The Cheltenham High School Class of 2023 graduates this morning at 9:30am on the school’s football field.

138 years ago on Friday, June 26, 1885, the first graduating class of Cheltenham High School held its commencement exercises at Parvin Hall, the Sunday School Building at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (pictured above), located at Old York and Ashbourne Roads in Elkins Park.

The original CHS Class of 1885 consisted of four students. They were: Kathryn E. Murphy, Anna L. Fenton, Gertrude Howard, and Robert S. Summers. Seventy-five percent of the class went on to higher education.

The following photos and paragraphs are excerpted from a paper titled “History and Development of the School District of Cheltenham Township” by Alexander W. Scott, Cheltenham Elementary 1983:

In 1884, as Montgomery County was entering its second century, Flounders made an exciting request of the Cheltenham School Board — expand the school to a complete high school. It was 11 years before the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was to pass a law establishing township high schools that Cheltenham planned Pennsylvania’s first township high school. Mr. Flounders made his request at the November 3rd School Board meeting and at the same meeting Robert Shoemaker, Benjamin R. Myers and W.H. Myers were appointed a committee to explore the possibility. The School Board, at its December 1,1884, meeting, officially took the farsighted step of approving Mr. Flounders’ recommendation.

Mr. Flounders had already begun a class of four students -Kathryn E. Murphy, Anna L. Fenton, Gertrude Howard and Robert S. Summers — and after one year of this “advanced course,” they became Cheltenham High School’s first graduating class in June 1885. The commencement exercises were held at Parvin Hall, the Sunday School building at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, on June 26, 1885, at 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon.

Three of those first graduates went on to higher education — Kathryn Murphy took courses at West Chester State Normal School, later studied music in Providence, Rhode Island and became an assistant to the music supervisor in the Philadelphia school system; Gertrude Howard taught school and later studied stenography and typewriting before moving to Quakertown; Robert S. Summers was an 1889 graduate of Hahnemann Medical College and set-up practice in Philadelphia; Anna L. Fenton was married to Mr. Lesher and they lived in Philadelphia.

The first course of study included — geography, history, civil government, American and English literature, rhetoric, algebra, plane geometry, Latin, physics, and chemistry.

The minutes of the September 2,1885, School Board meeting referred to the Ashbourne School for the first time as “the high school.” County Superintendent Hoffecker wrote in his March 1885 report to the State — “Cheltenham Township has established a township high school, which bids fair to be a complete success, and thus place its schools in the front rank in the county.”

To read Scott’s paper in full, you can click here.

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Information courtesy of Chuck Langerman, local historian