A third unsuccessful attempt to secure the founding of a college was made in 1761,[3] and a fourth in 1763, when contrary to the earlier course of events, the rock, on which the project was shipwrecked, was found in the Upper House.  The college was to be placed at Annapolis, to occupy Governor Bladen’s mansion, and to have a faculty of seven masters, who were to be provided with five servants.  The expense was to be defrayed from the colonial treasury, in case a tax to be levied on bachelors should prove insufficient for the purpose.[4]

The failure of these projects did not dampen the zeal of the advocates of higher education.  In 1773 we find William Eddis, Surveyor of Customs at Annapolis, writing that the Legislature of the Province had determined to fit up Governor Bladen’s mansion and “to endow and form a college for the education of youth in every liberal and useful branch of science,” which college, “conducted under excellent regulations, will shortly preclude the necessity of crossing the Atlantic for the completion of a classical and polite education."[5] The gathering storm of war, however, drew men’s attention away from this project.

THE FIRST UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.

The Rev. Dr. William Smith,[6] head of what is now the University of Pennsylvania, being out of employment on account of the revocation of that college’s charter, was called as pastor in Chestertown on the Eastern Shore in 1780.  To add to his income, he conceived the idea “of opening a school for instruction in higher branches of education.”  As a nucleus for his school, he took an old academy, the Kent County school, and, beginning the work of teaching, was so successful, that in 1782 the Legislature, on his application, granted the school a charter as Maryland’s first college.  To it the name of Washington was given, “in honorable and perpetual memory of His Excellency, General George Washington.”  Dr. Smith was so earnest and zealous in the presentation of the claims of the college, that in five years he had raised $14,000 from the people of the Eastern Shore.  All seemed propitious for the college.  In 1783 the first class graduated and the first degrees ever granted in Maryland were conferred, at the same time the corner-stone of the college building was laid, and in 1784 General Washington himself visited the college.

Dr. Smith prepared a three years’ curriculum for the institution, equal to that of any college of the day and similar to the one used at the University of Pennsylvania.  But the Western Shore could not endure that the educational success of its rival section of the State should so far outstrip its own.  In the early days of the State, the sections were nearly equal in importance and the prevailing dualism of the political system invaded the field of education.