½PARA úPAR@ ` ïTEXT ` }Pierce, Sarah1767╨1852educatorBorn in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 26, 1767, Sarah Pierce attended schools in her native town and for a time in New York City. In 1792 she opened a school in her home in Litchfield. The success of the school was such that in 1798 a group of Litchfield citizens presented her with a building to house the rapidly growing institution. Alongside Tapping Reeve╒s already famous Litchfield Law School, Pierce╒s helped make Litchfield a leading center of education in the young United States. In addition to basic subjects she taught composition, geography, history, needlework, painting, and dance. She also saw to it that her charges received an amount of physical exercise. In 1814 she brought her nephew, John P. Brace, a Williams College graduate, into the school, and he instituted classes in logic, philosophy, and the sciences. In 1825 she relinquished the principalship to him, but she continued to teach the course that was her particular love, universal history. Between 1811 and 1818 she had published four volumes of Sketches of Universal History Compiled from Several Authors, For the Use of Schools for that course. At its peak the school enrolled some 130 students, some of them boys. Among them were Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher (Stowe), and Henry Ward Beecher, children of Reverend Lyman Beecher, who provided religious instruction at the school in return for his children╒s tuition. In 1827 the school was incorporated as the Litchfield Female Academy. Pierce retired from teaching in 1833; the school closed about a decade later. She died in Litchfield, Connecticut, on January 19, 1852. ╓styl `
