Scholarships

Community Happens Here.

Hitchcock Free Academy was founded in 1855 by Brimfield, MA native, Samuel Austin Hitchcock, as one of the nation’s first free public high schools, with a motto to “prepare students for the business of life.” A century later, Tantasqua Regional High School was constructed in neighboring Sturbridge, and Hitchcock was no longer needed as a high school. Undaunted, a group of forward-thinking local residents rallied to preserve the building and its 17 acre campus, enabling Hitchcock to quickly pivot to become a nonprofit community center in 1956. We became a new resource for the same community we had long served, with a new mission: to enrich the lives of area residents of all ages by providing educational, cultural, and recreational programming.

In keeping with the legacy of our founder, for generations, we have proudly awarded academic scholarships to local high-school graduates pursuing further education.