Fifteen years after the laying out of the town, at a session of the House of Burgesses, November 5, 1764, in the fifth year of the reign of George III it was "Resolved, That it is the Opinion of this Committee that the Petition of divers Proprietors of Lots, and other Inhabitants of the Town of Alexandria, in the County of Fairfax, praying that so much of the Act of Assembly for establishing the said Town as obliges the Purchasers of Lots therein to build and improve the same in a limited Time, may be repealed, and the Purchasers left at Liberty to build thereon when convenient to them, is reasonable."[38] George Washington found it convenient to build a house on one of his lots in 1769; the other was not built upon until almost thirty years later. The prodigious development of the new port was accompanied by a growing civic pride and the demand for better public buildings. A story-and-a-half brick town hall was erected in 1759 by funds raised by lottery, tickets selling at ten shillings each, the trustees making themselves responsible for a sum adequate for the purpose. At the trustees' meeting of April 1767, John Dalton and John Carlyle produced an account of moving the courthouse amounting to L52 7_s._ 5-1/2_d._; while William Ramsay presented his account for a "scheme of a lottery to build a Church and Market house" in the amount of L11 12_s._[39] The new town house with its clerk's office and assembly room stood on the northeast corner of the square; nearby on Cameron Street stood the Fairfax Court House, which town promotion had brought to Alexandria. The church and market did not materialize so early. [Illustration: The addition to the town in 1763 and 1767. (Library of Congress)] EARLY EDUCATION Space in the lower floor of the town hall was provided for a grammar school soon after the completion of this building in 1760. Seven years later the town fathers found that the schoolhouse was so misused that repairs were urgent and minutes for the meeting of February 2, 1767, record how they considered it necessary to put it in better condition, "also to make some additions in order to make the upper room usefull not only for meeting of the Trustees but for such other purposes as may be thought necessary." Apparently a separate entrance for the schoolroom dates from this time; other improvements included the raising of the roof for greater utility upstairs. The trustees further resolved: "As it appears to us that the House has been very much injured by the negligence of the School Masters it is now determined that each Master give security to repair any injury that the House may sustain during the time they have it." Robert Adam and Thomas Fleming were appointed overseers of the property for a term of twelve months.