History of Becker College, dating to 1784 (Leicester Academy)
Telegram & Gazette Staff
1784
1788
1791
The earliest documented presence of female students at the Academy is found in the diaries of student Ruth Henshaw, who would become early 19th-century portrait artist Ruth Henshaw Miles Bascom.
1834
John Barton of Nova Scotia and Horace Dickenson of Montreal become the first-known international students at Leicester Academy.
1836
1840
1880
First perfect game in Major League Baseball is pitched by J. Lee Richmond of the Worcester Worcesters at the Worcester Agricultural Fairgrounds, now the Weller Academic Center quad on the Worcester campus.
1884
1886
Elliott P. Joslin, the first doctor in the United States to specialize in diabetes and the founder of today’s Joslin Diabetes Center, graduates.
And Clappville.
Industrialist Joshua Clapp, his influence so grand, was recognized in the 1800s with his own section of town, to the south, at the Oxford border. The area is now part of the Rochdale village.
Clapp s mansion is pictured in our Then photo. The home, was located on the eastern end of the Common. It s gone now.
The mansion was built in 1833, amid Leicester s emergence as an industrial powerhouse, dotted with textile and carding mills.
The Western Railroad line and the landscape s many brooks lured mill owners, some from next-door Worcester, the county seat.
Clapp was educated at Leicester Academy and worked for years as a commission merchant in Boston.