Breck School

Breck School has its origins in Wilder (Jackson County), Minnesota where, through the efforts of the Rev. David Griffin Gunn, it was incorporated as an Episcopalian school in 1886 under the name Breck Mission and Farm School. The school was named for Episcopalian missionary and educator James Lloyd Breck (1818-1876), who had been active in Minnesota during the 1850-1867 period. It received its first students (nine boys and ten girls) in 1888, and was attended largely by farm children and adults seeking to learn English.

The school flourished during the 1890s with enrollments peaking at around 500, but the depressed local economy forced it to close in 1906. In 1916 the school reopened in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood of St. Paul, where it remained, in successive buildings, until 1956. The school's finances remained problematic until after World War II, but attendance during the St. Paul era gradually increased from a handful of students to more than 325 by the mid-1950s. Under a new administration beginning in 1938, the school added grades one through eight and also inaugurated a boarding school component that gained in popularity during the dislocation of the wartime years.

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