The Oldest Boarding School in New England

Since March, I have been researching and writing the history of The Governor’s Academy in Byfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1763—and known as Dummer Charity School, Dummer Academy, and Governor Dummer Academy—this coeducational boarding school will celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2012-2013. My charge is to deliver books in time for the opening of school in September 2012.

Founded before the American Revolution, the school was endowed by one of the earliest families to settle in Massachusetts, and its history is linked with the history of the Commonwealth and our country. For example, an early graduate was the personal secretary of George Washington. Another was governor of Massachusetts, twice, and a third was a commander of USS Constitution. My personal interest is piqued because I graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, another 18th-century boarding school still going today. When I was at Exeter, I couldn’t understand how GDA (as we called Governor’s then) could have been founded 20 years before PEA!

Oddly, I now feel as much loyalty to my client school as I do to my old one. This happens anytime you immerse yourself in someone else’s story—or it happens to me. I discovered this the first time I sat in front of a single client and listened to his life story.

For the past two months, I have spent most days at the academy, doing research in the archives and interviewing students and faculty members. I am impressed with the community atmosphere of the school, where most faculty live in dorms in loco parentis, and faculty children and pets run around campus with abandon. The school’s original two buildings still stand, and around them have clustered a mixed bag of clapboard and brick, added as needed, so that the school has evolved much in the manner of a New England village. It doesn’t hurt the village atmosphere that the school is set in rolling farmlands on the edge of the Great Atlantic Salt Marsh, embraced by a pair of meandering rivers.

The GDA story has re-taught me a great lesson: it’s not what happens to you that counts, it’s what you do with what happens to you. Every school the age of Governor’s has had its share of tragedy and misbehavior. What has impressed me as I’ve listened to such stories is how the headmaster and faculty dealt with these events—often impressively. When I was at Exeter there was one memorable scandal, and the way the administration handled that said much about the school. What has been said about GDA, especially under recent headmasters Peter Bragdon and Marty Doggett, is generally good news, a tale worth telling.

I’m happy the school hired me to tell it.