History of the Negro Race in America
Chapter 94 : While Martha Costin was teaching, James Enoch Ambush, a Colored man, had also a large s

While Martha Costin was teaching, James Enoch Ambush, a Colored man, had also a large school in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Israel Bethel Church, on Capitol Hill, for a while, commencing there in April, 1833, and continuing in various places till 1843, when he built a school-house on E Street, south, near Tenth, island, and established what was known as "The Wesleyan Seminary," and which was successfully maintained for thirty-two years, till the close of August, 1865. The school-house still stands, a comfortable one-story wooden structure, with the sign "Wesleyan Seminary" over the door, as it has been there for twenty-five years. This was the only Colored school on the island of any account for many years, and in its humble way it accomplished a great amount of good. For some years Mr. Ambush had given much study to botanic medicine, and since closing his school he has become a botanic physician. He is a man of fine sense, and without school advantages, has acquired a respectable education.

FIRST SEMINARY FOR COLORED GIRLS.

The first seminary in the District of Columbia for Colored girls was established in Georgetown, in 1827, under the special auspices of Father Vanlomen, a benevolent and devout Catholic priest, then pastor of the Holy Trinity Church, who not only gave this interesting enterprise his hand and his heart, but for several years himself taught a school of Colored boys three days in a week, near the Georgetown college gate, in a small frame house, which was afterward famous as the residence of the broken-hearted widow of Commodore Decatur. This female seminary was under the care of Maria Becraft, who was the most remarkable Colored young woman of her time in the district, and, perhaps, of any time. Her father, William Becraft, born while his mother, a free woman, was the housekeeper of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, always had the kindest attentions of this great man, and there are now pictures, more than a century and a half old, and other valuable relics from the Carroll family in the possession of the Becraft family, in Georgetown, which Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, in his last days presented to William Becraft as family keepsakes. William Becraft lived in Georgetown sixty-four years, coming there when eighteen years of age. He was for many years chief steward of Union Hotel, and a remarkable man, respected and honored by everybody. When he died, the press of the district noticed, in a most prominent manner, his life and character. From one of the extended obituary notices, marked with heavy black lines, the following paragraph is copied:

"He was among the last surviving representatives of the old school of well-bred, confidential, and intelligent domestics, and was widely known at home and abroad from his connection, in the capacity of steward for a long series of years, and probably from its origin, and until a recent date, with the Union Hotel, Georgetown, with whose guests, for successive generations, his benevolent and venerable aspect, dignified and obliging manners, and moral excellence, rendered him a general favorite."

Maria Becraft was marked, from her childhood, for her uncommon intelligence and refinement, and for her extraordinary piety. She was born in 1805, and first went to school for a year to Henry Potter, in Was.h.i.+ngton, about 1812; afterward attending Mrs. Billing's school constantly till 1820. She then, at the age of fifteen, opened a school for girls in Dunbarton Street, in Georgetown, and gave herself to the work, which she loved, with the greatest a.s.siduity, and with uniform success. In 1827, when she was twenty-two years of age, her remarkable beauty and elevation of character so much impressed Father Vanlomen, the good priest, that he took it in hand to give her a higher style of school in which to work for her s.e.x and race, to the education of which she had now fully consecrated herself. Her school was accordingly transferred to a larger building, which still stands on Fayette Street, opposite the convent, and there she opened a boarding and day school for Colored girls, which she continued with great success till August, 1831, when she surrendered her little seminary into the care of one of the girls that she had trained, and in October of that year joined the convent at Baltimore as a Sister of Providence, where she was the leading teacher till she died, in December, 1833, a great loss to that young inst.i.tution, which was contemplating this n.o.ble young woman as its future Mother Superior.

Her seminary in Georgetown averaged from thirty to thirty-five pupils, and there are those living who remember the troop of girls, dressed uniformly, which was wont to follow in procession their pious and refined teacher to devotions on the Sabbath at Holy Trinity Church.

The school comprised girls from the best Colored families of Georgetown, Was.h.i.+ngton, Alexandria, and surrounding country. The sisters of the Georgetown convent were the admirers of Miss Becraft, gave her instruction, and extended to her most heartfelt aid and approbation in all her n.o.ble work, as they were in those days wont to do in behalf of the aspiring Colored girls who sought for education, withholding themselves from such work only when a depraved and degenerate public sentiment upon the subject of educating the Colored people had compelled them to a more rigid line of demarcation between the races. Ellen Simonds and others conducted the school a few years, but with the loss of its original teacher it began to fail, and finally became extinct. Maria Becraft is remembered, wherever she was known, as a woman of the rarest sweetness and exaltation of Christian life, graceful and attractive in person and manners, gifted, well-educated, and wholly devoted to doing good. Her name as a Sister of Providence was Sister Aloyons.

MISS MYRTILLA MINER'S SEMINARY

for Colored girls was initiated in Was.h.i.+ngton. This philanthropic woman was born in Brookfield, Madison County, New York, in 1815. Her parents were farmers, with small resources for the support of a large family. The children were obliged to work, and the small advantages of a common school were all the educational privileges furnished to them.

Hop-raising was a feature in their farming, and this daughter was accustomed to work in the autumn, picking the hops. She was of a delicate physical organization, and suffered exceedingly all her life with spinal troubles. Being a girl of extraordinary intellectual activity, her place at home chafed her spirit. She was restless, dissatisfied with her lot, looked higher than her father, dissented from his ideas of woman's education, and, in her desperation, when about twenty-three years old, wrote to Mr. Seward, then recently elected Governor of her State, asking him if he could show her how it was possible for a woman in her circ.u.mstances to become a scholar; receiving from him the reply that he could not, but hoped a better day was coming, wherein woman might have a chance to be and to do to the extent of her abilities. Hearing at this time of a school at Clinton, Oneida County, New York, for young women, on the manual-labor system, she decided to go there; but her health being such as to make manual labor impossible at the time, she wrote to the princ.i.p.al of the Clover Street Seminary, Rochester, New York, who generously received her, taking her notes for the school bills, to be paid after completing her education. Grateful for this n.o.ble act, she afterward sent her younger sister there to be educated, for her own a.s.sociate as a teacher; and the death of this talented sister, when about to graduate and come as her a.s.sistant in Was.h.i.+ngton, fell upon her with crus.h.i.+ng force. In the Rochester school, with Myrtilla Miner, were two free Colored girls, and this a.s.sociation was the first circ.u.mstance to turn her thoughts to the work to which she gave her life. From Rochester she went to Mississippi, as a teacher of planters' daughters, and it was what she was compelled to see, in this situation, of the dreadful practices and conditions of slavery, that filled her soul with a pity for the Colored race, and a detestation of the system that bound them, which held possession of her to the last day of her life. She remained there several years, till her indignant utterances, which she would not withhold, compelled her employer, fearful of the results, to part reluctantly with a teacher whom he valued. She came home broken down with sickness, caused by the hara.s.sing sights and sounds that she had witnessed in plantation life, and while in this condition she made a solemn vow that whatever of life remained to her should be given to the work of ameliorating the condition of the Colored people. Here her great work begins. She made up her mind to do something for the education of free Colored girls, with the idea that through the influence of educated Colored women she could lay the solid foundations for the disenthrallment of their race. She selected the district for the field of her efforts, because it was the common property of the nation, and because the laws of the district gave her the right to educate _free_ Colored children, and she attempted to teach none others. She opened her plan to many of the leading friends of freedom, in an extensive correspondence, but found especially, at this time, a wise and warm encourager and counsellor in her scheme, in William R. Smith, a Friend, of Farmington, near Rochester, New York, in whose family she was now a private teacher. Her correspondents generally gave her but little encouragement, but wished her G.o.d-speed in what she should dare in the good cause. One Friend wrote her from Philadelphia; entering warmly into her scheme, but advised her to wait till funds could be collected. "I do not want the wealth of Croesus,"

was her reply; and the Friend sent her $100, and with this capital, in the autumn of 1851, she came to Was.h.i.+ngton to establish a Normal School for the education of Colored girls, having a.s.sociated with her Miss Anna Inman, an accomplished and benevolent lady of the Society of Friends, from Southfield, Rhode Island, who, however, after teaching a cla.s.s of Colored girls in French, in the house of Jonathan Jones, on the island, through the winter, returned to New England. In the autumn of 1851 Miss Miner commenced her remarkable work here in a small room, about fourteen feet square, in the frame house then, as now, owned and occupied by Edward C. Younger, a Colored man, as his dwelling, on Eleventh Street, near New York Avenue. With but two or three girls to open the school, she soon had a roomful, and to secure larger accommodation, moved, after a couple of months, to a house on F Street, north, between Eighteenth and Nineteenth streets, west, near the houses then occupied by William T. Carroll and Charles H. Winder.

This house furnished her a very comfortable room for her school, which was composed of well-behaved girls from the best Colored families of the district. The persecution of those neighbors, however, compelled her to leave, as the Colored family who occupied the house was threatened with conflagration, and after one month her little school found a more unmolested home in the dwelling-house of a German family on K Street, near the western market. After tarrying a few months here, she moved to L Street, into a room in the building known, as "The Two Sisters," then occupied by a white family. She now saw that the success of her school demanded a school-house, and in reconnoitring the ground she found a spot suiting her ideas as to size and locality, with a house on it, and in the market at a low price.

She raised the money, secured the spot, and thither, in the summer of 1851, she moved her school, where for seven years she was destined to prosecute, with the most unparalleled energy and conspicuous success, her remarkable enterprise. This lot, comprising an entire square of three acres, between Nineteenth and Twentieth streets, west, N and O streets, north, and New Hamps.h.i.+re Avenue, selected under the guidance of Miss Miner, the contract being perfected through the agency of Sayles J. Bowen, Thomas Williamson, and Allen M. Gangewer, was originally conveyed in trust to Thomas Williamson and Samuel Rhodes, of the Society of Friends, in Philadelphia. It was purchased of the executors of the will of John Taylor, for $4,000, the deed being executed June 8, 1853, the estimated value of the property now being not less than $30,000. The money was mainly contributed by Friends, in Philadelphia, New York, and New England. Catharine Morris, a Friend, of Philadelphia, was a liberal benefactor of the enterprise, advancing Miss Miner $2,000, with which to complete the purchase of the lot, the most, if not all, of which sum, it is believed, she ultimately gave to the inst.i.tution; and Harriet Beecher Stowe was another generous friend, who gave her money and her heart to the support of the brave woman who had been willing to go forth alone at the call of duty. Mr.

Rhodes, some years editor of the "Friends' Quarterly Review," died several years ago, near Philadelphia. Mr. Williamson, a conveyancer in that city, and father of Pa.s.smore Williamson, is still living, but some years ago declined the place of trustee. The board, at the date of the act of incorporation, consisted of Benjamin Tatham, a Friend, of New York City, Mrs. Nancy M. Johnson, of Was.h.i.+ngton, and Myrtilla Miner, and the transfer of the property to the incorporated body was made a few weeks prior to Miss Miner's death. This real estate, together with a fund of $4,000 in government stocks, is now in the hands of a corporate body, under act of Congress approved March 3, 1863, and is styled "The Inst.i.tution for the Education of Colored Youth in the District of Columbia." The officers of the corporation at this time are John C. Underwood, president; Francis G. Shaw, treasurer; George E. Baker, secretary; who, with Nancy M. Johnson, S.

J. Bowen, Henry Addison, and Rachel Howland, const.i.tute the executive committee. The purpose of the purchase of this property is declared, in a paper signed by Mr. Williamson and Mr. Rhodes, dated Philadelphia, June 8, 1858, to have been "_especially for the education of colored girls_."

This paper also declares that "the grounds were purchased at the special instance of Myrtilla Miner," and that "the contributions by which the original price of said lot, and also the cost of the subsequent improvements thereof, were procured chiefly by her instrumentality and labors." The idea of Miss Miner in planting a school here was to train up a cla.s.s of Colored girls, in the midst of slave inst.i.tutions, who should show forth in their culture and capabilities, to the country and to mankind, that the race was fit for something higher than the degradation which rested upon them. The amazing energy with which this frail woman prosecuted her work is well known to those who took knowledge of her career. She visited the Colored people of her district from house to house, and breathed a new life into them pertaining to the education of their daughters. Her correspondence with the philanthropic men and women of the North was immense. She importuned Congressmen, and the men who shaped public sentiment through the columns of the press, to come into her school and see her girls, and was ceaseless in her activities day and night, in every direction, to build up, in dignity and refinement, her seminary, and to force its merits upon public attention.

The buildings upon the lot when purchased--a small frame dwelling of two stories, not more than twenty-five by thirty-five feet in dimensions, with three small cabins on the other side of the premises--served for the seminary and the homes of the teacher and her a.s.sistant. The most aspiring and decently bred Colored girls of the district were gathered into the school; and the very best Colored teachers in the schools, of the district at the present time, are among those who owe their education to this self-sacrificing teacher and her school. Mrs. Means, aunt of the wife of General Pierce, then President of the United States, attracted by the enthusiasm of this wonderful person, often visited her in the midst of her work, with the kindest feelings; and the fact that the carriage from the Presidential mansion was in this way frequently seen at the door of this humble inst.i.tution, did much to protect it from the hatred with which it was surrounded.

Mr. Seward and his family were very often seen at the school, both Mrs. Seward and her daughter f.a.n.n.y being constant visitors; the latter, a young girl at the time, often spending a whole day there.

Many other Congressmen of large and generous instincts, some of them of pro-slavery party relations, went out there, all confessing their admiration of the resolute woman and her school, and this kept evil men in abeyance.

The opposition to the school throughout the district was strong and very general, among the old as well as the young. Even Walter Lenox, who, as mayor, when the school was first started, gave the teacher a.s.surances of favor in her work, came out in 1857, following the prevailing current of depraved public sentiment and feeding its tide, in an elaborate article in the "National Intelligencer," under his own signature; a.s.sailed the school in open and direct language, urging against it that it was raising the standard of education among the Colored population, and distinctly declaring that the white population of the district would not be just to themselves to permit the continuance of an inst.i.tution which had the temerity to extend to the Colored people "a degree of instruction so far beyond their social and political condition, which condition must continue," the article goes on to say, "in this and every other slave-holding community." This article, though fraught with extreme ideas, and to the last degree prescriptive and inflammatory, neither stirred any open violence, nor deterred the courageous woman in the slightest degree from her work.

When madmen went to her school-room threatening her with personal violence, she laughed them to shame; and when they threatened to burn her house, she told them that they could not stop her in that way, as another house, better than the old, would immediately rise from its ashes.

The house was set on fire in the spring of 1860, when Miss Miner was asleep in the second story, alone, in the night-time, but the smell of the smoke awakened her in time to save the building and herself from the flames, which were extinguished. The school-girls, also, were constantly at the mercy of coa.r.s.e and insulting boys along the streets, who would often gather in gangs before the gate to pursue and terrify these inoffensive children, who were striving to gather wisdom and understanding in their little sanctuary. The police took no cognizance of such brutality in those days. But their dauntless teacher, uncompromising, conscientious, and self-possessed in her aggressive work, in no manner turned from her course by this persecution, was, on the other hand, stimulated thereby to higher vigilance and energy in her great undertaking. The course of instruction in the school was indeed of a higher order than had hitherto been opened to the Colored people of the district, as was denounced against the school by Walter Lenox, in his newspaper attack.

Lectures upon scientific and literary subjects were given by professional and literary gentlemen, who were friends to the cause.

The s.p.a.cious grounds afforded to each pupil an ample s.p.a.ce for a flower bed, which she was enjoined to cultivate with her own hands and to thoroughly study. And an excellent library, a collection of paintings and engravings, the leading magazines and choice newspapers, were gathered and secured for the humble home of learning, which was all the while filled with students, the most of whom were bright, ambitious girls, composing a female Colored school, which, in dignity and usefulness, has had no equal in the district since that day. It was her custom to gather in her vacations and journeys not only money, but every thing else that would be of use in her school, and in this way she not only collected books, but maps, globes, philosophical, and chemical, and mathematical apparatus, and a great variety of things to aid in her instruction in ill.u.s.trating all branches of knowledge. This collection was stored in the school building during the war, and was damaged by neglect, plundered by soldiers, and what remains is not of much value. The elegant sofa-bedstead which she used during all her years in the seminary, and which would be an interesting possession for the seminary, was sold, with her other personal effects, to Dr.

Carrie Brown (Mrs. Winslow), of Was.h.i.+ngton, one of her bosom friends, who stood at her pillow when she died.

Her plan embraced the erection of s.p.a.cious structures, upon the site which had been most admirably chosen, complete in all their appointments for the full accommodation of a school of one hundred and fifty boarding scholars. The seminary was to be a female college, endowed with all the powers and professors.h.i.+ps belonging to a first-cla.s.s college for the other s.e.x. She did not contemplate its springing up into such proportions, like a mushroom, in a single night, but it was her ambition that the inst.i.tution should one day attain that rank. In the midst of her anxious, incessant labors, her physical system began so sensibly to fail, that in the summer of 1858, under the counsel of the friends of herself and her cause, she went North to seek health, and, as usual in all her journeys, to beg for her seminary, leaving her girls in the care of Emily Howland, a n.o.ble young woman, who came down here for the love of the cause, without money and without price, from the vicinity of Auburn, New York. In the autumn, Miss Miner returned to her school; Miss Howland still continuing with her through the winter, a companion in her trials, aiding her in her duties, and consenting to take charge of the school again in the summer of 1859, while Miss Miner was on another journey for funds and health. In the autumn of that year, after returning from her journey, which was not very successful she determined to suspend the school, and to go forth into the country with a most persistent appeal for money to erect a seminary building, as she had found it impossible to get a house of any character started with the means already in her hands. She could get no woman, whom she deemed fit to take her work, willing to continue her school, and in the spring of 1860, leasing the premises, she went North on her errand. In the ensuing year she traversed many States, but the shadow of the Rebellion was on her path, and she gathered neither much money nor much strength. The war came, and in October, 1862, hoping, but vainly, for health from a sea-voyage and from the Pacific climate, she sailed from New York to California. When about to return, in 1866, with vivacity of body and spirit, she was thrown from a carriage in a fearful manner; blighting all the high hopes of resuming her school under the glowing auspices she had antic.i.p.ated, as she saw the Rebellion and the hated system tumbling to pieces. She arrived in New York, in August of that year, in a most shattered condition of body, though with the fullest confidence that she should speedily be well and at her work in Was.h.i.+ngton. In the first days of December she went to Was.h.i.+ngton in a dying condition, still resolute to resume her work; was carried to the residence of her tried friend, Mrs. Nancy M.

Johnson; and on the tenth of that month, surrounded by the friends who had stood with her in other days, she put off her wasted and wearied body in the city which had witnessed her trials and her triumphs, and her remains slumber in Oak Hill Cemetery.

Her seminary engaged her thoughts to the last day of her life. She said in her last hours that she had come back here to resume her work, and could not leave it thus unfinished. No marble marks the resting-place of this truly wonderful woman, but her memory is certainly held precious in the hearts of her throngs of pupils, in the hearts of the Colored people of this district, and of all who took knowledge of her life, and who reverenced the cause in which she offered herself a willing sacrifice. Her a.s.sistants in the school were Helen Moore, of Was.h.i.+ngton; Margaret Clapp, Amanda Weaver, and Anna H.

Searing, of New York State, and two of her pupils, Matilda Jones, of Was.h.i.+ngton, and Emma Brown, of Georgetown, both of whom subsequently, through the influence of Miss Miner and Miss Howland, finished their education at Oberlin, and have since been most superior teachers in Was.h.i.+ngton. Most of the a.s.sistant teachers from the North were from families connected with the Society of Friends, and it has been seen that the bulk of the money came from that society. The sketch would be incomplete without a special tribute to Lydia B. Mann, sister of Horace Mann, who came here in the fall of 1856, from the Colored Female Orphan Asylum of Providence, R. I., of which she was then, as she continues to be, the admirable superintendent, and, as a pure labor of love, took care of the school in the most superior manner through the autumn and winter, while Miss Miner was North recruiting her strength and pleading for contributions. It was no holiday duty to go into that school, live in that building, and work alone with head and hands, as was done by all those refined and educated women who stood from time to time in that humble, persecuted seminary. Miss Mann is gratefully remembered by her pupils here and their friends.

Mention should also be made of Emily Howland, who stood by Miss Miner in her darkest days, and whose whole heart was with her in all her work. She is a woman of the largest and most self-sacrificing purposes, who has been and still is giving her best years, all her powers, talents, learning, refinement, wealth, and personal toil, to the education and elevation of the Colored race. While here she adopted, and subsequently educated in the best manner, one of Miss Miner's pupils, and a.s.sisted several others of her smart girls in completing their education at Oberlin. During the war she was teaching contrabands in the hospital and the camp, and is now engaged in planting a colony of Colored people in Virginia with homes and a school-house of their own.

A seminary, such as was embraced in the plan of Miss Miner, is exceedingly demanded by the interest of Colored female education in the District of Columbia and the country at large, and any scheme by which the foundations that she laid so well may become the seat of such a school, would be heartily approved by all enlightened friends of the Colored race. The trustees of the Miner property, not insensible of their responsibilities, have been carefully watching for the moment when action on their part would seem to be justified. They have repeatedly met in regard to the matter, but, in their counsels, hitherto, have deemed it wise to wait further developments. They are now about to hold another meeting, it is understood, and it is to be devoutly hoped that some plan will be adopted by which a school of a high order may be, in due time, opened for Colored girls in this district, who exceedingly need the refining, womanly training of such a school.

The original corporators of Miss Miner's inst.i.tution were Henry Addison, John C. Underwood, George C. Abbott, William H. Channing, Nancy M. Johnson, and Myrtilla Miner. The objects, as expressed in the charter, "are to educate and improve the moral and intellectual condition of such of the colored youth of the nation as may be placed under its care and influence."

MARY WORMLEY'S SCHOOL.

In 1830, William Wormley built a school-house for his sister Mary, near the corner of Vermont Avenue and I Street, where the restaurant establishment owned and occupied by his brother, James Wormley, now stands. He had educated his sister expressly for a teacher, at great expense, at the Colored Female Seminary in Philadelphia, then in charge of Miss Sarah Dougla.s.s, an accomplished Colored lady, who is still a teacher of note in the Philadelphia Colored High School.

William Wormley was at that time a man of wealth. His livery-stable, which occupied the place where the Owen House now stands, was one of the largest and best in the city. Miss Wormley had just brought her school into full and successful operation when her health broke down, and she lived scarcely two years. Mr. Calvert, an English gentleman, still living in the first ward, taught a cla.s.s of Colored scholars in this house for a time, and James Wormley was one of the cla.s.s. In the autumn of 1834, William Thomas Lee opened a school in the same place, and it was in a flouris.h.i.+ng condition in the fall of 1835, when the Snow mob dispersed it, sacking the school-house, and partially destroying it by fire. William Wormley was at that time one of the most enterprising and influential Colored men of Was.h.i.+ngton, and was the original agent of the "Liberator" newspaper for this district.

The mob being determined to lay hold of him and Lee, they fled from the city to save their lives, returning when General Jackson, coming back from Virginia a few days after the outbreak, gave notice that the fugitives should be protected. The persecution of William Wormley was so violent and persistent, that his health and spirits sank under its effects, his business was broken up, and he died a poor man, scarcely owning a shelter for his dying couch. The school-house was repaired after the riot, and occupied for a time by Margaret Thompson's school, and still stands in the rear of James Wormley's restaurant.

BENJAMIN M'COY'S, AND OTHER SCHOOLS.

About this time another school was opened in Georgetown, by Nancy Grant, a sister of Mrs. William Becraft, a well-educated Colored woman. She was teaching as early as 1828, and had a useful school for several years. Mr. Nuthall, an Englishman, was teaching in Georgetown during this period, and as late as 1833 he went to Alexandria and opened a school in that city. William Syphax, among others now resident in Was.h.i.+ngton, attended his school in Alexandria about 1833.

He was a man of ability, well educated, and one of the best teachers of his time in the district. His school in Georgetown was at first in Dunbarton Street, and afterward on Montgomery.

The old maxim, that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," seems to find its ill.u.s.tration in this history. There is no period in the annals of the country in which the fires of persecution against the education of the Colored race burned more fiercely in this district, and the country at large, than in the five years from 1831 to 1836, and it was during this period that a larger number of respectable Colored schools were established than in any other five years prior to the war. In 1833, the same year in which Ambush's school was started, Benjamin M. McCoy, a Colored man, opened a school in the northern part of the city, on L Street, between Third and Fourth streets, west. In 1834 he moved to Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue, continuing his school there till he went to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the autumn of 1836, to finish the engagement of Rev.

John F. Cook, who came back to Was.h.i.+ngton at that time and re-opened his school. The school at Lancaster was a free public Colored school, and Mr. McCoy was solicited to continue another year; but declining, came back, and in 1837 opened a school in the bas.e.m.e.nt of Asbury Church, which, in that room and in the house adjoining, he maintained with great success for the ensuing twelve years. Mr. McCoy was a pupil of Mrs. Billing and Henry Smothers; is a man of good sense, and his school gave a respectable rudimental education to mult.i.tudes, who remember him as a teacher with great respect. He is now a messenger in the Treasury Department. In 1833, a school was established by f.a.n.n.y Hampton, in the western part of the city, on the northwest corner of K and Nineteenth streets. It was a large school, and was continued till about 1842, the teacher dying soon afterward. She was half-sister of Lindsay Muse. Margaret Thompson succeeded her, and had a flouris.h.i.+ng school of some forty scholars on Twenty-sixth Street, near the avenue, for several years, about 1846. She subsequently became the wife of Charles H. Middleton, and a.s.sisted in his school for a brief time.

About 1830, Robert Brown commenced a small school, and continued it at intervals for many years till his death. As early as 1833, there was a school opened in a private house in the rear of Franklin Row, near the location of the new Franklin School building. It was taught by a white man, Mr. Talbot, and continued a year or two. Mrs. George Ford, a white teacher, a native of Virginia, kept a Colored school in a brick house still standing on New Jersey Avenue, between K and L streets.

She taught there many years, and as early, perhaps, as half a century ago.

DR. JOHN H. FLEET'S SCHOOL

was opened, in 1836, on New York Avenue, in a school-house which stood nearly on the spot now occupied by the Richards buildings at the corner of New York Avenue and Fourteenth Street. It had been previously used for a white school, taught by Mrs. McDaniel, and was subsequently again so used. Dr. Fleet was a native of Georgetown, and was greatly a.s.sisted in his education by the late Judge James Morsell, of that city, who was not only kind to this family, but was always regarded by the Colored people of the district as their firm friend and protector. John H. Fleet, with his brothers and sisters, went to the Georgetown Lancasterian School, with the white children, for a long period, in their earlier school days, and subsequently to other white schools. He was also for a time a pupil of Smothers and Prout.

He was possessed of a brilliant and strong intellect, inherited from his father, who was a white man of distinguished abilities. He studied medicine in Was.h.i.+ngton, in the office of Dr. Thomas Henderson, who had resigned as a.s.sistant surgeon in the army, and was a practising physician of eminence in Was.h.i.+ngton. He also attended medical lectures at the old medical college, corner of Tenth and E streets. It was his intention at that time to go to Liberia, and his professional education was conducted under the auspices of the Colonization Society. This, with the influence of Judge Morsell, gave him privileges never extended here to any other Colored man. He decided, however, not to go to Liberia, and in 1836 opened his school. He was a refined and polished gentleman, and conceded to be the foremost Colored man in culture, in intellectual force, and general influence in this district at that time. His school-house on New York Avenue was burned by an incendiary about 1843, and his flouris.h.i.+ng and excellent school was thus ended. For a time he subsequently taught music, in which he was very proficient; but about 1846 he opened a school on School-house Hill, in the Hobbrook Military School building, near the corner of N Street, north, and Twenty-third Street, west, and had a large school there till about 1851, when he relinquished the business, giving his attention henceforth exclusively to music, and with eminent success. He died in 1861. His school was very large and of a superior character.

CHARLES H. MIDDLETON'S SCHOOL

was started in the same section of the city, in a school-house which then stood, near the corner of Twenty-second Street, west, and I, north, and which had been used by Henry Hardy for a white school.

Though both Fleet's and Johnson's schools were in full tide of success in that vicinity, he gathered a good school, and when his two compet.i.tors retired--as they both did about this time,--his school absorbed a large portion of their patronage, and was thronged. In 1852, he went temporarily with his school to Sixteenth Street, and thence to the bas.e.m.e.nt of Union Bethel Church on M Street, near Sixteenth, in which, during the administration of President Pierce, he had an exceedingly large and excellent school, at the same period when Miss Miner was prosecuting her signal work. Mr. Middleton, now a messenger in the Navy Department, a native of Savannah, Ga., is free-born, and received his very good education in schools in that city, sometimes with white and sometimes with Colored children. When he commenced his school he had just returned from the Mexican war, and his enterprise is especially worthy of being made prominent, not only because of his high style as a teacher, but also because it is a.s.sociated with

THE FIRST MOVEMENT FOR A FREE COLORED PUBLIC SCHOOL.

This movement originated with a city officer, Jesse E. Dow, who, in 1848 and 1849, was a leading and influential member of the common council. He encouraged Mr. Middleton to start his school, by a.s.suring him that he would give all his influence to the establishment of free schools for Colored as well as for white children, and that he had great confidence that the council would be brought to give at least some encouragement to the enterprise. In 1850 Mr. Dow was named among the candidates for the mayoralty; and when his views in this regard were a.s.sailed by his opponents, he did not hesitate to boldly avow his opinions, and to declare that he wished no support for any office which demanded of him any modification of these convictions. The workmen fail, but the work succeeds. The name of Jesse E. Dow merits conspicuous record in this history for this bold and magnanimous action. Mr. Middleton received great a.s.sistance in building up his school from Rev. Mr. Wayman, then pastor of the Bethel Church, and afterward promoted to the bishopric. The school was surrendered finally to Rev. J. V. B. Morgan, the succeeding pastor of the church, who conducted the school as a part of the means of his livelihood.

ALEXANDER CORNISH AND OTHERS.

In the eastern section of the city, about 1840, Alexander Cornish had a school several years in his own house on D Street, south, between Third and Fourth, east, with an average of forty scholars. He was succeeded, about 1846, by Richard Stokes, who was a native of Chester County, Pa. His school, averaging one hundred and fifty scholars, was kept in the Israel Bethel Church, near the Capitol, and was continued for about six years. In 1840, there was a school opened by Margaret Hill in Georgetown, near Miss English's seminary. She taught a very good school for several years.

ALEXANDER HAYS'S SCHOOL

was started on Ninth Street, west, near New York Avenue. Mr. Hays was born in 1802, and belonged originally to the Fowler family in Maryland. When a boy he served for a time at the Was.h.i.+ngton Navy Yard, in the family of Captain Dove, of the navy, the father of Dr. Dove, of Was.h.i.+ngton, and it was in that family that he learned to read. Michael Tabbs had a school at that time at the Navy Yard, which he taught in the afternoons _under a large tree_, which stood near the old Masonic Hall. The Colored children used to meet him there in large numbers daily, and while attending this singular school, Hays was at the same time taught by Mrs. Dove, with her children. This was half a century ago. In 1826, Hays went to live in the family of R. S. c.o.xe, the eminent Was.h.i.+ngton lawyer, who soon purchased him, paying Fowler $300 for him. Mr. c.o.xe did this at the express solicitation of Hays, and seventeen years after he gave him his freedom--in 1843. While living with Mr. c.o.xe he had married Matilda Davis, the daughter of John Davis, who served as steward many years in the family of Mr. Seaton, of the "National Intelligencer." The wedding was at Mr. Seaton's residence, and Mr. c.o.xe and family were present on the occasion. In 1836, he bought the house and lot which they still own and occupy, and in 1842, the year before he was free, Hays made his last payment, and the place was conveyed to his wife. She was a free woman, and had opened a school in the house in 1841. Hays had many privileges while with Mr. c.o.xe, and with the proceeds of his wife's school they paid the purchase-money ($550) and interest in seven years. Mr. Hays was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic by Mr. c.o.xe, his wife, and daughters, while a slave in their family. When the Colored people were driven from the churches, in the years of the mobs, Mrs. c.o.xe organized a large Colored Sabbath-school in her own parlor, and maintained it for a long period, with the cooperation of Mr. c.o.xe and the daughters. Mr. Hays was a member of this school. He also attended day schools, when his work would allow of it. This was the education with which, in 1845, he ventured to take his wife's school in charge.

He is a man of good-sense, and his school flourished. He put up an addition to his house, in order to make room for his increasing school, which was continued down to 1857--sixteen years from its opening. He had also a night school and taught music, and these two features of his school he has revived since the war. This school contained from thirty-five to forty-five pupils. Rev. Dr. Samson, Mr.

Seaton, and Mr. c.o.xe often visited his school and encouraged him in his excellent work. Thomas Tabbs used also to come into his school and give him aid and advice, as also did John McLeod.

MR. AND MRS. FLETCHER'S SCHOOL