Two officers of the African School Society seek to amend its original act of incorporation to increase its property holdings beyond $5,000. They report that the Society had expended nearly $2,500 "in the purchase of lots and in the erection of two school houses thereon, capable of receiving about forty children each: one for boys and one for girls." They confess that the income from the remaining funds "is sufficient for the support of one school only, and hence they have been necessitated to discontinue their school for girls." The petitioners declare that "there are several hundreds of colored children in this City, who, being excluded from the benefit of our free schools, remain in a great measure dependent on charity for the means of obtaining the first rudiments of education, or they must otherwise grow up neglected and debased, forming a noxious mass in the midst of our population." They believe that "a property of about Fifteen thousand dollars would answer the purposes now suggested for supplying reasonable means for the education of most of the otherwise destitute colored children in this city." They therefore ask that their "act of incorporation may be so amended as to allow the said Society to hold property to the amount of Fifteen thousand dollars."
Result: House: read, referred; committee "adverse".
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Repository: Delaware State Archives, Dover, Delaware
