Among her many accomplishments, Sarah Derby founded Derby Academy in Hingham, Massachusetts. It was the first co-educational school in America. Even so, she sufferred from the pen of Reverend William Bentley who described her in less than flattering terms in diaries that remain a leading first-hand account of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Salem.

Home of Sarah Derby
168 Derby Street

Born in Hingham, Massachusetts, Sarah Langley Hersey Derby (1714-90) had a keen interest in education. While married to her first husband, Dr. Ezekiel Hersey, they bequeathed funds to Harvard College to found the first medical school in America. After Ezekiel’s death, Sarah married Richard Derby of Salem and moved north. Richard was retired from active business when he married Sarah, leaving his business interests in the hands of his son, Elias Hasket Derby, who was beginning to develop the trading relationships in the East Indies that would make him one of America’s first millionaires. Still an advocate for education, Sarah founded Derby Academy in 1784 in her hometown of Hingham. It was the first coeducational school in America. She lived at this site on Derby Street for twelve years, returning to Hingham after Richard died. Well-known diarist Reverend William Bentley, whose voluminous work survives as one of the only eyewitness accounts of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Salem, described Sarah as “short of stature, naturally ingenuous, but above instruction. The specimens of her needlework etc. resemble the efforts of an uninstructed native… at church she slept from mental inaptitude for reflection.”¹³ It is a valuable lesson in the study of history that Reverend Bentley’s opinion of Sarah survives while her own words have not. A philanthropist and advocate for education who founded the first coeducational school in America was probably not “above instruction” nor known for “mental inaptitude.”

Notes
13. William Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley, D.D. (Gloucester, Mass., 1962), I: 178.