George Tilghman  George Hammond Tilghman (1896-1943) was a teacher who served as the headmaster at the Morristown School (now Morristown-Beard School), a private preparatory school in Morristown, New Jersey, for 13 years (1926-1939). Tilghman succeeded Arthur Pierce Butler, one of the school's three founders. During his tenure as headmaster, Tilghman guided Morristown School through a lengthy period of financial turbulence for the school marked by the Stock Market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. He also served as head coach of the ice hockey team. Morristown-Beard School awarded Tilghman its Distinguished Alumni Award posthumously in 2010. Tilghman was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on September 14, 1896 to parents Henry Ashe Tilghman and Alice Tennyson Merry. His father, Henry, worked as a mining engineer for Cecil Rhodes. After attending the Sillig School in Vevey, Switzerland for five years, Tilghman completed his high school education at the Morristown School (now Morristown-Beard School) in Morristown, New Jersey in 1915. He then studied at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts between 1915 and 1917 and played on the varsity soccer and cross country teams. Tilghman left Harvard in April 1917 to serve as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army's Coast Artillery Corps for two years. Returning to Harvard in 1919, Tilghman finished his course of study and graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1920. Later that year, he joined the faculty of the Morristown School as a chemistry teacher. While teaching full-time, Tilghman completed a master's degree in chemical engineering at Columbia University in Manhattan in 1927. Tilghman adopted an innovative approach to the administration and educational mission of Morristown School. He created a self-help system modeled after the Kent School in Connecticut  under which students engaged in service experiences to improve their self-reliance. Students waited on dining room tables, made their own beds, and engaged in supervised activities to facilitate the physical maintenance and daily operations of the school. Simultaneously, Tilghman introduced curriculum advancements that integrated greater lessons in culture and business. He also reorganized the student government and established the school's first alumni magazine (The Morristown School News). In 1933, Tilghman took the Morristown School hockey team on a barnstorming tour of Europe during winter vacation, a novel experience for a high school team at the time.