Miss Porter's School

Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut is a private school for young women. The school opened in 1843 with 25 students, but grew rapidly, drawing students from the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states. The school was a project of Sarah Porter, daughter of the minister from the Congregational Church and sister to one of Yale University's presidents. She spoke four languages, teaching herself Hebrew late in her life. She emphasized traditional values at her school and wanted women to have an opportunity to gain an education equal to what was available to men during her era. She believed that schools should be similar to homes and wanted to prepare students to run households, as well as learn about the world around them. Women attending the school learned French, Latin and German, trigonometry, history, geography, reading, spelling and arithmetic, as well as physiology, botany, chemistry, astronomy, geology and the arts. Women attending the school were not permitted to wear the paralyzing fashions of the time and instead were encouraged to engage in physical movement and wear clothing that allowed this. Sarah Porter's history is alive and well at the school today and can be studied in the letters, documents, records and memorabilia onsite. The school offers 110 classes with an average class size of 11 students. There are boarding and day school options and students can participate in a wide variety of extracurricular activities and sports.