Baltimore’s Best

The lady from Baltimore wanted to send her son to school. But the good boarding schools were mostly in New England, and she thought that her son was too young to be sent that far from home. Baltimore’s public schools “gave off a nauseous odor,” in the words of the city’s own health commissioner. They were cramped and dingy, had no place where their pupils could play. So Mrs. Francis Carey rounded up a handful of like-minded mothers and they founded a school of their own—the first country day school in the U.S. Last week, the Oilman Country School was 50 years old.

Mrs. Carey’s project prospered from the start. Baltimore parents were delighted with the Country School’s broad lawns, surrounded by deep woods. They even accepted the fresh air fad of 1901, when classrooms were built without any glass in the windows. Boys attended class in woolens and mufflers, keeping their feet on bricks which had been heated in a furnace. The boys fared well (the fresh air, it was claimed, enabled them to do two years’ work in one). But constant colds among the faculty finally ended the experiment.

Today, the Oilman Country School occupies a 69-acre campus in suburban Baltimore, teaches 400 students. Only about 50 boys, mostly the sons of Senators and Congressmen, board in. Headmaster Henry H. Callard thinks that the main advantage of a country day school is its kinship with its community: since most of the kids go home to dinner, they never lose touch with the world of grownups, as boys are apt to do at boarding schools. But he has a right to be proud for another reason. After 50 years, the Oilman Country School is still the best secondary school in Baltimore.