil-
adelphia Young Ladies Academy
(1792); Miss Pierce's School,
(1792); North Parish Free School
(1801); Bradford Academy
(founded 1804 coed, became Fe-
male Seminary 1836); Emma
Willard School (1814); Hart-
ford Female Seminary (1823);
Adams Academy (1824); Ipswich
Seminarv; "Nunnery" (1832);

INDEX

599

Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary

(1837); New England Seminary
for Teachers; Catskill Female
Academy; Friends Yearly Meet-
ing Boarding School; "Fern Sems"

"Feminine Mystique," 335-337

Fidelio Society: choir and chorus
(founded 1887), 95; sang with
PA Glee Club, 222, 229

Finbury, Marion, College Coun-
selor, college counseling in
Gordon era, 386-387, 449

Fine and Practical Arts Course.
See Academic course

Finger, Louis, memories of Flagg,
5407226, 5417233, 546228

Flagg, Anne, wife of Burton S.

^ Flagg, 248, 5402230

Flagg, Burton Sanderson, Trustee
and Treasurer, 1906-1964:
started paid Alumnae post with
Jane B. Carpenter, 1892, as Abbot
record keeper and historian, 185,
189; hero of Abbot's Depression
Years, 240, 245, 246—253, 5402227;
partner, Smart, Flagg Insurance,
247; role in town of Andover,
247-251, 328; frugality, 248, 249,
5402232; admired Miss Bailey, 250;
investment expertise, 251—253,
5427242, 5427250, 5427251, 5437253,
5437255, 5437256; knew each bush
and tree on grounds, 252; remains
official adviser-in-chief in Hear-
sey era, 269-270; hurricane of
Sept, '$8, 274; Mr. Hearsey's
tribute to B. Flagg on 80th birth-
day, 280, 5487244; secured loan to
finance Draper Hall, 283-285;
built $1,000,000 endowment, 311;
turns over Treasurer's duties to
Trustee Investment Committee,
328-334, 5602229, 5627235; retires
from Board of Trustees, 349;
Finger's memories of, 5402226,
5417233, 546228. See also Abbot
Academy endowment fund

Flagg, Frances, "26 (Mrs. George
Knight Sanborn), 220, 537721 11;
comments on father, Burton S.
V^gg, 543^56

Flagg, Sarah Hicks, 1836 (Mrs.
Luther Harris Sheldon), member
of AA introductory class, 37

"Flitting scholars": problem of fe-
male academies, 57; statistics, 1 1 5—
1 16, 50672108

Floe, Mrs. Carl F. See Brooks,
Beverly

Florence Crittenton League, friend
of wayward girls, 1 79

Food packages, intercepted, 2 1 7

Foote, Abigail, diary of a woman's
day in 2775, 8

Forbes, Prof. Charles H., PA In-
structor in Latin, greetings from
Abbot's "Big Brother," 410-41 1

Ford Foundation, funded study of
Advanced Placement for the
gifted, 325

Fork, class newspaper, 114

Franklin, Mrs. Philip. See Bacon,
Mabel Ginevra

Franklin Academy. See North
Parish Free School

Frederick, Edwina (Mrs. Wayne),
Instructor in French, 5587297

French, Alice, 1868 (Octave Thanet,
pseud.), specialized in dialect
studies, the plight of the factory
worker and sharecropper, 180—
181, 5257234

French, Isabella Graham (Mrs. Mel-
ville James Bigelow), Instructor
in physics and chemistry, 89

"French" Hall. See Davis Hall
(i865)

French House. See Bertha Bailey
House

Friedan, Betty, "Feminine Mys-
tique," 335-337

Friends Yearly Meeting Boarding
School (Providence, R. I.),
female department, 16

Friendships, female, 99, 102-106,
1 10— 1 12, 200, 307-308, 447

Friskin, Kate, Instructor in Music:
concert pianist and music teacher,
229, 278, 289, 319; left on sab-
batical in 1959, 322

Fuess, Claude Moore, tenth Head-
master of PA (1933-48), 69, 269,

6oo

INDEX

4827248; PA instructor in English,
married Abbot alumna, Bessie
Goodhue, 223; administered first
intelligence tests to Abbot
(1920), 227

Fuess, Mrs. Claude Moore. See
Goodhue, Elizabeth (Bessie)
Cushing

Fuller, Anna, 1872, 1 80-1 81

Fuller, Margaret (Marchioness Os-
soli), Woman in the nineteenth
century, read by AA student, 89

Fuller, Rev. Samuel, Trustee, An-
dover property taxes (18 '50),
4857249

Fund-raising for expansion of Ab-
bot campus: (/tfjo's), 72-74; Mc-
Keenera, 153-159; Watson-Means
era, 189-190; See also Gill, Emily
Abbey; Gymnasium; Loyalty
Endowment Fund; New Abbot
Fund

Funeral wreath, instead of flowers,
195-196

Gage, Mrs. Brownell. See Hall,

Delight Walkly
Gale, Mrs. James S. See Gibson,

Harriet Elizabeth
Gargoyles: athletic team, 234;

interest falling off, 447
Geer, Katherine Chase (Sister Marie

Aimee), 1882, drew illustration,

103
General Federation of Women's

Clubs, co-founded by Charlotte

Emerson Brown, 1851, 180,

5327228
"German" Hall: South Hall, 90;

"Teutonic population" moves to

Draper Hall, 159. See also South

Hall
German plays, costumes and

scenery, 90, 91, 499m 1
"German" table. See Schieffer-

decker, Fraulein Natalie
Gershon, Sherry, Instructor in

History, 430
Gesell, Dr. Arnold, tests for mental

development, 227

Gibson, Harriet Elizabeth, 1881
(Mrs. John William Heron,
Mrs. James S. Gale), first woman
missionary to Korea, 100

Gilbert, Sally Jo, '72, "Life on the
Farm," 429, 5807250

Gilbert and Sullivan operetta: PA
and A A joint production, 289;
the last, 447

Gill, Mrs. Emily Abbey, gave
$50,000 to build Abbey House
0939), 284, 549/263

Gilman, Rebecca Ives, 1840, Prin-
cipal of Bradford Academy,
(1853-58), Abbot graduate, 71

Girls' Latin School (Boston):
founding of (1826), 16, 4817236;
report cards, 57

Gitata, Muthoni, G. See Githungo,
Muthoni

Githungo, Muthoni, '63, Kenyan girl
on full scholarship, 355, 5677226

Goddard, Charles, Principal of AA
(1829-31), refined and polished
manners, 31-32

Godey's Lady's Book, scolded
Vassar, 176

Golden Age (Abbot). See McKeen,
Phebe and Philena

Golden Rule Dinners, 215, 288, 389

Goldsmith, William Gleason, PA
1853, Principal of Punchard High
School (1858-1886), 126,4927215

Goodhue, Elizabeth (Bessie) Cush-
ing, 1898 (Mrs. Claude Moore
Fuess), married Claude Moore
Fuess, PA Headmaster, 223

"Goodie." See Goodwin, Carolyn
Elizabeth

Goodwin, Carolyn Elizabeth
("Goodie"), Instructor in Math-
ematics and Director of Studies:
Abbot math teacher, 303, 304,
310, 387; member Committee on
rules investigation, 357-358,
5687229; fear of sex embodied in
Old Abbot, 365-366, 570726; on
rapid change under Gordon,
377, 5727238; Director of Studies,
395, 396, 402; Indian girls from

INDEX

60 1

Rosebud Reservation, 406, 5772295;
studied coordination, 425, 428;
elected Dean of new Phillips
Academy, 439; appointments at
the new Andover, 440-441;
worked out process for Abbot
diploma candidates, 445, 580/260

Gordon, Donald Anderson (PA
'52), Principal of Abbot Acade-
my (1968-13), 364i 368-4<>8,
313, 5712218, 5712224; missionary
for coeducation, 368; consulted
faculty on curriculum matters,
374; installation address, 376;
New Abbot Fund, 376-377; defi-
cits, 377-378; "town meetings"
(Abbot), 380-383, 573*245,
5737248; quotes Eric HofTer's
ideas on excessive freedom in
installation speech, 382-383; rebel-
lious students and teachers, 388-
394, 403; speaking style, 404,
404; Abbot committed to coedu-
cation when Gordon was hired,
413-414; invited to present Ab-
bot/PA coed plan to PA Alumni
Council, 416; studied coordina-
tion, 425, 433-436; planned merger
with PA, 432-440; announced
Abbot and PA would become one
school, June 1913, 432, 440; ap-
pointments at the new Andover,
440-444; spent hours helping job-
less teachers, 444; feelings about
coming merger, 444, 447-448.
See also Merger

Gordon, Jamie, son of Donald
Gordon, 372, 394

Gordon, Josephine, wife of Donald
Gordon, 372, 5832291

Gorton, Mary Mahala, 188 6 (Mrs.
Frank Wilkinson Darling), ran
Indian missionary station in
Montana, 115

Gould Academy (Maine), 180

Grade and age distribution, statis-
tics, 115-116, 50622108, 50622109

Graduation, biggest class party, 1 1 7.
See also Commencement

Graham, Patricia, educational

historian, 99, 336

Grandfather clock, present from
Mrs. Draper, 210

Grant, Zilpah: co-founder Female
Seminary (Ipswich, Mass.), 16-
17, 23; bequest for Adams Acade-
my (Derry, N. H.), 23; report
cards, 57. See also Ipswich
Seminary

Graves, Mary Hannah, 18 $8, Uni-
tarian minister (1871), 178,
5122255

Graves, William Blair, PA Science
Instructor and Head of English
Department, science classes open
to Abbot, 1 26

Graves Hall, PA laboratory (1892),
126

Gray, Samuel, Trustee, wrote
anonymous poem, 1 1, 4802216

Greek courses. See Classical lan-
guages

Greeley, Jane Lincoln, M.D., 1884,
physician, 179, 5392212

Greenough, Louise M., "20 (Mrs.
Henry L. Jones), top scholar, 225

Gregory, Lady Augusta, Irish play-
wright, 232

Grenfell Mission (Labrador), Eliza-
beth G. Richardson, 1899, nurse,
178

Griffins: athletic team, 234; interest
falling off, 447

Griggs, Richard Charles, PA Busi-
ness Manager, 377, 396; Abbot
in stronger financial position than
formerly, 435; member of "the
working party," 440; legal and
moral obligations to non-aca-
demic staff of AA, 5832290

Griggs, Mrs. Thomas Thurston.
See Pierce, Julia Ann

"Grove," woods behind Smith Hall,
117, 122, 201, 274

Gym. See Sports

Gym suits: pantaloons and skirts,
94, 99, 5002223; lisle stockings and
bloomers, 194, 217-218

Gymnasium, funding, 311, 333-334,
5642244

602

INDEX

Hale, Emily, Instructor of Drama,
lifelong friend of T. S. Eliot,
302-303, 552724, 553725, 553726,
308, 317

"Half-hours." See Devotions, daily

Hall, Delight Walkly, '0/ (Mrs.
Brownell Gage), Instructor,
5277219

Hall, Granville Stanley, American
psychologist and educator, 222,
226, 227, 526724, 5297233, 5357273

Hall, Rev. Samuel Read, Principal
of Teachers' Seminary at PA
(/ #50-37), Lectures on School
Keeping, 44

Hall, Susan Elizabeth, 1835 (Mrs.
Amariah Chandler Austin), teach-
er and daughter of Rev. Samuel
Read Hall, 44-45

Hall House (1970): formerly the
Antoinette Hall Taylor Infirma-
ry, 383, 398; shakedown and civil
liberties, 404. See also Taylor,
Antoinette Hall; Taylor Infirmary

Hamlin, Abbie Frances, 1866 (Mrs.
Charles Anderson), taught at
Vassar, 178-179

Hamlin, Alice Julia, i88j (Mrs.
Edgar Lenderson Hinman), taught
science courses at AA, 89; col-
lege professor Mt. Holyoke,
Univ. of Nebraska, 179; survivor
relief for Armenians in Turkey,
216

Hamlin, Caroline Margaret, 1866
(Mrs. William Henry Vail), In-
structor in French, proficient in
French as student, 90

Hamlin, Mrs. Cyrus. See Jackson,
Henrietta Anna Loraine

Hamlin, Rev. Cyrus, founder of
Bebek Seminary, 46-48, 84; helped
found Robert College, Constanti-
nople, 46; returned from Turkey,
156

Hamlin, Hannibal, brother of Rev.
Cyrus Hamlin, won vice presi-
dential election, 84

Hamlin, Harriet Clara, 1873 (Mrs.
Lucius Orren Lee), Instructor,

senior editor Courant, later
taught in a mission in Scutari,
Turkey, 1 14

Hamlin, Henrietta Loraine, 1858
(Mrs. George Washburn),
daughter of Henrietta Jackson
Hamlin, traveled abroad, 143

Hamlin, Susan Elizabeth, daughter
of Henrietta Jackson Hamlin, 47,

H3
Hammond, Josephine, Instructor

in English, poet, 232

Hampton Institute (Virginia):
work "among the lowly," 137;
launched in part by Rebecca
Tyler Bacon, /#57, 178

Hancock, Isabel Maxwell, Instructor
in Mathematics and Director of
Admissions, 271, 279; Admissions
Director and hostess, 291; en-
forces rules, 310, 5/2-/2; untime-
ly death, 360

Hapsburg, Minola, daughter of de-
posed Roumanian princess, spent
war years at AA, 292-293

Hardin, Carol J., '55 (Mrs. Geoffrey
D. Kimball), PA Trustee, 309,
5487247

Harlow, Mrs. John Martyn. See
Kimball, Frances Augustina

Harris, William T., U. S. Commis-
sioner of Education, member of
"Committee of Ten" who set new
standards for high school cur-
ricula, 166, 517722

Hartford Female Seminary: found-
ing (1823), 16, 23-24; upper crust
urban constituency, 40. See also
Beecher, Catharine; Stowe,
Harriet Beecher

Harvard Annex. See Radcliffe
College

Harvard University: language
courses (1858-66), 90, 498728;
curricula, semi-obsolete, 1 76,
526724

Hasseltine, Abigail, Headmistress,
Bradford Academy, 71

Hasseltine, Nancy Judson (Mrs.
John S. Sanborn), Principal of

INDEX

603

Abbot Academy ( 1854-56) :
salary and duties, 71-72, 77,
491728; severed formal teaching
connections with Andover Hill,
78, 80, 88; sketched path of Ab-
bot, 145

Hatch, Mildred Althea ("Hatchet"),
Instructor in Latin, teacher and
dorm mother, 307, 359, 5547222,
5687244

"Hatchet." See Hatch, Mildred
Althea

Hawaiians, 172

Hayden, Mrs. Edward C. See Spald-
ing, Gertrude W.

Haymakers, ATS-AA dramatic pro-
duction, 83, 289

Headmistresses Association: Bertha
Bailey, Treasurer, 227, 238; Bailey
chaired Teachers Unemployment
Committee, 256; M. Hearsey, Di-
rector, 267, 546221 1 ; responsibility
of schools in a democracy chal-
lenged by Communism, 324,
5517299, 5627233

Health: American girl a delicate
plant, 124; premature death and
illness, 1 38-141; woman not
suited to be a physician, 142;
only one woman in five enjoys
good health (1878), 142; women
too delicate for studying, 175;
girls must have periodic rest, 192—
194, 5097234, 5297233; age of
menarche, 221, 5337252

Hearsey, Marguerite Capen, Prin-
cipal of Abbot Academy ( 1936-
~l955)'- appointed 14th Principal
of A A, 263, 26 y; prayers, 266,
545723; Director and President of
NAPSG, 267-269; Chapin closest
co-worker, 269; improves rela-
tions with Phillips Faculty, 269;
new teachers, 270, 277, 278-279,
301—304; redefined Bible study,
271; students' restiveness, 273—
274, 301, 304-311; honor system,
274-276, 5477233; on the quality
of teachers, 282; Harkness appeal,
283-284, 5487255; dreams pro-

duced real gains, 285; resignation,
295, 3 1 1-3 15; offered Mile. Arosa
a job, 301-302; summer home in
Jaffrey, N. H., 303; regulations
and student-teacher relationships,
304-311, 5567255; left a campus
with ample space for learning,
311, 334; rules relaxed a bit, 3 14,
5547224; quoted Conant's speech
on public high schools, 323; Ab-
bot's 125th Anniversary financial

campaign (1954), 329> 332"334,
5627231, 5627232, 5627233; small
school works best, 329-330; Fac-
ulty Retirement Plan (TIAA),

33°-33I» 56in35, 563w36. 563w37>
5637238, 5637239, 5637240; Develop-
ment Fund launched, 332—334;
visited athletic facilities of other
schools with architect, 333; joked
about coeducational Utopia, 410
Heating: lack of, 40, 76; central,

l55, 159
Heaven, novels about, 1 39

"Henrietta the Second." See Ham-
lin, Henrietta Loraine

Henry, Mrs. Lenert William. See
Allen, Helen Stearns

Herbarium, 92

"Heresy trials": ATS (1886-87),
129—130, 5127258; number of theo-
logues dwindled after trials, 192.
See also Andover Case

Heron, Mrs. John William. See
Gibson, Harriet Elizabeth

Hidden, David, contractor to AA
and theological seminary, 26—27

"High Beta" category, honor
system, 276

High school curricula, set new
standards (1890), 166

"High School Law" (1827), cur-
riculum in Mass. high schools, 49

"Hill," 37-38, 88, 122. See also
Andover Hill

Hillsdale School (Cincinnati), 203

Hinkley, Alice, 1891 (Mrs. Fred-
eric Morton Black), 122

Hinman, Mrs. Edgar Lenderson.
See Hamlin, Alice Julia

604

INDEX

History: early courses, $6. See also
Curriculum; Minard, Mary; Roth,
Anna E.; Witten, Anne Lise

Hogdon, Mrs. Frederick P. See
Bartlett, Ellen Motley

Hoffer, Eric, ideas on excessive
freedom quoted by D. Gordon in
Installation speech, 382-383

Hollins College, 264

Holt, Mrs. John Voorhis. See Pur-
ington, Alice Emma

Holt, Solomon, 483/21; served the
Lord in heathen lands, 46

Holyoke Plan, education of women
from all income groups, 81,
496/26 1

Home and family, surest future for
women, 144, 283. See also
"Feminine Mystique"

Home making course, 228, 272, 283

"Homestead" (opened as dormitory
1918): Draper home, 132; as
dormitory, 302; papers in the
chimney, 528T12J

"Honor A" Society, 234, 276, 287,
309

Honor system, 106, 274-276. See
also Self -reporting

Hoover dinners, 215, 532726

Hopkins, Dorothy, Librarian,

5312210; first professional librarian,
227, 5352277; doubled the collec-
tion, 241, 538223

Hopkins, Ernest, President of Dart-
mouth College, 222

Hoppin, Rev. James P., 1 19, 4952252

Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus),
83, 170,429

Horner, Matina, 412, 5772214

House counselors. See Housemasters

Housemasters, 421, 441, 442

Housemothers: replaced "corridor"
teachers, 319; in the fifties and
sixties, 337, 356-357, 5682232; in
Gordon era, 382, 389, 421

Houseparents, 338, 383, 391-392,
5^,421,441

House parties, 250

House warming, opening of Draper
Hall, 158-159

Housework, part of education, 93-
94. See also Domestic science
course, Home making course

Howard, Mrs. James Waite. See
Bodenmeyer, Fraulein Adelheid

Howard, Mary Mynderse, "40
(Mrs. Edmund Washburn Nut-
ting), PA Trustee, 5482247; fund
raising, 333; "the time is now,"
438, 5812266

Howe, Julia Ward, 5 1 1225 1

Howe, Walter Edward, Instructor
in Music, composer, organist,
choir and music teacher, 229, 278,
304, 5532214

Howey, Martha Melissa, Instructor
in Dramatics, 230

Howland Institute (N.Y.), 105

Humes, Barbara (Mrs. Alexander
Euston), Assistant to Principal,
320

Humeston, Pauline, '27 (Mrs.
Herbert Carter), Trustee, 5602229

Humphrey, Mrs. Simon James, I.
See Hutchinson, Susan Elizabeth
(Batcheller)

Humphrey, Mrs. Simon James, II.
See Emerson, Elizabeth

Hunneman, Robert I., Trustee,
Chairman of Board, 328, 348-349,
5602229, 5662222, 5792226

Hurricane (1938), 274

Husbands, 1 10-120, 178, 180

Hutchinson, Susan Elizabeth
(Batcheller) (Mrs. Simon James
Humphrey, I), Acting Principal
of A A (/ #52-13), 69

Hyde, Simeon, Jr. (PA 1937), PA
Instructor in English: PA dean
for coeducation and author of
Case for Coeducation, (25770),
413-414, 416-418, 423, 5782219;
studied and implemented coordi-
nation, 425, 428

Hygiene lectures, 233

I Q Tests. See Tests, intelligence
ISTS. See Independent School

Talent Search Program
Independent School Talent Search

INDEX

605

Program (ISTS), (196s), 5677225

Indian exchange program, 405-406,
5767292, 576/293, 5777295

Ingalls, Edith Eliza, 1882, Instruc-
tor, 168

Innes, George, "A June Day" paint-
ing brought $39,000 at auction,
401

Intelligence tests. See Tests,
intelligence

Intervale (N. H.): winter sports
weekend, first {1913), 225; De-
pression years, 257, 310, 311

Iowa State University, first state
university to accept women
( 1858), 5097233

Ipswich Female Academy. See
Ipswich Seminary

Ipswich Seminary, 40, 69, 178;
Zilpah Grant co-founder, 16-17,

Irish, 185, 224, 250, 267

Iverson, John S., Jr., 315, 319, 338
Ivy League, husbands, 178

J.F. Kennedy Scholarship Program.
See Kennedy Scholarship Program

Jackson, Andrew, seventh U. S.
President (1829-37), 6, 30

Jackson, Caroline Rebecca, 18 51, In-
structor, 179-180; assisted father,
Rev. Samuel C. Jackson, at Mass.
State Board of Education (Bos-
ton), 178

Jackson, Caroline True (Mrs.
Samuel Cram), 85; wife of Rev.
Samuel C. Jackson, 18; raised
money for Smith Hall furnish-
ings, 75; supported antislavery
societies, 78

Jackson, Helen, 1895, CEEB exam
reader (1901), 526725

Jackson, Henrietta Anna Loraine,
1829 (Mrs. Cyrus Hamlin), 37,
38, 40; sister of Rev. Samuel C.
Jackson, 20-30; teacher in Sutton
(Mass.) and co-founder of Cat-
skill (N.Y.) Female Academy,
46; helps found Bebek Seminary
with husband, Rev. Cyrus Ham-

lin, in Turkey, 46-48; fluent in
Greek, 47; died (18 50) island of
Rhodes, 48
Jackson, Rev. Samuel Cram, Trustee
of AA and PA, minister at West
Parish Church, 5, 18-23, 19, 34;
letter to sister Henrietta, 20—30;
negotiator for Teachers Semi-
nary, 41; tries to convert Henri-
etta, 59; woman's function, 60;
temperance crusades, 61; worked
for public education, 72, 4957244;
helped fund Smith Hall, 74-75;
champion of education, 248, 353,

449
Jackson, Susannah Elizabeth, 18 y/,

Instructor and first President Ab-
bot Academy Alumnae Associa-
tion, 59—60; remarkable teacher,
78, 99; co-founder Abbot Alum-
nae Association (1871), 155

Jackson Memorial Reading Room,
158

Jacksonian America, 30, 36

JafTrey (N. H.), M. Hearsey's
summer home, 303

James, William, psychologist and
philosopher, 168-169, 5217259;
right action becomes habitual, 2 1 8

Jencks, Fanny Bigelow, Instructor
in Biology and Acting Principal
(1936-37), registrar and Bertha
Bailey's assistant, 262

Jenness, Sarah A., M.D., 1864, B. U.
School of Medicine, (1889), 179

Jews, 185, 224-225, 5267213, 5347268;
refugee hired, 285; welcomed at
Abbot, 292, 386

John-Esther Art Gallery: named
after donors John and Esther
Byers, 190; Charles William Eliot
speaks at dedication, 190— 191; col-
lection auctioned off at Parke-
Bernet realizing $98,000, 401

Johns Hopkins Medical School, ac-
cepts qualified women students,

*73, 175
Johnson, Annie E., Principal of

Bradford Academy, 125, 151,
517724

6o6

INDEX

Johnson, Lucretia Bly (Mrs. Osgood
Johnson), wife of fifth PA Prin-
cipal, $2000 claim on Madam
Abbot's estate, 62-63

Johnson, Osgood, fifth Principal of
PA: salary, 62, 4847220, 491728

Johnston, Carolyn Lumsden (Mrs.
Malcolm), Instructor in English
and Dean of Students: Dean
under Gordon, 395, 396; dorm
searches for drugs and liquor,
397-398, 5757285; permission to
black students to attend black af-
fairs out of town, 406; studied
coordination again, 425, 5792231

Joint instruction. See Coordinate
education

Jones, Mrs. Henry L. See Green-
ough, Louise M.

Jordan, Frances Ruml (Mrs. Wilbur
K.), Trustee, wife of President of
RadclirTe, 328, 5607229, 5667222;
chairs Administrative Policy
Committee, 354; on Search Com-
mittee (1967), 5717213

Judd, Dorothy, Instructor in Physi-
cal Education and Spanish, 303,
310, 320-21, 387; set up language
laboratories, 321; Convocation
Chairman for Installation of
Gordon, 372; exchange program
for Spanish students in Costa
Rica, 443; faculty Cabinet, 5687229

Judge Morton House. See Morton
House

Kaatz, Gerda Ruth, 320

Kaiser, Faith Howland, Instructor
in Classics and Admissions, 359,
374, 396, 5817264; wanted to com-
bine PA and Abbot admissions
operations, 442, 5827285

Kaufman, Mrs. Sidney. See War-
burg, Andrea

Keller, Helen Adams, American
author and lecturer, overnight
visits, 97

Kellogg, Carolyn (Carolyn Kellogg
Salon), Instructor in Biology, 359—
360, 5687229

Kelsey, Katherine ("Kit") Rox-
anna, Instructor and Acting Prin-
cipal (1909-10, 1911-12), 170,
188, 5277224; science courses, 89;
instituted Student Council, 202;
condemned behavior of the
twenties, 217; inspected necklines,
217; annual retirement grants,
252, 5627235; chairman Social
Science Department at Novem-
ber Club, 51 1725 1

Kemper, John Mason, eleventh Prin-
cipal of PA, 269, 333; not in tune
with student upsurge, 389;
Trustees' resolution to study co-
education with Abbot, 415-416;
worked for Abbot-Phillips
merger, 416-417, 422-423, 427,
434; studied coordination, 425-
427; resigned, spoke for merger,
427, 5807247; Boston Abbot Club,
introduction at, 5817265

Kemper, Mrs. John Mason. See
Castle, Abby Locke

Kennedy Scholarship Program,
supported Kenyan student, 355

Kent, S. Leonard, Trustee, 437

Kimball, Mrs. Angelina, Head
matron Smith Hall (1855-58,
1860-1901), 76

Kimball, Frances Augustina (Mrs.
John Martyn Harlow), Instructor
and Trustee, one of first women
Trustees, 189

Kimball, Mrs. Geoffrey D. See
Hardin, Carol J.

Kimball, Mary Russell, 1843, taught
"freed colored people," 178

Kingsley, Charles, English clergy-
man and novelist, visiting lecturer,
101

Kingsley, James L., Professor at
Yale, classical curriculum at Yale,

49
Kinsey Report, student pregnancy

and abortion rates, 339
Knapp, Valeria Addams, Director
of Winsor School (1951-53),
412, 556722, 566722, 5777213, 577?2I4
Kniesel String Quartet, recital

INDEX

607

series for Abbot students, 92

Knife, class newspaper, 114

Knott, Laura Anna, Principal of
Bradford Academy, speech, 203

Krivobok, Georges Nicolas, Instruc-
tor in French, later PA Instructor
in French and Russian and Di-
rector of School Year Abroad,
Rennes, France (1976—77), 387,
428

Kussmaul, Mrs. Henry S. See
Bryant, Mildred Copeland

Ladies Benevolent Society (PA)
(7*5/), 410

Ladies Home Journal, 173

Lamson, Rev. Samuel, Principal of
Abbot Academy (1832-34), 31-32

Lander, Meta (pseud.) See Woods,
Margaret Oliver

Langstroth, Rev. Lorenzo Lorraine,
Principal of Abbot Academy
(1838-39), 31, 33

Language courses. See Classical
languages, Modern languages

Lantern, Bradford Academy peri-
odical, 114

Larcom, Lucy ( 1824-93), American
author and educator, 93, 107

Larson, Jens Frederick, architect,
282-283

"Latin Commons" (PA), 20, 4827748

Latin courses. See Classical languages

Laura Watson Art Fund, estab-
lished, 241

Lawrence, Amos A., 13

Lawrence, Mrs. Edward Alexander.
See Woods, Margaret Oliver

Lawrence (Mass.), 266-267; AA
student tutored immigrant chil-
dren, 389

Lawrence Academy (Groton,
Mass.), 163

"Leadership," chapel talk by
Bertha Bailey, 215, 5327723

League of Women Voters, 180,
5117751

Learoyd, Henrietta, 1868 (Mrs.
Willard Gardner Sperry), In-
structor, Acting Principal (1875-

76), and Trustee, 170, 5227772
Lectures and programs (1860's),

95-99

Lee, Mrs. Lucius Orren. See Ham-
lin, Harriet Clara

Leete, Mrs. William White. See
Rockwell, Sarah Elizabeth

Le Row, Caroline (Mrs. Charles
Goddard), Instructor, ^

Leslie, Madeleine (pseud.). See
Woods, Harriet Newell

Levee, grand, 118. See Stowe, Har-
riet Elizabeth Beecher

Li, Tsing Lien, '77 (Mrs. C. Henry
Chen), 224

Library: few books in the begin-
ning, 40, 83, 98, 162; furnished by
the November Club, 158; 5,000
volumes and part-time librarian
(1892-98), 167; best girls' school
library, 227, 5357777; new library
in memory of Miss Means, 241,
246, 378, 538723; grew to 1880
volumes (1879) during the Mc-
Keen era, 5007735; gift of William
Draper, 5287228

Lighting systems, 152, 153, 159

Lincoln, Abraham (1809-186$),
sixteenth President of the U. S.,
84, 86

Lincoln, Almira Hart, sister of
Emma Willard, 52, 53-54, 4867757

Ling, Constance, '20, 225

Lisle stockings, 217, 220

"Literary Exercises" (1887), 107,
124, 498723

Locke, James, founding father of
AA,5

Lord, Katherine, Principal of
Winsor School, 227

"Lord's Annointed," Andover theo-
logues, 123. See also Andover
Theological Seminary

Lorenzo of Urbino, statue for
teacher's platform, 93

Loring, Rev. Bailey, 9

Lovett, Mrs. Sidney. See Parker,
Esther

Lovett, Rev. Sidney, Trustee, 328,
372, 5607229

6o8

INDEX

Lowell, James Russell, Professor at

Harvard University, 183
Lowenstern, I., 79, 4967255
Loyalty Endowment Fund, 241-242,

253. 539?2IO> 539mi> 542W49-
See also Abbot Academy endow-
ment fund
Luhan, Mabel Dodge, 217, 5327233
Lynd, Albert, author and educator,

324
Lyon, Mrs. Amzi Babbitt. See

Palmer, Clara Ellen
Lyon, Mary, pioneer educator, 409;
co-founder female seminary, Ip-
swich, 17; rejects Abbot Trustees'
offer to found New England
Seminary for Teachers at Abbot,
41-42; founded Mt. Holyoke Fe-
male Seminary (1837), 42; con-
verts one quarter of her students,
59. See also Ipswich Seminary

MWSA. See Massachusetts Woman
Suffrage Association

McArdle, Mrs. Frank, Jr. See
Sweeney, Miriam

McCarthy, Senator Joseph, 324

McGay, Katherine W., Head-
mistress Rogers Hall, 292

MacKay, Alexander, English author,
132

McKee, Harriet E., Instructor in
Latin and Greek, 279

McKeen, Phebe Fuller (Jenny Brad-
ford, pseud.), Assistant Principal:
arrival at Abbot (18 $9), 67,
4962260; instructor at Mt. Hol-
yoke, 8 1 ; Assistant Principal
(1859), 81-87, $2i 9&\ writer and
novelist, 81-83, 4962270; read news
of Lincoln assassination, 86; re-
quests alumnae reminiscences, 89;
History of the English Language
course, 89—90; self -reporting, 106;
writes novel of boarding school
life, 1 10— 1 13; on the ambition of
women, 114; Victorian Abbot,
1 19-145; conversions, 135; death
at forty-eight, 139-140, 159; co-
founder of Abbot Alumnae

Association (1871), 155; Chair of
Literature, 164, 401; inspiration,
177

McKeen, Philena, Principal of Abbot
Academy (1859-92): arrival as
principal at Abbot (1859), 67, 81-
87, 82, 81, Victorian Abbot under
Miss McK., 84, 110-145, i$9; town
and gown, 88; language program
strengthened, 89-91; statue for
teacher's platform, 93; injunctions
against "eatables," 102, 107, 109, 113;
criticized dancing, 117; religious
views, 1 29-1 3 1, 135, 236; church
history course, 135-136; attended
Episcopal Church late in life, 138,
5 1 522 1 01; salary and raise, 151; ad-
vocates physical improvements for
Abbot, 152; fund raising tour for
building drive, 153-161; visited
homes of D. O. G.'s, 156, 157;
letter of resignation, 157; retire-
ment breakfast at Vendome
(1892), 161; retired to South Hall,
161, 165, 170; died May, 1898,
171; "Memorial" to Miss McKeen,
177, 5 1 522 1 09; co-organizer with
Caroline Jackson '5 1 of
W. C. T. U. in Andover, 179; in-
voked by Miss Hearsey, 264, 306;
helped found November Club,
51 1225 1

McKeen, Rev. Silas, father of the
McKeen sisters, 81, 129

McKeen (Memorial) Hall {1904),
188, 190

McKeens, the, "Binary star," 82, 83.
See also McKeen, Philena; Mc-
Keen, Phebe Fuller

McLean, Donald Holman, Jr. (PA
'2#), Chairman of the Board of
Trustees at PA, 435

McQuilkin, R. Rennie, Instructor in
English, 442

"Madam" Phillips. See Phillips,
Madam Phebe

"Madame Cancan's" Seminary. See
"Cancan, Madame"

Male and female: relationships, 1 19—
125, 121, 367, 5o8ni3; women's

INDEX

609

weaknesses, 126; cultural stereo-
types of, 394, 51572111. See also
Coordinate education, Coeduca-
tion

Mann, Horace, endorsed women
teachers, 43, 4957244

Mansion House, 12; destroyed by
fire (1887), 124

Marijuana, 391-392, 420, 5547222.
See also Drugs

Marland Mills, wives, daughters
working, 38-39. See also Andover,
town of

Marland sisters, 45, 145

Marshall, Elizabeth, "49 (Mrs.
Stephen M. Thomas), found AA
deadening, 305-309; admired M.
Hearsey and teachers, 305, 311,
315; on community of unmarried
women, 337, 339; daughter en-
rolled at Abbot, 398

Marriage: sacred calling, 1 19-120,
127, 507723; majority of alumnae
married, 334-335. 56WS

Martin, Mrs. Albert Gallatin. See
Abbot, Sarah Augusta

Martin, Edward Sandford, American
editor and writer, 173

Mary Sharp College (Tenn.), 106

Mason, Flora Louise, 1889, Abbot
loyalty Fund Chairman, 242,
538724, 5627235

Mason, Mortimer Blake, Trustee,

153

Mason, Nellie Maria, Instructor:

training in scientific method, 168;
laboratory science program, 188,
228—229; condemned behavior of
the twenties, 217; annual retire-
ment grants, 252

Mason Drawing Room, 158

Massachusetts Congregationalist
Women's Association Conference,
180

Massachusetts Council of Congrega-
tionalist Ministers, 61

Massachusetts Woman Suffrage
Association (MWSA), (1870),
5117251

Matthews, T. S., on T. S. Eliot, 302,

303, 552724
May (Day) Breakfast, 192, 223
Maynard, David and Phyllis, house-
parents, Hall House, 383, 389,

39J-392

Meacham, Emma Priscilla, 1875
(Mrs. William Henry Davis),
5187217

Mead, Mrs. Elizabeth Storrs (Bill-
ings), Instructor: used Wayland's
ideas, 89; later President of Mt.
Holyoke College (1889-1901), 92,

143
Means, Emily Adams, 1869, Principal

of Abbot Academy ( 1898-1911 ) :
Abbot Academy art teacher, 88,
93; painted portrait of Phebe
Fuller McKeen, 140; helped fur-
nish and decorate guest entrance,
158; assistant to Miss McKeen,
171, 172, /#3, 183—202; academic
course vs. college prep course
controversy, 183-184, 526724,
526727; "A New England Aristo-
crat," 183; summer place in
Maine, 186, 5277221; new teachers,
187—188; lent (then gave) $10,000
to the McKeen Building, 190; re-
signed (1911), 202; designed school
seal, 218; library built in her
memory, 241, 246; helped found
November Club, 51 1725 1

Means Library Committee, 241, 246

Meditation, required, 58

"Memorialists' Petition, 35, 4857228.
S, e also Farwell, Rev. Asa

Memorial Hall Library, 98

Menarche, age of, 221, 5337252

Menstruations, physicians' views on,
192-194, 5097234, 5297233

Mental discipline, 50-53

Merger: talk of, 125-129, 550, 55/,
400-450; achieved (Trustees
Minutes, 20 Sept., 1972), 409;
Abbot/PA one school, June, 1973,
432, 5797228. See also Allen, Philip
Kirkham; Coeducation; Gordon,
Donald Anderson

Merk, Lois Bannister, wrote on
Woman Suffrage movement,

6io

INDEX

511W51

Merriam, Alice Williams, 1814 (Mrs.
Charles Moore), on first Courant
editorial board, 113, 5067299

Merrill, Maria Stockbridge, In-
structor, 106, 107, 141, 5057283;
French teacher and "French"
family at Davis Hall, 157, 167

Merrill Gate, built in honor of
Maria Stockbridge Merrill, 223

Merrimack Mutual Fire Insurance
Company (founded 1828), Flagg
president, 247, 251, 330

Merriman, Rev. Daniel, Trustee,
President of the Board, 189, 190

Merritt, Francis, Instructor in Art,
278

Middlebury College (Vt.), 294

"Midnight revelries," 107

Midwifery. See Women: Ante-
Bellum

"Mill and Till" girls, 38-40. See also
Abbot Academy, Day students

Miller, Mrs. Erwin Curtis. See
Wright, Harriet Prescott

Miller, Mrs. Jeanne Vical, Instructor
in French, Olympic fencer, 279

Mills, visits to Pacific Mills, 98

Milton, John, model for Abbot writ-
ing instructors, 56, 140

Minard, Mary Sophia, '55, Instruc-
tor in History: chairman history
department, 360; rewriting of stu-
dent constitution, 380; on col-
league's skill, 430

Ministers, training of, 10

Ministers' wives, AA alumnae be-
fore /#70, 178, 5242226

Mirror, Philomathean publication,
114, 123

Miss Beecher's Hartford Seminary.
See Hartford Female Seminary

Miss McKeen. See McKeen, Philena

Miss Phebe. See McKeen, Phebe

Miss Pierce's School (Litchfield,
Conn.), founding (27572), 14, 15

Missionaries: Armenian and Turkish
Christians, 46-48; at home and
abroad, 136-137. See also Amer-
ican Board of Foreign Missions;

Hamlin, Rev. Cyrus; Hampton
Institute; Holt, Solomon; Jackson,
Henrietta Anna Loraine; Oboo-
kiah; Schauffler, William G.;
Scholarships, for missionary
daughters; South End House
(Boston)

Mitchell, Maria, astronomer, 78; at
Vassar, 164

Mixers, Mary Crane's innovation,

316, 339

Model, papier mache, physiology

class, 93
Modern languages: early Abbot, 50-
51, 52; McKeen era, 80-91,
498728, 4982210, 4997213, 4997214,
4997216; French and German
plays, 90, 91; language "Halls"
moved, 159; recommended by
Committee of Ten, 166; French
and German tables, 186; in Hear-
sey era, 271, 272, 273; return to
oral-aural emphasis, 301-303;
advanced French courses, 302,

317, 326; in Gordon era, 387,
398, 428

Moore, Barbara, '22 (Mrs. Maurice
Henry Pease), letter to grand-
daughter, 187, 5007237

Moore, Mrs. Charles. See Merriam,
Alice Williams

Moreau de Saint-Mery, Mederic
Louis Elie, French visitor com-
mented on America's young
adolescent women, 152-153

Morgan, Maud Cabot (Mrs. Pat-
rick), Instructor in Art, arranged
Abbot/PA art competitions, 278,
289

Morgan, Patrick, PA Instructor in
Art, 289

Morton House (Judge Morton
House), 191

Mt. Holyoke College, 151, 164, 412

Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary:
founded by Mary Lyon (2 #57),
42, 49, 71; curriculum compared
with A A, 44, 151; Phebe McKeen
taught at, 81; Miss Watson studied
and taught at, 163, 164; Abbot

INDEX

6ll

alumna principal, 164, 177
"Mummsie," harrassed housemother,

357

Municipal Suffrage Act (1889), de-
feated, 511W51

Murray 's Abridged English Gram-
mar, 56

Music, 92, 95-96. See also Ashton,
J. N.; Downes, S. M.; Friskin, K.;
Howe, W.

NAIS. See National Association of
Independent Schools

NAPSG. See National Association
of Principals of Schools for Girls

N.E.A. See National Education
Association

NEACSS. See New England Asso-
ciation of Colleges and Secondary
Schools

Nathaniel and Elizabeth Stevens
Foundation. See Stevens
Foundation

National Association of Independent
Foundations. See Stevens Founda-
tion

National Association of Indepen-
dent Schools (NAIS): M. Crane's
role in, 354, 362, 569/257; NAIS
Bulletin, 362, 5697257, 5717218; bud-
getary procedures, 379. See also
National Council for Independent
Schools

National Association of Principals of
Schools for Girls (NAPSG): M.
Hearsey director and President,
269, 546721 1 ; on the hiring of
teachers, 325, 5687243; M. Crane's
role in, 354; on advantages of all-
girls' schools, 412

National Association of School Prin-
cipals, B. Bailey member, 227

National Council for Independent
Schools (precursor of NAIS), 334

National Education Association
(N.E. A.), appointed Committee of
Ten to set new standards for high
school curricula, 165—166

National Merit finalists, at AA and
PA, 5807260

Neilson, William Allan, President,
Smith College (1917-39), gradua-
tion address (1929), 242

Nereids, 1 1 3

Neumark, Evelyn {Mrs. Arthur),
E. Tucker's assistant, 353

New Abbot Fund, 376-377, 400-

4oi,435
"New American Progressives." See

Progressive movement

New England Association of Col-
leges and Secondary Schools
(NEACSS), 214, 362, 5697256;
Evaluation Committee, 326, 367

New England Female Medical Col-
lege, 98

New England Seminary for Teach-
ers, 41-42. See also Lyon, Mary

New York Abbot Club, founded
1898, supplemented Alumnae
Association, 188

Newcomb, Rev. Frederic Seymore,
ATS, husband of Harriet Wet-
more Chapell, 1 01, 104—105, in—
113,127

Newcomb, Mrs. Frederic Seymore.
See Chapell, Harriet Wetmore

Newcomb, Ruth Wetmore, '/o,
daughter of Harriet Wetmore
Chapell Newcomb, 105, 192,
5347261

Newman, Mark, third Principal of
PA, 5, 26; President of Abbot
Board, 17; acre of land, 21

News, presentation of, 94, 235

Nineteenth Amendment (1920),
51 1725 1 ; grants woman suffrage,
216, 5327227, 5327228. See also
Woman suffrage

Nixon, Richard Milhous, U. S.
President (1969-1974), 390, 397

North Parish Church (North An-
dover), 9

North Parish Free School (1801)
(later Franklin Academy), female
department, 10

Northfield School, 266, 330. See also
Northfield-Mount Hermon
Schools

Northfield-Mount Hermon Schools,

612

INDEX

413,438, 572W35

Nourse, Mary Susan, 1858 (Mrs.
Abaline Bardwell Cutler), from
Abbot to Punchard, 77

November Club (1889): met in
Academy Hall, 98, 5117251; fur-
nished library, 158; civic work,
170, 180, 187. See also League of
Women Voters, Woman suffrage

Nudd, Mrs. Raymond G. See Wells,
Eleanor

"Nunnery," select private school
for girls on Main St., Andover
(1832-64)^0

Nutting, Mrs. Edward Washburn.
See Howard, Mary Mynderse

Oberlin College, first coeducational

college (1852), 49, 5097233
Obookiah, young Hawaiian heathen

befriended by Madam Sarah

Abbot, 24, 25
Occupational statistics. See Abbot

alumnae
"Ocean," (poem), 5767293
Octave Thanet (pseud). See French,

Alice
Odeon, literary society, 194, 215, 235
"Old Scholars'Day," 155; AA

fiftieth anniversary, 10 June, 1879,

5757281
Old South Church (Boston), 92
Oliphant, Rev. Charles Henry, 237
One-year students. See Students,

one-year
Organ fund, 401
Ossoli, Marchioness. See Fuller,

Margaret
Owen, Julia M., 'tf/, study of

merger, 5797232

Page, Rev. Frederick Harlan (PA
/#7j), President, Andover Theo-
logical Seminary, 5407229

Paley, William, English theologian
and philosopher, science and re-
ligion, 50, 54, 4887221

Palmer, Clara Ellen (Mrs. Amzi
Babbitt Lyon), Instructor, lecture
on whistling, 102, 134

Parent-Alumnae Fund, 332, 334, 353
Parents: special occasions for, 291,

353. 55^97
Park, Agnes, 18 $8, Secretary Abbot

Academy Alumnae Association:
daughter of Rev. Edwards A.
Park, 155; suffrage movement,
180; secretary-treasurer A A
Alumnae Assoc, 188; died 1922;
216; Agnes Park Chair of History,
241; chairman Social Science De-
partment November Club, 51 1725 1;
Miss McKeen's close friend,
5 1 572 1 01; repudiates Congregation-
alism, 51572101

Park, Ann Marie, wife of Rev.
Edwards A. Park, 4957247

Park, Rev. Edwards Amasa, Trustee
and Professor at ATS, father of
Agnes Park, 72-73, 75, 140,
4937221, 4937223, 4957247, 5127258,
5 1 37261; marble pedestal, 93; Sun-
day sermon, 102; "train minds of
women," 120; proximate educa-
tion, 125; meetings with Miss Mc-
Keen, 129; holds out for old
theology, 129-131; died 1900, 189;
young "divines" attracted to
scholarly women, 5247226

Park, Marion Edwards, President of
Bryn Mawr College (1922-42):

82> 3*5* 495^47* 5l5m°l, 53l724
Parker, Constance, '06 (Mrs. Reeve

Chipman), Trustee, 185; tries to

persuade B. Bailey to abandon lisle

stockings, 217—218; recruited new

students, 255—256, 258, 259, 260,

5447271; searched for Miss Bailey's

successor, 262-263

Parker, Esther, '08 (Mrs. Sidney
Lovett), 170

Parker, Mary Adams (Mrs. Daniel
Tenney), Instructor, geometry
teacher, 51-52

Parker, Mrs. Wendell Phillips. See
Swazey, Frances Thomas

Patrick, Sara Lyman, 1898, 215

Patriotic League, 214, 216

Peabody, Rev. Andrew P., Abbot
Semicentennial speech, 128, 5107250

INDEX

6l3

Peabody, Elizabeth, 10

Pease, Carlie, '74, granddaughter of
Barbara Moore Pease, 500/237

Pease, Mrs. Charles B. F. See Cole,
Mary Jessie

Pease, Mrs. Maurice Henry. See
Moore, Barbara

Pedagogy, 48-58, 227-229. See also
Teaching

Pendleton, Ellen Fitz, Trustee, and
President of Wellesley College,
203; chaired a symposium on
Art and Life," 244

Pensions: none, annual grants in-
stead, 252; Faculty Retirement
Plan (1946) mandatory, 330-331,
35h 445, 562^35* 5637236. See
also Salaries

Perrin, Stephanie Blake (Mrs.
Stephen), Curator, John-Esther
Art Gallery, PA Instructor in
Art, 401

Perrin, Stephen (Steve), Instructor
in Humanities, 382-383, 384-385,
440, 442, 448; poem of remem-
brance, 5837298

Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, 55

Peterson, Frederick Almond (PA
'34), PA Instructor in English,
first dean of coed Summer School,

4i3
Peterson, Priscilla, Instructor in

Music, admissions, 396, 5802260

Phelps, Mrs. Austin. See Stuart,
Elizabeth

Phelps, Rev. Professor Austin, father
of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, 4852249

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 18 $8 (Mrs.
Herbert Dickinson Ward), 35, 39,
223; student at "Nunnery," 40,
69; novels about heaven, 139;
speaker at Abbot, 51 1225 1; on Rev.
Edwards A. Park, 5122258

Phelps, Mary Gray (changed name
to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps). See
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart

Philadelphia Young Ladies Acade-
my, first incorporated girls' school
( 1192), 4812229

Phillipian, 115

Phillips, Rev. George, progenitor of
Samuel Phillips, Jr., 24

Phillips, Madam Phebe Foxcroft,
wife of Samuel Phillips, Jr.: in-
fluence on education in Andover
and first founding gift ($5000) to
ATS, 1 2 ; prompted admiration of
lawyer, Samuel Farrar, 2 1 ; friend-
ship with Madam Abbot, 24

Phillips, Samuel, Jr. ("Judge"):
founder of Phillips Academy, An-
dover, 6, 7; on education and re-
ligion, 1 1 ; left trust for education
of female instructors for public
schools, 11-12; intended to join
wife in founding an academy for
girls in North Parish, 2 1 ; family
connections with Madam Sarah
Abbot, 156, 410; rose from the
grave, 449

Phillips, Wendell, abolitionist, speak-
at Abbot, 5 1 1225 1

Phillips-Abbot couples, 367. See also
Coordinate education

Phillips-Abbot Madrigal Society, 366

Phillips Academy (Andover, Mass.):
founding (277^), 6; first incorpo-
rated boarding school U. S. A.,
6; Trustees in common between
PA and AA, 17, 20, 362, 410, 418;
"Latin Commons," 20, 4822248;
dormitory construction and bath-
rooms, 152; donated English hall
clock to A A, 158; curriculum, 164;
drama and singing groups with
Abbot Academy, Fidelio and PA,
223, 339; $6,000,000 building pro-
gram, salaries raised, scholarship
program expanded in 1960's, 362;
PA-Abbot Madrigal Society, 366;
"inferiority" of Abbot to PA,
367, 570229; radical activity and
fantasies, 390; holds power to
make decisions on merger, 41 3—
416; stereotypes of students at PA
and AA, 419-421; participation in
athletics with, 447; Faculty Follies
make fun of, 448-449. See also
Allen, Philip K.; Coordinate edu-
cation; Gordon, Donald A.

614

INDEX

Phillips Academy Alumnae Asso-
ciation, Abbot/PA to combine
reunions, 447

Phillips Academy Charter (1780),
5837292; legal absorption of AA by
PA preserved PA's ancient charter
(1780), 436, 581/265

Phillips Academy Classical Depart-
ment: Abbot students and, 44;
merged with PA English Dept.
(1870), 45; curriculum, 51; served
younger age group as college prep
school, 90; lack of modern lan-
guages in, 80-90; enrollment,
491728

Phillips Academy Discipline Com-
mittee, 420

Phillips Academy English Depart-
ment, 45; lectures in chemistry
and geology, 51; discipline, 491728.
See also Phillips Academy Teach-
ers Seminary (precursor of PA
English Department)

Phillips Academy Philomathean So-
ciety. See Philomathean Society

Phillips Academy Teachers Semi-
nary: Abbot students and, 44-45;
closed, 45; curriculum, 51,
4887218. See also Phillips Academy
English Department

Phillips Academy Trustees, 413,

415-416, 418, 423-428, 432-433.

437. 44°. 49 I728
Phillips Exeter Academy, 54, 41 3—

414,436

"Philo." See McKeen, Philena

Philomathean Society (PA), 5, 27,

n3i I23
Physical education, 70, 332—333. See

also Sports
Physical Science Study Committee,

revised science curriculum

(z^jo's), 326
Pierce, Julia Ann, 1841 (Mrs.

Thomas Thurston Griggs), 29,

43,45, 58,61
Pierce, Mrs. Wilson Howard. See

Bancroft, Antoinette Louise
Pierce College (Athens). See Crane,

Mary Hinckley

Pierce's School, Miss. See Miss
Pierce's School (Litchfield, Conn.)

Pieters, Richard Sawyer, Instructor
in Mathematics, 423, 427, 444,
5807243

Pomps Pond, 123, 508^5, 5547220

Poor, Mrs. John R. See Chapman,
Abby Wade

Porter, Rev. Prof. Ebenezer, Presi-
dent of ATS, 32

Posture Honor Roll, 234

Powel, Harford, PA instructor,
5677726. See also Guthingo,
Muthoni

Powel, Virginia (Mrs. Harford,
Jr.), Instructor in Art, 321, 365,

443. 567n26i 57on4
Pratt, Mrs. Thomas Franklin. See

Abbott, Elizabeth Punchard
Prayer meetings, 134
Princeton University, 98, 411, 417
Progressive Education Association

(1919)-, 207, 227-235, 259-260, 280
Progressive movement, 173—174,

522774, 522725. See also Curriculum

( 1920's)
Prom: Abbot, 197, 26$, 268; PA,

197, 221, 570729
"Psalm 121st," Miss Phebe's last

prayer, 140
Public schools, 101, 166, 226, 323—

324, 5437257. See also Andover

High School, Committee of Ten,

Punchard High School
Puffer, J. Adams, boys' athletic

prowess, 221
Punchard, Benjamin, founded Free

High School in Andover, 72, 77
Punchard, Ellen, 1863, adopted

daughter of High School's

Founder, spent 5 years at Abbot,

77, 4957243
Punchard High School, founded

(1856), 72, 77, 123,4957244
Purington, Alice Emma, 189$ (Mrs.

John Voorhis Holt), 180
Puritans, 9
Putney School (Vt.), 282; teachers'

strike (1949), 325. 559^4. 568w43

INDEX

615

Quaker educators, coeducation, 15
Quakers, 57, 174-175. See also

Society of Friends
Quincy, Josiah (PA 1786), Mayor

of Boston, later President of

Harvard College, memorized

Latin grammar book, 55

RadclifTe College (Harvard Annex),
128, 184, 386

Raymond, Mrs. Freeborn Fairfield.
See Tarbox, Mary Potter

"Rec" Room, 275

Recitations, class, 55

Recorder, 30

Recreation: walking, croquet, 94-99;
special parties, 108, 116, 116, 197—
202; following victories over
Exeter, 168, 193, 257, 422, 446

Recruiting new students, 255-256,
5447765. See also Parker, Con-
stance; Teacher recruiting

Red Cross work, 214, 215

Redfield, E. Benjamin, Jr., Trustee,
5607729, 5667722

Reed, Mrs. Edwin. See Fellows,
Emily Putnam

Reed, William M., staff member of
Harvard Observatory used AA's
telescope for observation, 93

Rees, Caroline Bridgman, Instructor
in History, Asian history, 322

Reeves, Mrs. Ruth, Administrative
Assistant, 320

Religion: as motive for the founding
of academies, 6, 17, 18; as guide
to life in early Andover, 9, 10, 11,
13; women's role in the church, 9,
18-20, 60—61; as theme in Abbot
constitution, 22; religious conver-
sion, 30, 59—60, 80, no, 135,
5147786; Sabbath day observations,
38, 133-134, 258-259, 274, 316; as
subject within the academic cur-
riculum, 52-53, ^6, 58-62, 1 35—
136, 236—237, 271; faith compli-
cated by science, 54, 61-62, 137;
Miss McKeen's religious back-
ground and views, 81, 1 29-1 31,
135, 236; during the McKeen era,

129-138; under Miss Bailey, 212,
235-239; "drum and trumpet"
Christianity in World War I era,
213; under Miss Hearsey, 265-266,
5467722; under Mrs. Crane, 316—
317, 5567772; required Chapel
abandoned, 381; special services in
Gordon era, 403; religious back-
ground of Trustees, 4907248. See
also Abbot Academy Trustees,
Abbot Christian Association, Ab-
bot Religious Association, An-
dover Theological Seminary,
Chapel, Honor system, Mission-
aries, Revivalism, Self-reporting,
South Church

Republican Party, 84, 141, 5587710

Residence, Director of, 359

Reunions, 242, 447

Revivalism, 59—60, 80, 112. See also
Religion

Revolution, student: in 1960'$, 343-
345, 387, 388-391; AA and PA
students join Andover High
School in antiwar demonstrations,
389, 391; student-faculty action
against Vietnam War, 390-392;
lack of confidence in PA adminis-
tration, 421—422

Richards, John II, PA Dean of Stu-
dents and Instructor in History,
370, 423, 5797722

Richardson, Elizabeth Garland, 1899
(Mrs. Harry Parkhurst Thomas),
nurse for Grenfell Mission, 178

Richardson, W. C, architect of
Draper Hall (1890), 5197732

Richardson, Rev. Winthrop Horton,
Instructor in Bible History, 287

Riggs, Mrs. George Christopher.
See Smith, Kate Douglas

Ripley, Col. George, Trustee: do-
nated pedestal, 93; Building Com-
mittee member, 153; improved
Abbot accounting system, 189

Ripley, Mrs. Philip Franklin. See
Bacon, Mabel Ginevra

Risley, Louise, '57 (Mrs. Horton
Guyford Stever), Trustee, 5607729

Ritchie, Shirley J., Instructor in

6i6

INDEX

Physical Education, 303, 447

Robb, David, Custodian, bequeathed
Abbot $10,000, 331

Robbins, Mrs. Rensseleer David
Chance Ford. See Stuart, Sarah
Cook

Robert College (Constantinople,
Turkey), 46. See also Hamlin,
Rev. Cyrus

Robinson, Helen Dunford, Instruc-
tor in Latin, received sick pay,
5427242

Rockwell, Dorothy, '32 (Mrs.
Rockwell Clark), poem, 232, 236-
237,53772113

Rockwell, Sarah Elizabeth, 1881
(Mrs. William White Leete),
minister's wife, 180

Rogers, Caroline Stevens (Mrs.
Horatio Rogers), Trustee, 328,
369, 5607229, 5667222

Rogers Hall, 292

Rosebud Reservation (South Da-
kota), student exchange with A A,
405-406, 5767292, 5767293, 5777295

Roth, Anna Elizabeth, Instructor in
History, 292, 302

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, on women's
education, 14

Rowland, Mrs. Lyman. See Ward-
well, Tace Ann Farley

Rowley, Irene, 1843 (Mrs. Warren
Fales Draper): instigated A A
Draper Reading (1868), 96-97,
5087213; supervision of Abbot
"Commons," 131, 132; benefactor
of school, 132, 141; welcomed
Miss Bailey, 20, 251, 5427241;
presents grandfather clock, 210

Rules and regulations: for early
boarders, 40-41, 4867255; "mon-
strous," 86; no-nonsense McKeen
days, 106, 109— no, 5047276, 5047279;
few restrictions for 19th century
PA students, 124; Miss Means'
rules stressed decorum and good
manners, 186, 197; chaperones, 197,
198, 218, 220, 221, 309, 320—321,
339; Bailey era, 217-223; Hearsey
era, 273-276; rules for teachers,

too, 308-309; catching rule-break-
ers, 310; Crane era, 316, 339, 347,
357-358; rules necessary for ado-
lescent growth (1960's), 358;
Gordon era, 374, 370-382, 389,
397-398, 443

Runner, Olive Grace, Instructor in
Latin, 187-188

Rush, Benjamin, on education of
women, 15, 4817229

Russell, Herbert D. (PA 1890),
letter about sleighride, 5007237

Russell, William, Instructor in Oral
Reading: address at AA on educa-
tion of females, 53, 62; co-founded
Journal of American Education,

SAT. See Scholastic Aptitude Test

Sabbath. See Religion

St. Catherine's School (Va.), Abbey
Castle Kemper Dean before mar-
riage, 357

St. Johnsbury Academy (Vt.): Miss
Watson, Preceptress there before
coming to Abbot Academy, 163;
Calvin Coolidge attended, 51 97241

St. Paul's School (Concord, N. H.),
coed, 413, 5357277

St. Pierre, Jean Mary, Instructor in

^ English, 321, 359, 403, 440

Salaries: early Abbot , '34; Trustees
took over financial responsibility
of school and offered Principal
Hasseltine $500 per year salary,
71, 491728; Miss Merrill (1871-
1901) salary, 106, 5057283; Mc-
Keen's salary, 151, 517724; Laura
S. Watson's beginning salary of
$1200, 163; Bertha Bailey's salary,
203, 246; to be raised through
Centennial Fund, 241; average
teacher's salary (1928), 254; cuts
during Depression, 254; salaries
and benefits in postwar decade,
330-331, 5607227, 5627233; M. Crane
argued for higher salaries, 354,
5677223, 5677224; Cresap Report on,
358-359; salary budget increased
( 1967-1969), 377, 378-379, 572W4o;

INDEX

617

(1969-1973) brought above the
median, 400-401; PA and A A
salaries compared, 426; at merger,
445; when Warren F. Draper,
Treas. (1876-1900) teachers earned
$400-1500 plus room and board,
5017242; N. Y. State equalized
salaries for men and women
(1920), 5337255. See also Pensions

Salon, Carolyn Kellogg. See Kel-
logg, Carolyn

Samaritan House, widow Johnson
nursed sick students there, 62

Sanborn, George Knight (PA '24),
5347261

Sanborn, Mrs. George Knight. See
Flagg, Frances

Sanborn, Mrs. John S. See Hassel-
tine, Nancy Judson

Santayana, George, 115

Sargent, Porter, 347

Sargent's Handbook of Private
Schools. See Sargent, Porter

Sartorius, Tara C, '7/, 5757285

Sawyer, George Frost, Trustee,
5607229

Scannell, Michael, School Engineer,
230, 252, 5427247

Schauffler, Rev. William Gottlieb,
Instructor in French and German.
32; missionary, 46, 136

Schedules, daily: during Stone era
(1839-1841), 58; during McKeen
era, 93-94; Watson era, 167,
5217256; daily class schedule
(Marion Brown in 1910), 199;
academic scheduling, 374, 395,
414. See also Chapel

Schedules, weekly, 94, 98, 133-134,

274
Schiefferdecker, Fraulein Natalie,
Instructor in German, 167; Ger-
man table, 197
"Scholars, Old." See Abbot alumnae
Scholarships: for desirable candi-
dates, including missionary daugh-
ters, 100, 255; war years, 292-293;
Abbot funds, federal and founda-
tion, 354-355, 400, 401, 5677225-
5677228

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)
scores, 435, 565721, 5807260

"School-home," term used for AA
after 1854, 76, 81, 194

School Suffrage Act (1879),
women's vote on educational
matters, 51 1725 1

School Year Abroad Program, 41 1

Science: early courses (1834) 50,
53-54; facilities and equipment,
89, 92-93, 126, 190; Watson era,
166, 168; Bailey era, 228-229;
Hearsey era, 271, 272; Crane era,
326; Gordon era, 398, 402; offer-
ings at PA, 403, 429

Science and Religion. See Religion

Scudder, Vida Dutton, Professor of
English at Wellesley College,
reformer, 216, 5327229

Search Committee (1967), for prin-
cipal, 368, 5717213

Second Century Fund, $250,000
five-year goal, 282, 283

Seelye, Clark, President of Smith
College, first President, 184

Self-reporting: confessions, honor
system, 106; abandoned (1890),
137; still remembered, 275. See
also Honor system, Religion

Semicentennial Celebrations, 85, 108,
l55, 1 77> 505^89

Senior Exhibition, began Anniver-
sary Day, 117

Seven Sisters, seven leading women's
colleges, 386

Sewall, Richard, Yale Professor of
English, s6, 372, 4897225

Sex: new freedom of the twenties,
216-217, 12°i 532fl33'i fear of dis-
cussion, 339, 340, 5657261; remarks
of PA student, Thomas Doland
(pseud.), 390. See also Puritans

Sex education course, 365-366, 414,

415
Sexton, Hannah (Mrs. Asa Farwell),

Instructor, Directress of Abbot

"Commons," 43
Shady Hill School (Cambridge,

Mass.), 285
Sheahan, Richard Eugene, Director

6i8

INDEX

of Development, PA Associate
Secretary of the Academy, 377,
396, 425, 447

Sheldon, Mrs. Luther Harris. See
Flagg, Sarah Hicks

Sherman Cottage. See Sherman
House

Sherman House (/p/y): mid-night
parties, 306, 5547222; hidden letters,
306-307, 359; no mercy on house-
mothers, 356-357, 421

Sidon, Rev. Hans, Instructor in
Bible, 271,5557226

Single sex institutions, advantages
of for women, 412, 5787215

Sioux Indian Girls (South Dakota).
See Rosebud Reservation

Sisson, Barbara Blagdon (Mrs. John
H.), Instructor in English, 321,

.338

Sister-brother pairs. See Brother-
sister pairs

Sisters Melody and Cheerfulness, 42

Sisters Temperance, Mercy, Music,
Calmness and Affection, 42

Sizer, Nancy Faust (Mrs. Theodore
Ryland), PA Instructor in His-
tory and Social Sciences, wife of
Theodore R. Sizer, PA Head-
master, 433

Sizer, Theodore Ryland ("Teddy"),
twelfth Headmaster of PA,
4927217; appointed 1972, 432-440;
on coordination, 433-436;
moment of agreement, July, 1912,
448; Teddy's New Frontier, 449

Skating, 123, 5087225

Skeleton, 93, 4997218

Skiing, 234, 277

Skilton, Emily Maria, 1884,
Florence Crittenton League volun-
teer, deputy probation officer, 1 79

Sleighrides, 99, 108, 116, 221, 409,
5007237

Smart and Flagg Insurance Agency,
Flagg partner, 247, 251

Smith, Donald B., Trustee, 5607229

Smith, Esther Humphrey, 18 56
(Mrs. John Byers), donor of

John-Esther Art Gallery, 190

Smith, Mrs. George Ferguson,
Trustee's wife, furnished guest
rooms in Draper Hall, 158

Smith, John, Trustee, Founder of
Memorial Hall Library, Andover:
donor of John-Esther Art Gal-
lery, 190; taxes, 4857249, 4947224

Smith, Kate Douglas, 187 s (Mrs.
Samuel Bradley Wiggin; Mrs.
George Christopher Riggs), 179,
5257229

Smith, Mary Byers, '04, 186, 210-
211; A4eans Library Committee,
241; offered annuities to alumnae
in Bulletin, 253

Smith, Mrs. Melancthon. See
Edwards, Annie M.

Smith, Peter, Trustee, 35, 72-75, 75,
4937221

Smith College (1871), college

women could succeed in advanced
studies, 142, 159, 162, 164, 5237212.
See also Appendix C

Smith Hall (1854): financing and
construction, 74-75, 86; furnish-
ing, 75, 83-84; early life in, 76;
Civil War celebration, 84, 8$, 86;
under Miss McKeen, 99, 103, 109,
/ //, 112, 122, 141, 5007237; special
entertainments, 116; Julia Downs
died (1873), 138; moved back to-
ward grove (1887), 157-158, 159,
i6i\ closed (1897), 170; de-
molished (1907), 191

Smoking: allowed for teachers in
lounge, 253; students, 306-307;
PA/Abbot, 421, 422

Smyth, Egbert Coffin, Trustee:
speech at Semicentennial, 108; ap-
peal to Mass. Supreme Court, 129,
5127258

Snobbishness: AA had snob appeal,
185, 5267213; attitude toward day
scholars, 192, 5347267; sororities,
196; minimized during Depression,
257-258; exclusiveness, 327; social
mobility, 178, 5247225. See also

INDEX

619

Clubs and sororities, Social class
distinctions

Snyder, Wendy (MacNeil) (Mrs.
John M.), Instructor in Photogra-
phy, 365

Social class distinctions: "town and
gown" and "mill and till," 37-40,
84; elite status apparently sought
by applicants to A A, 100, 101,
208-209, 299> 327* 559^224; played
down or minimized by A A, 185,
224, 256-257, 289; exclusiveness,
185, 526/213; no conclusions pos-
sible as to status conferred by
A A, 5247225; See also Ivy League,
Snobbishness, Students, Black;
Town and gown

Social Science Department. See
November Club, Woman suffrage

Societies, suspended during World
War II, 288. See also Clubs and
sororities

Society of Friends, women as Elders
in, 5127255. See also Quakers,
Quaker educators

Soessel, Alfred, 244

Somerset, Lady Henry, 136

Sororities. See Clubs and sororities

South Church (1708): 9, 17, 25, 33,
367; Abbot students' Sunday
Church, 58; Semicentennial tent
pavilion, 108, 5057289; sermons,
122; evening lectures, 136, 180;
Flagg pillar of the church, 248,
5417239; Gordon Installation, 372;
women not admitted as members
of parish, 4827743; B. Bailey,
53772103

South End House, Boston, founded
by ATS liberals (1891), 5157297

South Hall: opened as dormitory
(1865), on site of John-Esther
Art Gallery, 86; "German" House,
90; moved to Abbot Street site
(1889) and renamed Sunset Lodge
(1892), 157, 161. See also Hearsey,
Marguerite; McKeen, Philena;
Sunset Lodge

Southworth, Irving, Trustee, re-

sisted admission of black students,

2 94
Spalding, Gertrude W., 1869 (Mrs.

Edward C. Hayden), murdered

by husband, 1 39

Spanish-American War, 172

Sperry, Mrs. Willard Gardner. See
Learoyd, Henrietta

Sphinx, 113, 115

Sports, 142; tennis, baseball, bi-
cycling, basketball, field hockey,
243, 194, 19$; boys' athletic
prowess, 221—222, 233-234, 384-

385, 399, 53^94. 536n95'> differ-
ences PA and Abbot, 421, 5797239;
for Abbot girls, 430; joint sports,
447. See also Physical education

Stackpole, Rev. Markham Winslow,
Trustee, 203, 244

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, President
National Woman Suffrage Asso-
ciation, 78, 136, 4957248

Stapleton, Peter T., Instructor in
English and Assistant to the Prin-
cipal: no required tests in English
class, 382—383, 387; completed
plans for striking students, 391;
working on a book with Gordon
about the Headmaster's job, 393,
395, 571/218; non-traditional, 402

Stearns, Alfred Ernest (PA 1890),
ninth Principal of PA, 122-123,
197; widening chasm between
Abbot and PA, 221-223, 244>

^ 54^38

Stearns, Mabel, sister of Alfred E.
Stearns, letters from brother, 122

Stevens, J. P. Family, 251

Stevens, Stoddard M., Jr., Trustee,
5607229

Stevens Foundation, $50,000 gift for

gym, 333
Stever, Mrs. Horton Guyford. See

Risley, Louise
Stille, Alfred, stated women unfitted

by nature to become physicians

(7^7/), 142
Stockbridge, Theodosia, 2^57,

Instructor, 56—57

620

INDEX

Stone, Mary (Mrs. Henry Jones),
Instructor, 31

Stone, Rev. Timothy Dwight Porter,
Principal of AA (1839-1842), 31-
32; opened Abbot "Commons"
(l$39), 42; prepared women for
teaching (1839-1842), 44-45;
mental arithmetic, 55

Stott, Frederic Anness (PA 1936),
Executive Secretary of Andover
Program, studied coordination, 425

Stowe, Prof. Calvin Ellis, ATS, 70,
4807216; evening lectures at South
Church, 136

Stowe, Eliza Tyler, 1855, twin
daughter of Harriet Beecher
Stowe, 4947233

Stowe, Georgiana May (Georgie)
1862, daughter of Harriet Beecher
Stowe, objected to self -reporting,
106

Stowe, Harriet Beecher (Hattie)
18 $5, twin daughter of Harriet
Beecher Stowe, 70, 4947233

Stowe, Harriet Elizabeth Beecher,
co-founder with sister of Hart-
ford Female Seminary, 16; toured
Europe, 70; Uncle T orris Cabin,
70; raised money for Smith Hall
furnishings, 75; "levees" as a cause
of dissipation for students, 75,
4947233; on women's use of their
gifts, 78; woman suffrage, 79; end
of slavery, 85-86; donated auto-
graphed copy of Uncle Torris
Cabin, 158. See also Beecher,
Catharine Esther; Beecher, Rev.
Henry Ward; Beecher, Rev. Lv-
man; Stowe, Prof. Calvin Ellis

"Stu G." See Student Council

Stuart, Elizabeth, 1829 (Mrs. Austin
Phelps), mother of Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps Ward, 24, 37

Stuart, Moses, Professor at ATS,

37.54
Stuart, Sarah Cook, 183$ (Mrs.

Rensseleer David Chanceford
Robbins), 20—21
Student Council, (Stu G), 238; in-
stituted by Katherine Kelsey, 202;

honor system, 274-276, 5477233;
hymn book slamming and note
passing, 307, 310, 5557246; relieved
of disciplinary role, 358; pushing
for more freedom, 367; system
came apart, 380; parietal rules, 443

Student unrest. See Revolution,
student

Students, black: admitted to Oberlin
( 1830's), 49; acceptance at Abbot

(l953), 29!-295. 55\n99; new
federal and foundation scholar-
ships, 354; full scholarship, 400;
Afro-American center, 406; ten
blacks, 407-408, 407

Students, geographical distribution,
37, 100— 101, 5677227

Students, gifted, advanced place-
ment, 325—326

Students, one-year: Elizabeth Mar-
shall Thomas, 305—306; welcomed,
5447270

Students, Oriental, welcomed at
Abbot for decades, 292, 55 172101

Students from Oxford, scholarships
during World War II, 292,
55122103

Sullivan, Catherine Jane (C. Jane)
'3/, A A Alumnae Secretary, 258,
271,400, 5347267

Sunday School, women teachers, 61

Sunset Cottage. See Sunset Lodge

Sunset Lodge (1892), formerly
South (or "German") Hall: 1889
moved to Abbot St. and renamed
Sunset Lodge (1892) 157, 161;
(1892—1898) retirement home of
Miss Philena McKeen, 170; reno-
vated for M. Hearsey (1936—
1955), 266. See also South Hall

Sutton, Gardner, Trustee, 5607229;
Treasurer, 330, 377-378,400,
5682228

Swarthmore College, coed (1869),
5097233

Swazey, Frances Thomas, 1886
(Mrs. Wendell Phillips Parker),
1 10, 5057290; eulogy for Miss
Bailey (poem), 261

Sweeney, Alice Curtiss, '14, In-

INDEX

62 1

structor in English, Acting Prin-
cipal and Director of Studies,
224-225, 237, 5312210, 546/29;
modernized English courses, 233,
5312210; Director of Studies and
assistant to M. Hearsey, 266-269,
268 \ Courant advisor, 278; on
minority students, 293; as teacher-
colleague, 302, 304, 309, 311, 314;
acting principal (1946-194']) dur-
ing M. Hearsey's leave of absence,
311; careful counseling of stu-
dents with unusual records, 326;
favored modernization of Abbot,
378; academic and college counsel-
ing, 386, 387, 428; opposed
Parents' Day, 5517297

Sweeney, Arthur (PA '06), brother
of Alice Sweeney, 267

Sweeney, John P., father of Alice
Sweeney, 267

Sweeney, Miriam, '25 (Mrs. Frank
McArdle, Jr.), 237

Sweeney, Nora, '/2, sister of Alice
Sweeney, 267

Swift, Charlotte Harris, 18 $8,
daughter of Trustee Nathaniel
Swift, 155

Swift, Nathaniel, Trustee, Abbot
Treasurer (181$), 5012242, 51622126

Swisshelm, Jane, 78

Syllabus, for Miss McKeen's Church
History course, 135-136

TIAA. See Teachers Insurance and

Annuity Association
Taconic School (Conn.), B. Bailev

co-principal and co-owner, 203,

210
Taft, Charles Phelps (PA 18 $9),

Congressman, 134
Taft School (Watertown, Conn.),

became coed, 413
Taliatine, Mesrobe, Armenian tutor,

46
Talmadge, Mrs. Thomas R. See

Wilkins, Alexina
Tamblyn and Brown: fund-raising

firm, negotiations suspended, 246;

launched 2nd Century Fund, 282,

284, 355, 361, 377, 5497259

Tarbox, Mary Porter, 1871 (Mrs.
Freeborn Fairfield Raymond), 127

Taylor, Antoinette Hall (Mrs. John
Phelps), Trustee's wife: furnished
guest rooms, Draper Hall, 158;
Abbot Infirmary (Taylor Infirma-
ry) named in her memory
( 1914), 239, 538221 19. See also
Hall House, Taylor Infirmary

Taylor, Edward, Trustee, 77

Taylor, Emma L., Principal of AA
(1857-59) and Sister of PA Prin-
cipal Samuel Taylor, 78, 80, 81,
4962260

Taylor, Rev. John Phelps, Trustee
and Professor at ATS, 138, 189,
191, 248

Taylor, Samuel Harvey ("Uncle
Sam"), sixth Principal of PA, 33-
34, 5092228; converts, 59, 77; col-
lege prep, tradition, 91; discipline,
120, 124; coed issue surfaced after
his death (1871), 124-125; salary,
491728

Taylor Homestead, house next to
John-Esther Art Gallery, later
Flagg's residence, 248

Taylor Infirmary (1914), 223. See
also Taylor, Antoinette Hall; Hall
House

Teacher recruiting: Watson era,
170; Crane era, 319, 321-322, 358-
361; Gordon era, 402

Teacher Work-Load Study Com-
mittees, Ms. Hearsey started
(1944), 318-319

Teachers, live-in, difficult to recruit,
317-322, 5577279. See also House-
mothers

Teacher's course. See Abbot Acade-
my, teacher's course

Teachers Insurance and Annuity
Association (TIAA), Faculty Re-
tirement Plan, 330, 5627235; (1964)
increase, 354

Teachers, non-resident, 359, 5687243

Teachers Seminary (PA). See Phil-
lips Academy Teachers' Seminary

Teachers' tenure, 188, 321, 5577296;

622

INDEX

Abbot a home to many, 332, 441—
442

Teaching, 56, 221, 226, 5337255. See
also Pedagogy

Telescope and observatory, 93, 5/ /—
312

Temperance, 61, 97, 306; movement,
women's role, 78, 131, 1 74, 5 1 1 725 1

Tenney, Mrs. Daniel. See Parker,
Mary Adams

Tenney, Louise (Mrs. Pomeroy
Belden), Acting Principal of Ab-
bot Academy ('#54-35), 31

Tenure. See Teachers' tenure

Terman, Lewis P., phychologist,
mental development tests, 227

Tests, intelligence, 227, 290, 5357276;

results {1951, 1961), 334, 564M7
Thanet, Octave {pseud.). See

French, Alice
Thanksgiving: in Smith Hall, 132;
Miss Watson's first, 167, 520/255;
in Gordon era, 403
Thayer, Sylvia, '54 (Mrs. P. Philip

Zaeder), 5542224
"The Chantant," 214
Theater, 98, 198, 278, 5132262
"Theologues, Andover." See An-

dover Theological Seminary
Therapy, recommended for stu-
dents, 279, 392, 5482243
Thomas, Mrs. Henry Parkhurst. See

Richardson, Elizabeth Garland
Thomas, M. Carey, President of
Bryn Mawr, 32; language study
emphasized in girls' schools, 90,
105, 127, 4992213; feminist activi-
ties and speeches, 174-177; argues
for and against coeducation, 412—
413, 5782218. See also Bryn Mawr
College
Thomas, Norman, 366, 570227
Thomas, Stephanie, '74, 398
Thomas, Mrs. Stephen M. See

Marshall, Elizabeth
Thompson, Mildred, Vassar Dean,

552721
Thomson, Eleanor Jaffray, 1896
(Mrs. Alfred Lucius Castle),
167, 176, 186

Thomson family, 197

Thorndike, Edward L., psycholo-
gist, 227, 5357278

Thornton, Dr. John, 192-194, 5297233

Thornton Hall, novel of boarding
school life by Phebe McKeen,
1 10— 1 12, ///, 5057291

Thorpe, Mrs. Ronald Dale. See
Urie, Sandra Ann

Tiffin, 308, 372

Tingley, Gertrude, Instructor in
Singing, 310

Tinker, J. Pamela, Instructor in
Chemistry and Biology, 321

Titcomb, Miriam, Instructor in
Mathematics, 202—203

Tobey, Governor Charles W.
(N. H.), 244

Todd, Guerin, Trustee, 5822272

"Town and gown": anti-Farwell pe-
tition, 34-36, 39; "Mill and Till,"
38-40; McKeen era, 88, 98; visits
to mills, 98; Bailey era, 223; Flagg
and Great Depression, 246-261;
AA's gradual separation from,
327-328, 5607227; AA students
tutored immigrant children in
Lawrence, 389. See also Andover,
Andover High School, Punchard
High School, Social class distinc-
tions

"Town meetings." See Abbot town
meetings

Transfer theory, 52

Travel: pilgrimages abroad, 143—
144; limited during World War
II, 289

Tree planting. See Class ceremonies

Tree song, 507721 14

Trenbath, Isabelle, Housemother,

357
"Trinity of Andover Schools," 92

Trips, special, 32-33, 97-98, 406

Trowbridge, Mrs. Augustus, lec-
turer on morals, 220

Troy Academy (N. Y.) (later
Emma Willard School). See
Emma Willard School; Willard,
Emma

Trustee Investment Committee, 329

INDEX

623

Trustees. See Abbot Academy
Trustees

"Truth," Abbot seal, 218

"Tuck." See Tucker, Eleanor
Morin

Tucker, Eleanor Morin, Instructor
in Chemistry and Mathematics,
Director of Studies, and Acting
Principal, 271, 5417235; sense of
community strong during World
War II, 289, 315; freed from
corridor duty, 319-320; Director
of Studies, 322; careful counseling
of students, 326, 353; Vice-Prin-
cipal, 354; Acting Principal, 364-
371; first Dean of Girls, PA Sum-
mer School, 365; triple-tiered job,
371; resigned, 375-376; became
Principal of Winchester-Thurston
Day School (Pittsburgh, Pa.),
376, 387; studied at Oxford,
55172103

Tuition: early, 39, 51, 4867251; day
students, 77, 192, 5427249

Tuition and board, ( 1854-1862), 75-
76; (1876), 86, 100, 5027244,
5027250; raised after completion of
new buildings, 160; delayed pay-
ments during Depression, 256;
rising, 290, 5557252; compared with
PA, 42 5-426, 436, 439; rise (1926),

54^49
Twichell, Julia Emeline, 1879,

51772136
Twichell, Mary Delight, 1873 (Mrs.

Alfred Henry Hall), "Bells"

(poem), 94-95
Twitchell, Alice Carter, 1886,

Volunteer Fund Director, 242

"Uncle Sam" Taylor. See Taylor,

Samuel Harvey
Uncle Torrts Cabin. See Stowe,

Harriet Elizabeth Beecher
"Underground Railroad," McKeens'

childhood home a station, 84
Undines, Abbot Boat Club, 1 1 3
Urie, Sandra Ann, '70 (Mrs. Ronald

Dale Thorpe), Instructor in Rus-

sian, Admissions Officer, PA, 370

Vail, Mrs. William Henry. See
Hamlin, Caroline Margaret

Vassar College: tuition, 100, 105,
159, 5147288; admission standards
did not match men's colleges, 162;
salaries, 164, 175; (1965-66), six
new graduates had teaching jobs
at AA, 359

Vical, Jeanne. See Miller, Mrs.
Jeanne Vical

Victorian values, 79, 84, 99, 1 10-
129, 144-145, 301. See also
Adolescence

Vine oration, class vine planting, 117

"Visiting Committees," 348

Visitors Committee: tried to remove
five liberal professor-editors of
ATS Andover Review, 1 29,
5127258. See also Andover Review

Von Erpecom, Olthje Christine,
Instructor in Speech and Drama
and Dean of Students, 359

WCTU (Woman's Christian Tem-
perance Union). See Temperance
movement

Wagner Festival (Boston), 98

Waiting on table, continued after
World War II, 291

Wald, Prof. George, 388

Wald, Lillian, settlement house
movement, 179

Walks, approved, 218

"Wallstreet, Mr.," 337

"War and the Schools," 215

Warburg, Andrea, '40 (Mrs. Sidney
Kaufman), 293, 55172105

Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. See
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart

Ward, Herbert Dickinson (PA
1880), 5097228

Ward, Mrs. Herbert Dickinson.
See Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart

Ward, Rev. Nathaniel, Puritan
clergyman, 9

Ward well, Tace Ann Farley (Mrs.
Lyman Sibley Rowland), Instruc-
tor, 1 1 o

624

INDEX

Warner, Margot, Instructor in
Music, 322

Warner, Sally S., Resident Advisor,
5807253

Warren, Rev. Theodore John, Jr.,
Instructor in History and PA In-
structor in Religion, 406

Warren, Mrs. Theodore John, Jr.
See Chandler, Beth

Washburn, Mrs. George. See Ham-
lin, Henrietta Loraine

Washington, Booker Taliaferro, 190

Water beds. See Beds, water

Waterford Academy (N. Y.),
4877266

Watson, Laura Sophia, Principal of
AA (1892-98), 162-167, l63\
created solid College Prep course,
162; Principal of Abert Lee Col-
lege for Women (Minn.), 163;
fund raising, 169-170, 51 97241,
5197242; enrollment of C. P. stu-
dents increases, 184, 189; drapery
on AA seal expanded, 218. See
also Laura Watson Art Fund

Wayland, Francis, (ATS 1816),
President of Brown University,

53>6l> 89
"Weathermen," 344

Webster, Daniel, speech to Essex
County Whigs in Andover,
5 October, 1843, 4867251

Wellesley College, 152, 164, 175—
176, 212, 227, 264. See also Bailey,
Bertha; Clapp, Margaret; Hearsey,
Marguerite Capen; Appendix C

Wells, Eleanor, 1936 (Mrs. Ray-
mond G. Nudd), 261, 5457282

Welter, Barbara, historian, 79

Werner, Ann Sandford (Mrs. Paul),
Instructor in English, 326, 339

Werner, Paul, Instructor in Mathe-
matics, 315, 556776J

Wesleyan Female College ( Cincin-
nati, Ohio), 106

Wesleyan University (Bloomington,
111.), 163

Western College for Women (Ox-
ford, Ohio), 81, 4967261

Western Female Seminary. See
Western College for Women

Wheaton College (1830), 49, 152

Wheaton Seminary. See Wheaton
College

Wheeler, Mary Colman, 1866,
founder and Principal of Wheeler
School for Girls (1889, Provi-
dence, R. I.), 178, 326

Whig party, 30, 42, 84, 4867251.
See also Webster, Daniel

Whiting, Ella Keats, Wellesley Col-
lege Dean, 31 1

Whitney, Alice, Punchard High
graduate, 166, 5207251

Whittier, John Greenleaf, speaker
at AA, 51 1225 1

Wholesale Price Index (1835-1890),
5017242

Whyte, Rev. James Rae, Instructor
in Religion, 381, 450, 5737246

Wiggin, Kate Douglas. See Smith,
Kate Douglas

Wiggin, Mrs. Samuel Bradley. See
Smith, Kate Douglas

Wilder, Laura Ingalls, author, 43-44

Wilkerson, Cathlyn P., '62, 343-344

Wilkins, Alexina, ^22 (Mrs. Thomas
R. Talmadge, 5337235, 5347266,
5437256

Wilkinson, Dorothea, Instructor in
English, 310

Willard, Emma, founder of Emma
Willard School, 43, 52, 54,
4877266; founded Seminary for
Women (1814), Middlebury, Vt.,
15-16; Troy Academy (N. Y.)
(founded 1821), 16; enrollment
(1828), 16. See also Emma
Willard School

Willard, Mrs. Harriet B., Head
Matron (1856-60), Smith Hall, 76

"Willie's Prize," poem, 1 14

Wilson, Mira Bigelow, '/o, Trustee
and Principal Northfield School,
244, 266

Winship, Mildred, Recruiter, 255

Winsor School (Boston, Mass.), 227,
363,412, 5487248

INDEX

625

Winter sports, 234, 327

Winthrop, John, Governor of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, 10

Witten, Anne Lise (Mrs. Oscar),
Instructor in History, 321, 357

Woman suffrage, 23, 78-80, 84, 141,
5327228; McKeens' indifference to
suffrage activities, 128; mock elec-
tions at A A, 131; original unity
disappeared, 174-177; suffragist
orientation of Social Science Dept.
in November Club, 187, 5117251;
Bertha Bailey, first suffragist Prin-
cipal, position on, 216, 5327227;
Massachusetts a nerve center in
suffrage movement, 5117251. See
also Anti-suffragists, Nineteenth
Amendment

Woman's Christian Temperance
Union. See Temperance move-
ment

Women:

Ante-Bellum, 8-12; job opportuni-
ties and earnings of, 8-9, 522724;
dress, 10; literacy, 10; midwifery,
14; suffrage and civil rights, 23,
78-80; church work, 60-62;
Sunday School teachers, 61; tem-
perance crusades, 61; abolitionism,
61, 78-79. See also Marland Mills
Victorian Age: Abbot students,
1 19-145; health, 142; opportuni-
ties for jobs and graduate study,
141-142, 226, 51672117, 517^135
Turn of the Century (1900), edu-
cation and job opportunities, 1 73—
177, 522725

Twenties, 215-217, 228
Fifties and early sixties, 334-338

Women, Community of, 99-1 18

Women ministers, 178, 5127255. See
also McKeen, Philena

Women's clubs. See Emerson, Char-
lotte; General Federation of
Women's Clubs; Ladies' Benevo-
lent Society (PA), November
Club

Women's education. See Education,
women's

Women's Liberation Movement,

344,412
Women's Missionary Committee,

180
Women's occupational opportuni-
ties, 78-80, 85-86, 144-145,

173—186, 51672117, 522724, 522725.

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