introduction

Daily Gleaner, January 10, 1891                                                                                         Closely identified with St. Paul's from 1845 to1871 was the Montego Bay Academy, which for twenty-six years tendered good service to Jamaica in sending forth a large number of well-educated youth, many of whom now fill important positions in the island. Some of whom are now ministers of Episcopalian, Wesleyan, and Baptist churches, while others are in the ministry of the Prebyterian Church. Others are doctors, lawyers, planters, penkeepers, merchants, engineers, or are in the Customs service or in other public offices. Among the ministers may be named the Rev H Sharpe, Rector of the Parish Church, Montego Bay, the Rev. T. M. Geddes, Coke Chapel Kingston, and the Rev. T.C. Hutchings, St. James. Over one hundred "missionary students," that is without charge to themselves or parents or guardians, were sent out by the Academy, most of them becoming teachers of day-schools. In this way through its missionary students and its "public scholars," as they were called in its annual reports, the Academy made in its time a large contribution to the higher education of the island.