Schools and Education

Schools and Education. Danbury, Connecticut. , Since its earliest days, the importance of education has been at the forefront of the development of the community. In 1763 the will of Comfort Starr left 800 pounds “for the support of a perpetual school in the centre of town.” , By 1769, a School Committee was administering the Starr Fund and had divided the area into school districts. Committeemen were appointed to oversee the schools in each district: Beaver brook, Great Plain, Stony Hill, Pembroke, King St., Boggs, Mill Plain, Long Ridge, Uptown, Downtown and Miry Brook. The Starr Fund was also used to establish a high school in 1869. , There were also many private means of schooling available in homes and churches throughout Danbury. , The Danbury Trade School catered to the needs of those going into local industries and was later replaced by the Henry Abbott Technical School. , There was a military school on Rose Hill but the most notable of boys’ schools was Danbury’s Wooster School founded in 1926. At one time there was a boarding school for girls located on West St. and Deer Hill Avenue that catered to the “cultivation of their intellectual, social and moral powers.” , The State Normal School built in 1903 on White Street prepared its students to become teachers. By 1905 it had graduated its first class of 24 students.,

”The first village school was on Wooster St. between the early settlers’ graveyard and the old Danbury Jail. Scholars were thus constantly reminded on one hand of the certainty of death and, on the other, of the uncertainties of life.” - James Montgomery Bailey