Meanwhile another seed was sown in this fruitful ground, and another name was associated with a great public benefaction, the name of John Howland, a native of Newport, but from his ninth year a resident of Providence and a barber by trade, became, in 1799, the father of the free school system of Rhode Island. Not all at once was this good work done, but slowly and in spite of much opposition, chiefly from the poor who were to profit most by it. Years were yet to pass before the pride as well as the consciences of the people became enlisted in its behalf. In the commercial history of the State the foundation of the Providence Bank, in 1791, was an event of great importance, to be followed at intervals by others with various degrees of success. But among them all not one bore so directly upon the moral growth of the community as the Providence Institution for Savings, founded in 1819. Great hopes were founded on a canal connecting the tide-water of Providence River with the north line of the State. A company for this purpose was formed in 1796, and so great was the confidence which the undertaking inspired, that John Brown, a leading merchant of Providence, subscribed forty thousand dollars to the stock. The project failed, and though enthusiastically renewed in 1823, failed again and forever. The yellow fever belongs to our record, and Rhode Island came in for a full share of the destruction occasioned by the September gale of 1815. Most towns hand down from generation to generation the story of some great fire which swept over it in its young days, leaving ruin and desolation in its path. The "great fire" of Providence was the fire of 1801, the memory of which still lives in the traditions of our own generation. Pleasant memories also belong to our record. When Washington made his first visit to the East as President, Rhode Island had not yet entered the Union. When she did he made a second visit to the East in recognition of her accession, and was enthusiastically welcomed. He had already been there under very different circumstances during the war. We have spoken of John Howland as a public benefactor. Another of these benefactors of their race was Ebenezer Knight Dexter, founder of the Dexter Asylum, who having amassed a large fortune in honorable commerce, gave sixty thousand dollars of it to the support of the poor. A still more important movement was made in the interest of the poor, when the first temperance meeting was held in Providence in 1827.