Rapid Growth.

It is not known how many students Sarah Pierce had when she began teaching in her Litchfield, Connecticut, farmhouse in 1792. Six years later the Litchfield Female Academy had thirty pupils, and the town's most prominent citizens, led by law-school teacher Tapping Reeve and including congressmen, state legislators, and local judges, contributed to a campaign for "the purpose of Building a House for a Female Academy to be placed upon the land of Miss Sally Pierce." Some 1,500 students would attend Sarah Pierce's Academy by 1814, and in 1816 alone it had enrolled 169 students. While the Academy was primarily for girls and young women, at least 125 boys are known to have attended. Students came from all parts of the country, and though a stagecoach ride from New York cost ten dollars, Litchfield was at the hub of New England's road systems, making the town...