Lawrence Academy at Groton is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational college preparatory boarding school located in Groton, Massachusetts, in the United States. Founded in 1792 by a group of fifty residents of Groton and Pepperell, Massachusetts as Groton Academy, and chartered in 1793 by Governor John Hancock, Lawrence is the tenth oldest boarding school in the United States, and the third in Massachusetts, following Governor Dummer Academy (1763) and Phillips Academy at Andover (1778). The phrase on Lawrence Academy's seal is "Omnibus Lucet": in Latin, "Let light shine upon all." History On April 27, 1792, residents of the towns of Groton and Pepperell, Massachusetts, influenced by the growing "academy movement" in the young republic, which sought to provide a broader and more practical education than that available in the traditional Latin Grammar Schools, formed an association "for the purpose of erecting a suitable building, and supporting an Academy for superior educational purposes at Groton, Massachusetts." The association received its charter from Governor John Hancock on September 28, 1793. Originally, the school was called Groton Academy, but was later changed to honor the Lawrence family. For the academy's first schoolmaster, the trustees selected Samuel Holyoke, a prominent composer. He was a graduate of Phillips Academy and Harvard college. The trustees announced the opening of their academy with an advertisement in the May 25, 1793 edition of the Columbian Centinel, a Boston newspaper; this was somewhat premature, as the charter was not secured for another four months. The advertisement expressed the values of the academy movement, reading in part: This is to give notice, that a Public School is now opened in Groton, for the education of youth, of both sexes—in which School are taught the English, Latin and Greek Languages, Writing, Arithmetic, Geography, the Art of Speaking and Writing, with Practical Geometry, and Logic. Classes commenced in 1794, with an enrollment of seventy-three students, primarily from Groton and the surrounding towns. Some, such as Thomas and Wyriott Alderson of Bath, North Carolina, came from farther afield. In 1838, alumnus Amos Lawrence, a son of founder Samuel Lawrence and a prominent Boston merchant and industrialist, began his patronage of the Academy with a gift of "books and philosophical apparatus," followed in 1839 by "a telescope and Bowditch's translation of Mécanique Céleste by Laplace," and $2,000 for enlarging the schoolhouse in 1842. In 1844, Amos's brother William donated $10,000 to the school's endowment "for