Having given up law and tutored Latin for two years at Yale, Horace Dutton Taft starts a school in Pelham Manor, NY, on September 25 with the help of Mrs. Robert Black. The building was known as "the Red House" (which still stands today). Ten boarding students paid $600 tuition, 7 day scholars $200.
"The school was called 'Mr. Taft's School' at the beginning, but, " Horace writes in his memoirs, as a matter of fact it belonged to Mrs. Black and I was on salary, though of course the complete management was mine....
"We had the two houses and we had the promise of the boys, but that was all.... The furniture arrived at the same time that the boys and their parents did.....It was a most comical beginning of a school.... I suppose that nothing pleased me so much in my plan for a boys' school as the idea that I might be a lay preacher, that association with the boys would give me an opportunity for influencing their ideas and ideals.... I began to think that I was achieving some results that had nothing to do with the marking book or college examinations."