History & Traditions
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Here’s to the School and the spelling book and rule...
...and here's to Miss Charlotte whom we follow.
Charlotte Haxall Noland founded Foxcroft School in 1914, at the age of 32. Her dream was to create a school that "girls would want to come to and hate to leave because they loved it." More than 100 years later, it’s clear that she accomplished her goal. Foxcroft girls work hard, play hard, and they love their school. Each year, ITs (daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters) and Legacies (sisters, nieces, and cousins) of alumnae average between 20-25% of the student body, reflecting this love, belief, and commitment, fueled by the sense of joy and playfulness that Miss Charlotte created.
From the beginning, Miss Charlotte’s highest aim and Foxcroft’s greatest responsibility has been to educate the whole student. Her efforts to instill high purpose, integrity, leadership, understanding, and empathy in students, along with the School’s motto — mens sana in corpore sano (a health mind in a healthy body) — guide Foxcroft to this day.
At Foxcroft's heart is still the belief that a school for girls is better than a school with girls. Miss Charlotte knew this to be true even before she founded Foxcroft more than a century ago, and Mary Louise Leipheimer reaffirmed this notion when she became the ninth Head of School in 1989. During her tenure, Leipheimer served on the first board of the International Coalition of Girls Schools and supported research that demonstrated the “Girls’ School Advantage." The School's enrollment and endowment both grew and an excellent faculty refined its forward-thinking curriculum. Believing firmly that “Everything we do is curriculum,” co-curricular programs from sports and activities to community service, leadership, and residential life were treated as opportunities to fulfill the School’s mission.
Foxcroft celebrated its first century of girls' education with a centennial celebration April 25-27, 2014. Following the close of the 2013-14 school year, Catherine Smylie McGehee, a girls’ school veteran and passionate advocate for 21st Century skills which will prepare students for their futures, was installed as the 10th Head of School. Then came the stunning news of a $40 million bequest, left by the grateful and generous alumna, Ruth Bedford '32, the largest gift ever bestowed on an all-girls secondary school. Several years later, four alumnae from the Mars family — Victoria Beth Mars '74 and Pamela Mars Wright '78 and their daughters Bernadette Schuetz Russell '03 and Charlotte Audrey Rossetter '12 — gave an extraordinary multi-generational gift of $22 million to the STEAM phase of the Building for Our Future campaign. The Mars STEAM Wing will open its doors for the 2025-26 school year, providing opportunities and learning spaces which support best practices for teaching girls in a field where women continue to be under represented.
The future of Foxcroft is bright indeed.
Keep up with times, don’t be narrow, have few rules, good hard work, and much fun.
— Charlotte Haxall Noland, Foxcroft's Founder
1914
1914
In October, Foxcroft opens its doors to 24 students. The School’s founder Charlotte Haxall Noland becomes known as Miss Charlotte.
1914-2
1914
Miss Charlotte holds the first Fox/Hound basketball game in November, beginning the School’s oldest and most beloved tradition.
1918
1918
Miss Charlotte becomes sole owner of Foxcroft by buying out co-owner Major Hartley.
In the coming decades, Miss Charlotte expands the academic and residential campus while growing the School’s reputation as it becomes one of the premier girls’ schools in the country.
1930
1930
Covert is purchased as Miss Charlotte’s home. It burned in 1933 and was rebuilt the next year.
1933
1933
Miss Charlotte receives a gift of 80 cherry trees from the School for Christmas.
These trees and many more donated and planted through the years still adorn the campus, most notably along the main road.
1936-2
1936
Court, the first of the modern dormitories, is completed.
1936
1936
The first Foxcroft scholarship fund is established.
1937
1937
Miss Charlotte gives Foxcroft to its alumnae.
“Many women have had schools and made great successes of them,” she says, “but I want mine to go farther than that. I want mine to go down through the ages, and that seems assured now.”
1941
1941
Miss Charlotte institutes military drill.
1947
1947
Applegate and Dillon Dormitories are completed.
1949
1949
General George Marshall and General Cummings review the Foxcroft Corps at Commencement.
1952
1952
Schoolhouse is dedicated, completing the work of the Building and Endowment Fund.
The Foxcroft Observatory, a gift of Duncan H. Read, is dedicated.
1955
1955
Van Santvoord Merle-Smith becomes the second Head of Foxcroft.
After 40 years at the helm, Miss Charlotte hands the reins over to her academic dean, who happens to be married to her niece. She continues, however, to live on campus and serve on the board.
1956
1956
Foxcroft holds a science conference.
1958
1958
Miss Charlotte receives an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Columbia University, recognizing her as one of the foremost educators in the world.
1960
1960
The "new" Orchard Dormitory is completed, replacing "Old Orchard."
1961
1961
Bertha Adkins becomes the third Head of School, bringing a renewed commitment to the academic life.
1966
1966
The Engelhard Activities Building is completed.
1967
1967
Alexander Uhle succeeds Adkins at the fourth Head of School.
1968
1968
The Jean DuPont McConnell Stables and Riding Arena is completed.
1969
1969
Audrey Bruce Currier Library is dedicated.
One of the largest and best regarded independent school libraries in the country, Currier Library soon becomes the heart of the School. The library is not just a place for studying, reading, and relaxing, but also provides a home for all-school Morning Meetings, meetings and presentations, and eventually the information technology center.
1975
1975
Coit Johnson becomes the fifth Head of School.
1979-2
1979
Richard Wheeler becomes the sixth Head of School.
1979
1979
Foxcroft is the first girls’ school to receive a Kenan Grant for faculty professional development.
1983
1983
McClain Jeffrey Moredock becomes the seventh Head. He is followed, briefly, by Dr. Geraldine Pearson in 1988.
1989-2
1989
Mary Louise Leipheimer becomes Foxcroft's ninth Head of School.
1989
1989
Foxcroft celebrates its 75th anniversary.
1991
1991
Poet Maya Angelou electrifies her audience as Goodyear Speaker.
2000
2000
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, gives her Goodyear address to a standing-room-only crowd in the Engelhard Gymnasium.
2003
2003
Interim Term trip goes to Antarctica.
2008
2008
The first building of the 2003 Campus Master Plan is completed: A maintenance building called “Sally’s Service Center.”
2009
2009
Goodyear Fellow James Baker, III, speaks to a capacity crowd in Engelhard.
2010-2
2010
The first Think Pink basketball tournament to benefit the Cherry Blossom Breast Cancer Foundation is held.
2010
2010
The $14 million Athletic/Student Center, a significant renovation and expansion of the Engelhard Activities Center, is dedicated.
2011
2011
Foxcroft becomes the first school in Virginia to partner with Purdue University’s EPICS engineering program.
2013-2
2013
Foxcroft kicks off its Centennial Celebration with a worldwide Day of Service and hosts the Cherry Blossom Breast Cancer Walk, Run & Pooch Prance for the first time.
2013
2013
Foxcroft’s first LEED-certified building, Stuart Hall, opens its doors to 50+ students and three faculty families.
2012
2012
Actress Lisa Kudrow speaks at Commencement.
2014
2014
Foxcroft celebrates its Centennial with a weekend full of activities.
2014-3
2014
Ruth Bedford ’32 leaves Foxcroft more than $40 million, the largest gift ever bestowed to a girls’ school.
2014-2
2014
Catherine Smylie McGehee is installed as the 10th Head of Foxcroft School in a September garden ceremony.
2014-4
2014
Ellen Stofan, Chief Scientist of NASA, speaks with students.
2016
2016
Dorm Renovation Project is completed with upgrades to Applegate, Dillon, Orchard, and Reynolds.
2016-2
2016
Court is rededicated as a welcome center.
The renovated building houses the Admissions and other offices, the School Store, and high-tech seminar rooms for academic and business use.
2020
2020
Foxcroft introduces virtual learning to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
2022
2022
The Music Building is rededicated during Reunion Weekend.
At a Friday evening celebration during Reunion Weekend, the Music Building was rededicated on Friday, April 22, as part of the first phase of the newly launched "Building for Our Future" campaign. Students are once again filling each room of the building with the beautiful sounds of creative expression as they hone their voices and talents.
2023
2023
Foxcroft receives an extraordinary multi-generational $22 million gift from 4 Mars alumnae.
Victoria Beth Mars '74 and Pamela Mars Wright '78 and their daughters Bernadette Schuetz Russell '03 and Charlotte Audrey Rossetter '12 gave a transformative gift to the STEAM phase of the Building for Our Future Campaign to name the Mars STEAM Wing, set to open in fall 2025.
2023-2
2023
Renowned oceanographer and ocean advocate Dr. Sylvia Earle speaks to the gathered students, employees, and guests assembled in Engelhard Gymnasium, as part of the Alison Harrison Goodyear 1929 Fellowship program.
Charlotte Haxall Noland was born in 1883 at Burrland, in Fauquier County, Virginia. One of seven children, she develops a love for animals and nature, as well as self-reliance, ingenuity and a deep abiding faith. Young Charlotte is educated at home and at schools in Baltimore, MD, and Washington, DC, but doesn't enjoy school. She vows to create a school of her own “that girls will love to come to and never want to leave.”
In 1904, Noland decides on the name 'Foxcroft' during a summer at England's Oxford University in England. One fine day, she rides past the estate of a Major Foxcroft. “That’s the name that hit me right! I took it back and kept it,” she says later.
In the following years, Noland studies at the Sargent School of Physical Education at Harvard, works in a gymnasium and schools in the Baltimore area, and then opens a summer camp at Burrland.
At age 32, Noland realizes her dream of starting a school for girls. “No one will ever know the excitement I felt that October day in 1914 when twenty-four girls — three of them babies only ten years old — and three day scholars, came to me. That is what started Foxcroft that day. My joy knew no bounds.”
Give us the tools we need and we will give the world fine women.
— Charlotte Haxall Noland, Foxcroft's Founder
Traditions at Foxcroft
Dating back to the School's founding, traditions enrich the lives and experiences of today's Foxcroft students.
Whether participating in the traditional Christmas pageant or running around the salad bar in the Dining Hall on their birthday, there are unique aspects of the Foxcroft experience that bond students across generations. Some of our traditions include:
Fox/Hound, starting with Choosings and continuing through the lifelong affiliation
Christmas Pageant, presented annually by our New Girls as a gift to the community
ITs and Legacies, students who have a family member who has attended Foxcroft before them
Old Girl / New Girl, the pairing of incoming students with an older returning student
Sleeping Porches
Running around salad bar on your birthday
Sunrise Service, along with the New Girls running from the flagpole to breakfast
Wintermission
Paul K. Bergan Poetry Festival
Graduation in Miss Charlotte’s Garden, complete with singing across Schoolhouse Lawn to the underclassmen
Baccalaureate at Trinity Episcopal Church
And more!
Are You a Fox or a Hound?
This is often the first question asked of students or alumnae when meeting one another. It's a favorite question to ask our alumnae guest speakers, and has even been known to make connections among Foxcroft students past and present who run into one another in the real world!
