for the purpose of enlarging and improving the state system of common schools, his donations amounting to not less than $35,000.[15] The first person to clearly advocate the establishment of schools for the training of teachers was Rev. Charles Brooks, minister of the Second Unitarian Church in Hingham from 1821 to 1839, afterwards professor of natural history in the University of the City of New York, and a reformer and author of some reputation in his day. In 1834 he began to write and lecture in behalf of common schools, and especially in the interest of normal schools.[16] He spoke throughout the state in behalf of training schools, with which he had become acquainted in Prussia; he went before the legislature on this subject; and he carried his labors into other states.[17] Horace Mann took up the idea of professional schools for teachers and made it effective. Edmund Dwight gave $10,000 to the state for this purpose, and schools were established in 1838. When the first of these normal schools opened in Lexington, July 3, 1839, its principal was Rev. Cyrus Peirce, who had been the minister of the Unitarian church in North Reading from 1819 to 1829, and then had been a teacher in North Andover and Nantucket. "Had it not been for Cyrus Peirce," wrote Henry Barnard, "I consider the cause of Normal Schools would have failed or have been postponed for an indefinite period."[18] Dr. William T. Harris has said that "all Normal School work in this country follows substantially one tradition, and this traces back to the course laid down by Cyrus Peirce."[19] In the Lexington school Peirce was succeeded by Samuel J. May, who had been settled over Unitarian churches in Brooklyn and Scituate.[20]