History
In 1835 the citizens of Bethel, Maine formed an organization as trustees of the Bethel High School. A hall was fitted up for a school-room and N. T. True was employed as principal. Encouraged by their success, the trustees reorganized and obtained a charter for an Academy, which by act of the Legislature on January 27, 1836, was incorporated as Bethel Academy. A building was erected, Isaac Randall was the first instructor, and the school opened for its first term on the second Wednesday of September, 1836.
Bethel Academy accepted its first tuition-paying students in 1836, both locals and boarders. Reverend Daniel Gould, the town's first pastor who settled in 1799 from Cape Cod, left his $842 fortune to the school when he died in 1843. Gould, who left no children, stipulated that the school be named for him; from then on it was known as Gould's Academy and eventually Gould Academy.
In 1921, plans to build the Bingham Gymnasium were announced by then president Frank E. Hanscom. In 1933, construction began on Hanscom Hall. In 1936, the Academy earned accreditation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.
William Bingham II, who came to Bethel from Cleveland for John George Gehring's medical care, was a major school benefactor from the 1930s to his death in 1955 and thereafter via the Bingham Betterment Fund. Since the town of Bethel lacked a public high school, all local children were educated at Gould until 1969, when Telstar High School opened.
Read more about this topic: Gould Academy
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