cute an ample and authentick Deed or Deeds of Conveyance of the premises to any person or persons who have or may purchase the same." All the seven trustees signed this petition. The lower house voted to grant it, but the upper house refused to concur, probably on the ground that they had the authority already, by virtue of the town grant to their predecessors in office.59 At all events, the trustees, a few months later60 (Brockett having meanwhile died), received the stipulated price from his heirs, and another party who was interested with him in the purchase, and gave them deeds in the usual form with full covenants of warranty. Toward the close of the eighteenth century, the southeast corner of this Church street lot was let for 999 years to John Mix. It is described as lying "on the East side of the Green or square part of the school lot, so called . . . " bounded southerly on Court street 46 feet, easterly on Orange street 90 feet, northerly on said school lot, and westerly on land of Richard Cutler and Joseph Bradley, reserving an annual rent of £6, 18/.61 After the country had adopted a decimal standard, this was estimated as equivalent to $23, and that amount was paid until May 15, 1861, when the Trustees, for the gross sum of $525, released and quitclaimed to Enos Foot, assignee of John Mix, all the rents thereafter to accrue during the rest of the term. It will be observed that the trustees did not convey or release the reversion. This lot is the site of the Hotel Davenport, appropriately so named after the chief trustee under Governor Hopkins' will. Consequently, on May 10, A. D. 2784, after the lapse of only eight hundred and seventy-four years more, the School will come into possession of a very handsome piece of business property. In 1800, leases for 999 years, for gross sums, from December 1 of that year, were made by the trustees, of twenty-five acres of meadow, belonging to the School, in what had then 59 State MSS. Archives, I Colleges and Schools, 118, 119. 6o In January, 1747 (N. S.), New Haven Land Records, XIII, 136, 137. 61 N. H. Land Records, Vol. 46, p. 136. become the town of North Haven, but until 1786 had been part of New Haven. £232 in all was realized from this source." 62 On March 31, 1801, they (N. H. Land Records, Vol. 52, 407) let most of their Church street lot to New Haven County for 999 years. The lease provides that "said lot is estimated at two hundred and sixty six pounds, two shillings, the interest whereof being fifteen pound, nineteen shillings, and four pence per annum is to be annually paid to the Treasurer of said Hopkins Committee by the treasurer of said County, the payment of which annual interest or rent is to be secured by a bond to be given by the treasurer of said County to the Treasurer of sd Hopkins Committee, and such interest or rent is to be due and payable annually until sd County shall pay to said Hopkins Committee the full sum of two hundred and sixty six pounds and two shillings, which the contracting parties have agreed may be done whenever the County shall choose to do the same." Receipt of such a bond is acknowledged to their full satisfaction, and "in consideration thereof" and to carry their before recited "agreement into effect," the Committee let the land to the County "for the full term of nine hundred and ninety nine years from" March 31, 1801, with covenants for quiet enjoyment during the whole term aforesaid, and that they would "resign and deliver up to the treasurer of said County of New Haven the bond which we have this day received for security of the annual rent, whenever said County shall pay to us or our successors the sum of two hundred and sixty pounds and two shillings." The County proceeded to put up a jail on this lot. It has since been replaced by the City Hall. On March 22, 1802, the rest of the Church street lot, north of the jail, was let for 999 years (Vol. 52, 419), for the gross sum of $140.58, no rent being reserved. This is the lot now. occupied by the Court House. Our successors, therefore, who will gather to celebrate the eleven hundred and fortieth anniversary of the School in June, 62 The lessees were Gideon Todd, Joshua Barnes, John Barnet, Nathaniel Dayton and Harman Robinson; see Thorpe, North Haven Annals, 181. A. D. 2800, may find it installed in the present City Hall; but it cannot use the County Court House as a dormitory or Rector's residence before March 22 in the following year. Toward the close of the last century a crown lease made in England by Alfred the Great for 999 years came to an end, and the crown took quiet possession. Let us hope that the Hopkins Grammar School, which has already outlived one English dynasty, may round out her millennium in the year 2660, and after a century or two more of useful activity, enter on her inheritance of the North Haven meadows, and of well-improved central property in a city that may then itself, not improbably, contain a million inhabitants. Meanwhile her ownership in real estate in possession extends only to her school building and grounds, and to the Pratt Field for athletic sports. The title to the Hopkins House, the dormitory in Chapel street, is in an auxiliary corporation in which the trustees have only a small stock interest, presented to them by some of the friends of the School, who subscribed for it to increase her facilities for receiving boys from out of town. The school was at first kept in the town schoolhouse, on the Green. This was situated nearly opposite the Pierpont house.63 In 1723 another schoolhouse was put up on the Green, for the exclusive use of the grammar school. This was placed near College street, and between that and the church, which stood in the center of the square.64 It is shown on the Wadsworth map of New Haven in 1748, as standing next to the jail, opposite what is now Farnam Hall. It is certain that in 1756 a brick schoolhouse was built by the trustees, in which the grammar school was kept until 1801, but where it was placed is not wholly clear. The late John W. Barber, who was born in 1798, states in his "History and Antiquities of New Haven" (p. 51), that the first house built for the school "was on the East side of Church street, fronting the 68 Blake, Chronicles of New Haven Green, 17, 182. |