History
Thornton Academy was first established in 1811, under the name "Saco Academy" in response to a petition by citizens of southern Maine, most of them from Saco, to the Massachusetts legislature, which passed, in both houses, a bill founding the school in February 1811. The founding legislation also granted, as was common, six square miles of land (16 km²) in northern Maine (most of what is currently the southern part of Greenville) as an endowment so long as the trustees named in the founding charter raised USD $3,000 in funds. After successful fundraising and construction, Saco Academy officially opened on January 4, 1813.
The school was plagued for years by financial difficulty. The name was officially changed to Thornton Academy in 1821 in gratitude for the gift of $1,000 by Dr. Thomas G. Thornton, also the marshal for the Maine territory, which put the school on solid financial footing. Depending upon the economic indices used, the gift may have been worth up to $36 million in 2007 dollars.
The academy was destroyed by fire on July 28, 1848 in what was concluded to be arson, although no culprit was ever found. Almost all records were lost in the fire, and the academy was closed indefinitely. Although the board of trustees continued to meet and discuss the school's future, serious efforts to rebuild the school were not taken until 1884, when investments by trustee James W. Bradbury had more than quintupled the academy's financial endowment.
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