History
Maria H. (Bissell) Hotchkiss founded the school in 1891 to prepare young men for Yale University. The first day of instruction was October 18, 1892. Maria originally had aspirations for the school to serve underprivileged students, and the original charter provided some scholarships, and reserved space for academically gifted Lakeville boys (regardless of family income). Maria Hotchkiss was the widow of Benjamin B. Hotchkiss, who founded the French arms company Hotchkiss et Cie, made famous by the use of its machine guns in World War I . This led to a nickname for the school, "son of a gun".
The current Head of School is Malcolm McKenzie, former principal at Atlantic College in Wales. McKenzie is a Rhodes Scholar, with degrees from the Universities of Cape Town, Oxford and Lancaster.
Read more about this topic: Hotchkiss School
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)