St. Mark’s School is a coeducational, Episcopal, preparatory school, situated on 250 acres in Southborough, Massachusetts, 25 miles from Boston. It was founded in 1865 as an all-boys school by Joseph Burnett, a wealthy native of Southborough who developed and marketed the world-famous Burnett Vanilla Extract. Girls have attended since the 1970s. St. Mark's is a member of the Independent School League, and the second-oldest of the five elite prep schools collectively termed St. Grottlesex.
Burnett founded St. Mark's School in 1865 and is thus one of the earlier New England schools founded on the British model, as opposed to New England academies such as Phillips Academy and Phillips Exeter Academy, both founded nearly a century earlier. St. Mark's initial board of trustees was composed of members of prominent Boston families, as well as many eminent Episcopal churchmen, and from the first the school attracted many members of Boston Brahmin and New York Knickerbocker families, although St. Mark's great headmaster William Greenough Thayer admitted a limited number of Jewish boys as well.
