Emlen Institute

The Emlen Institute on Aquetong Road was founded using money bequeathed by Samuel Emlen, a Burlington Quaker who died in 1837. Samuel left $20,000 for the “education, maintenance and instruction in school learning and in agriculture and mechanical trades or arts, of free male orphan children of African or Indian descent,” and a school was opened in Ohio to serve this purpose in 1841. In 1857, the school moved to Solebury, where it remained for sixteen years. Census records show that the school had 10 students in 1860 and 12 in 1870, most in their teens. The school moved to Warminster in 1873.