Master Foster's School for Boys
Miscellany Mondays
For those with means, Andover had private schools.
You are probably familiar with Phillips Academy and its founder Samuel Phillips, but his cousin William Phillips Foster also operated a school in town.
Foster, born 1758, lived in his family’s homestead near the bank of the Shawsheen River on Central Street.
The home long precedes the subject. When William’s ancestors purchased the house in 1696, it stood on Reservation Road. In 1750, with the help of a causeway, they transported the house across the river to its present location and affixed it to the William Ballard house.1 Ballard’s house on paper dates to 1635 but the oldest surviving section dates to c.1660.2
Foster Homestead, 1985, photo by the National Park Service
In 1796, Foster approached the Trustees of Phillips Academy and requested permission to establish a school of his own for boys.3
Neither wanted to compete for students, so they made a deal.
Phillips Academy was a college preparatory school, but had trouble teaching its youngest students, some as young as six. Foster would prepare these young boys for the Academy. The trustees accepted his offer, noting in their records the following:
William Foster is “a person of good morals and exemplary deportment, & well calculated to take the charge of, & instruct youth.”4
With the trustees’ confidence behind him, Foster opened a school in his home with the explicit purpose of preparing his students for Phillips Academy.5
He expanded his homestead to include boarding rooms, a schoolhouse, books, and dining tables. People associated with the Foster family recalled students sitting at a long table each with milk and a fresh loaf of bread.
Their prescribed rations didn’t abate their hunger. Students were sometimes caught roasting chickens at night without permission.6
Master William Foster (1758-1843) by Thomas B. Reed, private collection.
With the help of his mother Hannah Abbott as head of the household, she and William provided for over twenty-five pupils at a time.
One of the first students, William Person, exemplified the purpose of Foster’s school, but led a troubling life story. His parents abandoned him as an infant and in 1794 at 10 months old Hannah Abbott adopted him. When he was five or six, he entered Foster’s school and despite his unconventional upbringing excelled academically.
Foster Homestead c.1940 ACHC #1992.952.1
After a stint in Providence, Rhode Island, he attended Phillips Academy and then Harvard where in 1820 he would die of an illness in his senior year.7 Those who knew him mourned his death because of his promise as a student and unfortunate circumstances. A friend published a biography with his letters that same year.8
Indeed for the next twenty years, most students of Master William Foster’s (also known as “Master Billy’s” and “Foster’s Lodge”)910 school would go on to the Academy. Some continued to board at Master Foster’s home because the Academy had no dormitories.11 Others opted not to attend Phillips Academy at all because of its classical curriculum as designed by Samuel Phillips and his colleague Eliphalet Pearson.12
For unknown reasons, Foster closed his school in 1815. He continued to house Phillips Academy students until about 1820.13
In 1826, he married Sally Kimball and had one son.14 He no longer taught, but remained involved in other activities. He was secretary of a Friendly Fire Society in 1829.15 Later in life he commissioned Thomas Buchanan Read to paint his portrait.16
Foster died in 1843 at the age of 85. At the time of his death he was the “oldest man in the parish”.17 He is buried in the Foster family plot in the South Church Cemetery.18
Some of the buildings on the Foster homestead survive, but the surrounding development changed the landscape. Foster kept few if any records related to school happenings so much of our knowledge today comes from recollections and secondary sources.
With a careful eye, the modern observer can still find evidence of the school that once existed here and the man who ran it. Windows with student’s names scratched into them and Foster’s custom fire bucket remain.19
Bessie Goldsmith, Historic Houses in Andover, Massachusetts, Compiled for the Tercentenary (Andover: n.p., 1946), http://www.pa59ers.com/library/Historic/houses.html.
Nancy J. Stack, Juliet Haines Mofford, and James S. Batchelder, “2 Abbott Bridge Rd,” Andover Historic Preservation, Andover Preservation Committee, last modified March 2013, https://preservation.mhl.org/2-abbott-bridge-rd.
Claude Moore Fuess, An Old New England School: A History of Phillips Academy Andover (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917) 117, https://archive.org/details/anoldnewenglands00fuesrich.
Trustees of Phillips Academy, quoted in Claude Moore Fuess, An Old New England School, 117.
Fuess, An Old New England School, 117.
Sarah Loring Bailey, Historical Sketches of Andover (Comprising the Present Towns of North Andover and Andover), Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1880), 542, https://archive.org/details/historicalsketch00bail.
David Lee Child and William Person, Life and Letters, together with Poetical and Miscellaneous Pieces of the Late William Person, a student of Harvard University (Cambridge: Hilliard and Metcalf, 1820), 3-55, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Life_and_Letters/7PRBAAAAYAAJ.
Charles Carroll Carpenter, Biographical Catalogue of the Trustees, Teachers, and Students of Phillips Academy, Andover, 1778-1830 (Andover: The Andover Press, 1903), 73, https://archive.org/details/biographicalcata00carp.
Charlotte Helen Abbott, Early Records of the Foster Family of Andover (Andover: n.p., n.d.), 23, https://mhl.org/sites/default/files/files/Abbott/Foster%20Family.pdf.
Carpenter, Biographical Catalogue, 93.
Ibid, 73.
Goldsmith, Historic Houses in Andover.
Carpenter, Biographical Catalogue, 93.
Topsfield Historical Society, Vital Records of Andover Massachusetts to the End of the Year 1849 (Topsfield: Topsfield Historical Society, 1912), 2:136, https://archive.org/details/vitalrecordsofan02ando.
Stack, et. al., “2 Abbot Bridge Rd.”
Cheryl Foster, e-mail message to the author, March 7, 2021.
South Church in Andover, “Details for Record, William Phillips Foster”, South Church Cemetery Search, South Church in Andover, accessed March 1, 2021, http://southchurch.com/cemetery/recordDetail.php?IDnum=2172.
Ibid.
Stack, et. al., “2 Abbot Bridge Rd.”