ob being determined to lay hold of him and Lee, they fled from
the city to save their lives, returning when General Jackson, coming
back from Virginia a few days after the outbreak, gave notice that the
fugitives should be protected. The persecution of William Wormley was
so violent and persistent, that his health and spirits sank under its
effects, his business was broken up, and he died a poor man, scarcely
owning a shelter for his dying couch. The school-house was repaired
after the riot, and occupied for a time by Margaret Thompson's school,
and still stands in the rear of James Wormley's restaurant.

BENJAMIN M'COY'S, AND OTHER SCHOOLS.

About this time another school was opened in Georgetown, by Nancy
Grant, a sister of Mrs. William Becraft, a well-educated Colored
woman. She was teaching as early as 1828, and had a useful school for
several years. Mr. Nuthall, an Englishman, was teaching in Georgetown
during this period, and as late as 1833 he went to Alexandria and
opened a school in that city. William Syphax, among others now
resident in Washington, attended his school in Alexandria about 1833.
He was a man of ability, well educated, and one of the best teachers
of his time in the district. His school in Georgetown was at first in
Dunbarton Street, and afterward on Montgomery.

The old maxim, that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
Church," seems to find its illustration in this history. There is no
period in the annals of the country in which the fires of persecution
against the education of the Colored race burned more fiercely in this
district, and the country at large, than in the five years from 1831
to 1836, and it was during this period that a larger number of
respectable Colored schools were established than in any other five
years prior to the war. In 1833, the same year in which Ambush's
school was started, Benjamin M. McCoy, a Colored man, opened a school
in the northern part of the city, on L Street, between Third and
Fourth streets, west. In 1834 he moved to Massachusetts Avenue,
continuing his school there till he went to Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, in the autumn of 1836, to finish the engagement of Rev.
John F. Cook, who came back to Washington at that time and re-opened
his school. The school at Lancaster was a free public Colored school,
and Mr. McCoy was solicited to continue another year; but declining,
came back, and in 1837 opened a school in the basement of Asbury
Church