Mr. Linthicum was a prominent and prosperous merchant of the highest type, a man of great civic activities, and deeply interested in everything which tended to beautify the community. In his will by a legacy of $50,000 he provided for the endowment of a school for the free education of white boys of Georgetown in useful learning and in the spirit and practice of Christian virtue being, as he expressed it, convinced that knowledge and piety constitute the only assurance of happiness and healthful progress to the human race and devoutly recognizing the solemn duty to society which develops in its members, and entertaining a serious desire to contribute in some manner to the permanent welfare of the community, amongst whom my life has been spent. As a commentary on the length to which partisan feeling went in the years succeeding the War Between the States, it may be stated that efforts to have the Linthicum Institute incorporated by Congress were prevented by Charles Sumner, Senator from Massachusetts, for the reason that the benefits were confined to white youths. [Illustration: EDWARD MAGRUDER LINTHICUM] The Linthicum Institute began its career in the lower floor of one side of the Curtis school building on P Street, opposite Saint John's Church. The name in large gold letters used to be there. The present building was erected about 1890 on the south side of O Street near 31st, the school occupying the lower floor, and Linthicum Hall, considered by the belles of the nineties to have the "best floor 'par excellence' for dancing anywhere," being the upper portion. I have been told it was the first night school in the District of Columbia. Mr. Linthicum was a very imposing looking gentleman, was married, but had no children. He and his wife adopted a daughter, Kate, who became Mrs. Dent, and I think it was in honor of her or her son that the little street called Dent Place, just below R and between 30th and 31st Streets was named when that part of Georgetown, then nicknamed "Cooke Park" was developed. [Illustration: WILLIAM WILSON CORCORAN] William Wilson Corcoran, the third son of Thomas Corcoran, was born in George Town on December 27, 1798, in his father's home on Bridge (M) Street. He attended Mr. Kirk's school, later Reverend Addison Belt's, in between, having been for a while a day scholar at Georgetown College. Contrary to his father's wishes for him to complete a classical education, at the age of seventeen he went into a dry goods store belonging to his brothers, James and Thomas. Two years later they established him in a small store of his own on the northwest corner of High (Wisconsin Avenue) and First (N) Streets. Again, two years later they all purchased a two-story brick house on the corner of Bridge (M) and Congress (31st) Streets and commenced a wholesale auction and commission business.