Ela Hockaday (1875 - 1956) received her early education in the public schools of Bonham, Texas. After graduating from the Denton Normal School (now University of North Texas), she pursued graduate studies at both Columbia University and the University of Chicago. An experienced teacher, she was contacted in 1913 by a group of Dallas residents with an offer to head a new preparatory school for girls and was thus able to realize a long-held dream of promoting quality education for girls in Texas.
Opened on September 25, 1913, in a large house on Haskell Avenue, the school became known as the Miss Hockaday School for Girls. With an initial enrollment of ten students and four part-time teachers, the school began a tradition of excellence in education following Hockaday's cornerstones of "character, scholarship, courtesy, and athletics."
Experiencing steady growth in enrollment of resident and day students, the school expanded its primary and secondary curriculum in later years to establish a junior college, in operation from 1931 to 1951.
Moved in 1919 to a campus on Greenville Avenue, the Hockaday School was relocated to a 100-acre site on Welch Road in 1961.
(Incise on Base) Virginia Maxson Buchanan-Smith '60 Mary Maxson Thompson '67
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