In the south-west corner of it, some hundred feet or more from the street boundaries, was elected the plain wooden building, about fifty-five feet long by forty wide in which, on the first Monday of June, 1807, when the population of the town was only about five hundred, the Grammar School was opened. It was attended by the sons and daughters of the well-to-do citizens of York, and on the few existing records may be found many a well known name. In 1812, the Rev. John Strachan. D.D., was appointed Rector of York, and succeeded the Rev. Mr. Stewart as Head Master of this school.[22] Mr. Barnabas Bidwell (father of the late Hon. M. S. Bidwell) kept a good Latin School at Bath, on the Bay of Quinté, in 1811. In 1813, he removed to Kingston, where he taught for twenty years until he died in 1833. [22] _Canadian Educational Monthly_, February 1889, page 58. In 1820, the "Central School at York" was opened under the mastership of Mr. Joseph Spragge, father of the late Chief Justice Spragge. Lieutenant-Governor and Lady Sarah Maitland took a special interest in the success of this school. In a _View of Upper Canada_, published at Baltimore in 1814, by Mr. M. Smith, (who resided in the Province from 1808 until the breaking out of the War in 1812) he said:-- "The greater part of the inhabitants are not well educated, for, as they were poor when they came to the Province and the country being but thinly settled for a number of years, they had but little chance for the benefit of schools. But since the country has become settled, or the inhabitants rich, or in a good way of living, which is almost universally the case, they pay considerable attention to learning. Ten dollars a year is the common price given for the tuition of each scholar by good teachers."--Page 52. In 1813, Rev. John Langhorn (a Church of England missionary at Earnestown and Bath from 1787 to 1812, and teacher of a school) made a present of his library to the inhabitants of the Bay of Quinte district. In 1814 Rev. Robert Baldwin was appointed Grammar schoolmaster at Cornwall, vice Rev. John (afterwards Dean) Bethune resigned. In 1815 the Midland District School, so-called, was incorporated. Dr. Strachan resigned the head mastership of the District School on July 1st, 1823. He was succeeded by Mr. Samuel Armour, M.A., a graduate of Glasgow University, who afterwards became a clergyman of the English Church, and officiated many years in the township of Cavan.