Amherst Academy

The first mass of Puritans had arrived in Massachusetts by 1630, and soon afterward, they began passing laws for education. To Puritans, learning to read meant reading the Bible, which saved a soul, and in 1648, the Massachusetts General Court passed its third education law. This law demanded that families teach "their children and apprentices so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the english tongue, and knowledge of the Capital laws."(Law 16) The laws were difficult to enforce, but more importantly, Massachusetts did not tax citizens for schooling. As a result, families who could afford it were more likely to pay a grammar school's tuition.

In July of 1812 Hezekiah Wright Strong began gathering money for an academy in Amherst, and many people, disappointed with inferior local schools, soon joined him. (Tuckerman 10) By November of 1814, they had collected $5,000, secured a half-acre on Amity Street, built a three story brick building, and were set to enroll 60 students of both sexes in December of that year.

The Academy's founders soon raised enough money for a college, and in 1820 Academy boys "came out one Saturday afternoon and helped to dig the foundation trench" (Fuess 39) for Amherst College's first building. The College was "to afford its instructions gratuitously to indigent young men of promising talents and hopeful piety, who shall manifest a desire to obtain a liberal education with the sole view to the Christian ministry."

The Academy also trained toward the ministry, but not exclusively. The Classical department attracted the most students, from as far away as Europe, (Tuckerman 80) and its students studied ancient Greek and Latin to prepare for advanced schooling, like Amherst College. Students in the English department did not attend college but received a more practical education. In 1827, the Academy started a new department to train schoolteachers.

Though the Academy had cut female enrollment in 1824, young women were admitted again in the fall of 1838 after a fire in nearby Phoenix Row consumed the prosperous Amherst Female Seminary. The fire marked the beginning of the end. By the 1850s, a public school system offered a comparable education, and the Academy was closed in 1861. The building became host to many different purposes—African American Sunday school, a few Church services, and office space until 1867 when the school was razed in order to build Amity Street Public School.

Essay by Benjamin Felker-Quinn, Hampshire College

References:

"Law of 1648," cited from Tyack, David B., Turning Points in American Educational History, Waltham, MA: Blaisdell Pub, 1967, 16.

Tuckman, 10.

Fuess, Claude Moore, Amherst: The Story of a New England College, (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1935,39.

Tuckerman, 80.