This year The Governor's Academy celebrates 50 years of "coeducation." Not just one of the oldest boarding schools in the country, the Academy is older than the country itself. Like many other venerable institutions, for most of its long history the Academy was a boys-only school. Not until 1971, more than 200 years after its founding, did it embrace "coeducation."
But this narrative, the most common one about coeducation at the Academy, overlooks two brief periods of early coeducation and an intermittent period defined by one headmaster's determination to return the Academy to its historic "first principles" as a boys' boarding school.
Unpacking these two early periods of coeducation at the Academy reveals a remarkable history that speaks to the controversy surrounding the era's burgeoning women's rights movement. The early female students at the Academy received mixed treatment from their male peers but found constant forward-thinking champions in two headmasters, Ebenezer Parsons and Perley Leonard Horne. What's more, though many of these female students successfully completed the Academy's course of study, they never received diplomas or formally graduated. Nevertheless, several alumnae would go on to pursue full-fledged careers and lead remarkable lives.
This is an online event. The Zoom link will be sent several days prior.
Imogene Robinson graduated from The Governor's Academy in 2013 only to return as an archival intern two years later. As an intern, she continued her historical research into the Academy's early eras of "coeducation" as part of a grant awarded to her by Centre College's Brown Fellowship program. Since leaving college, Imogene has been a small-town barista, a wildlife journalist, and, most recently, a writer for a global digital agency. Somehow, however, she always seems to find her way back to history and to the village of Byfield.
