Hopkins School
An exhibit at the New Haven Museum April 2010 Hopkins School: Celebrating 350 Years, an exhibit hosted by the New Haven Museum, opens April 1, 2010. The exhibit has been jointly curated by Hopkins Archivist and History Teacher Thom Peters, Head of School Barbara Riley, and Elizabeth Fox, former curator at the Connecticut Historical Society. The exhibit documents the principal events in Hopkins’ long and distinguished history. It also puts into historical perspective the roles of the many individuals—including School graduates and members of the Hopkins community—who featured prominently in the School’s founding and subsequent development and who also contributed meaningfully to society.
Hopkins’ history begins with the seventeenth-century Puritan migration to New England, the founding of New Haven, and the need for a grammar school to prepare local youth for college and the ministry. Reverend John Davenport founded Hopkins Grammar School with trust funds from the School’s first great benefactor, Edward Hopkins. The School was off to a shaky start, until, through the establishment of the Committee of Trustees, it gained a solid permanence that has endured to this day. Items in the exhibit from this period include a government broadside published by Edward Hopkins, who was Oliver Cromwell’s minister to the navy, and a seventeenth-century Latin reference book that reportedly belonged to John Davenport. Also included are the 1660 New Haven town records, which document the founding of the school.
Important historical events—such as the founding of Yale College, the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and the great intellectual progress of the nineteenth century—figure in the Hopkins story. In the years following the Civil War, Hopkins enjoyed one of its greatest periods of growth, adding curriculums and activities that continue to be a vital part of students’ school experience today. Items that help tell this story include early examples of student report cards, yearbooks, and a poster advertising an 1875 ball game played by “The Grammar School Nine of New Haven.” Also from this period are paintings of well-known New Haven scenes painted by two Hopkins alumni, Thomas Rossiter and George Henry Durrie. A large portrait of alumnus Adolphus Leffingwell, painted in 1842, while he was a student at Hopkins, hangs at the center of the exhibit.
During the twentieth century, the Country Day School Movement and coeducation become powerful themes in education, and both have directly influenced the character of Hopkins School today. The story of the School’s move from the corner of Wall and High Streets to the campus on Forest Road is told through historic maps and architectural drawings of the period. Photo albums, class books, and student publications from the early days of the girls’ schools reveal that combination of charm and intellectual endeavor that characterized those students’ vital experience.
The show includes a large panel that acknowledges Hopkins’ notable alumni/ae and summarizes their contributions. Also on display is the Seal of the City Award that the New Haven Museum presented to Hopkins “in grateful recognition of its contributions to the New Haven community.” As this exhibit meticulously illustrates, the challenges that Hopkins has faced during each phase of its history—in terms of governance, enrollment, curriculum, and finance—have been significant. Indeed, only three such mid-seventeenth-century independent schools survive today: Collegiate School in New York City (founded in 1628), Roxbury Latin School in West Roxbury, Massachusetts (founded in 1645), and Hopkins School in New Haven (founded in 1660).
In his last will, Edward Hopkins bequeathed his estate in North America “for the breeding up of hopefull Youths…at the Grammar Schoole…for the publique service of the Country in future tymes.” His bequest has been amply honored. Hopkins School has graduated generations of accomplished scholars who have fulfilled that original intent.
