JEWS IN THE UNITED STATES FROM1800 UNTIL WORLD WAR II----Episode 17

      CONTINUING WITH THE SAGA OF ENDICOTT 
      PEABODY AND THE BEGINNING OF PREP 
     SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES 

  By the time Peabody returned to the United States in 1880, he was as much British as American in both speech and demeanor.  In search of a career, he initially followed the family tradition by joining Lee, Higginson and Company, a brokerage firm founded many years earlier.  But he quickly became restive in business and soon enrolled at the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge. A competent but uninspired student, he briefly left the seminary before being ordained to serve as parson in the remote town of Tombstone, Arizona. Cotty then returned to complete his studies, and it was there, in the spring of 1883, that he conceived the idea of a school that would stress religious education and Christian life while striking a balance between the acquisition of culture and participation in athletics. His vision, shared by his fellow seminarian and and lifelong friend Sherrand Billings, was of "a school where boys and men could live together, and play together in friendly fashion with friction rare. 
  For most twenty-five-year old men, such a vision might be a distant dream, but Endicott Peabody was no ordinary young man. Tall, broad-shouldered, blue-eyed, and fair haired, he was a striking presence whose enthusiasm, energy, and obvious decency left a strong impression. More than personal presence was needed, of course. Founding a school, especially a boarding school on the British model, would require considerable resources. Cotty's family, fortunately, was at the center of a network of some of the wealthiest and most powerful patricians in the United States, so resources would prove no obstacle. Starting with his relative James Lawrence, who [along with his brother] donated ninety acres of farmland for the school, Peabody put together a board of trustees that included J.P. Morgan, James and William Lawrence, Phillips Brooks, and his father, Samuel Endicott Peabody. Its site was approved by no less a figure than Frederick Law Olmsted, the renowned landscape architect. The Groton School opened its doors in the fall of 1884. 

   Groton was the second of seven elite boarding schools ---the others were Lawrenceville [1883] , Hotchkiss [1892], Choate [1896], St. George's [1896], Middlesex [1901], and Kent [1906] --- founded between 1883 and 1906. It was a period of tremendous social change in America, and many of the transformations were deeply disturbing to the old protestant upper class. Mass immigration and rapid urbanization, in particular, created a sense among patricians that they were losing control of the country, especially its cities. Increasingly, they withdrew to their own clubs and summer resorts. 
   The transformed urban environment of the late nineteenth century presented a distinctive set of problems for the rearing of upper-class children Whereas in previous years the elite had relied on private day schools and tutors to educate their offspring, they believed that the city had become an unhealthy place for children to grow up. One solution could be to send them to an undefiled rural or small-town setting in which Christian educators of solid character could be entrusted with their children's moral development. 

  The official announcement of the opening of "a school for boys in Groton, Massachusetts made a direct appeal to these sentiments : "Every endeavor will be made to cultivate manly, Christian character, having regard to moral and physical as well as intellectual development. . . A farm of ninety acres, in a healthy and attractive situation near the town of Groton, 34 miles from Boston and in direct communication with New York, has been given the school, and upon this estate will be erected during the coming season a building with classrooms and dormitory. " In a preface to the announcement, the trustees described the idea of Groton as "an attempt to found a boys' school in this country somewhat after the manner of the Public Schools of England." They noted that the headmaster was a graduate of Cambridge University who had spent five years at Cheltenham. Like its British counterparts, which were under the influence of the Church of England," Groton would be "under the influence of the Protestant Episcopal Church" and its headmaster, an Episcopalian clergyman.