ceeded in getting ahead and gathering together property. Benjamin Drew's picture of the Canadian Negroes as he found them in the middle of the fifties is favorable and when Dr. Samuel G. Howe investigated the Canadian situation on behalf of the Freedmen's Inquiry Commission in 186314 he was able to report:

"The refugees in Canada earn a living, and gather property; they marry and respect women; they build churches and send their children to schools; they improve in manners and moralsnot because they are picked men but simply because they are free men. Each of them may say, as millions will soon say, 'When I was a slave, I spake as a slave, I understood as a slave, I thought as a slave; but when I became a free man I put away slavish things.'"'

FRED LANDON

14 Howe, The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, Report to the Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, Boston, 1864. The Freedmen's Inquiry Commission was instituted by Stanton in 1863 to consider what should be done for slaves already freed. The members of the Commission were Dr. Samuel G. Howe, Robert Dale Owen and James Mackay.

MYRTILLA MINER

A century ago it was generally conceded that a person unfitted for any other occupation either public or private could at least be a teacher, for many teachers of the colonies were felons and convicts brought to America to serve as indentured servants. This egregious error, however, was discovered by the pioneers of the new era in education, who saw clearly enough that the strength of the nation depended upon the professional as well as the academic equipment of its teachers and thus the training school for teachers had its birth. Its influence has been most significant in raising the standards of efficiency in the elementary schools and equally significant is its need in the high schools and colleges of this country.

No one in the District of Columbia can think of the benefits derived from the professional teacher training without immediate recollection and sacred memory of its pioneer and benefactress, Myrtilla Miner. For her noble character, her high ideals, her progressive methods in education, her struggles against opposition in the pursuit of her Godgiven task, her lasting contribution of an organized institution for the training of teachers in the spirit of the Master to serve all humanity, the citizens of the District of Columbia and especially the people of color must ever revere her memory.1

On the 4th of March, 1815, in Brookfield, Madison

1 The facts set forth in this sketch were obtained largely from Ellen M. O'Connor's Myrtilla Miner, A Memoir; W. S. Montgomery's Historical Sketch of the Education for the Colored Race in the District of Columbia, 1807–1905; and The Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the condition and improvement of the Public Schools in the District of Columbia, submitted to the Senate June 1868 and the House, with additions, June 17, 1870-1871. Some valuable facts were also obtained from former pupils of Miss Myrtilla Miner now residing in the District of Columbia and from public spirited citizens who cooperated with her.

County, New York, Myrtilla Miner, of poor and humble, yet of industrious parentage, was born. As a child, though frail of physique and deprived of opportunity, her indomitable will enabled her to overcome the obstacles of poverty and superstition as well as poor health. Wading through them all she earned enough by arduous labor in the hopfields near her home to purchase books for her further enlightenment. These struggles against fate, however, were the rocks upon which her noble character was built. Here were sown the seed of sympathy for the weak, appreciation for the struggling, and respect for the ambitious.

After a year's training at Clinton, Oneida County, New York, where she obtained the elements of education under the most adverse circumstances of ill health and lack of funds, Miss Miner accepted a call to teach in Mississippi in order to pay the debts incurred for the training she had already received. Her experience in Mississippi was indeed invaluable, for there she learned through horrible experiences the evils of the institution of slavery. She boldly protested against the cruelties of the slaveholders and the institution in general. She innocently requested permission to teach the slaves of the planter whose daughters she was then instructing. When told that such was a criminal offense against the laws of Mississippi and that she should "go North and teach the 'Niggers,'" Miss Miner with an intrepid spirit resolved then and there that she would go North and teach them. Out of this unpleasant experience developed the determination to found a Normal School for girls of color in the city of Washington.

Returning North, Miss Miner found other difficulties than poor health confronting her in her efforts to establish a school for the Negro youth in the District of Columbia. Funds had to be raised, pro-slavery opposition had to be overcome, and public sentiment had to be changed at least to indifference. Each of these in itself was sufficiently colossal to try the strength, physical and moral, of the ablest anti-slavery agitators of that day. It was at the

time of the passage of that infamous Fugitive Slave Law, when freedmen and runaways like William Parker, Jerry McHenry and Joshua Glover were knocked down, beaten, bound and cast into prison; when abolitionists were incarcerated for their anti-slavery propaganda and giving aid to the fugitives; when even our valiant Frederick Douglass admitted himself too timid to support any such project as that undertaken by Miss Miner in the city of Washington.2 It was in times such as these that this fearless and resolute little woman, with an enthusiasm that seemingly glistened in her penetrating eyes, determined to give her life to the cause of alleviating suffering, dispelling ignorance, and liberating the oppressed Americans in body and mind.

3

With the small sum of one hundred dollars that she had secured from Mrs. Ednah Thomas, of Philadelphia, a member of the Society of Friends, Miss Miner started out upon her great work in behalf of the Negro children of the District of Columbia. Her thrift prompted her to solicit funds of various and peculiar sorts. Donations of old papers, books, weights, measures and other castaway material were transformed by this real teacher into valuable material for the instruction of her undeveloped pupils.

Funds of the material sort were not the only difficulties that beset her road of progress, for pro-slavery opposition assailed Miss Miner from every side. Such propaganda

2 O'Connor, Memoir of Myrtilla Miner, Letter of Frederick Douglass, p. 23. 3 Special Report of Commissioner of Education, Washington, D. C., Henry Barnard, 1868, p. 207.

4 She had some friends, however, as the following shows:

"There are in the United States 500,000 free people of color. They are generally, although subject to taxation, excluded by law or prejudice from schools of every grade. Their case becomes at once an object of charity which rises infinitely above all party or sectional lines. This charity we are gratified in being able to state has already been inaugurated, through the devoted labors of an excellent young lady from Western New York by the name of Miss Myrtilla Miner who has established and maintained for the past four years in the city of Washington a school for the education of free colored youth. This school is placed there because it is national ground, and the nation is responsible for the well-being of its population; because there are there 11,000 of this suffering people excluded by law from schools and destitute of instruction; be

as the following appeared in the National Intelligencer, a Washington newspaper of pro-slavery sentiments and was spread far and wide. (1) The school would attract free colored people from the adjoining States, (2) it was proposed to give them an education far beyond what their political and social condition would justify, (3) the school cause there are in the adjoining States of Maryland and Virginia 130,000 equally destitute, who can be reached in no other way; and because it is hoped through this means to reach a class of girls of peculiar interest, often the most beautiful and intelligent, and yet the most hopelessly wretched, and who are often objects of strong paternal affection. The slaveholder would gladly educate and save these children, but domestic peace drives them from his hearth; he cannot emancipate them to be victims of violence or lust; he cannot send them to Northern schools, where prejudice would brand them. and it is proposed to open an asylum near them, where they may be brought, emancipated, educated and taught housewifery as well as science, and thus be prepared to become teachers among their own mixed race.

"In its present condition this school embraces boarding, domestic economy, normal teachers and primary departments, and is placed under the care of an association consisting of the following trustees: Benjamin Tatham, New York; Samuel M. Janney, Loudoun County, Virginia; Johns Hopkins, Baltimore; Samuel Rhoads and Thomas Williamson, Philadelphia; G. Bailey and L. D. Gale, Washington; H. W. Bellows, New York; C. E. Stowe, Andover; H. W. Beecher, Brooklyn. together with an executive committee consisting of S. J. Bowen, J. M. Wilson and L. D. Gale, of Washington; and M. Miner, Principal, and William H. Beecher, of Reading, Secretary.

"The trustees state that a very eligible site of three acres, within the city limits of Washington, of the northwest, has already been purchased, paid for and secured to the trustees, and that all which is now wanted is $20,000 wherewith to erect a larger and more suitable edifice for the reception of the applicants pressing upon it from the numerous free colored blacks in the District and adjacent States. The proposed edifice is designed to accommodate 150 scholars and to furnish homes for the teachers and pupils from a distance. The enlarged school will include the higher branches in its system of instruction.

"There was a meeting yesterday afternoon, in an ante-room of Tremont Temple, of gentlemen called together to listen to the statements of the Secretary of the Association regarding this school. The meeting was small, but embraced such gentlemen as Hon. George S. Hillard, Rev. Dr. Lathrop, Rev. C. E. Hale, and Deacon Greele, all of whom are deeply interested in the project.

"The meeting decided to draw up and circulate a subscription paper, and counted upon receiving $10,000 for the purpose in this city. The pastors of several churches in New York had pledged their churches in the sum of a thousand dollars each. Mr. Beecher will solicit subscriptions in most of the principal towns of Massachusetts. The designs and benefits of the project will be fully set forth at a public meeting in this city in the course of a fortnight." -The Boston Journal, April 18, 1857.