Woodstock has never been negligent in the cause of education. As soon as the settlement became an organized town, John Chandler, Jr., was appointed to instruct the children to write and cipher. As the town grew in population, it was divided into school districts. In 1739 was established the United English Library for the Propagation of Christianity and Useful Knowledge. Col. John Chandler was the moderator at the first meeting, and the Rev. Abel Stiles, John May, Benjamin Child, and Pennel Bowen, of Woodstock, and leading citizens of Pomfret and Killingly, assisted in the organization.100 It was Gen. Samuel McClellan and his sons John and James McClellan, the Rev. Eliphalet Lyman, William Bowen, Parker Comings, Nehemiah Child, Ebenezer Smith, William Potter, Hezekiah Bugbee, Benjamin Lyon, Ebenezer Skinner, and Amos Paine who established Woodstock Academy, at the beginning of the present century, and the influence of that honored institution has been deep and far-reaching. But who can measure the good done by Woodstock Academy, or by the different churches and other organizations of the town? Such institutions are our heritage, and our duty and privilege it is to improve their character and transmit them to future generations, with the memories and traditions of the town itself.