Founded by Friends : the Quaker heritage of fifteen - Scarecrow Press

Guilford College 25
However, these other schools, such as the Methodists’ Greensboro Female
College (1838) and Union Institute (1838, later Trinity College and Duke
University), were limited to a single sex. As for Quaker coeducational secondary
schools in North Carolina, New Garden Boarding School was preceded
by Belvidere Academy (1835), which remained an important educational
institution in northeastern North Carolina but did not reach the
prominence of New Garden in terms of yearly-meeting-wide influence or
future growth into a college.
The early New Garden Boarding School was greatly influenced by
other Quaker schools. The rules and regulations were adapted from those
at Westtown School in Pennsylvania. Several of the early teachers were recruited
from Moses Brown School in Rhode Island. Like the other coeducational
Quaker schools of the time, there was strict separation of the
sexes within the buildings with girls on the west side and boys on the
east. There were two male teachers for the boys and two female teachers
for the girls.
Quaker education in the state was much improved twenty years after
the 1831 disheartening report on the status of education of Friends’ children.
Much of this improvement was due to New Garden Boarding
School since it provided training of teachers. It was reported in 1843 that
400 students received education at New Garden and nearly 100 of them
were employed as teachers in different Quaker communities. In 1851,
North Carolina Yearly Meeting counted among its membership 804 children
between five and sixteen and another 336 between sixteen and
twenty-one. Over 97 percent of them received education that year in one
of the 130 coeducational schools available to them.
New Garden grew over the years, but there were still periodic declines
in student enrollment due to difficulties present in the antebellum South,
such as sickness, economic hardships, and, by the 1850s, the possibility of
war. The school’s enrollment peaked at 179 in 1855, but just four years
later the number dropped to sixty-five. Measures were taken to maximize
enrollment. Day students were first allowed in 1842. The school experimented
with admitting non-Friends briefly in 1841 and became open to
non-Friends in 1846 with the expectation that they follow the school’s regulations.
One practical reason was financial since non-Friends were initially
charged a higher tuition that helped cover costs. Only 59 percent of
the students in 1850 were Quakers. By 1865, there was no longer a Quaker
majority with only 36 percent of the students identifying as Friends.
The strict rules and regulations associated with New Garden in the early
years were gradually modified, especially as more non-Friends joined the
student body. Basic guidelines and expectations considered part of a
guarded education, such as plainness in dress and speech, were recommended
but not required. Music and dance were forbidden throughout the