History

Establishing the School

Westtown School first opened it doors to students in May, 1799. Twenty boys and twenty girls, most in their teens but some as young as eight years old, entered the school from Quaker families living primarily in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey area. The opening of Westtown School was the result of many years of decision-making, planning, and fundraising by members of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The Philadelphia Quakers established a boarding school so that their children might be in a setting where their moral development could be attended to along with their schooling.

The American Revolution had been a time of great crisis for Quakers whose principle of pacifism left them branded as traitors to the cause of freedom for the colonies. Quakers had suffered economically, politically and socially, the effects of which were cast upon their children. Finding it increasingly difficult to preserve and pass on to their children the values they placed at the center of their lives, Philadelphia Quakers soon followed the example of Quakers in England who had opened their own boarding schools. A boarding school exclusively for Quaker children could provide a "guarded" education - a physical, educational and spiritual environment in which students (and teachers) could be wholly dedicated to seeking a closer relationship with God through adherence to Quaker beliefs and practices. Usefulness in all activities, educational and otherwise; plain dress and speech; honesty, modesty and piety were the foundation of the plans for the school set forth in great detail by the founders, even to the time the scholars were to rise in the morning (six o'clock).

Land for the school was purchased in Chester County, Pennsylvania, at that time a full day's stage ride from Philadelphia. The distant location was an intentional effort by the Philadelphia Quakers to keep their children away from the influences of the city. The property of six hundred acres provided other advantages for the fledgling school, including clay for making bricks and land for farming. As buildings were erected, students admitted, and supplies gathered, a superintendent and matron were hired and charged with running the school in a family-like atmosphere. The group of forty students who arrived in May 1799 was joined by an additional twenty or so each month until the size of the school reached one hundred boys and one hundred girls.

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