By Sarah Becker When Quakers Benjamin Hallowell and William Stabler established the Alexandria Philosophical Society in 1832 few knew that Hallowell, an educator, would emerge a nationally recognized man of science. Hallowell, originally from Pennsylvania, came to Alexandria in 1824 to open a school. His boarding school was initially located on Oronoco Street, an “unhealthy edge of town.” Robinson Stabler, William Stabler’s younger half-brother, was among the first Alexandrians to welcome the Hallowells. Benjamin Hallowell taught Robinson when he was a student at Maryland’s Fair Hill Boarding School. Stabler brother, Edward H. enrolled in Hallowell’s Alexandria school and became a mathematical scholar. “The subscribers intend opening in Alexandria, D.C. a BOARDING SCHOOL in which will be taught Spelling, Reading, Writing, Grammar, Geography with the use of the globes, Arithmetic, and the various branches of Mathematical Science, together with their application to the principles of Natural Philosophy,” Hallowell advertised in October 1824. “Natural philosophy and Chemistry will be taught as regular exercises in the school.” “The practical teaching of young persons consists of two parts:—instructing then how to do something; and giving the reason for it in that way,” Hallowell wrote in Geometrical Analysis, or the Construction and Solution in 1872. “Youth should first learn, well, the practical part,—how to do then the why.” “Children learn to use words before they learn the definitions of them,” Hallowell continued. “They form phrases, before they are able to construe or parse them. And the more nearly a teacher keeps to this natural process, the more successful will he be in developing the minds of his students and in pleasurably educating them.” Alexandria’s Robert E. Lee was a Hallowell student prior to leaving for West Point. The location, 607 Oronoco Street, proved unlucky. Hallowell’s wife—Margaret Farquhar—became ill, and their first-born son James contracted bilious…