They had established a school with one Benjamin Davis as a teacher.

He reported an attendance of one hundred and eight pupils, four of whom "could write a very legible hand," "read the Scriptures with tolerable facility," and had commenced arithmetic.

Eight others had learned to read, but had made very little progress in writing.
Among his less progressive pupils fifteen could spell words of three or four syllables and read easy lessons, some had begun to write, while the others were chiefly engaged in learning the alphabet and spelling monosyllables.[1] It is significant that colored children of Alexandria, just as in the case of Georgetown, attended schools established for the whites.[2] Their coeducation extended not only to Sabbath schools but to other institutions of learning, which some Negroes attended during the week.[3] Mrs.Maria Hall, one of the early teachers of the District of Columbia, obtained her education in a mixed school of Alexandria.[4] Controlled then by aristocratic people who did not neglect the people of color, Alexandria also became a sort of center for the uplift of the blacks in Northern Virginia.
[Footnote 1: _Proceedings of the Am.Conv_., etc., 1797, p.

35.] [Footnote 2: _Ibid_., 1797, p.

36.] [Footnote 3: _Proceedings of the Am.