Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/116

112 were to cede it to those of the academy; the latter undertaking to discharge the debt, to keep for ever open in the building a large hall for occasional preachers, according to the original intention, and maintain a free school for the instruction of poor children. Writings were accordingly drawn; and, on paying the debts, the trustees of the academy were put in possession of the premises; and, by dividing the great and lofty hall into stories and different rooms above and below for the several schools, and purchasing some additional ground, the whole was soon made fit for our purpose, and the scholars removed into the building. The whole care and trouble of agreeing with the workmen, purchasing materials, and superintending the work, fell upon me; and I went through it the more cheerfully, as it did not then interfere with my private business.

The question of an earlier date for the foundation of the University is said to arise from the purchase by the Trustees in 1749 of this incomplete building, which was erected by subscriptions procured in good faith in preceding years for the maintenance therein of a certain religious preaching as well also of a Charity School; and a gain of nine years in the University, existence is thus affirmed, inasmuch as the former enterprise was projected in 1740, and the building then shortly begun was designed to further these two objects. The first public claim in our own day of this earlier date is sanctioned by its publication in the University Catalogue of 1893–4. The year in which free preaching and a free school were thus projected, need not here be considered, particularly as the operations of the latter feature, a free school, were not consummated for ten years and more after, and then only under the efforts of the assignees, though the preaching privilege was at once exercised—even before the roof was on. The Academy Trustees in thus taking title to the premises obligated themselves "to discharge the debt, to keep forever open in the building a large hall for occasional preachers and maintain a free school for the instruction of poor children." The trustees of 1749 having erected the building by subscriptions gathered upon these pledges, could not but seek from their assignees the condition that these objects be carried out in due time, which the Academy Trustees were in no wise loth to do, as these would not only prove attractions to the new movement but give them speedy possession of the needed edifice; and they, in continuing good faith to the original