On the evening of November 21, 1879, following a meeting at the Town Hall in Hamilton, six pages of a minute book were filled with signatures agreeing to a declaration to promote the ?object and intention? of the recently-formed Berkeley Educational Society.

At least nine of those who signed were unable to write their names and were obliged to simply make a mark on the paper ? evidence, if any were needed, that the society?s goal, to found a school to educate all, was desperately needed in Bermuda.

It was to be 18 years before that school, Berkeley Institute, was established but its name can be traced back to 1724, when Irish philosopher Bishop George Berkeley formulated a plan to build a college for white boys and North American Indians in Bermuda.

A Proposal For The Better Supplying Of Churches In Our Foreign Plantations And For Converting the Savage American To Christianity By A College To Be Erected In The Summer Islands, Otherwise Called The Isles Of Bermuda contained a detailed scheme for St. Paul?s College ? but the project was abandoned for a number of reasons, including a lack of funding and the Island?s isolated location.

Bishop Berkeley never made it to Bermuda but his surname has, for more than a hundred years, been one of the best-known and most often referred to on the Island. For though it was not recorded anywhere at the time of the founding of the Berkeley Educational Society in 1879, it is believed that the parent body which eventually opened the Berkeley Institute in 1897 was named after the Bishop.

Local historian Carol Hill ? whose grandfather Samuel David Robinson and great grandfather Joseph Henry Thomas were both founding members of the society ? explains that an English reverend, William C. Dowding, who greatly admired Bishop Berkeley, launched an inter-racial school called St. Paul?s College in Bermuda in 1853.

The Berkeley Club was formed at the same time to maintain the Island?s first integrated school. ?Rev. Dowding wanted to do what Bishop Berkeley had intended to do but he went one step further,? she says.

?He didn?t want to open the school for white boys and Native American Indians. He wanted to open a school for all. That?s what the Berkeley Institute is built on. From the Berkeley Club came the name the Berkeley Institute.?

Many educational institutions in the US, and even a city in California, were also named after Bishop Berkeley, including a college at Yale University.

Though he became an abolitionist, Bishop Berkeley was known to have bought slaves and is recorded at one stage as saying he believed slavery was the best way to Christianise black people.

Miss Hill, herself a Berkeleyite, describes the origin of the school?s name as ?a ticklish subject?. ?It was named after Bishop Berkeley but Rev. Dowding was the key,? she says.

She believes that the source of the name is unimportant and that the term ?Berkeley Institute? has taken on its own meaning and relevance to Bermudians.

?Rev. Dowding wanted to carry out the wishes of Bishop Berkeley with one exception,? she says. ?He wanted to have it (a school) regardless of race, creed or colour and that?s what the Berkeley Institute has been based on ever since the beginning.?

She adds: ?Rev. Dowding recognised that blacks really had as much to give as anybody else. When he came he was not welcomed by white Bermudians. They stood on Front Street with signs saying ?go home?. They did not wish the blacks to be educated.?

Still, Rev. Dowding persisted and St. Paul?s College, which taught white and black boys subjects such as Latin, Greek, French and Vocal Music, was formed. It folded after just over three years but its impact was undeniable.

Joseph Henry Thomas, a schoolmaster who had been a member of the Berkeley Club, went on to become the first chairman of the Berkeley Educational Society.

Dr. Kenneth Robinson, in his book The Berkeley Educational Society?s Origins and Early History, says that other members of the committee also knew about St. Paul?s College and the Berkeley Club.

The first meeting of the society, attended by six prominent black men ? Mr. Thomas, Richard Henry Duerden, William Henry Thomas Joell, Samuel David Robinson, Eugenius Charles Jackson and Dr. Charles William Thomas Smith ? took place in October 1879 at Wantley, the home of Mr. Robinson, a baker.

Three days later they were joined by five colleagues ? William Orlando F. Bascombe, John Henry T. Jackson, Samuel Parker Senior, Samuel Parker Junior and Henry T. Dyer ? and together they became the society?s first 11 committeemen.

Berkeleyite Gary Phillips, the current secretary to the school?s board of governors, says that the courage of those men should not be underestimated, given the prevailing attitude to integrated education at the time. ?This was 30 years after Emancipation when racism and everything else was the order of the day,? he says. ?The six founding fathers and the five who joined them decided they were going to buck the system.

?They decided that Bermuda, as a small community, couldn?t afford to lose the opportunity which was there.?

His words echo those of Dr. Robinson, who called the men ?militant proponents of racially integrated schooling?.

These men chose to decline funds made available through the Devonshire College Act of 1870, which sanctioned racially segregated schools, and instead, set out to raise funds within the community for an integrated school.

By 1897, the society had agreed to accept the interest derived from the funds to pay the salaries of teachers at the soon-to-be-opened Berkeley Institute.

The services of George DaCosta, a Jamaican educator who had worked at another school, the Bermuda Collegiate Institute, but was intending to leave the Island, had been secured and on September 6, 1897, the Berkeley Institute became a reality.

Another English clergyman, the Rev. Mark James, who had previously been the first constitutional chairman of the society, opened the school on the ground floor of the Samaritans? Lodge in Court Street with a prayer.

Mr. Robinson, the chairman of the society, was present, but it was a low-key event. Dr. Robinson writes: ?There was no fanfare, and, seemingly, no report of it in The Royal Gazette at that time.?

Fourteen black boys, 12 black girls and one white boy, Leon Giavelli, made up the student body. Two years later, land on St. John?s Road, Pembroke, was bought and a small two-storey building was erected in 1902.

The tiny structure was a far cry from the $121 million Berkeley Institute set to open next week across the road.

But as the years went by, it grew to accommodate an ever-expanding number of pupils and some of the Island?s finest head teachers: another Jamaican, W. Douglas Innis, Trinidadian Roderick A. N. James, Clifford V. Maxwell and the school?s current principal, Michelle Simmons.

Perhaps the most famous is Frederick Shirley Furbert, the first Bermudian head teacher of the school, who served from 1943 to 1971.

A profile of him in the society?s Centenary Journal, published in 1979, said: ?The whole life of Mr. F. S. Furbert was bound up in his profession and his commitment to creating citizens of whom this community could be justly proud.?

The list of former Berkeley students who have gone on to achieve greatness is endless and includes the Island?s first black Premier, E. T. Richards; the first black female Premier, Dame Pamela Gordon; the first Progressive Labour Party Premier, Dame Jennifer Smith and the present Premier Alex Scott.

In the Centenary Journal, the then-Minister for Education, Ernest Vesey, urged ?white parents to send their children to this very fine institution which has made such a magnificent contribution to Bermuda and the world?.

Mr. Phillips says that has never happened ? a fact he feels the founding fathers would have regretted.

?It certainly had nothing to do with the excellence of the education provided,? he says. ?In the early 1960s, under Mr. Furbert, he began to invite white teachers and from the very finest universities.

?The Berkeley Institute was worthy of educating white boys and white girls, as well as black boys and black girls. It just never happened, not in any great numbers. Whites and blacks have just never been able to rationalise this whole race thing.?

Despite this, the school?s core values, adopted by the board of governors in 2002, still declare that the Institute is ?accountable to our forefathers? and that it aims to provide all students, irrespective of gender or race, with access to quality education.

Calvin White, the current chairman of the school?s board of governors, says: ?Our core values concur with the wishes of the founding fathers and their desire to create a school that would educate all Bermudians.?

As the Centenary Journal states, the society is to be commended for maintaining its ideal of integrated education throughout its existence: ?It, together, with the school which it established, stands as an example of racial tolerance which is unmatched by any other organisation and school in Bermuda.?

Mr. White adds: ?People need to come and talk to us and see what we are actually doing. You?ll find that the values that we are espousing here are the same values that have been around for the last 109 years.?