in Talbot County, Maryland.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Ibid._, 1871, p. 364.]

After some opposition this work began to progress somewhat in
Virginia.[1] The first school established in that colony was for
Indians and Negroes.[2] In the course of time the custom of teaching
the latter had legal sanction there. On binding out a "bastard or
pauper child black or white," churchwardens specifically required
that he should be taught "to read, write, and calculate as well as to
follow some profitable form of labor."[3] Other Negroes also had an
opportunity to learn. Reports of an increase in the number of colored
communicants came from Accomac County where four or five hundred
families were instructing their slaves at home, and had their children
catechized on Sunday. Unusual interest in the cause at Lambeth, in the
same colony, is attested by an interesting document, setting forth
in 1724 a proposition for "_Encouraging the Christian Education of
Indian, Negro, and Mulatto Children_." The author declares it to be
the duty of masters and mistresses of America to endeavor to educate
and instruct their heathen slaves in the Christian faith, and
mentioned the fact that this work had been "earnestly recommended by
his Majesty's instructions." To encourage the movement it was proposed
that "every Indian, Negro and Mulatto child that should be baptized
and afterward brought into the Church and publicly catechized by the
minister, and should before the fourteenth year of his or her age
give a distinct account of the creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten
Commandments," should receive from the minister a certificate which
would entitle such children to exemption from paying all levies until
the age of eighteen.[4] The neighboring colony of North Carolina
also was moved by these efforts despite some difficulties which the