Merion seems to have left no written records of educational activity. There is a possibility that Marmaduke Pardo[490] may have been connected with a school there, soon after his coming from Wales, but this is little better than a conjecture.[491] In the loft of the present building (which, however, does not date back so early as this study) there is a school room in which are rude tables and benches. One of them bears the date, 1711, rudely cut with a jackknife. If, in the early eighteenth century, the meeting house still sufficed for school, it is quite probable that the same was true much earlier; at any rate, no search thus far has revealed anything concerning an early schoolhouse. The Radnor Monthly Meeting Minutes in 1791 state: [Sidenote: School, at least not according to plan of yearly meeting] At Merion and Valley we have not discovered any progress in laying a foundation for schools in the way proposed by the yearly meeting.[492] which would favor still further the idea that any school held there at that time was perhaps in the meeting house. [Sidenote: Horsham] The earliest mention made of Horsham Meeting is that in the Abington Minutes of 1777, stating: It is agreed that there be two overseers chosen for Horsham Meeting, viz., John Michener and Thomas Iredell.[493] This was doubtless very near the time of its first establishment as a preparative meeting. The earliest preparative minutes accessible are those beginning 1757.[494] We may feel certain, however, that there was a school before this time, for in the _Gazette_ for 1753 there appeared an advertisement which stated: Any person well qualified for keeping a school and comes well recommended by applying to John Lukens, surveyor, Abraham Lukens, or Benjamin Cadwalader, living in Horsham township, near the meeting house, may meet with proper encouragement.[495] [Sidenote: Assistance by donations] This may have been the same stone house in which Isaac Comly of Byberry taught in 1799, we cannot say. In the records of the preparative meeting on the first page there is an account of donations concerning schools, but the page is so badly mutilated that no straight account can be made of it.[496] It will be recalled from the account given of Abington schools that Horsham members were also benefitted by Carter’s legacy and others.[497] A committee appointed to investigate the conditions of schools in Horsham Meeting reported (1779): [Sidenote: Report on Horsham schools, 1779] [Sidenote: Four schools mentioned]