The American Missionary Association supported, at Port Royal and other points in the State, schools which, along with many others, had only a temporary existence. The lasting and best contribution of this association to this movement was the Avery Institute, its second best was the Brewer Normal. Avery was established at Charleston on October 1, 1865, in the State Normal School building, which was offered by General Saxton. The school commenced with twenty teachers and one thousand scholars with every available space taken, one hundred being crowded in the dome. The next year, having been turned out of this building, the school was held for two years in the Military Hall in Wentworth Street. On May 1, 1869, the school entered its present new large building on Bull Street when it dropped the name of the Saxton School for Avery in honor of the philanthropist from a portion of whose bequest $10,000 was spent by the American Missionary Association for the grounds and a mission home. The building proper was erected by the Freedmen's Bureau at a cost of $17,000.[59] Avery very soon dropped its primary department and concentrated its efforts on the normal or secondary department where it had from the beginning a comfortable number of students. These students came largely from the free Negro class. Under the guidance of their well-trained Negro principal the boys and girls here were reading Milton's "L'Allegro," translating Caesar, and solving quadratic equations.[60] From the standpoint of grade of instruction, Avery was the banner school of the State. With a less pretentious beginning Brewer was established by the American Missionary Association at Greenwood in 1872 on school property valued at $4,000. The Baptist Home Mission Society, following in the wake of the American Missionary Association, made a beginning at Port Royal with the labor of Rev. Solomon Peck, at Beaufort. This society in 1871 established Benedict at Columbia. The school property consisted of eighty acres of land with one main building--"a spacious frame residence," two stories, 65 x 65. This property cost $16,000 with the funds given by Mrs. Benedict, a Baptist lady of New England. During the first year the school had sixty-one students, most of whom were preparing for the ministry.[61] In 1868, Mrs. Rachel C. Mather established the Industrial School at Beaufort which now bears her name. This school came under the auspices of the Women's American Baptist Home Mission Society.