Monson Academy - Academy Bell Yearbook (Monson, MA)

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'We lmmlaly and gratefully dedicate our yearlaoole to tloe memory of tloose faitlaful sons of Monson flcademy wlvo unsemsbly gave tloeir lives in tloe second Qreat 'World 'War

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CADEMY BELL 1946 X 1 A '? 1 F, 1 - K A if' X. , A ANNUAL 3 Fon THE MoNsoN A Y ACADEMY CLASS 1946 S

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AN HISTORIC SKETCH .OF MONSON ACADEMY A Unlike most independent schools, Monson Academy does not owe its origin to a single founder. From the first it has been a co-operative effort. If we must point to a single great influence behind the school, we might go back to our first president of the Board of Trustees. It was the Reverend Iohn Willard, D.D., of Stafford, Connecticut, who joined with the local inn-keeper, Ioel Norcross, and the local parson, Iesse lves, in rousing public interest to the point of getting a state charter for the founding of Monson Academy. Mention should be made also of the Reverend Alfred Ely, one of the first Trustees and an active member from 1806 to 1866. Dr. Willard, who was graduated from Harvard as far back as 1751, was the brother of the more famous President Willard of Harvard C1781-18041 and was able to interest many of the leading scholars of the day in his Monson project. Under an act of 1797 the Massachusetts legislature had undertaken to endow with lands in the province of Maine any preparatory school built by the industry of the local people, if that particular area needed such educational facilities. For the location of such a school in this part of Western Massa- chusetts the citizens of Monson and Brimfield competed, and after some debate Monson was chosen. The Act of Incorporation of Monson Academy was passed by the Massa- chusetts House of Representatives on Iune 21, 1804, and half the Township of Monson, Maine, was granted as an endowment. A fund of over four thousand dollars was collected among local citizens, and the first Academy building was opened in 1806. ' Though the school was and still is closely associated with the local Congre- gational Church, there has been no official religious affiliation with any group. All creeds and races were welcome. This fact, no doubt, had a great deal to do .with the school's rapid rise to fame. The founding fathers had hoped for a school which would attract students from all over the state, in addition to functioning as a secondary school for the Monson area. In a very few years it had a national reputation, after its first quarter-century, students were coming from all over the world. There is no space here to go into many details of Monson's history. We can, however, note a few landmarks. The first headmaster, Simeon Colton, who left after his first year, in 1807, returned in 1821 and stayed for nine years. This was the period of Monson's beginning as a great school. During the decade 1820-1831 the school graduated such famous men as Sophocles of Harvard, America's greatest classical scholar, who came here all the way from Smyrna in Asia Minor, Dr. Henry L. Barnard, the first United States Commissioner of Education, regarded as second only to Horace Mann in the development of the American public school, Professor W. A. Larned, late professor at Yale College, and the Reverend Richard S. Storrs, D.D., of Brooklyn, New York, commonly and affectionately referred to in those days as Prince of Preachers. A glance at the catalogues of the eighteen-twenties will show students from England, Greece, Turkey, and many parts of North America. Men went out from the Academy to open up the West and carry the Gospel to the South Seas. The Reverend Cushing Eels and the Reverend Charles B. Sumner were instru- mental in founding, respectively, Whitman College in Washington and Pomona College in California.