page_title: Bishop Scott Academy
section_title: Bishop Scott Grammar and Divinity School
hierarchical_section_title: Bishop Scott Academy / Prior schools / Bishop Scott Grammar and Divinity School
context_page_description: Bishop Scott Academy was a school located in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. Affiliated with the Episcopal Church, the school was named for the Bishop Thomas Fielding Scott. The school opened in 1870 to educate young men in good citizenship and prepare them to enter the ministry. Later a military department was added to the school before the academy closed in 1904. The school organized the first American football team and held the first football game in the Pacific Northwest in 1889.
context_section_description: The newly completed Bishop Scott Grammar and Divinity School opened as a boarding and day-school for boys on September 6, 1870, under principal Charles H. Allen. Comprising three storeys above a basement, the building housed 2 classrooms, recitation rooms, a parlour, library, 16 rooms for boarders, a suite for the principal and his family, and its own chapel, called Saint Timothy's. Although the total costs amounted to $15,000, no debt remained.
  A year after opening the school had a new head master: Professor R. W. Laing, M.A., L.L.D., assisted by the Reverend George Burton.
  By 1873 the property was valued at $30,000, after the addition of the chapel, school rooms, and the dormitory. Costs were defrayed from tuition fees of $150 per annum, and interest from an $7,000 endowment—the proceeds from the sale of the Oswego property. Eighty pupils attended school, thirteen down from the previous year, drawn from Oregon, Washington, California, Utah, Alaska, and British Columbia. The faculty comprised three teachers: Junior Master, William M. Barker; Primary Master, Mr. Grant; and Senior Master, Rev. A. N. Wrixon. As chaplain, Burton conducted services "in the large schoolroom of the Grammar School" at 10.30am, and Sunday School at 2pm in August.
  At the start of Christmas Term on 1 September, Rev. Burton, now rector of Trinity Parish, was ensconced as head master. As it had been since 1870, the school was still administered directly by Bishop Morris. Subjects included modern languages, music, singing, drawing, chemistry, and penmanship. Oregon's superintendent of education found that the grammar school's "philosophical and chemical apparatus [were] unsurpassed in the State", and mentioned that the school library contained 1,500 books.
  The school had replaced almost all its faculty by 1874, and added women to the staff for the first time. Laing and Barker continued, alongside the new head master and chaplain, Rev. D'Estaing Jennings, M.A. Miss I. A. Buss was added as "Preceptress" (female teacher), and Matron Maria Emery had been appointed. A military tone was introduced, in the form of Drill Master R. R. Anderson and the organization of the Bishop Scott Cadets. Drilling was viewed not only in terms of military preparedness, but as a form of exercise.
  On 8 November 1877 the grammar school was heavily damaged by fire. Before fire almost destroyed the library and equipment, the enrollment stood at 43 day pupils and 40 boarders.
  Joseph Wood Hill was the new principal when the rebuilt school opened on the same premises in September 1878. Burton had been deposed by Bishop Morris in May that year.  The new building was smaller than the one it replaced, although "admirable" and "of superior architectural character", to fit in with the homes in the surrounding area.
  Hill was a native of Westport, Connecticut, having attained a BA from Yale University earlier in 1878. He had responded to an address that Bishop Scott gave to a class at Yale. Noah Porter, Yale's president, recommended Hill for his character, teaching experience, and maturity. After his appointment, Hill studied medicine at Willamette University's College of Medicine in Portland, graduating as an MD in 1881. At college he rowed, and became a member of the Gamma Nu fraternity.
  Only five boarding pupils attended the school at the start, and there were "less than twenty pupils, all told". Hill leased the school building from the bishop, and later from the board of trustees that had been appointed when Oregon became a separate diocese in 1889.
  Echoing the beliefs of Bishop Scott in the value of private over public education, Hill modelled the school after the private boarding schools on the east coast, like the one that he himself had attended. He filled the initial faculty vacancies with Yale graduates, such as John W. Gavin and English teacher Allan Elsworth. At the same time he did subsidize from his own pocket those students for whom the $300 annual fees were a hardship.
  Hill spent his vacations visiting exemplary private schools throughout the United States, and gradually b
caption: The Bishop Scott Grammar School in 1874
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