Thornton Academy

Thornton Academy is a co-educational, independent boarding and day school serving grades 9–12 located in Saco, Maine. Thornton Academy also opened a full-time, private junior high school on its campus, named Thornton Academy Middle School, which serves grades 6-8 for Saco, Dayton, Arundel, Biddeford, and Kennebunk students.

Thornton Academy was first established in 1811, under the name "Saco Academy" in response to a petition by citizens of southern Maine, most of them from Saco, to the Massachusetts legislature, which passed, in both houses, a bill founding the school in February 1811. The founding legislation also granted, as was common, six square miles of land in northern Maine as an endowment so long as the trustees named in the founding charter raised USD $3,000 in funds. After successful fundraising and construction, Saco Academy officially opened on January 4, 1813.

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