Tapping Reeve Law School
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Tapping Reeve House and Law School
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East elevation and north profile of Tapping Reeve House, 2010
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| Location | Litchfield, CT |
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| Coordinates | 41°44′38″N 73°11′19″W / 41.74395°N 73.18851°WCoordinates: 41°44′38″N 73°11′19″W / 41.74395°N 73.18851°W |
| Built | 1773 |
| NRHP Reference # | 66000879 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
| Designated NHL | December 21, 1965 |
The Litchfield Law School of Litchfield, Connecticut, was the first proprietary law school founded in the United States of America. The school was founded by Tapping Reeve in 1784 after tutoring students, including his brother-in-law, Aaron Burr, in law in the ten years previously and developing a 14-month course of study to prepare students for the Bar exam. Reeve, who later became the Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, hired former student James Gould to assist him in delivering lectures. By the time the school closed in 1833, over 1,100 young men from throughout the country had attended, many of whom went on to have significant influence on political, economic, and legal development of the United States during the antebellum period. Some of the school's most notable students include Burr and John C. Calhoun.
The law school, including Reeve's house, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965 as the Tapping Reeve House and Law School. The Tapping Reeve House and Law School are owned and operated by the Litchfield Historical Society as a museum and contains the interpretive exhibit The Noblest Study which illustrates the lives and studies of the students who traveled to Litchfield to study at the Litchfield Law School and Litchfield Female Academy.
The Society also operates the Litchfield History Museum.
Tapping Reeve, the founder of the Litchfield Law School, was born in 1744, son of the Rev. Abner Reeve, a Presbyterian minister who had graduated from Yale in 1731, and his wife Deborah. Tapping Reeve attended the College of New Jersey, later Princeton, graduating in 1763. He remained in Elizabethtown to teach at a grammar school associated with the college. Reeve then tutored at Princeton and was hired to privately teach the orphaned children of the Rev. Aaron Burr, Sr., the former President of the college, and his wife Esther Edwards Burr. Tapping Reeve taught young Aaron Burr and his sister Sally for several years. By 1771 Reeve had moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where he studied law with Judge Jesse Root, passing the bar there in 1772.
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