Morristown Beard School is a coeducational, independent, college-preparatory day school located in Morristown, New Jersey, United States. Serving students in sixth through twelfth grades, the school has two academic units: an Upper School (9–12) and a Middle School (6–8).
The present-day Morristown Beard School was formed from the 1971 merger of two single-sex schools: the Beard School for Girls and the Morristown School for Boys. The Commission on Secondary Schools at the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools has accredited the school since 1973.Morristown–Beard School, Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools. Accessed February 6, 2012.
Peter J. Caldwell served as Morristown Beard School's Head of School from 2011 to 2021.Welcome from the Headmaster , Morristown–Beard School. Accessed July 5, 2011. The interim head of school is Philicia Levinson, who took office in June 2025 to succeed Liz Morrison, who had assumed the role of head of school on July 1, 2021.
Student body and faculty As of the 2021–22 school year, the school had an enrollment of 616 students and 94.0 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 6.6:1. The school's student body was 73.1% (450) White, 8.6% (53) Black, 6.3% (39) Hispanic, 6.0% (37) two or more races, 5.7% (35) Asian and 0.3% (2) American Indian / Alaska Native.School data for The Morristown Beard School, National Center for Education Statistics. Accessed November 1, 2023. Of the 2018–19 school year, Morristown Beard School had 435 Upper School students and 140 Middle School students. The student body (46% male, 54% female) come from 90+ towns in New Jersey.Fast Facts about MBS, Morristown–Beard School. Accessed December 20, 2018.
Ninety-two faculty members teach at Morristown Beard School as of the 2018–19 school year. The school has a faculty–to-student ratio of 1:7 and an average class size of 13 students. Seventy-two percent of the faculty hold advanced degrees, and 19% hold PhDs.
History
St. Bartholomew's School
The Episcopal Church founded Morristown School as St. Bartholomew's School in 1891. Rev. Frank E. Edwards, a graduate of Harvard University (1891), served as the school's first headmaster, and classes took place in Morristown's Normandy Park area. St. Bartholomew's school was noted for hosting a speech by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, in 1894.
Three years later, St. Bartholomew's School moved its classes to Whippany Road after building a new campus near the Morristown railroad station. Designed by architects Edward Lippincott Tilton and William A. Boring (co-designers of Ellis Island's Immigrant Station), the buildings for this campus required only 90 days to construct. The blended Colonial Revival and Classical Revival architecture styles reflect the colonial history of the Morristown area. Ford Mansion in Morristown (now part of Morristown National Historical Park) served as one of George Washington's headquarters during the American Revolutionary War.
Morristown School When St. Bartholomew's School faced financial challenges in late 1897, three of its teachers from Harvard University Class of 1888 reorganized St. Bartholomew's School as the Morristown School. These three co-founders of Morristown School were Francis Call Woodman, Arthur Pierce Butler, and Thomas Quincy Browne. Aiding their work to start the new school, a large donation from wealthy businessman Henry Lee Higginson (known for founding the Boston Symphony Orchestra) provided critical seed funding. The school also benefited from large financial gifts of three other notable philanthropists: businessmen Charles Francis Adams III, Larz Anderson III, and Joseph Lee. Adams (a great-grandson of President John Quincy Adams) and Anderson (a son of General Nicholas Longworth Anderson) graduated from Harvard in the same class year as Morristown School's co-founders. (Lee graduated from Harvard five years earlier.)
Morristown School prepared its students for Harvard University, other Ivy League schools, and engineering schools. " The school opened in September 1898 with 23 students and eight staff members. Just two years later, enrollment more than tripled to educate 75 students; the student body increased to 173 by 1923. In 1908, Morristown School achieved recognition as one of only two schools outside New England to send students to Harvard for ten consecutive years (1899–1908). Strengthening the connection with Harvard, Morristown School leaders hosted the Harvard Club of New Jersey. The club's April 1909 meeting brought visits from Harvard President Charles Eliot, New Jersey Governor John Fort, and New Jersey Chancellor Mahlon Pitney (later a U.S Supreme Court justice). Eleven years later, the Morristown School ran a $500,000 fundraising campaign to establish an endowment. Several Harvard graduates served on the campaign's executive committee, including graduates of Harvard and the Morristown School (writer Roger Burlingame, journalist Samuel T. Williamson, and businessman Felix Knauth).
During World War I, 65 of Morristown School's first 103 graduates (63%) served in the U.S. military. Their service reflected the value of community service emphasized by Morristown School to its student body. During the war, students at the school raised funds to purchase and equip the Morristown School Ambulance. They then presented this ambulance to the American Field Service for use in France. The American Field Service awarded Morristown School a certificate and a brass plaque to show its appreciation for the ambulance. In 1913, a group of 40 of Morristown School's students helped the Morristown Fire Department extinguish a forest fire that had spread over three miles on Horse Hill; the students used portable chemical extinguishers to fight the flames. Nine years later, the full student body (173 students) helped fight a large fire that had destroyed two nearby houses. In 1957, the basketball team donated a trophy to Delbarton School (the school rival) to honor Paul Kreutz, a Delbarton player who drowned in 1956.
Beard School
In 1891, sisters Lucie Beard, Eliza Mills Beard, and Ettie Beard Foster started a school for kindergarten students on Claredon Place in Orange, New Jersey. The three sisters were cousins of historian James Truslow Adams, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. Eliza Beard oversaw the school's financial management, and Lucie Beard ran the educational activities. Their mother, Hester Truslow Beard, also assisted with the establishment of the school. The Beard school had an initial enrollment of 13 students. The all-girls school moved to Berkley Avenue in 1900 and continued adding grades until it graduated its first class in 1903. Taking the role of a preparatory country day school, Beard School prepared its students for the Seven Sisters and other colleges and universities.
Earning notoriety for this purpose, the Beard School received financial support from capitalist Sidney Morse Colgate of Colgate-Palmolive. In 1928, the school hosted a speech by Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, a social justice activist, at its commencement ceremony. Fosdick's visit reflected Beard School's commitment to service for its student body. During World War I, the students made bandages and wound dressings and began a tradition of sewing and knitting items to donate to the American Red Cross. This tradition extended into and past the Great Depression of the 1930s. During World War II, Beard School's students worked for the Junior Red Cross and assisted the American war effort by contributing their time and money.
On November 30, 1953, a large fire swept through Beard School's campus in the middle of the night. Reaching a peak of fifty feet in the air, the fire engulfed two of the school's five buildings and left them unusable. The fire destroyed an auditorium, 16 classrooms, and Beard School's gymnasium. After calling the fire department, Headmistress Edith Sutherland awakened the 20 boarding students and led them to safety on the school's front lawn.
Salvaging wood from the school's ruined buildings, a machinist repairman who lived nearby built a two-story garage for his family's home. His daughter later penned an essay about her childhood that described her memories surrounding the fire. Submitting the essay to Unico National, an Italian-American service organization, she earned second place in their Ella T. Grasso literary contest. Rebuilding, Beard School launched the Beard Fund campaign in Fall 1954 to fund construction of a new building to replace the two buildings devastated by the fire. The campaign hosted a Hawaiian-themed benefit dance on October 22, 1954, to raise some of the funds. In the spring of that school year, the Beard School opened the new fireproof building for use by classes. Eleven years later, the Beard School had discussions with Short Hills Country Day School about a potential merger of the two schools. The two schools did not merge, however. Short Hills Country Day School later merged with the Pingry School in Bernards, New Jersey.
Morristown Beard School
The all-boys Morristown School merged with the all-girls Beard School in 1971. The new co-ed school elected to use Morristown School's campus in Morristown and close the Beard School's campus in Orange. (The former campus of the Beard School now houses the White House Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center.) On Prize Day, June 5, 1971, the Morristown School officially transitioned into Morristown Beard School, a name chosen to reflect the importance of the history of its predecessor schools.
Recognizing their collective legacy, Morristown Beard School adopted the Beard School's Latin motto of ("Ad Astra per Aspera") and the Morristown School's school shield. (The Morristown School had two Latin mottos: "Civitas" and "Orbis Aratro Pendet". The former means citizenship, and the latter means: "The world hangs in the work of the plow.") Morristown Beard School also renamed its Main Building as Beard Hall. The first class of the school graduated in June 1972. Twenty-two years later in 1994, the school expanded its Middle School's student body from two grades (7–8) to three (6–8).
Morristown-Beard was the subject to a sex-scandal in 2011 due to a sexual relationship between a student and a teacher. The couple where engaged in a sexual relationship since at least 2010, a date an MBS employee went on record stating he saw the two engage in a physical relationship. The relationship was made apparent to the student's parents when she feigned an illness during a school trip to Greece in 2011 and was 'chaperoned' by the teacher until she recovered which went against school rules. The school initially requested the student's parents be lenient, but claimed to have no knowledge of the relationship at the time. By December 2011 MBS administration received numerous calls from concerned parents about the relationship, and performed an internal investigation, but never notified the Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCPP) with other concerned parents having to go directly to the DCPP to get them involved. Shortly after the DCPP got involved the teacher fled to Israel and following her graduation after not physically attending classes Senior year the student also moved to Israel. Her parents sued the school in December 2015 for gross negligence, breach of contract, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and fraud. Shortly after the DCPP began their investigation in 2011 headmaster Alex Curtis stepped down, being replaced by Peter Caldwell. In 2016 the lawsuit was dismissed as the judge ruled the parents had no standing to sue, and that only she herself could sue, but the judge did acknowledge that she was sexually assaulted by the teacher.