Bacon Academy

Story

Bacon Academy is a public high school in Colchester, Connecticut, in the United States.In 1800 a prominent Colchester farmer, Pierpont Bacon, died and left an endowment of thirty-five thousand dollars (with buying power equivalent to that of about two million dollars in 2009). The endowment was to theinhabitants of the First Society of Colchester for the purpose of supporting and maintaining a school…for the instruction of Youth in Reading and writing English, in Arithmetic, Mathimaticks, and the Languages, or such other branches of Learning. This established the academy that bears his name. Bacon Academy’s doors opened to the children of Colchester on the first of November 1803 and from that point forward, prepared many young men and women for the life that lay ahead.HistoryIn its early days, Bacon Academy had a reputation of preparing its students for accomplishment at universities and colleges around the country. Local children attended the school without charge for tuition. The status of the Academy was high in the minds of many prominent fathers of the nineteenth century.The trustees established an academic year of three terms: the first term started in September and ended in December, the second ran from January to April, and the third, from May to August. Early class rolls show that the number of local students would fall in planting and harvesting seasons, many students skipping semesters or returning either late in the first term or leaving early in the second and not attending the Academy at all during the third.Early Bacon students were neither given a diploma nor graduated after four years, as they generally are today. Instead, the school had a system divided into three branches. In the first branch, a young student learned such subjects as languages, English grammar, and mathematics. In the second branch, he or she would be taught writing, geometry, and rhetoric. The last branch was similar to the common or grammar school. Age never factored into a student’s placement or progress; some students would leave Bacon at fifteen or sixteen if they had completed all three branches. In 1886, the branch structure was abandoned for the current four-year system; and by 1890, the first modern commencement was held, with each graduated student receiving a diploma.