14 Facts About Carmelita Hinton

Carmelita Hinton was an American progressive educator.

Carmelita Hinton is best known as the founder in 1935 of The Putney School, a progressive boarding school in Vermont.

Carmelita Hinton's father, Clement Chase, who owned a newspaper and a bookstore, was a women's rights advocate and encouraged Hinton's energetic nature and belief that she could do what she wished with her life.

At Bryn Mawr College, where she trained as a teacher, Carmelita Hinton found a greater love of reading and the type of education she had been seeking earlier in life.

Carmelita Hinton graduated in 1912, then moved to Chicago, where she lived at Hull House in 1913 as secretary to Jane Addams.

Carmelita Hinton was stunned by the events, and according to Susan McIntosh Lloyd, told only her siblings and her best friend, Jane Arms, the truth about Sebastian's death.

Carmelita Hinton began teaching kindergarten at the North Shore Country Day School to keep herself busy.

Carmelita Hinton later moved again to a farm in Weston, Massachusetts.

In 1934 a Hull House friend arranged the sale of Elm Lea Farm in Putney, Vermont for a reduced price for Carmelita Hinton to found a school.

Carmelita Hinton based its structure on her belief in the value of manual labor, art and music, and scholarship as equally necessary components of a healthy adult life.

At first it enrolled the children of wealthy progressives and liberals; and though all its students, staff, and faculty were heeded and treated as constituents by Carmelita Hinton, she was the sole director of every aspect of the school.

Carmelita Hinton was married to Sebastian Carmelita Hinton, a patent attorney who is credited with inventing the jungle gym in 1920.

Carmelita Hinton's daughter Jean Hinton Rosner was a civil rights and peace activist.

William's daughter and Carmelita's granddaughter Carma Hinton is a documentary filmmaker.