Lake Forest Academy

Lake Forest Academy (also known as LFA) is a co-educational college preparatory school for boarding and day students in grades 9 through 12. The school is located on the North Shore in Lake Forest, Illinois, United States, about 30 miles north of Chicago. As of the 2019–2020 school year, the school enrolled 435 students, with the students coming from 13 states and 35 countries. This school is among the most selective boarding schools in the United States. The current head of school is Christopher O. Tennyson. The school is accredited by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS), and the Secondary School Admission Test Board (SSATB). History The original inhabitants of the region of the North Shore were the Potawatomi. The town of Lake Forest emerged in the area after the violent dispossession of the Potawatomi in the 1830s, the Chicago cholera epidemic of 1854, and the arrival of the railway from Chicago in 1855. The academy (known as "LFA") was founded in 1857 as a key part of plans for Lake Forest more generally. In tune with the religious revivalism of the time period, the boys preparatory school was Presbyterian. LFA's first principal—Samuel F. Miller—had been one of the civil engineers who helped build the railway, as well as a founder of the Presbyterian Church in town. Early curriculum included Greek, Latin, Mathematics, English, Grammar, and Geography. Life for early students was rustic. An outdoor pump provided water for drinking and washing. In the fall and summer they often simply bathed in Lake Michigan; in the winter, however, they did not bathe at all. They recalled wandering and hunting in the ravines along Lake Michigan. Another of their pastimes was "hickory nutting," in which boys would climb trees "to shake down the nuts to...friends beneath." In the lead-up to the Civil War, the student body received military training from the eccentric Elmer Ellsworth. The New York farm boy was enamored with the fezzes and billowy pants of local Algerian soldiers who abetted French colonization of North Africa. And so Ellsworth he began organizing units all around the United States known as Zouaves in their image (or at least his idea of it), including at nascent Lake Forest Academy. Ellsworth would go on to acquire fame for being the first officer to be killed in the conflict. Many of the boys Ellsworth trained ended up fighting in the war, too.