In the school which opened in this building in 1744 Harry and Andrew served as teachers.[1] In the beginning the school had about sixty young students, and had a very good daily attendance for a number of years.

The directors of the institution planned to send out annually between thirty and forty youths "well instructed in religion and capable of reading their Bibles to carry home and diffuse the same knowledge to their fellow slaves."[2] It is highly probable that after 1740 this school was attended only by free persons of color.

Because the progress of Negro education had been rather rapid, South Carolina enacted that year a law prohibiting any person from teaching or causing a slave to be taught, or from employing or using a slave as a scribe in any manner of writing.
[Footnote 1: Meriwether, _Education in South Carolina_, p.

123; McCrady, _South Carolina_, etc., p.

246; Dalcho, _An Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina_, pp.
156, 157, 164.] [Footnote 2: _Ibid_., pp.