This is the story of a school founded in 1874 on the Eastern Frontier of the Cape Colony, South Africa, the story of a girls’ school founded at a time when education for young women had just begun to be taken seriously by a few women (and fewer men) who could see sufficiently ahead of their own times. It is the story of the principles on which that school was founded, of its early struggle to survive, and of its growth over 125 years of turbulent world and South African history.