1890 Milton Bradley View of Wilbraham, Massachusetts

This is a c. 1890 bird's-eye view of the Wesleyan Academy, now part of the prestigious Wilbraham and Monson Academy, in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, printed by the Milton Bradley Company.

A Closer Look

The view is oriented towards the north, depicting today's Academy Historic District, which primarily consists of the historic campuses of Wesleyan Academy and neighboring Monson Academy. The large building on the left is Rich Hall, built in 1861 along Main St., which remains the school's academic and administrative center. In the foreground is the Alumni Memorial Chapel, built in 1867. The group of buildings at right includes the Old Academy (built 1825) and Fisk Hall (1851), the oldest surviving campus buildings. (The oldest building in the entire historic district, the Old Meeting House, is just out of view here, across the street from the Alumni Memorial Chapel). In the background is the town of Wilbraham, behind which lie rolling hills, with the tallest perhaps meant to be Mt. Holyoke and Mt. Tom. In addition to buildings and topography, a group of students can be seen playing sports, including baseball, on athletic fields near center.

Wilbraham and Monson Academy

Wilbraham and Monson Academy was founded in 1804 as the Monson Academy. In 1825, the New Hampshire-based Wesleyan Academy, the first coeducational boarding school in the United States (though it later became a boys-only school), moved to Wilbraham, Massachusetts, but continued to operate as a separate school, changing its name to Wilbraham Academy in 1912. In 1971, amid a spate of prep school mergers, the Wilbraham and Monson Academies merged into the single school that exists today, becoming coeducational in the process.

Both the formerly separate and now unified academies boast prominent alums, including: Lucy Stone (1818 - 1893), the first woman in Massachusetts to earn a college degree; the inventor, patent lawyer, and cofounder of Scientific American Alfred Ely Beach (1826 - 1896); oil tycoon Charles Pratt (1830 - 1891); U.S. Supreme Court justices William Strong (1808 - 1895) and Henry Billings Brown (1836 - 1913); and Massachusetts governor and U.S. Senator Winthrop Crane (1853 - 1920). Monson Academy was the first American school to admit Chinese students, in 1847, and among them was Yung Wing (容閎, 1828 - 1912), who then graduated from Yale University, being the first known Chinese-born college graduate in the U.S. and an important intermediary between the two countries in the following decades. Yung Wing's classmate at Monson, Wong Fun (黄寬, 1829 - 1878), went on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, becoming the first Chinese to receive a Western medical degree. The Wesleyan Academy maintained a similarly close relationship with Thailand in the 20th century, counting among its graduates Pote Sarasin (พจน์ สารสิน, 1905 - 2000), who served as foreign minister and prime minister of Thailand, and Nitya Phibunsongkhram (นิตย์ พิบูลสงคราม; 1941-2014), the son of Plaek Phibunsongkhram (Thailand's leader for most of the 1940s and 1950s), who was Thailand's Ambassador to the United States and also a foreign minister. Prominent individuals have also taught at the schools, including Frances Perkins (1880 - 1965), Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor and the first woman to hold a cabinet-level position in the U.S. government.

Publication History and Census

This view was prepared by an unnamed artist and printed by Milton Bradley Co., based in nearby Springfield, which began as a lithographic printer before shifting to producing games, jigsaw puzzles, and toys. It is undated; the production method (a two-tone chromolithograph) and details in the view lead us to estimate a date of 1890, but the company's history suggest sa somewhat earlier date. In any event, it is very rare, with the only other known example being held by the Boston Athenaeum, which dates it to 'after 1884'.