Prof. H. B. Worcester, proprietor of the Garden City Business College and Academy, came to San Jose in the fall of 1876, and took charge of the Business College Department of the San Jose Institute for one term; and in January, 1877, opened a school for instruction in book-keeping, and for business training, in his own private parlors.  Eight years before, in 1869 , Prof James Vinsouhaler established a commercial college in San Jose, which he conducted successfully until his death, in the spring of 1876.  The business college ws then connected with the Institute, changing the name to Institute Business College.  But the combination proved unsuccessful, and  the school soon went down.  After the collapse of the institute, Professor Worcester leased its building on First and Devine Streets, in which he carried on  his young and growing school till near the close of 1878.  He then leased the hall in the Farmers' Union Building, corner of Santa Clara and San Pedro Streets, and removed his school to it.  There  was at first considerable unoccupied room in the large hall, forty by eighty feet in area, but under the professor's able management it soon grew to the full capacity of the hall.  Still thinking to improve and enlarge the facilities of the college, Professor Worcester leased the still more commodious quarters the college now occupies, known as Commercial Hall, at 59 South Market Street.  The room is one hundred feet square, and is divided into a lecture- room, school-room, recitation rooms and office.  It is admirably lighted and in every way well adapted for the purpose, and is fitted up and furnished with all the furniture and appliances of a first-class commercial college, including desks and sittings for a hundred students.  The attendance during the school year numbers from one hundred and fifty to two hundred.  The business course embraces bookkeeping, penmanship, arithmetic, business paper, commercial law, business correspondence, business practice, lectures, and reading.  The academic course includes such studies and instruction as will fit the pupils to enter any of the literary colleges or universities. Many of the graduates from the Garden City Business College are filling prominent positions in the bank and other large business establishments.

After obtaining his early education, Professor Worcester enlisted in the US Army, from which he was discharged at the end of two years' service on account of ill health.  He took a course in Bryant & Strattan's Business College, and entered upon a career of twelve years of practical business life, at the end of which he was tendered the principal ship of the Aurora Business College, in Aurora, Illinois.  He filled this position form 1873 till 1875, when he resigned to come to California, to recover his wife's failing health.  As an instructor in the school-room Professor Worcester has few equals.  His methods are original, and his power to resent facts and import knowledge to the receptive mind, is peculiarly striking and impressive.

SOURCE:  Pen Pictures From The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, Illustrated. - Edited by H. S. Foote.- Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1888. Page 145
Transcribed by CDF

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