Our History

At a time when opportunities for high school education were rare in the rural South, the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia established St. Margaret's School in Tappahannock. Its primary purpose was to "meet the need in Tidewater of a standard school, at the least possible cost, for girls of character and ability."

Back then, students often arrived by steamboat, as there was no bridge linking Tappahannock with the Northern Neck, and there was no government road to Richmond or easy way to reach a central metropolitan area like Washington, DC.

“St. Margaret’s instilled into us that there was a right and a wrong, and all our lives, we would have to make that choice, and our characters were built by the choices we made.”

- Nancy Berry '23, St. Margaret's first graduate.
 
Follow the timeline below to see how far we've come since 1921.
St. Margaret's School
P.O. Box 158
Tappahannock, VA 22560
T: 804-443-3357
admit@sms.org
Episcopal girls' school for boarding and day, grades 8-PG, on the banks of the Rappahannock River in Virginia.