For his first school he rented the building on the northeast corner of Oronoco and Washington Streets, next to the house where the widow of General Harry Lee resided!
Alexandria was in a turmoil of hospitality, welcoming the Marquis de la Fayette. Hallowell and his wife of a few hours stood in their front door the morning after their marriage and saw the famous Frenchman paying his devoirs to Mrs. Lee. Hallowell's autobiography pictures the occasion: "When he got opposite," he wrote, "he looked at us, took off his hat, and made a graceful bow, not knowing it was to a lady who had been married the day before." Nor that his liking for a fresh smiling face inspired the schoolmaster to immediately express his emotions in the following verse:
Each lover of Liberty surely must get
Something in honor of LaFayette
There's a LaFayette watch-chain, a LaFayette hat,
A LaFayette this, and a LaFayette that.
But I wanted something as lasting as life
As I took to myself a LaFayette wife.[187]
The school of Benjamin Hallowell filled slowly at first. The ninth boy to enroll was Mrs. Harry Lee's son, Robert Edward. Edmund Lee and Thomas Swann sent their boys, who were "ten dollar" scholars. The time was to come when Hallowell would turn away more than a hundred applicants, but that was after Robert Edward Lee had gone to West Point and distinguished himself.
At the end of his year in Alexandria, Hallowell's child was born. Both he and the mother were very ill, "seemingly with bilious fever." Then, for the first time, Hallowell heard that the "situation on Oronoco Street, on the edge of town as it was, had always been regarded as unhealthy."[188] He could not bear the idea of his wife and family continuing in a place that was so evil, or of inviting his scholars to share such an environment. Then it was that he got in contact with the widow Hooe, made arrangements to give up his first schoolhouse and immediately engaged the more healthy situation on Washington Street.
The house which was so "unhealthy" is a replica in almost every respect of Mrs. Harry Lee's house, but there is no record of Mrs. Lee complaining of the situation nor of the health of her boys.
The new schoolhouse, so commonly spoken of as the Lloyd House [220 North Washington Street.] by Alexandrians, was built by John Hooe in 1793. In 1826, Benjamin Hallowell rented it from the widow Hooe and in the spring vacation with his ill wife in his arms, moved into this building so admirably adapted to his purpose.
"My school room," he tells us, "was on the first floor, north end, all across the house. I having obtained permission of my Landlady, in our arrangements, to remove the partition on condition of replacing it by one with folding doors, when I should leave the property, which was done. My lecture room was the back room over the school room.... The very day the quarter's rent was due the widow Hooe's carriage was at the door, and this continued to be her custom as long as she lived. If I had not the money, which was generally the case, I would frankly tell her so, and add that the first money I could get, and could possibly spare, I would take to her, with which she was always satisfied. She never said a word like urging me, or being disappointed in not getting the rent due, and I did take her the very first I received, never permitting it to be in my possession over night."[189]
The frail Mrs. Hallowell opened a school for girls in the front room over the schoolroom, and Hallowell lectured to her scholars. Money being very scarce with them at this time, they could not afford two stoves, so Hallowell and the servant, Nancy, carried the stove from schoolroom to lecture room as needed.
