In 1882, the University of Maryland obtained from the Legislature authority to open a Dental Department.[24] In 1837, the first Dental Lectures in America had been delivered before the Medical Students of the University, and it was quite fitting that there should be a dental school connected with it.  The first class numbered 60, the last 132, and in eight years there have been 250 graduates.  This fact and the further one that twice has it been found necessary to make large additions to the buildings of the department on Green Street, adjoining those of the Medical School, will show how rapid has been its growth.

The University has, at present, flourishing departments of Medicine, Law, and Dentistry, and worthily maintains the reputation of thorough and careful training, which it has gained in its history of eighty years.

COKESBURY COLLEGE.

In Maryland was the first Methodist Church in America, and it was natural that here too should be the first Methodist College in the world.  There was no permanent organization of this denomination in the United States, until John Wesley, on the petition of the American churches, consecrated Rev. Thomas Coke, Superintendent for the United States, in 1784.  Dr. Coke sailed directly from England, and arrived in New York on November 3, 1784.  He thence traveled southward and, on the 15th of the same month, met Francis Asbury at Dover, Delaware.  At this first meeting, Coke suggested the founding of an institution for higher education, to be under the patronage of the Methodist Church.[25] This was not a new idea to Asbury; for, four years previous to this meeting, John Dickins had made the same suggestion to him.  The earlier idea had contemplated only a school, on the plan of Wesley’s at Knightwood, England, and for that purpose, a subscription had been opened in North Carolina in 1781.[26]

Coke’s suggestion, to have a college, was favorably received and, at the famous Christmas Conference at Baltimore in 1784, the Church was formally organized, with Coke and Asbury as Bishops, and the first Methodist College was founded.  Thus the denomination which has increased to be the largest in the United States, recognized the paramount importance of education at its very foundation.[27] To the new institution, the name of Cokesbury was given, in honor of the two Bishops, from whose names the title was compounded.  For this College, collections were yearly taken, amounting in 1786 to L800 and implying great self-denial by the struggling churches ill-supplied with wealth.[28]