Rivers School Application Form for the 1916-1917 school year

This is one of the few documents that survives from the school’s first two years. It is an application form sent by Robert Rivers on June 26, 1916 to Howard and Helen Blackwell of Cambridge, who were contemplating sending their seven-year-old son George to Rivers in the 1916-1917 school year. The Blackwells toured the school, but George was eventually enrolled at Browne and Nichols School, which was much closer to home. George’s younger brother John was later enrolled at Rivers, and he graduated in the class of 1927, in the school’s fifth graduating class. He would later serve as a consultant to the Board concerning the purchase of the current campus in Weston.

The Blackwell family has a quite prominent place in the histories of medicine, abolition, and women’s rights in the United States. This application, and the letters between Rivers and the Blackwells, is part of the Blackwell Family Papers in the Harvard University Archives.
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