The first Sunday-schools organized in this country distinctly for purposes of religious training were by persons connected with Unitarian churches. Several schools had been opened previously, but they were not continued or were organized in the interests of secular instruction. In the summer of 1809 Miss Hannah Hill, then twenty-five years of age, and Miss Joanna B. Prince, then twenty, both teachers of private schools for small children, and connected with the First Parish in Beverly, Mass., of which Dr. Abiel Abbot was the pastor, opened a school in one room of a dwelling-house for the religious training of the children who did not receive such teaching at home. In the spring of 1810 the same young women reopened their school in a larger room, using the Bible as their only book of instruction. Sessions were held in the morning before church, and in the afternoon following the close of the services.[1] The first season about thirty children attended, but the interest grew; and in 1813 the school occupied the Dane Street chapel, and became a union or town school. Jealousies resulted, and a school was soon established by each church in the town. In 1822 the First Parish received the original school under its sole care, and it was removed to the meeting-house. A Sunday-school was begun in Concord in the summer of 1810, under the leadership of Miss Sarah Ripley, daughter of Dr. Ezra Ripley, the minister of the town. On Sunday afternoons she taught a number of children in her father's house, since known as the "Old Manse." About five years later a school was opened at the centre of the town, near the church, by three young women. In 1818 a Sunday-school was begun in connection with the church itself, which absorbed the others, or of which they formed the nucleus.[2]