A teacher of a charity school supported by the West Church in Boston was the first person to open a Sunday-school in that city. In October, 1812, the teacher of this school, Miss Lydia K. Adams, then a member of the West Parish, according to the statement of Dr. Charles Lowell, minister of the church at the time, "having learned on a visit to Beverly that some young ladies of the town were in the practice of giving religious instruction to poor children on the Sabbath, consulted her minister as to the expediency of giving like instruction to the children of her school, and to those who had been members of it, on the same day. The project was decidedly approved, and immediately carried into effect." In December of the same year, Miss Adams was compelled by ill-health to leave her school; and ladies of the West Church took charge of it, and in turn instructed the children, both on the week-days and the Sabbath, till a suitable permanent teacher could be obtained. On this event they relinquished the immediate care of the week-day school, but continued the instruction of the Sunday-school, till it was transferred to the church, and was enlarged by the addition of "children of a different description," in 1822.[3] Sunday-schools were also begun in Cambridgeport, in 1814; Wilton, N.H., in 1816; and Portsmouth, in 1818. The latter school had the enthusiastic support of Nathaniel A. Haven, a young lawyer and rising politician, who devoted himself with great zeal and success to such instruction of the young.[4] The Association of Young Men for Mutual Improvement and for the Religious Instruction of the Poor began the work of forming Sunday-schools for the children of the poor in Boston during the year 1823. A school was begun in the Hancock School-house, then recently built for grammar-school purposes.[5] Soon after they opened a school in Merrimac Street, called the Howard Sunday-school, in connection with the work of Dr. Tuckerman; and in 1826 the Franklin Sunday-school was begun by the same persons and for the same purposes. In connection with these schools was formed the Sunday School Benevolent Society, composed of charitable women, who provided such children as were needy with suitable clothing.