Walton High School is named after Mary Walton, a wife of General Lewis Morris, a member of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, as well as one of the first members of New York States Board of Regents. Mary Walton was the mother of ten children, four of whom fought in the American Revolutionary War. The Walton and the Morris families owned land in the west Bronx from the 17th until the 19th century. Mary Walton operated a dame school, teaching little girls of the colonial period to read, write, do basic mathematics, and keep house. Mary Walton was buried next to Saint Anns Church in the South Bronx. Mary A. Conlon, an elementary school principal of P.S. 30 (located next to Mary Waltons burial place), founded Walton as one of the first all-girl schools in New York City. The New York City Board of Education accredited Walton as an all-girl high school on April 19, 1923. The first graduation took place in January 1926 with 126 girls. In 1930 the current building on Jerome Avenue and West 195th Street was constructed as Waltons new home, using the same structural design as Abraham Lincoln High School and Samuel J. Tilden High School, both in Brooklyn. The school moved to its new home in 1932. Conlon continued as principal until her death in 1936, when Marion Cahil Heffernan took over. Walton was a prestigious all-girl institution throughout much of its history, with a high graduation rate. Its students were often inducted into the Arista honor society. Many of Waltons graduates went on to Ivy League colleges and universities. For many years the schools yearbook was named the Periwinkle, a small blue flower. With the change in demographics of the surrounding neighborhoods came the change in the overall level of excellence for which Walton had been known. The demise and eventual closing of this school saddened those who remembered Walton as it was. In 1968 the school appointed its first male principal, Daniel Feins, and continued as an all-girl school until 1977 when boys were first admitted Shared from Anna Ortiz-Irving, Fordham Road Yesterday & Today
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 03:22:57 +0000
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