Kendall attended free public elementary schools in Massachusetts and New Hampshire during two months each summer, and was a frequent user of the subscription library in Dunstable, Massachusetts (where his father had the right to check out two books a month). Kendall attended the New Ipswich Academy in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, for a few weeks in the fall of 1805, and a free public secondary school in New Ipswich for a month in the winter of 1806. In April 1806, he re-entered New Ipswich Academy, paying tuition by working at manual labor. He remained there until the fall, then studied a few weeks in December 1806 at a free public school in Dunstable. At the age of 16, Amos's education was advanced enough that his father obtained a two-month teaching position for him at a school in Reading, Massachusetts, in summer 1806 and another in the fall at a public school in Dunstable, New Hampshire (now known as Nashua). Amos entered the Lawrence Academy at Groton in Groton, Massachusetts, in April 1807. Despite poor health, he felt prepared to apply to Dartmouth College. He succeeded, and was admitted to Dartmouth on September 10, 1807. College education Unable to afford the $80 to $90 cost of the fall and winter term, his father Zebedee obtained another teaching position for Amos at a school in Dunstable. Away from his father's control for an extended period of time, Kendall began to play cards, dance, and occasionally drink alcohol. With money in hand, he entered Dartmouth in March 1808. Kendall joined the Social Friends, a fraternal society, as well as a small, semi-secret study and debating society known as the Gymnasion Adelphon. Through the college's and society's libraries, he had access to more than 4,000 books (a huge number by the standards of the day), many of which were by recent authors and in fields which he had been unable to study while under his father's strict moral supervision. Kendall later said that the informal education he received through reading and discussion outside the classroom was more productive than the formal classes he attended. Kendall spent the fall and winter terms of 1808 teaching in New Ipswich and began attending classes again at Dartmouth in March 1809. When the college banned on-campus drinking, students blamed Kendall — who had circulated a petition to have it stopped. He was bullied and nearly assaulted on