Ward Academy was a private high school ran by Professor Benjamin Franklin Leggett and his wife Sarah Shaw Leggett together for 16 years from 1882 to 1898, and then solely by Sarah Leggett until the early 1910s. The couple operated the school from their home in Ward Village at present-day 780 Concord Road.
The Academy began with 36 pupils in October 1882 and quickly grew in number to 46 pupils by December 1883. Professor Benjamin Leggett and his wife Sarah Shaw Leggett were the primary teachers, but they relied on the help of assistants as the school grew. Ms. Lizzie Paschall was their first assistant hired in August 1883 for one year, and Lillie Hannum replaced her in September 1884. School sessions generally ran from late August/early September through June and concluded with an annual picnic in Graff’s Meadow or Brinton’s Lake.
Ward Academy hosted various special lecture events and extra-curricular clubs and societies. The Ward Academy Lyceum met at the school in 1883 and comprised various young people from the village, such as E. Harvey and Maggie Hannum. St. John’s Episcopal Church’s Reverand Copeland addressed the students in October 1883, and Reverand J.J. Sleeper in March 1884 regarding “Mind Training.” Professor Richard Darlington visited Ward Academy in May 1887 and lectured on “American Journalists.”
Anna Paschall Hannum (1880-1970) wrote about the school in May 1968 in a memoir series for St. John’s Episcopal Church’s “The Church Mouse” publication. She writes:
“After #2 school, we went on to the village Academy, the Concord equivalent of High School. Its official name was Ward Academy, but it was generally known as Leggett’s. It was conducted by Professor and Mrs. Leggett. The Professor had been to college and was suppose with no formal preparation, was much the better teacher. He taught only as a matter of necessity, and would much have preferred devoting his time to his books and writings. (There was a story told of him that Mrs. Leggett, weary of trying to mend his old clothes, sent him off to town for a new suit. He returned with an armload of books instead; he had strayed into Leary’s and had forgotten all about the suit.)
Mrs. Leggett taught from necessity too, of course, but with real enthusiasm, and real love for her pupils. She was a fine disciplinarian, too; if Mrs. Leggett looked at you with those big eyes of hers, you felt as if she saw all your thoughts and all your secrets, and nothing was hid from her penetrating gaze.
As for her looks, she had a pleasant face, but was elephantine in build though light on her feet, and completely oblivious of fashion. All she asked of her clothes were that they should be neat, clean and comfortable. (It was told of my Aunt Lizzie when she was a child that one day in Mrs. Leggett’s presence, she was teasing her mother to let her take dancing lessons, arguing that they would “make her graceful.” Mrs. Leggett put in her oar: “Yes, I took dancing lessons when I was a little girl, and see how graceful they made me!” Aunt Lizzie looked at her solemnly and rejoined, “What would you have been without it!”)
Mrs. Leggett’s secret, like all good teachers’, lay in inspiring her pupils with interest and zeal for learning. For my own part, I enjoyed all the subjects she taught, and was bored by those learned under Mr. Leggett. (They divided the advanced subjects between them, leaving the lower grades to their assistants.) And when I went on to Teachers’ College, I found myself quite as well prepared as the graduates of the city High Schools.”
Henry Graham Ashmead sums up the reputation of Ward Academy in his 1884 History of Delaware County:
Although an institution of recent date, it has been well attended, and gives promise of extended usefullness. It has grown rapidly in public approval, and is firmly established.
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