August 29, 2024
5 Things About Rabbit Pond
Five Things is an Andover magazine series highlighting fun and interesting facts about the Academy's people and places.by Jill Clerkin
Tucked behind the Andover Inn, Rabbit Pond has played a central role in various activities since the Academy’s founding. In recent years, Outdoor Pursuits students have learned paddling techniques there. History classes visit Missionary Rock and biology classes test water quality, assess fish and wildlife populations, and observe the lively gosling hatch each spring.
1. For many years between 1898 and 1950, the pond served as the school’s varsity hockey rink. In 1942, boards were erected near the perimeter to prepare for competition. At one point, notes an alum, “the boards fell through the ice, as did the horse-drawn plow and mechanized plow, the tractor sent to rescue them, and, on at least one occasion, the puck, at a critical point in the game.” Thankfully, the Sumner Smith Hockey Rink was constructed in 1950.
2. The diminutive pond first came of note during the early 1800s when students from the Andover Theological Seminary walked to the area seeking solitude. Facing the pond is Missionary Rock, installed in 1910 at the 100th anniversary of the American Board of Foreign Missions. In total, 248 missionaries were trained at the seminary to carry the gospel “to the heathen world.”
3. At the same time students were praying, cows were grazing. Academy founder Samuel Phillips Jr. intended that all students be well-versed in the art of agriculture and learn to support themselves by growing vegetables. By the 1830s, multiple acres abutting Rabbit Pond—which included a farmhouse, barn, and silo—became the second of three working farms on campus.
4. The town of Andover’s first nine-hole golf course was created near Rabbit Pond in 1896 by architect Alexander Findley. A golf club—with $5 membership fees for gentlemen and $3 for ladies—formed in 1897, and members soon enjoyed a small clubhouse overlooking the pond. The course, also used by students and teachers, closed in 1909.
5. According to campus legend, a group of Humphrey Bogart’s friends, incensed at his dismissal from Andover, tossed the innkeeper into Rabbit Pond, thinking he had reported Bogart “for being too attentive to his daughter.” The truth was less interesting—Bogart, Class of 1920, had to leave due to poor academic performance.
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Categories: Campus Life, Magazine
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