Framingham State University

As the first secretary of the newly created Board of Education in Massachusetts, Horace Mann instituted school reforms that included the creation of an experimental normal school, the first one in the United States, in Lexington, in July 1839. Cyrus Peirce was its first principal or president.[6] A second normal school was opened in September 1839 in West Barre (the school later moved to Westfield) followed by Bridgewater State College the next year. Growth forced the first normal school's relocation to West Newton in 1843, followed in 1853 by a move to the present site on Bare Hill in Framingham.