Severn Teackle Wallis

Severn Teackle Wallis (September 8, 1816 – April 11, 1894) was an American lawyer and politician.

Severn Teackle Wallis graduated from the secular St. Mary's College in northwest inner Baltimore in 1832, and later studied law with William Wirt, attorney general, and with noted lawyer John Glenn. In 1837, Wallis was admitted to the bar.

Wallis early developed a taste for literature and contributed to periodicals many articles of literary and historical criticism, also occasional verses. He became a proficient in Spanish literature and history and was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of history of Madrid in 1843. He may have been an acquaintance of the budding poet and author Edgar Allan Poe, (1808-1849), along with his friend, the author and political figure John Pendleton Kennedy.

In 1846, he was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries of Copenhagen, in the Kingdom of Denmark.

In 1847 he visited Spain and in 1849 the U. S. Government sent him on a special mission to that country to examine the title to the public lands in their former colony of East Florida (on the peninsula), as affected by royal Spanish Crown grants during the negotiations for the treaty of 1819, which provided for the American annexation of Florida, and creation of the Territory of Florida.

In 1851, he was the speaker at the first commencement exercises held for the newly renamed Central High School of Baltimore, (traditionally the third oldest public high school in America, founded as the High School in 1839, later the Male High School after 1844 (with the founding of two female secondary schools - Eastern and Western High Schools), and later titled by 1866 as The Baltimore City College), then located in the old "Assembly Rooms" building of 1796, famous as a former landmark Greek Revival styled dancing-social-literary and civic hall for the Baltimore Dancing Assembly, and later reading rooms and book stacks of the Library Company of Baltimore along with its newer rival, the Mercantile Library Association to the 1830s at the northeast corner of Holliday and East Fayette Streets, nextdoor to the famous Holliday Street Theatre, to the north, both of which perished in a large fire in November 1873, but the Theatre was later rebuilt and endured until 1917, now the site of the War Memorial Plaza and the War Memorial Building built in the mid-1920s, facing the massive Baltimore City Hall of 1867-1875. While the high school moved to its first new building at the southwest corner of West Centre and North Howard Streets, dedicated 1875). Wallis maintained a frequent and constant interest in the premier local public school and in the public schools system as a whole

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