This was the school of Alexander Hays, an emancipated slave of the Fowler family of Maryland.
Hays succeeded his wife as a teacher.

He soon had the support of such prominent men as Rev.Doctor Sampson, William Winston Seaton and R.S.
Coxe.

Joseph T.and Thomas H.Mason and Mr.and Mrs.Fletcher were Hays's contemporaries.

The last two were teachers from England.
On account of the feeling then developing against white persons instructing Negroes, these philanthropists saw their schoolhouses burned, themselves expelled from the white churches, and finally driven from the city in 1858.[1] Other white men and women were teaching colored children during these years.

The most prominent of these were Thomas Tabbs, an erratic philanthropist, Mr.Nutall, an Englishman; Mr.Talbot, a successful tutor stationed near the present site of the Franklin School; and Mrs.George Ford, a Virginian, conducting a school on New Jersey Avenue between K and L Streets.[2] The efforts of Miss Myrtilla Miner, their contemporary, will be mentioned elsewhere.[3] [Footnote 1: Besides the classes taught by these workers there was the Eliza Ann Cook private school; Miss Washington's school; a select primary school; a free Catholic school maintained by the St.Vincent de Paul Society, an association of colored Catholics in connection with St.Matthew's Church.