A native of Gloucester, Massachusetts, Judith Foster married Thomas Bradbury Saunders in 1793. She was a respected educator who co-founded Saunders and Beach Academy in Dorchester with Clementina Beach (pictured below), an artist who studied under acclaimed portrait painter Gilbert Stuart. Saunders and Beach were encouraged to open the school by essayist and women’s rights advocate Judith Sargent Murray. The Academy, an elite school for girls, was located at 34 Adams Street. The pair purchased the property from local lumber merchants and house builders Frederick and William Pope. The school’s advertisement in the Columbian and the Boston Independent Chronicle in 1803 indicated that the curriculum included reading, writing, grammar, arithmetic, sewing, embroidery, French, painting, and geography. A number of the silk embroidery pieces done by students under the supervision of Saunders and Beach are housed in collections at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Dorchester Historical Society, National Museum of American History, Old Sturbridge Village, and Winterthur Museum. Little is known of the private lives of Saunders and Beach. The site of the academy was converted into a multi-family home that still stands. The embroidered artwork above is housed in the National Museum of American History, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
