History

Desperate circumstances following the Civil War led Dr. Anthony Toomer Porter, rector of The Church of the Holy Communion, to open a day school in the church's Sunday School classrooms called Porter Academy.  The school opened with an enrollment of 425 boys and 125 girls.  That same year, 1867, Dr. Porter opened a boys' boarding school known as the Porter Military Academy, housed in buildings formerly used as a Federal Arsenal.

Nearly 100 years later, in 1965, Porter Military Academy consolidated with two other schools located on the Peninsula, The Gaud School and The Watt School, to form Porter-Gaud School.  A new campus was built on 71 acres donated by The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.  Proceeds of the sale of the military academy campus to the Medical University of South Carolina were used to construct the first buildings on the new campus west of the Ashley.  The present day Porter-Gaud School is a coeducational, independent college-preparatory school with programs for grades Kindergarten through 12 and an enrollment of approximately 940 students.