Hall, Elizabeth B. (Elizabeth Blodgett), 1909-

The daughter of Margaret Kendrick and Thomas Harper Blodgett, Elizabeth Blodgett Hall was born in New York City, where she attended the Ethical Culture School. Her father was a businessman and the family moved to Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1922, while he continued to work in New York. Elizabeth (Betty) attended Miss Hall's School in Pittsfield and studied for one year at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Returning to New York City to study journalism, Elizabeth married attorney Livingston Hall after a three-month courtship. Livingston Hall was appointed to the faculty of Harvard Law School in 1932 and Elizabeth enrolled at Radcliffe College in 1942, graduating in 1946. She taught history at Concord Academy for one year and in 1949 she was appointed headmistress at Concord Academy where she raised academic standards and gained a reputation as an innovative educator. This record of educational innovation was later incarnated in the form of Simon's Rock, a school she founded in 1966 on family land in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to respond to what she saw as the redundant extant educational system of the last two years of high school and the first two years of college; Simon's Rock has since grown into a progressive liberal arts early college, while the program continues to serve as the foundation for the national early college movement. She resigned as president in 1971, but continued to serve on the board for many years and help secure its affiliation with Bard College in 1979. Hall died in 2005.