[2]
A third unsuccessful attempt to secure the founding of a college was
made in 1761,[3] and a fourth in 1763, when contrary to the earlier
course of events, the rock, on which the project was shipwrecked, was
found in the Upper House. The college was to be placed at Annapolis, to
occupy Governor Bladen's mansion, and to have a faculty of seven
masters, who were to be provided with five servants. The expense was to
be defrayed from the colonial treasury, in case a tax to be levied on
bachelors should prove insufficient for the purpose.[4]
The failure of these projects did not dampen the zeal of the advocates
of higher education. In 1773 we find William Eddis, Surveyor of Customs
at Annapolis, writing that the Legislature of the Province had
determined to fit up Governor Bladen's mansion and "to endow and form a
college for the education of youth in every liberal and useful branch of
science," which college, "conducted under excellent regulations, will
shortly preclude the necessity of crossing the Atlantic for the
completion of a classical and polite education."[5] The gathering storm
of war, however, drew men's attention away from this project.
THE FIRST UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
The Rev. Dr. William Smith,[6] head of what is now the University of
Pennsylvania, being out of employment on account of the revocation of
that college's charter, was called as pastor in Chestertown on the
Eastern Shore in 1780.
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