Fairfield Board of Ed Approved Name for New Fairfield High School 56 Years Ago This Week

The following story is reprinted from the November 5, 1954 edition of the Bridgeport Sunday Post. The article appeared on the front page. Please see the newspaper scans below.

Fairfield's new secondary school, to be constructed on the eastern side of town, has been named Andrew Warde High School in honor of one of the first commissioners appointed to govern the people of Connecticut.

The Board of Education approved the name for the new school following a recommendation made by Mrs. Herbert A. George, secretary of the board, who headed a committee studying various names for the new structure.

A contemporary of Roger Ludlowe, after whom the town's original public high school was named, Mr. Warde played an important role in the early history of Connecticut. Mrs. George said information gathered disclosed that he came to America in Winthrop's fleet and for a short time resided in Watertown.

He was appointed by the General Court of the Bay Colony as one of the commissioners to govern the people of Connecticut and was one of the five persons who held the first court in the colony. Mr. Warde, records indicate, was one of the six magistrates who with committees of the lower house first asserted the sovereignty of the colony by the formal declaration of the war against the Pequots in 1637. "The names of the six commissioners should live forever," reported Mrs. George.

Among his other descendants were Miss Annie Burr Jennings, Oliver Gould Jennings, Henry Ward Beecker, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Rear Admiral Andrew Hull Foot, General William Hull, Commodore Isaac Hull, General Joseph Wheeler, Stephen Burroughs, inventor of the decimal system of currency, John Burroughs, emminent naturalist and author, and Mary E. Wooley, president of Mount Holyoke College.

Mr. Warde was the father of nine children. His daughter, Mary, married John Burr II of Fairfield, father of Aaron Burr, who was the third vice president of the United States, and ancestors of the Rev. Aaron Burr, president of Princeton College.

The Board of Education also approved a list of seven names from which Mrs. George was authorized to select four for the naming of the four houses in the new high school plan. The names approved were John Winthrop, founder of New London; John Mason, founder of Windsor and author of A Brief History of the Pequot War: 1736; Joel Barlow, author of A Vision of Columbus, and editor of a weekly newspaper in Hartford.

Also, Oliver Wolcott, one of the signers of The Declaration of Independence who served as governor of the state in 1796; and Thomas Morehouse, Thomas Newton, and Edmund Strickland were among the first early settlers of the town.

The name Aaron Burr, president of Princeton, was dropped when it was pointed out that the name might be confused with that of the Revolutionary War traitor.

Members of the committee working with Mrs. George on the names were Dr. Carlyle G. Hoyt, superintendent of schools Bernard Marlin, Alanson C. Harper, Kenneth Peterson, and Philip Pitruzzelio of the school teaching staff.

Paul