Benjamin Hallowell
b. 1799 · d. 1877
Quaker educator, scientist, and surveyor who ran a boys’ boarding school at 609 Oronoco Street from 1824 onward. Robert E. Lee Robert E. Lee b. 1807 · d. 1870 United States Army officer who spent much of his childhood in Alexandria at the house on Oronoco Street before his West Point appointment, and who later commanded Confederate … received his pre–West Point tutoring from Hallowell in 1824–1825.
Benjamin Hallowell, a Pennsylvania-born Quaker, opened his Alexandria boys’ school in 1824 at 609 Oronoco Street, almost directly across the street from the Lee family’s rented Boyhood Home. He prepared students in mathematics and natural philosophy for college admission and the federal service academies; among his students was the young Robert E. Lee Robert E. Lee b. 1807 · d. 1870 United States Army officer who spent much of his childhood in Alexandria at the house on Oronoco Street before his West Point appointment, and who later commanded Confederate … , whom he tutored in 1824–1825 ahead of Lee’s appointment to West Point. [1] Powell, History of Old Alexandria, 1928 Book
Hallowell co-founded the Alexandria Lyceum (1839) and was first president of Maryland Agricultural College (now the University of Maryland) from 1859 to 1860. His autobiography, published posthumously, is a primary source for antebellum Alexandria’s educational culture.
Associated places
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1824–1842
Benjamin Hallowell ran his boys' classical school at 609 Oronoco Street from 1824 onward.
Sources
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1.
Mary G. Powell, The History of Old Alexandria, Virginia, from July 13, 1749 to May 24, 1861, Richmond: William Byrd Press, 1928.
Book
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