In the antebellum period, rich Southerners customarily would send their daughters north of the Mason-Dixon Line to finishing schools.
Many did not make it very far north of the line, stopping 15 miles from the Pennsylvania-Maryland border at the Cottage Hill Academy on York’s north side. (See previous post, "Little Jimmy's someday might draw big crowd").
The academy, constructed in 1847, overlooked the Codorus Creek, not far from what is now the twin-towered Susquehanna Commerce Center.
This excerpt, from “Never to be Forgotten," explains the girls school:
“John F. Hey purchases land along present-day Cottage Hill Road in York where he constructs a four-story school for girls. Cottage Hill Academy, a newspaper said, ‘is situated on a beautiful eminence, overlooking the romantic and placid Codorus... .’ Several owners operate the school before it closes in the 1870s. The York Gas Company later purchased the site and demolished the academy."
With such comments about the Codorus, who could resist sending their daughter away for a touch up in York?
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