or of
ante-dating Harvard College by a few years, and of thus being the very
oldest in the land, is the Boston Latin School. For two hundred and
fifty years it has been a part, and an important part, of the town and
city of Boston, influencing all its other institutions, social,
literary, moral, political, and religious, and largely giving to the
metropolis, directly or indirectly, its wide-spread fame as the "Athens
of America."

The establishment of this School has its origin in a vote of which the
following is a transcript:

"... 13th of the 2d moneth 1635 ... att a General meeting upon public
notice ... it was generally agreed upon, that our brother Philemon
Pormout shall be intreated to become scholemaster for the teaching and
nourtering of children with us."

At this time, Boston was a village of perhaps, fifteen hundred
inhabitants, and it was a hundred years later before it had reached as
many thousands.

The first school-house was on the north side of School street, close by
the burying-ground which had already received the mortal dust of several
of the early settlers. It was a century before King's Chapel was built,
but at the foot of School street, near the site of the Old South
meeting-house, was Governor Winthrop's imposing mansion; and nearly
opposite this, was the Blue Lion Tavern.

The foundation of this school was soon followed by several others.
Charlestown had a school in 1636, Salem and Ipswich in 1637, and the
Eliot school in Roxbury was established in 1645. The Latin school was
alone in Boston, however, for nearly fifty years, and it was wisely
cherished and nurtured by the town. Mr. Pormout was paid a salary of
sixty pounds a year, a sum considered comportable to the talent
employed, and the grave responsibilities of the position.

The masters who succeeded to Mr. Pormout are, in their order: Rev.
Daniel Maude, Rev. John Woodbridge, Robert Woodmansie, Benjamin
Thompson, Ezekiel Cheever, Rev. Nathaniel Williams, and John Lovell,
whose rule continued for forty-two years, or until the Revolutionary
war. Among Lovell's pupils was Harrison Gray Otis. During the excitement
of the war, the school was closed for a short time, but was again opened
in June, 1776, under the rule of Mr. Samuel Hunt. He was in authority
for twenty-nine years and was then succeeded by William Bigelow of
Salem, who held the sceptre until 1813, when it passed to Benjamin
Apthorp Gould, and in 1828 to Frederick P. Leverett