Collection Overview
Title: Partridge Academy Papers
Dates: 1826-1923
Creator: Partridge Academy
Repository: Drew Archival Library
Call Number: DAL.MSS.137
Accession Number:
Location: Fogg Archives Room
Quantity: 3 boxes and one binder
Language: English

Administrative Information
Access Restriction: Collection is open to researchers
Acquisition Information: Donated by Dorothy Wentworth in 1993; Mildred Glass in 1996; Ann Noyes in 1996.
Preferred Citation: DAL.MSS.137, Partridge Academy Papers, Duxbury Rural & Historical Society
Finding Aid Prepared by Archives Committee (prior to 2007)

Scope and Content:
The papers provide a substantial contribution to the historical record of Duxbury’s first high school, the Partridge Academy. They begin with the last will and testament of George Partridge, dated five years before his death in 1828. It spelled out in some detail the school he wished to be built and the principles on which it was to operate, set aside a bequest to provide funding, and dictated the financial arrangements that were to ensure a regular revenue stream for the future.

Regrettably, the papers offer only a very small sample of the minutes of the Board of Trustees (only two sets for meetings in 1844 and 1856 are included), but there are extensive Treasurer’s records from 1843-1890, as well as records of financial transactions with three of the early guarantors, Gershom Weston, Josiah Quincy, and George Ford.

Regular reports submitted to the Trustees by the school’s Preceptors offer a very close reading of school activities. The collection holds reports for 1855 through 1862, 1871, 1872, 1874 through 1879. There are also Principal’s Reports for 1890 and 1891, the change in title from Preceptor to Principal reflecting the merging of the Academy with Duxbury High School, and there is a Superintendant of Schools Report for that latter period.

Also included are letters accepting appointments to the Board of Trustees, and letters of resignation, as well as letters of application for the Preceptorship and the faculty letters of resignation from these positions. Records of student academic performance and attendance are few, but there are programs of graduation from 1880 to 1923 (with some omissions), and they are valuable because they list the names of graduates.

Most of these papers were given to the Society by Dorothy Wentworth, a gift recorded on March 10, 1993. They have been augmented by graduation programs for the years 1895 through 1903 and for 1919 and 1921, a gift from Mildred Glass entered into the Society’s archives on Sept. 11, 1996, and a program for 1909 was given by Ann Noyes and entered into the collection also in 1996.

Biographical Sketch:
When George Patridge of Duxbury died in 1829, he left a will that bequeathed $10,000 in trust to establish a school or academy in the town. Five trustees named in the will were directed to hold this fund until it accumulated enough interest to permit the purchase of land and the construction of a building suitable for a school. Partridge Academy broke ground in 1843 and was ready for occupancy by the end of the following year. The first classes were held in January 1845.

By agreement between the School Committee and the Academy trustees, it soon served the town as its only high school. The Town Report of 1873-1874 mentioned the sum of $150 paid to the Academy as a high school “for some years,” and the following years stated, “It does not fall within the province of the School Committee to report officially concerning the Partridge Academy, as such. The arrangements however, entered into between the Trustees of the Academy and the School Committee on the 11th of April 1874, by which the Academy has been recognized and sued as the High School of the town, bring it properly within the limits of this report.”

By 1881 the town and the Commonwealth each contributed $150 per year to the school, a sum that gradually grew over the years until by 1903 it had become $1000, state law dictating that the Academy’s curriculum be approved by the school committee. In 1926 Duxbury reorganized its school system and built a new high school, and the old Academy building reverted to the town. In 1933 it was destroyed by fire.