446 HISTORY OP 



success and how much benefit to the community, its present 

 widely extended reputation will best attest. 



The school for the education of the male youth of the soci- 

 ety and adjacent country, continued its operations until in the 

 year 1815,* when it was assigned to Mr. John Beck, the pre- 

 sent able and indefatigable principal — a gentleman of ac- 

 knowledged ability, of great goodness of heart, enthusiastical- 

 ly devoted to his profession, and remarkable for the fatherly 

 care and aflection which he has always evinced for his pupils, 

 the school grew rapidly into public favor under his superin- 

 tendence ; and at tliis day, its reputation is deservedly high as 

 an academy where the English and German languages, Maths- 

 raatics, Chemistry, Astronomy and all the sciences are taught 

 with unsurpassed skill, to young men from almost every State 

 in the Union. 



We now return once more to the movements of the friends 

 of education, in the borough of Lancaster. Being the metrop- 

 olis of the county, we must judge of the progress of know- 

 ledge in the rural districts by the encouragement given to 

 learning in this local Capital. About the year 1780, Jasper 

 Yeatcs, Esq., Casper Shalfner, Esq , Col. George Ross, Charles 

 Hall, Esq., and other gentlemen of the place, finding that the 

 existing Schools under the charge of the Lutheran and German 

 Reformed Congregations, as also the one established a number 

 of years previous by the Moravians, and conducted upon the 

 same plan, were inadequate to the growing wants of the people, 

 and incapable of teaching the higher branches, engaged the 

 services of a teacher of recommended abilities, to conduct a 

 select academy for the education of their male children. This 

 Academy continued in existence for several years, as the High 

 School of the place, until, owing to the violent temper of the 

 teacher and the many indignities which he offered to the pupils 

 under his charge, it was finally suspended. This school sugges- 

 ted the idea of establishing another; but upon a surer basis, 

 under the control of Trustees by an act of incorporation, and 

 ultimately begat the application to the Legislature for the incor- 

 poration of "Franklin College." 



On the 10th of March, A. D. 1787,* the General Assembly of 



•Page 318 antea. 



j-2 Sm. laws, p-jje 398. 



