Cheshire Academy - Rolling Stone Yearbook (Cheshire, CT)

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The Senior Class

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Cheshire and other towns in Connecticut and New York attended the Academy. Between 1826 and 1836, the Academy suffered a decline, often referred to as “‘the dark age of the Academy.’’ There were three principals during that period. All the principals were clergymen and many of them also served as rectors of St. Peter’s Church in Cheshire. This distribution of time and effort naturally hurt the Academy and this custom was finally abandoned. With the Rev. Allen Morgan the institution began a renaissance which continued under the Rev. Dr. E. E. Beardsley, who introduced the boarding school system in 1838, and rose to great heights under the Rev. Sanford J. Horton, who became the Principal in 1862. Dr. Horton brought a number of students with him from Windham, Conn., and established at once a military regime which was at the time a great drawing card. The military aspect of the school continued for the next forty years. The school grew and prospered greatly during the thirty years that Dr. Horton was Principal. When the building that was used as a dormitory and Dr. Horton’s home was burned in 1873, he raised funds and built, in 1874, the building which was given the name of Horton Hall. This dormitory and administration building was in its turn destroyed by fire on the night of January 8, 1941. In 1892 Dr. Horton resigned to be succeeded for four years by the Rev. James Stoddard. Then in 1896, Professor Eri D. Woodbury, long an able helper to Dr. Horton, became the last Principal of the Episcopal Academy, end- ing his term in 1903. At that time the Trustees of the Diocese of Connecticut leased the school for ninety-nine years to the Trustees of the Cheshire School, Inc. The buildings were entirely renovated and the school placed on a thor- oughly modern basis. In 1917 the Cheshire School gave way to the Roxbury School, a tutoring organization which flourished until 1925 and which, in turn, began to expand and return to the traditional lines of the past. The link with the past was made secure when, on April 29, 1937, the former Roxbury School was granted a charter by a Special Assembly in Hartford, Conn., and the school at Cheshire became the Cheshire Academy. The present headmaster of the Academy, Mr. Arthur N. Sheriff, became the headmaster of the Roxbury School in 1922 upon the retirement of Mr. Walter L. Ferris on account of illness. Mr. Sheriff has seen the Academy through its various phases of aligning the old with the new and continuing the policies which have made the school at Cheshire one of the great and historic educational institutions of the nation.

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Officers of the Class of 194] RALPH M. GRIFFITHS, JR. President LAWRENCE R. ELLIS, JR. PAUL S. BRAUER Vice-President Secretary and Treasurer