1700

148

charge, for every hundred dollars appropriated by the State.
In the year 1800, a lot of ground was purchased of the
Rev. Thomas Jackson, by the Board of Trustees, which
Board then consisted of Messrs. John Edmondson, Nicholas
Hammond, Samuel Chamberlaine, Thomas James Ballitt,
William Hayward, Ennals Martin, Stephen Theodore John-
son, Perry Benson, John Roberts, Owen Kennard, John
Coats and Hugh Sherwood. The building was ejected, so
tar as can be learned, by the private beneficence of certain
gentlemen, there being no evidence that any Slate or County
appropriation was made for the purpose, but there is suffi-
cient evidence that a subscription paper was in circulation
in the year 1806. The school was in the occupancy of the
Academy Building in 1812, about which time it was erected.
It was then under the superintendence of Mr. John Boyle,
as teacher, who was followed by a succession of earnest and
able men, who gave to the Academy a high standing, which
it maintained until the year 1866, when the Board of Trus-
tees transferred the building under a lease, at a nominal
sum, to the Board of School Commissioners for the use of a
High School, to which I shall refer in this report. At this
school many of our most useful citizens were educated, and
it has fostered, or kept alive among us a love and appreci-
ation of liberal studies. If the limits of this report would per-
mit, I should be pleased to give an account of some of the
most successful of the teachers, and of the most distinguished
of the scholars.

In the month of November, 1832, a school was organized
by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Spencer, in the parish of St. Michael's
upon the farm " Solitude,"the residence of the rector. Dr.
Spencer was assisted in this school by his brother, Mr. Mat-
thew Spencer, who was subsequently the Principal of the
Easton Academy, of which he had charge when he died, in
the year 1865. This school received no aid from the State.
It was very flourishing for a number of years and was dis-
tinguished particularly for its thorough tuition in the clas-
sics, in which branch of learning Dr. Spencer was especially
proficient. He was a scholar of the medieval type. He
was a devoted churchman and recluse from society, not from
any unsocial or misanthropical feelings, but because solitude
afforded opportunity for study. With highly cultivated
tastes, he was simple, almost to asceticism, in his habits,
for he was thus from small means enabled to gratify his
passion for books. His knowledge of the languages was
profound. He paid but little attention to the natural
sciences, doubtless having imbibed a prejudice against them
in early life from the character of the French Philosophers
of the past century. He excelled as a teacher of the ancient
languages, and was probably more thorough in his training
of boys in thete studies than any man in the State. This