institution to the maintenance of an evening school.  An effort at the establishment of a day school was made in 1850, but it was not effected before 1852.  A building was then erected in Lombard Street and the school known thereafter as the Institute for Colored Youth was opened with Charles L. Reason of New York in charge.  Under him the institution was at once a success in preparing advanced pupils of both sexes for the higher vocations of teaching and preaching.  The attendance soon necessitated increased accommodations for which Joseph Dawson and other Quakers liberally provided in later years.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Special Report of the United States Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 380.]

This favorable tendency in Pennsylvania led to the establishment of Avery College at Alleghany City.  The necessary fund was bequeathed by Rev. Charles Avery, a rich man of that section, who left an estate of about $300,000 to be applied to the education and Christianization of the African race.[1] Some of this fund was devoted to missionary work in Africa, large donations were made to colored institutions of learning, and another portion was appropriated to the establishment of Avery College.  This institution was incorporated in 1849.  Soon thereafter it advertised for students, expressing willingness to make every provision without regard to religious proclivities.  The school had a three-story brick building, up-to-date apparatus for teaching various branches of natural science, a library of all kinds of literature, and an endowment of $25,000 to provide for its maintenance.  Rev. Philotas Dean, the only white teacher connected with this institution, was its first principal.  He served until 1856 when he was succeeded by his assistant, M.H.  Freeman, who in 1863 was succeeded by George B. Vashon.  Miss Emma J. Woodson was an assistant in the institution from 1856 to 1867.  After the din of the Civil War had ceased the institution took on new life, electing a new corps of teachers, who placed the work on a higher plane.  Among these were Rev. H.H.  Garnett, president, B.K.  Sampson, Harriet C. Johnson, and Clara G. Toop.[2]

[Footnote 1:  African Repository, vol. xxxiv., p. 156.]

[Footnote 2:  Special Report of the U.S.  Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 381.]

It was due also to the successful forces at work in Pennsylvania that the Ashmun Institute, now Lincoln University, was established in that State.  The need of higher education having come to the attention of the Presbytery of New Castle, that body decided to establish within its limits an institution for the “scientific, classical, and theological education of the colored youth of the male sex.”  In 1853 the Synod approved the plans of the founders and provided that the institution should be under the supervision and control of the Presbytery or Synod within whose bounds it might be located.  A committee to solicit funds, find a site, and secure a charter