What is the history of Westminster School, Connecticut?
Westminster School was founded by William Lee Cushing in 1888 as a boys’ school in Dobbs Ferry, New York. A graduate of Yale University, and a firm believer in the traditional form of English boarding school education, Mr. Cushing was strongly influenced by the Reverend Edward Thring, headmaster of Uppingham School in England. Thring believed in “education as training for life.” Mr. Cushing’s formula for education was endorsed by many in the emerging influential American families, who sent their sons to Westminster, including John Hay, Advisor to Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State to Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. ‘The Move to Simsbury’ In 1900, as enrollment increased, Mr. Cushing moved the school to its current location in Simsbury, Connecticut. The move to Simsbury provided more land, which had been donated through a trustee of the school, Arthur M. Dodge, a member of an old Hartford family. Williams Hill, the site of the school, offered more than 230 acres,
