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Deerfield Academy

Headmaster	Margarita O'Byrne Curtis
School type	Private
Religious affiliation	None
Founded	1797
Location	Deerfield, MA, USA
Enrollment	600
Faculty	110
Campus surroundings	Rural
Mascot
School colors	Green and White

Deerfield Academy is a private, coeducational prep school located in Deerfield, Massachusetts. It is a four year boarding school with a student body of approximately 600 students and employing about 100 faculty, all of whom live on or near campus.

Deerfield is part of an organization known as The Ten Schools Admissions Organization. This organization was founded more than forty years ago on the basis of a number of common goals and traditions. Member schools include Deerfield, Choate Rosemary Hall, The Lawrenceville School, The Taft School, The Hill School, The Hotchkiss School, St. Paul's, Loomis Chaffee, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Phillips Academy.

In 2006, Deerfield's endowment was valued at $330 million, or roughly $550,000 per student. Tuition is $36,130 for boarding students and $27,100 for day students; the average annual expense is $60,000 per student.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Preceptors 1.2 Principals 1.3 Headmasters 1.4 Heads of School 2 Prominent alumni 3 References 4 External links

Deerfield Academy was founded in 1797 when Massachusetts granted a charter to start a school in the town of Deerfield. The academy quickly established itself as one of the finest schools in the new republic, drawing boys from prominent families across New England.

Deerfield was never affiliated with a religion, but attendance at Congregationalist Church services was required by boarding students until the 1970s and school meetings included the singing of Christian hymns.

In the early twentieth century, Deerfield's fortunes rose with the appointment of Frank Boyden as Headmaster. At the time of Frank's appointment as headmaster, the school was almost completely bankrupt. The prestige enjoyed by the school today is a direct result of the foundations he laid over seven decades, including having trained scores of men as teachers and headmasters in their own right. His success would not have been possible without the support and assistance of his wife, Helen Childs Boyden. After 66 years of service, Frank Boyden retired in 1968. Boyden's long career and legacy at Deerfield are reviewed in The Headmaster, (1966) by Deerfield alumnus John McPhee.

In 1989, the Academy reestablished co-education, which Boyden had discontinued during the 1940s.

Eric Widmer '57 served as headmaster from 1994 to 2006. He left to assume the position of Founding Headmaster at King's Academy in Madaba, Jordan, a school inspired in part by HM King Abdullah II '80's Deerfield years. It is scheduled to open in the fall of 2007.

The current Head of School, Dr. Margarita Curtis, previously a Dean at Phillips Academy, is the first female in school history to hold the position.

Traditionally, the Academy's rival in both sports and academics is Choate Rosemary Hall. The Fall athletics season culminates with Choate Day, which features matches with Choate at every level of every sport.

Deerfield Academy is led by a Head of School selected by the Board of Trustees. During the Academy's history, the position has been known as Preceptor (1799-1851), Principal (1851-1902), Headmaster (1902-2006), and Head of School (2006-)

1. Enos Bronson 1799 2. Claudius Herrick 1799-1800 3. Samuel Fisher 1800-1801 4. Henry Lord 1801-1802 5. John Hubbard 1802-1804 6. Allen Greeley 1804-1805 7. Avery Williams 1805-1806 8. John Chester 1806 9. Hosea Hildreth 1807-1810 10. Leonard Jewett 1811 11. Daniel Wells Jr. 1812 12. Aaron Arms Jr. 1813-1816 13. Edward Hitchcock 1816-1818 14. Henry Payson Kendall 1821-1823 15. Joseph Root Field 1823-1824 16. Jonathan A. Saxton 1824 17. Rufus Saxton 1825 18. Frederick H. Allen 1825 19. Zenas Clapp 1836 20. Daniel Hawks 1827 -. Jonathan A. Saxton 1828 21. Joseph Anderson 1828-1829 -. Zenas Clapp 1830 22. Charles Chapin Corse 1830-1831 23. Winthrop Bailey 1832-1835 24. Luther Barker Lincoln 1835-1844 25. Cotton M. Crittenden 1844-1851

26. Lucien Hunt 1851-1852 27. John H. Thompson 1852 28. Hezekiah R. Warriner 1853-1855 29. Jonathan C. Brown 1855 30. Robert Dickinson Smith 1856 31. Benjamin Smith Lyman 1856 32. Horatio Alger, Jr. 1856 33. George W. Bartlett 1856-1857 34. Virgil Maro Howard 1857-1872 35. Arthur Driver 1873-1874 36. Orpha Julina Hall 1874 37. Frances O. Allen 1875 -. Orpha Julina Hall 1876 38. Edgar Rollins Downs 1876-1877 39. Edward Plummer Baker 1877-1879 40. Joseph Y. Bergen Jr. 1879-1881 41. Starr Willard Cutting 1881-1886 42. Edward Everett Rankin 1886-1887 43. Walter Porter White 1887 44. Robert Hamilton Leland 1888-1892 45. Allen Latham 1892-1894 46. Albert Bell Tyler 1894 47. George Arthur Goodell 1895-1897 48. David F. Carpenter 1897-1899 49. Frank A. Kennedy 1899 50. Robert Pelton Sibley 1900-1902

51. Frank Boyden 1902-1968 52. David Melville Pynchon 1968-1980 53. Robert Kaufmann 1980-1994 54. Eric Widmer 1994-2006

55. Margarita O'Byrne Curtis 2006-

• George Grennell, Jr. (1786-1877), U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts
• Edward Hitchcock (1793-1864), president of Amherst College
• George Sheldon (1818-1916), politician and historian
• Rufus Saxton (1824-1908), Union Army Brigadier General awarded Medal of Honor
• William Lincoln Higgins (1867-1957), U.S. Congressman from Connecticut
• Paul Langdon Ward (1911-2005), president of Sarah Lawrence College
• Frederick Carlos Ferry, Jr. (1913-2004), president of Pine Manor College
• Budd Schulberg (born 1914), screenwriter and novelist
• Hastings Keith (1915-2005), U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts
• Lyman Kirkpatrick (1916-1995), inspector general and executive director of the CIA
• H. Stuart Hughes (1916-1999), academic and activist
• John Edward Sawyer (1917-1995), president of Williams College
• Robert Morgenthau (b. 1919), Manhattan district attorney
• James Colgate Cleveland (1920-1995), U.S. Congressman from New Hampshire
• William Zinsser (1920-), writer
• Talcott Williams Seelye (1922-2006), U.S. Ambassador to Syria and Libya
• John Chafee (1922-1999), U.S. Senator from and Governor of Rhode Island; Secretary of the Navy under President Nixon
• Arthur Nims (b. 1923), Chief Judge of United States Tax Court
• William Sloane Coffin (1924-2006), minister, attended without graduating, went on to Phillips Andover
• John Weinberg (1925-2006), chairman of Goldman Sachs
• Ogden R. Reid (b. 1925), U.S. Congressman from New York, U.S. Ambassador to Israel
• Henry W. Kendall (1926-1999), physicist, 1990 Nobel Prize
• John Ashbery (b. 1927), poet
• James Wadsworth Symington (b. 1927), U.S. Congressman from Missouri
• Allen Stack (1928-1999), Gold Medalist U.S. swimmer at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London
• John Gunther, Jr. (1929-1947), son of author John Gunther and focus of his book Death Be Not Proud
• Gilbert M. Grosvenor (b. 1931), President of the National Geographic Society, 2004 Presidential Medal of Freedom
• John McPhee (b. 1931), writer
• Richard Mellon Scaife (b. 1932), media mogul and philanthropist, "The Republican George Soros"
• Robert Hazard Edwards (b.1934), president of Carleton College; president of Bowdoin College
• Thomas C. Reed (b. 1934), Secretary of the Air Force
• Warren Zimmermann (1935-2004), final U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia
• Steven C. Rockefeller (b. 1936), philanthropist
• Joseph Verner Reed (b. 1937), U.S. Ambassador to Morocco
• Kit Bond (b. 1939), U.S. Senator from and Governor of Missouri
• Eric Widmer (b. 1939), headmaster of Deerfield Academy; headmaster of King's Academy
• David H. Koch (b. 1940), billionaire, Libertarian Vice-Presidential Candidate in 1984
• David Childs (b. 1941), architect
• Bruce Faulkner Caputo (b. 1943), U.S. Congressman from New York
• Pete Varney (b. 1949), Major League Baseball player
• Steven Brill (b. 1950), journalist and publisher
• Stephen Hannock (b. 1951), painter
• Howie Carr (b. 1952), journalist and radio host
• Kerry Emanuel (b. 1955), scholar
• Buddy Teevens (b.1956), Head Football Coach at Dartmouth College
• Ken Bentsen, Jr. (b. 1959), U.S. Congressman from Texas
• Haun Saussy (b. 1960), scholar
• King Abdullah II al-Hussein of Jordan (b. 1962)
• Matthew Fox (b. 1966), actor
• Mike Trombley (b. 1967), Major League Baseball player
• Nestor Carbonell (b. 1967), actor
• Fernando Poma (b. 1968), CEO of Real Hotels and Resorts
• Chris Waddell (b. 1968), Gold Medalist Paralympic skier
• Chris Klug (b. 1972), Bronze Medalist U.S. snowboarder at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah
• Randal Williams (b. 1978), National Football League player
• Jamie Hagerman (b. 1981), Bronze Medalist U.S. women's hockey player at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin

• Cooke, Brian P. Frank Boyden of Deerfield: The Vision and Politics of an Educational Idealist. Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1994. 181 pp.
• Cookson, Peter W. Preparing for power: America's elite boarding schools (1985) (ISBN 0-465-06268-7)
• McLachlan, James. American Boarding Schools A Historical Study (1970)
• McPhee, John. The Headmaster: Frank L. Boyden (1966) ISBN 0-374-51496-8
• Moorhead, Andrea D. and Moorhead, Robert K. Deerfield, 1797-1997: A Pictorial History of the Academy (1997) (ISBN 0-9632800-1-5)

• Deerfield Academy website
• Deerfield Academy at Boarding School Review
• Deerfield Academy Admissions Video on SchoolFair.tv
• King's Academy

The Ten Schools Admissions Organization
Choate Rosemary Hall - Deerfield Academy - The Hill School - The Hotchkiss School - The Lawrenceville School Loomis Chaffee - Phillips Academy Andover - Phillips Exeter Academy - St. Paul's School - The Taft School