ton, in the office of Dr. Thomas Henderson, who had
resigned as assistant surgeon in the army, and was a practising
physician of eminence in Washington. He also attended medical lectures
at the old medical college, corner of Tenth and E streets. It was his
intention at that time to go to Liberia, and his professional
education was conducted under the auspices of the Colonization
Society. This, with the influence of Judge Morsell, gave him
privileges never extended here to any other Colored man. He decided,
however, not to go to Liberia, and in 1836 opened his school. He was a
refined and polished gentleman, and conceded to be the foremost
Colored man in culture, in intellectual force, and general influence
in this district at that time. His school-house on New York Avenue was
burned by an incendiary about 1843, and his flourishing and excellent
school was thus ended. For a time he subsequently taught music, in
which he was very proficient; but about 1846 he opened a school on
School-house Hill, in the Hobbrook Military School building, near the
corner of N Street, north, and Twenty-third Street, west, and had a
large school there till about 1851, when he relinquished the business,
giving his attention henceforth exclusively to music, and with eminent
success. He died in 1861. His school was very large and of a superior
character.

CHARLES H. MIDDLETON'S SCHOOL

was started in the same section of the city, in a school-house which
then stood, near the corner of Twenty-second Street, west, and I,
north, and which had been used by Henry Hardy for a white school.
Though both Fleet's and Johnson's schools were in full tide of success
in that vicinity, he gathered a good school, and when his two
competitors retired--as they both did about this time,--his school
absorbed a large portion of their patronage, and was thronged. In
1852, he went temporarily with his school to Sixteenth Street, and
thence to the basement of Union Bethel Church on M Street, near
Sixteenth, in which, during the administration of President Pierce, he
had an exceedingly large and excellent school, at the same period when
Miss Miner was prosecuting her signal work. Mr. Middleton, now a
messenger in the Navy Department, a native of Savannah, Ga., is
free-born, and received his very good education in schools in that
city, sometimes with white and sometimes with Colored children. When
he commenced his school he had just returned from the Mexican war, and