Westover: Giving Girls a Place of Their Own

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WESTOVER Early Connecticut Silver, 1700–1840 by Peter Bohan and Philip Hammerslough Introduction and Notes by Erin Eisenbarth The Old Leather Man by Daniel DeLuca Westover: Giving Girls a Place of Their Own by Laurie Lisle Making Freedom: The Extraordinary Life of Venture Smith by Chandler B. Saint and George Krimsky Welcome to Wesleyan: Campus Buildings by Leslie Starr o t h e r b o o k s b y t h e a u t h o r Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life Without Child: Challenging the Stigma of Childlessness Four Tenths of an Acre: Reflections on a Gardening L ife WESTOVER Giving Girls a Place of Their Own LAURIE LISLE w e s l e y a n u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s ✦ m i d d l e t o w n , c o n n e c t i c u t Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress© 2009 by Laurie Lisle For the author’s Web site, see www.laurielisle.com All rights reserved Printed in U.S.A. 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lisle, Laurie. Westover : giving girls a place of their own / by Laurie Lisle. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978–0–8195–6886–1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Westover School. 2. Girls’ schools—Connecticut—Middlebury—History. I. Title. ld7251.m635l57 2008 373.18235'2097468—dc22 2008029051 Materials in the Westover archive are published with the permission of Westover School, Middlebury, Connecticut. Materials pertaining to Theodate Pope Riddle are published with permission of the Archives, Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, Connecticut. Excerpts from a letter of John Masefield to Mary R. Hillard, dated April 28, 1917, are quoted with the permission of The Society of Authors, London, the literary representative of the Estate of John Masefield. Quotations from the essay “Taking Women Students Seriously” are from On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966–1978 by Adrienne Rich. Copyright© 1979 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Used by permission of the author and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Every effort has been made to secure permissions from copyright owners to publish photographs in the archive of Westover School. Sometimes the photographer is unidentified and unknown. In other cases, neither the photographer nor his or her estate could be located. Any copyright owners who were not contacted by the author are invited to come forward and be gratefully acknowledged. Designed by Charlotte Strick To my Westo ver aunts , co u si ns , m other, and si ster — once girl s known as E l ean o r Col e, E sther Merri man , B arbara S i m o nds , L ally S i m o nds , Nan Mo rse, L inda S i m onds , Philli s S i m o nds , A bigail Congdo n , and A deli n e G wynn e — wh o attended fro m 1 9 09 to 1 9 6 8 ...