Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st edition, 1998

Languages Used:

• English

LC Subject Headings:

• African American women -- Biography.
• African Americans -- Biography.
• Women -- Biography.

Revision History:

• 2000-11-14,
  Celine Noel and Wanda Gunther
  revised TEIHeader and created catalog record for the electronic edition.
  
  
• 2000-09-14,
  Natalia Smith, project manager,
  finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing.
  
  
• 2000-09-06,
  Lee Ann Morawski
  finished TEI/SGML encoding
  
  
• 2000-08-15,
  Apex Data Services, Inc.
  finished scanning (OCR) and proofing.
  
  

MISS HALLIE Q. BROWN
Hon. President of the N. A. C. W.

HOMESPUN HEROINES
AND OTHER
WOMEN OF DISTINCTION

COMPILED AND EDITED
By

HALLIE Q. BROWN

AUTHOR OF
"Bits And Odds" "First Lessons In Public Speaking"
"Tales My Father Told"
"Machile -- The African"

Foreword By
MRS. JOSEPHINE TURPIN WASHINGTON
ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS FROM WIDELY DIFFERENT SOURCES

Copyrighted by
HALLIE Q. BROWN
1926
Published at
THE ALDINE PUBLISHING COMPANY
Xenia, Ohio, U. S. A.

IN MEMORY OF THE MANY MOTHERS WHO
WERE LOYAL IN TENSE AND TRYING
TIMES, THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED
TO
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COLORED WOMEN OF
AMERICA AND CANADA

                         Through all the blight of slavery
                         They kept their womanhood,
                         And now they march with heads erect,
                         To fight for all things good,
                         Nor care for scorn nor seek for praise,
                         Just so they please their God.

--CLARA ANN THOMPSON.

FOREWORD

        Interesting as are the facts recorded in this book, they do not constitute its chief value.

        That is found in its reflection of the wonderful spirit which moved the women who strove and achieved, despite obstacles greater than any which have stood in the way of other upward struggles.

        These sketches breathe aspiration, hope, courage, patience, fortitude, faith.

        The youth of today and of other days will come under this influence. They will not relieve those lives. That cannot be: conditions change; human beings differ; deeds cannot be duplicated. But the spirit of the noble dead may be enkindled in the hearts of those who live after.

        It is said that one can appreciate only that to which he has some inner likeness. The author's spiritual kinship with the women of whom she wrote made possible the rare understanding brought to her subject.

        The result is a work which not only furnishes useful information, but--what is even more--inspires to finer character growth and racial development.

--JOSEPHINE TURPIN WASHINGTON.

INTRODUCTION

To My Readers--Greeting:

        This book is presented as an evidence of appreciation and as a token of regard to the history-making women of our race.

        One chief object of these introductory sentences is to secure for this book the interest of our youth, that they may have instructive light on the struggles endured and the obstacles overcome by our pioneer women.

        It has been prepared with the hope that they will read it and derive fresh strength and courage from its records to stimulate and cause them to cleave more tenaciously to the truth and to battle more heroically for the right.

        The characters and facts herein set forth are veritable history.

        In presenting this volume to the public, it is proper to remark that it has been prepared from a settled conviction that something of the kind is needed.

        It is our anxious desire to preserve for future reference an account of these women, their life and character and what they accomplished under the most trying and adverse circumstances,--some of whom passed scatheless through fires of tribulation, only to emerge the purer and stronger,--some who received their commission even at the furnace door, the one moment thinking their all was lost forever, the next in secure consciousness of the Everlasting Arms.

        We lack a complete record of these self-sacrificing heroines, but such as we have been permitted to gather we present through this medium to the public, hoping that it may find as much pleasure in its perusal as the writer had in its making.

--HALLIE Q. BROWN.

ODE TO WOMAN

                         All to Woman! the mother of man,
                         Whose worth can never be measured.
                         Her moral and mental and physical life
                         As mother, or sister, or sweetheart, or wife,
                         And oft, too, as friend, is e'er treasured.
                         Her role is extensive and varied through earth;
                         Her service far-reaching and wide.
                         The Queen of the hearth and the home and the church;
                         While the club and the school come under her rule,
                         And all secular business beside.
                         The "Joy of Service," her fond heart endures,
                         From infancy, through many years
                         Of development; mingled with faith, hope and trust,
                         She builds to the great, the good and the just,
                         That the Future may fairly decide.
                         All hail to our Women! the welkin shall ring,
                         As the Queen of the Earth passes by.
                         'Tis her's to "Lift" as she "Climbs" to the heights;
                         'Tis her's to make day of the darkest of nights,
                         Let all earth sing her praises aloud.

--SARAH G. JONES,
Poet Laureate of Ohio State Federation.

MARTHA PAYNE
Mother of Daniel A. Payne
Founder of Wilberforce University

MARTHA PAYNE

        The silhouette of Martha Payne as shown in this volume is probably one hundred and thirty years old. It represents the mother of Daniel Alexander Payne. We have meagre information of this mother and what we glean is told by her son after she had been dead more than fifty years.

        We learn that London and Martha Payne were free born and lived in Charleston, South Carolina. They were earnest Christians and faithful observers of family worship. "Often," says this son, "their morning prayers and hymns aroused me from my infant sleep and slumbers." He was taught the alphabet by his father, but was bereft, by death, of this paternal care at the age of four and a half years. When he was nine years old his mother died leaving him in charge of a grand aunt "whose godly lessons and holy example stimulated me to attain unto a noble character."

        Of his father he says, he was one of six brothers who served in the Revolutionary War. Their father was an Englishman. Daniel had a clear recollection of the rejoicing after the close of the war of 1812 when the city of Charleston was illuminated and, that he might see the objects of interest more clearly, his father carried him through the streets on his shoulders. He describes his mother as a woman of light brown complexion, medium stature and delicate in frame. Her grandmother was of a tribe of Indians known in the early history of the Carolinas

as the Catawba Indians. Her grandfather was remarkable for great bodily strength and activity.

        Martha Payne was a woman of amiable disposition, gentle manners, and fervent piety. He remembers the custom of his mother which was to take "her little Daniel" by the hand and lead him to the house of God, seating him by her side. In this way he became early impressed with strong religious feelings. Again he says, "I was the child of many prayers. My parents prayed for a son and before my birth I was dedicated to the Lord. Afterward I was taken to the house of God and again consecrated to His service in the holy ordinance of baptism." When but a lad of eight years through that mother's godly example and early instruction he was converted and daily sought his closet "beseeching the Lord to make me a good boy."

        Thus this mother, Martha Payne, early impressed her child with high, honorable impulses which were to develop into traits of noble character, making the name of Daniel Alexander Payne renowned on two hemispheres for eighty years as a man of deep piety, unsullied reputation, an educator of first rank, a champion for human rights and honorable prelate of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

CATHERINE FERGUSON
Founder of the First Sunday School Movement in New York City

CATHERINE FERGUSON

1749 (?)--1854
FOUNDER OF THE FIRST SUNDAY SCHOOL MOVEMENT IN NEW YORK CITY

        In the 1922 edition of Cubberley's History of Education we find this: "In 1793 Katy Ferguson's School for the Poor was opened in New York, and this was followed by an organization of New York women for the extension of secular instruction among the poor."

        So meagre were opportunities for education of any sort for the poor that this effort is given significant place in the early beginnings of American education. The Sunday School movement, originated by John Wesley and worked out in England by Raikes in 1780, had two years previous made a start in Philadelphia. Katy Ferguson, with no knowledge of the Raikes' movement, with scant material, and with no preparation save her piety and her warm mother's heart, gave to New York City its first Sunday School; and because Sunday Schools at first gave secular as well as religious instruction, her name is recorded with other early American educators.

        For the fact that Catherine Ferguson was an ex-slave, we are indebted to Lossing's Eminent Americans, published in 1883. She was well known and highly respected in New York City. The accompanying cut is from a daguerreotype "taken in 1850 at the instance of Lewis Tappan, Esq., and later owned by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher."

        From the historian Lossing we gain the facts given here. She was born a slave while her mother was on her

passage from Virginia to New York. At the tender age of eight her mother was sold from her, "which taught her to sympathize with desolate children." She secured her freedom partly through her own efforts and partly through the benevolence of others. For fifty years she was held in high esteem as a professional cake-maker. At eighteen she was married. She lost her two children and from that time "put forth pious efforts for the good of bereaved and desolate little ones." In her ministrations she took from the almshouse and from dissolute parents forty-eight children, twenty of them white, rearing them herself or finding homes for them.

        In her life of toil and sacrifice, there was no time for learning to read. She, however, attended Divine service regularly under the excellent Dr. Mason and, not content to enjoy this religious instruction for herself alone, she gathered into her humble dwelling in Warren Street the neglected children of the neighborhood, black and white. "Sometimes the sainted Isabella Graham would invite Katy and her scholars to her house, and there hear them recite the catechism, and give them instruction. Finally, Dr. Mason heard of her school, and visited it one Sunday morning. 'What are you about here, Katy?' he asked. 'Keeping school on the Sabbath?' Katy was troubled, for she thought his question a rebuke. 'This must not be, Katy; you must not be allowed to do all this work alone,' he continued; and then he invited her to transfer her school to the basement of his new church in Murray Street, where he procured assistants for her." Some of New York's most eminent divines were in later years proud to trace their experience to helping in Katy Ferguson's Sunday School. Among these may be cited the Rev. Dr. Ferris, sometime Chancellor of New York University.

        And so it is that this humble handmaiden of the Lord has come into her own in the annals of educational achievement and is reckoned worthy to be named with Plato, Rousseau, Herbart, Pestalozzi, and Horace Mann.

PHILLIS WHEATLEY
First Poet of the Negro Race

PHILLIS WHEATLEY

1754--1783 (?)

                         'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
                         Taught my benighted soul to understand
                         That there's a God--that there's a Savior, too,
                         Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

--PHILLIS WHEATLEY.

        In the year 1761, a little slave girl about seven years old, stood in the market place in Boston, Massachusetts, with a number of others to be sold as chattel.

        The little girl had been brought from far off Africa. She stood a pitiful looking object with no clothing save a piece of dirty, ragged carpet tied around her. Mrs. John Wheatley had several slaves, but they were growing too old to be active and she wished to purchase a young girl, whom she could train up in such a manner as to make a good domestic. For this purpose she went to the slave market and there she saw the little girl who appeared to be in ill health, which no doubt was due to the suffering she endured in the slave-ship on the long voyage. Mrs. Wheatley was a kind, religious woman and though she considered the sickly look of the child an objection, there was something so gentle and modest in the expression of her dark countenance and her large mournful eyes that her heart was drawn toward her and she bought her in preference to several others who looked more robust. She took her home in her chaise, gave her a bath and dressed her in clean clothes. They could not at first understand her and she resorted to signs and gestures for she spoke only her native African dialect and a few words of broken English. Mrs. Wheatley gave her

the name of Phillis Wheatley, little dreaming that it, and the little slave girl she had rescued, would become renowned in American history.

        Phillis soon learned to speak English, but she could tell nothing of herself nor when she was torn from her parents by the slave-traders, nor where she had been since that time. The poor, little orphan had gone through so much suffering and terror that her mind had become bewildered concerning the past.

        The only thing that clung to her about Africa was seeing her mother pour out water before the rising sun which would indicate that the mother descended from some remote tribe of sun-worshippers. And that sight of her mother doing reverence before the great luminous orb coming as it did out of the nowhere, but giving light and cheer to the world, naturally impressed the child's imagination so deeply that she remembered it when all else was forgotten about her native land. In the course of a year and a half a wonderful change took place in the little, forlorn stranger. She not only learned to speak English correctly, but was able to read fluently in any part of the Bible. She possessed uncommon intelligence and a great desire for knowledge. She was often found trying to make letters with charcoal on the walls and fences. Mrs. Wheatley's daughter became her teacher. She found this an easy task for the pupil learned with astonishing quickness. At the same time she showed such an amiable, affectionate disposition that all members of the family became much attached to her. Her gratitude to her motherly benefactress was unbounded and her greatest delight was to do anything to please her. At the age of fourteen she began to write poetry. Owing to such uncommon manifestations of intelligence, she was never put to hard household work. She became the companion of Mrs. Wheatley and her daughter. Her poetry attracted attention and friends of Mrs. Wheatley lent her books which she read with great eagerness. She soon acquired a good knowledge of

geography, history and English poetry. After a while she learned Latin which she so far mastered as to be able to read it understandingly. There was no law in Massachusetts against slaves learning to read and write and Mrs. Wheatley did everything to encourage her love of learning. She always called her affectionately "My Phillis" and seemed to be as proud of her attainments as if she had been her own daughter. Phillis was very religious and at the age of sixteen joined the Orthodox Church that worshipped in the Old-South Meeting-house in Boston. Her character and deportment were such that she was considered an ornament to the church. Clergymen and other literary persons who visited Mrs. Wheatley's home took a great deal of notice of her. Her poems were brought forward to be read by the company and were often praised.

        She was often invited to the homes of wealthy and distinguished people but she was not turned by so much flattery and attention. Seriousness and humility were natural to Phillis and she retained the same gentle, modest deportment that had won Mrs. Wheatley's heart when she first saw her in the market-place. Although tenderly cared for and not required to do any fatiguing work, her constitution never recovered from the shock it had received in early childhood. At the age of nineteen her health failed so rapidly that physicians said it was necessary for her to take a sea-voyage. A son of Mrs. Wheatley was going to England on commercial business and his mother proposed that Phillis should go with him. In England she received even more attention than had been bestowed upon her at home. Several of the nobility invited her to their houses and her poems were published in a volume with an engraved likeness of the author. Still the young poet was not spoiled by flattery. A relative of Mrs. Wheatley remarked that not all the attention she received, nor all the honors that men heaped upon her had the slightest influence upon her temper and deportment. She was the same simple-hearted, unsophisticated being. She addressed

a poem to the Earl of Dartmouth who was very kind to her during her visit to England. Having expressed a hope for the over-throw of tyranny she says:

                         "Should you, my Lord, while you peruse my song,
                         Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,--
                         Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
                         By feeling hearts alone best understood,--
                         I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate,
                         Was snatched from Afric's fancied happy state.
                         What pangs excruciating must molest,
                         What sorrows labor in my parent's breast!
                         Steeled was that soul, and by no misery moved,
                         That from a father seized his babe beloved.
                         Such was my case; and can I then but pray
                         Others may never feel tyrannic sway."

        King George, the third, was soon expected in London and the English friends of Phillis wished to present her to their King; but letters from America informed her of the declining health of her beloved Mrs. Wheatley and she greatly desired to see her. No honors could divert her mind from the friend of her childhood. She returned to Boston immediately. The good lady died soon after. Mr. Wheatley soon followed and the daughter, the kind teacher of her youth, did not long survive. The son married and settled in England. For a short time Phillis remained with a friend of Mrs. Wheatley, then she rented a room and lived by herself. It was a sad change for her. The war of the American Revolution broke out. In the Autumn of 1776, General Washington had his headquarters at Cambridge, Massachusetts. The spirit of the occasion moved Phillis to address some complimentary verses to him. In reply, he sent her the following courteous note:

        "I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me in the elegant lines you enclosed. However undeserving I may be of such encomium, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talents. In honor of

which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the poem, had I not been apprehensive that, while I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This, and nothing else, determined me not to give it a place in the public prints.

        "If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near head-quarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the Muses, and to whom Nature had been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations.

"I am, with great respect,
"Your obedient, humble servant,

"GEORGE WASHINGTON."

        The early friends of Phillis were dead, or scattered abroad and she felt alone in the world. About this time she formed the acquaintance of a colored man by the name of Peters who kept a grocery store. He was very intelligent, spoke fluently, wrote easily, dressed well and was handsome in appearance. He proposed marriage and in an evil hour she accepted him. He proved to be lazy, proud and high-tempered. He neglected his business, failed and became very poor. Though unwilling to do hard work himself, he wanted to make a drudge of his wife. She was unaccustomed to hardships, her constitution was frail and she was the mother of three little children with no one to help her in household labors and cares. He had no pity on her and increased her burdens by his ill temper. The little ones sickened and died and their gentle mother was completely broken down, by sorrow and toil.

        Some of the descendants of her lamented benefactress heard of her illness. They found her in a forlorn situation, suffering for the common comforts of life.

        The Revolutionary War was still raging. Everybody was mourning sons and husbands slain in battle. Currency was deranged and the country was poor. The people were too anxious and troubled to think of the African poet whom they once delighted to honor. And so it happened

that the gifted woman who had been patronized by wealthy Bostonians and who had rolled through London in the splendid carriages of the English nobility, lay dying alone in a cold, dirty, comfortless room.

        It was a mournful reverse of fortune; but she was patient and resigned. She made no complaint of her unfeeling husband.

        The friends and descendants of Mrs. Wheatley did all they could to relieve her destitute condition but fortunately for her she soon went "Where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."

        Her husband was so generally disliked that she was never called Mrs. Peters, but went by the name bestowed upon her by her benefactress and by which she will be known to all posterity the name of PHILLIS WHEATLEY.

        --L. Maria Child in Freedmen's Book to whom much of the above is due.

SARA ALLEN Wife of the First Bishop
A. M. E. Church

SARA ALLEN

1764--1849

        The subject of this sketch was born in Isle of Wight County, Virginia. At an early age she was taken to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she remained until her death, July 16, 1849, which occurred at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Anna Adams.

        When quite a young woman, Sara was united in marriage to Reverend Richard Allen. This young man rose to great and distinctive honors. From the works (1816) of Lorenzo Dow, who was connected with early Methodism in America, we learn the following facts: Richard Allen and a number of other colored people were members of the white Methodist Society. But they were placed around the walls and in corners, compelled to commune after their white brethren had partaken of the sacrament. Richard Allen led the colored members from the Meeting House. Being a blacksmith, he hammered at the forge through the week and on Sundays worshipped in this shop until they were able to build an "African Meeting House"--the first ever built in the Middle or Northern States. After this Richard Allen built a Meeting House with his own money, upon his own ground, and called the name of it, "Bethel."

        The first General Conference of this infant child of God was held in the City of Philadelphia in 1816, at which meeting on April 11th, Richard Allen was elected Bishop--the first Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, his son, Richard Allen, Jr., was elected Secretary of the Conference.

        One writer says: "Richard Allen belongs to the constellation of moral and religious reformers, he is to the

Negro race what Moses was to the Jews in Egypt; what Luther was to the Germans; what Wesley was to the English. As a man and Christian he reflected the Christian graces and demonstrated the power of manly virtures." "If Luther was the apostle to mind freedom and Wesley to soul freedom, then Allen was the apostle of human freedom, or liberty of mind and body." "If Luther's motto was, 'The just shall live by faith,' and Wesley's, 'The world is my Parish,' Allen's was, 'I perceive of a truth, that God is no respecter of persons'."

        He filled the office of Bishop for fourteen years with uncommon zeal, fidelity, perseverance and sound judgment. He was an affectionate husband, a tender father and a sincere Christian.

        The life of Sara, his devoted wife, is indissolubly linked with that of her husband. She grieved with him in sorrow and rejoiced with him in the day of his victory and success. Sara Allen was sweet in disposition, pious in her life and serene of character.

        The name of "Mother Allen" is a household word in homes of African Methodism.

SOJOURNER TRUTH
The Libyan Sibyl

ISABELLA--SOJOURNER TRUTH

1777 (?)--1883

        "Her parallel exists not in history. She stood by the closing century like a twin sister. Born and reared by its side. What it knew, she knew; what it had seen, she had seen."

        There was born late in the Eighteenth Century one of the most singular and impressive characters of pure African blood that has appeared in modern times in the person of the slave, Isabella. Of her early life little is known. Up to the time of her emancipation she served five masters and suffered all the hardships, deprivations and abuse common to slaves of that period.

        She was married once and bore five children, all of whom were sold from her in their early life. We first see her as a slave in the state of New York. Her age is uncertain. The only event on which to build any substantial conclusion as to her age was her liberation in 1817. At this time an act went into force in the Northern States which freed all slaves who were forty years of age. Judging from this fact her birth year would probably have been 1777. According to this she was more than one hundred years old, but she lived not so much in years as in great deeds. She was called Isabella until she gained her freedom then she tells us that she asked God for a new name. She was given Sojourner because of her many wanderings and Truth because she was to preach the truth as to the iniquity of slavery, and because, as she says, "God is my master and His name is Truth and Truth shall be my abiding name until I die."

        Soon after her liberation, she commenced her traveling

career as an abolitionist and developed into a noted Anti-Slavery lecturer. Side by side she stood with Frederick Douglas and in history they are the only two noted ex-slaves who were ardent workers for freedom and qualified public speakers. She was optimistic by nature and became prominent as a publicist and was readily received by Presidents and Statesmen. She became an orator of a superior type, enlisting the sympathies and effecting conviction wherever she spoke.

        Few could match her earnest urgency or resist her persuasive plea. She was of that type of genius who knew without learning and understood with the certainty of instinct. She was blessed with a shrewd judgment and rare common sense. She was an ardent temperance and religious reformer and possessed a striking faith and simple piety. Many hearts which were never warmed by the eloquence of the learned were stirred by her homely renderings of the gospel.

        She preached from one text as she told the renowned Dr. Beecher: "When I preaches I has jest one text to preach from and I always preaches from this one. My text is, 'When I found Jesus'."

        Nature seemed to have endowed her with the spirit of eloquence and poetry. She seemed to be clothed with a native nobility that broke down all barriers. Says Harriet Beecher Stowe: "I never knew a person who possessed so much of that subtle, controlling power called presence as Sojourner Truth." Wendell Phillips said that he has known a few words from her to electrify an audience and affect them as he never saw persons affected by another.

        At a great, crowded public meeting in Faneuil Hall, Frederick Douglas was one of the chief speakers. He described the wrongs of his people, that they had no hope of justice from the white race, no possible hope except in their own right arms. They must fight for themselves and redeem themselves or it would never be done.

        Sojourner was sitting there, tall and dark and in the

hush of deep feeling, after the eloquent speech of Mr. Douglas, she arose and spoke out in her deep, peculiar voice heard all over the house--"Frederick, is God dead?" The effect was electrical and thrilled through the house, changing, as by a flash, the whole feeling of that vast audience.

        She made several visits to the White House to request and urge President Lincoln to enlist the free colored men of the north in defense of the Union. He gave her audience and promised to consider the matter. Shortly after, Mr. Lincoln and Congress gave consent; and Negro soldiers, north and south, were fighting for their freedom.

        Sojourner continued in her work until the war of the Rebellion broke out in 1861 when she went to Washington to care for the wounded troops and to instruct and assist the newly emancipated slaves, who flocked to the Capitol, homeless, half-naked, half-starved, dirty and ragged. Through her exertions many were provided with comfortable lodgings, suitable employment and helped into a cleaner, better life.

        After the close of the war, although nearly ninety years old, she continued traveling in behalf of her people, laboring in twenty-two states, speaking in Senate Chambers, halls, churches and at nearly every important convention and meeting where she endeavored to further their interest and always to large and appreciative audiences.

        Presidents, Senators, Judges, Authors, Lecturers--all were proud to grasp her hand and bid her God Speed on her noble mission. By many of these her name has been made immortal. She is the Libyan Sibyl of Harriet Beecher Stowe and the ideal Sibilla Libica which the chisel of the eminent sculptor, Mr. Story, has given to the world.

        She labored with William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Beecher Stowe and other patriots in the cause of freedom. In her exhortations for the cause of truth in all things, pleading and demanding justice for her down-trodden race, she rose to the greatest heights of oratory. Her African dialect, quaint speeches

and genial ways won for her an ever willing and interested audience. Her witty sayings would make a volume of themselves, had they been preserved. Her keen wit and repartee were strong weapons in debate or argument.

        She was a zealous advocate for the enfranchisement of women and claimed warm friendship with many of the noted women of that cause. In the Suffrage Convention of Akron, Ohio, in 1851, it was Sojourner Truth who saved the day and won the victory for the women.

        In her travels she carried a little book which she called the Book of Life. She could neither read nor write yet she had a large and varied correspondence. In this book were recorded the names, many extracts and testimonials of distinguished men and women. Among the first and most treasured name was that of the lamented President Lincoln who wrote, "For Aunty Sojourner Truth, A. Lincoln, October 9, 1864"; also these lines, "Sojourner Truth, U. S. Grant, March 31, 1870."

        Sojourner had a remarkable memory. Though a child of about six years she remembered the "dark day" of New England in 1780. She says, "The candle was lit, the chickens went to roost and the roosters crowed." She distinctly remembered seeing the soldiers of the old Revolutionary War limping about with their bandaged wounds. She often spoke of seeing the Ulster Gazette brought in draped in mourning on the death of General George Washington which occurred December 14,1799. At that time she was a full grown woman. She says she had reached her full height, which was nearly six feet, when the first steamboat moved up the Hudson River in 1809 and that the Dutchmen were very angry because it frightened away the fishes.

        She sold her biography and photographs as a means of support. Many of her photographs bear one of her characteristic sayings: "I sell the shadder to support the substance." By her own industry and gifts from personal friends she obtained a modest little home in Battle Creek, Michigan, where she lived for more than a quarter of a

SOJOURNER TRUTH
AND
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

century, esteemed by an intelligent community. Here she sought occasional repose from self-imposed and arduous labors.

        The compiler of this sketch visited Sojourner Truth in this humble home a few months before her death. Seated in a large arm chair with an open Bible on her lap, her face wreathed in smiles, she recounted many thrilling events of her long and remarkable life. So far back in history had she led us that a little girl who had been an attentive listener innocently asked, 'Sojourner, did you see Adam and Eve?" As we left that heroic character she said, "I isn't goin' to die, honey, Ise goin' home like a shootin' star."

        Her eventful life closed November 26, 1883, and all that is mortal of Sojourner Truth rests in Oakhill Cemetery to await the return of the Giver of all life who rewards every one according to the deeds done in the body.

ELIZABETH N. SMITH

        (A nineteenth century example, actual dates uncertain)

        Though an important division of the American people, in one phase we differ from most, if not all other divisions--we know so little about ourselves. We have neglected to preserve facts and incidents of those of us who have lived lives of strenuous endurance and unwavering self-sacrifice. Such had a lofty aim to sustain them, that of securing the unhampered enjoyment of life, liberty and property; and they could not be satisfied to plod along restricted paths marked out for them by certain self-styled superiors.

        So the story still remains to be told in all its details how our forbears inaugurated a propaganda so insistent and forcible as to culminate in a train of events making emancipation both a political and a moral issue.

        Regarded in the light of heroism, many Americans, bond and free, have passed on unhonored and unsung who yet were worthy of the olive crown and the victor's palm for their constancy, their courage and their firm belief in the ultimate triumph of justice.

        Among this galaxy of heroes may be included a woman who, born in New England, well might a century ago have lived the restrained life of a gentle woman and left an illustrious example of culture. refinement and noble character.

        Elizabeth Smith had wise, sagacious parents and enjoyed a material ease that seemed opulence in days of frugal habits and simple customs. This afforded her the opportunity to grow normally. With the advance of years she attained a fine physique, a trained intellect, a moral

discernment acute and sensitive, all of which contributed to make her the exceptional woman she finally became.

        Her earliest instruction was given her by private tutors belonging to the Quaker element of her home town, Providence, R. I. Studiously inclined, she was inducted into some branches then popularly deemed "too deep" for ordinary females. She also was at one time a pupil in the "Prudence Crandell" School. This was prior to 1832, for during that year the school building was dragged from its foundations and its brave principal was virtually driven into exile. In the prejudiced eyes of the Canterbury towns-people teaching of Negro and Indian youths was a misdemeanor. One year later the Connecticut legislature covered itself with ignominy by the passage of a law making the opening of a school for pupils of Negro descent a felony.

        In Rhode Island, however, such an institution was tolerated. Just prior to the middle of the last century a "colored school" was established which was located within sight of the State House. There Mrs. Smith worked many years, first as a teacher, afterward a principal.

        In 1865 the school law was so amended that children regardless of race, or color, were admitted into the schools of their respective districts. The only child of Mrs. Smith, a son, thus gained the right of attending the Boys' High School from which he graduated with honor.

        This "opening" of Providence schools just at the close of the Civil War was indeed a notable event. Through the efforts of Albert Lyons and his intrepid wife, Mrs. Mary J. Lyons, a revival of a statute was secured making public school really not merely nominally free. The action was both warmly contested and as strenuously endorsed. The endorsers were most ably assisted by Mrs. Smith, Hon. George T. Downing, of Newport, and many of the influential men in Providence both white and colored. Despite the opposition of "Copperheads," fair play won in the contest. The third daughter in the Lyons family, after

passing a grilling examination, written and oral, (for a certificate of graduation from Colored Grammar School 3, New York City, would not be accepted as qualifying for admission) entered the Girls' High School. This had been in existence only ten years and some of the "hayseeds" were still discussing the "pros and cons" of higher education for females. For females of African descent, such a departure in their undeveloped minds was equivalent to a revolution. And so it virtually proved to be, happily a bloodless one. Many of the graduates of her class became teachers but in a class reuinon in 1892, it was stated that among those following the profession, Miss Lyons was the only one who had taken a rank above that of class teacher, and congratulations were gracefully accorded to her.

        Many of our future women of mark attended this now venerable institution. Of these Amanda (Mattie) Bowen should be referred to for her successful work in Washington, D. C., as a teacher and her welfare work there where she literally spent and was spent in her voluntary sacrifices for her people.

        Miss Lyons, writer of this sketch, has always kept in touch with some of her former classmates, with one, a member of the Tappen family, well-known in abolition days, she has maintained permanent close relations. Until the end of her fruitful busy life the renowned educator, Miss Sarah E. Doyle, remembered "her girls" in ways kindly and practical, and Miss Lyons as one of them had the high honor of assisting in the celebration of this noble woman's ninetieth birthday. The school taught by Mrs. Smith was never "opened" neither was it "closed" until she voluntarily ceased her connection with public education. She turned her attention to private tuition and soon found herself fully occupied in giving piano lessons and instruction in French. Her pupils being mainly children of her neighbors, as she resided on the aristocratic "East Side," were of the better class and she enjoyed her work with them.

        Mrs. Smith was a pianist of high rank and a fine linguist. The writer is most happy to record her personal indebtedness to this woman who loved learning not only for learning's sake but for the privilege it gave her to aid in developing the mental growth and mental strength of the immature though aspiring.

        In conversation Mrs. Smith was supreme. She lived when conversation was an art; her disciplined mind and varied reading, her choice of apposite quotations and illustrations, her animated graceful manners, charmed as well as her kind heart led her to intuitively adapt herself to her auditors. She had the faculty of drawing out the best in each and the good sense to avoid monologues. The secret of her popularity was that she was equally a good talker and a good listener.

        Her endowments, her culture, her high ethical standard, her genuine charity gained for her in her maturity a more than local reputation. To the last she maintained a lively interest in all groups working for uplift recalling with satisfaction how she had helped him who became the "Grand Old Man" of our people, how she had fought and endured with the "real patriots who essayed such heroic service in stirring northerners' consciences just 'before the crisis'."

        Her purity of intention, her faith, her fidelity mark her existence as noble for its endeavor and its fruition. Wonderful records are enshrined in the life stores of so many of our women of the past. We can but dimly realize what it was to do one's duty under the shade of a slavery-darkened country. All honor to our women who were faithful to ideals despite doubt, discouragement, disappointment, despair. The nimbus of serfdom weighted like a nightmare. With the conflict between the spirit of legality and the letter of the law they lay, as it were, between upper and nether millstones. Their joy was so commingled with sorrow, their place so harrowed by injustice, their sense of justice so maltreated, that they were able to cultivate

patience and keep the faith undimmed is an eloquent tribute to the nobleness of their humanity.

        From the South have come many women who literally fought the stars in their courses, to step out of the darkness of bondage into the light of personal liberty. Throughout the North and other sections our thoughtful women have lived clouded lives, made dim by the tales of the indescribable sufferings endured by their sisters by blood and lineage. Their tears have flowed in sympathy and their characters have been moulded by large sacrifices cheerfully made upon demand to aleviate distress which at best could only be surmised. An impregnable persistency, a luminous faith, combined to make both the bond and the free able to endure to the uttermost.

        And they all have done their duty, much better than they knew. They have left a broad foundation upon which their successors are obligated to raise an enduring superstructure of character, one that will exhibit the progress of the much maligned "black woman of America," and so conserve the toils, vigils and prayers of the many whose lives have been lived in shade, who only in lives of others saw "the shine of distant suns."

MRS. SARAH H. FAYERWEATHER

MRS. DINAH COX

MRS. SARAH ELIZABETH TANNER

MRS. CHARLOTTA GORDON PYLES

SARAH HARRIS FAYERWEATHER

Born, Canterbury, Conn., 1802
Died, Kingston, R. I., 1868

        The larger portion of the nineteenth century covered a period of great political activity in the United States, slavery being the foremost topic of discussion. Very much was then being said and written concerning the "peculiar" institution. Antagonists and apologists seized upon pulpit, press and forum to aid in moulding public sentiment to be utilized as barricades in defense of respective positions. From the earliest days there was launched and extended, a campaign for the emancipation of the slaves, the elevation of free colored people, and the practical application of the fundamental principles underlying humanity and justice in the administration of government. Naturally colored people in the free states had the condition of their brethren in bondage very near to their hearts and thought but little of the trouble and nothing at all of the risk and cost involved in making their oppressed fellow creatures objects of solicitude and devotion.

        The records of the "Underground Railroad" disclose how the bondmen who were able to think at all regarded their anomalous state of existence. The creed and procedure of abolition and anti-slavery societies were in harmony with the sacred idea of human brotherhood. Tradition, which is verified through unwritten history, furnishes ample testimony to the race loyalty of the many who daily as it were, had the fact forced into inner consciousness that they, too, suffered a thraldom none the less vicious because invisible. Any average man or woman living under such a disability might properly serve as a type to illustrate the

self-abnegation displayed in an endeavor to minimize the nation's shameful traffic in human flesh. The selection of Mrs. Sarah Harris Fayerweather to exemplify a group of unhonored heroes is a happy one from more than one angle. All the circumstances of heredity and environment, save one only, combined to make her life honorable, responsible, care-free, and independent. The daughter of a New England farmer, she enjoyed all the advantages of the freedom and steadiness of existence in a rural community. She came from stock possessing elements of character essential to progress and contentment. All the then available opportunities for study open to girls were within her reach. Had she been an American by birth and descent, "only this and nothing more," her story would have been too commonplace to merit record or comment. But, she was in part, of African extraction; while this to an extent set her aside and apart, it also made her of importance because of the times during which she lived and of the part she played in the great drama of life.

        At Canterbury a select school for girls was kept by a Quaker lady, Miss Prudence Crandell. The Harris sisters were entered there as pupils. This philanthropic high-minded woman who received them upon precisely the same terms as she did other village pupils, later became a victim to the meanest sort of persecution. Disgusted with a sporadic outburst of race prejudice in her native state, Miss Crandell tried for a while to maintain a school for colored girls exclusively. Finally she emigrated to Kansas toward which all eyes were then turned as a presumptive "free state."

        In earliest youth Sarah Harris became the wife of George Fayerweather, who was descended from French West Indians named Monteflora. He was a blacksmith as was his father before him and one of his sons, C. Frederick Douglass succeeded him in the business. Their eldest daughter, another Sarah, was so deeply impressed by the Crandell episode that it influenced her entire life. She

never married, but upon reaching majority devoted herself to the dissemination of literature upon anti-slavery, temperance and allied subjects. She even undertook the long and toilsome journey to Kansas to visit Miss Crandell whom she regarded with affection tinged with awe.

        In the quiet precincts of a model New England village, Kingston, R. I., the Fayerweathers built a home and reared a family. After the formal, reserved habits of the day, they were trained in politeness and obedience. They were expected to study, to perform manual labor, keep early hours, and follow the strict practices of the Congregational Church.

        Artisans, in days of yore could do well for and by their families, for the doubtful custom of living beyond or even up to one's means, had not as yet in rural localities become fashionable. Had this family been burdened only with the natural responsibilities attached to their position, affairs would have moved on easily and smoothly as in a groove. But they were "colored people" and that significant epithet embodies a "true tale" of sadness, sin, and sorrow.

        The opponents of slavery have been divided into three classes, those who made appeals verbally and in writing to influence public sentiment, those who gave full financial support to aid in the propagation of the doctrine of personal liberty, and those who gave secret service of time, thought, and strength to make effective the attempted escapes of slaves. Almost without exception our men and women were numbered in at least two of these divisions. Douglas, Remond, Sojourner Truth, Sarah Lenox, Frances Harper, won world wide fame for their eloquence and aggressiveness. Countless obscure, though loyal adherents, worked differently but as effectively in a cause which to them had all the sacredness and importance of a latter day crusade. In many a household like that of Sarah Fayerweather, a portion of the income was duly set aside to be devoted to the forwarding of this work. The people responded to any call however sudden, cheerfully and with

alacrity. Shelter, legal assistance, disguises, all necessary creature comforts, were forthcoming upon demand. The earnest helpers felt that the fugitives like the poor were always with them actually or in anticipation. They scrutinized the neighborhood to discern whom to trust in emergencies and to kindle and keep alive a healthy sentiment in the locality, was but one phase of the multifarious tasks undertaken. Safe housing, safe thoroughfare were prime essentials; to invariably secure these was a delicate dangerous mission.

        Under such conditions, so continuous, so tense, the elders in a family could not fail in being thoughtful, cautious and full of resources; the youthful members caught the reflected spirit and only awaited a signal to become participants as well as sympathizers in a work which they gradually began to know was being carried on. This missionary work as they understood it to be, was not disclosed to them in all its details until the age of discretion had been attained. Though no dawning intellect could be entirely oblivious of the sudden additions and as sudden subtractions to the household numbers, yet a premature reference to anything out of the ordinary was never hazarded.

        Upon the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law there was a tacit understanding among the lovers of freedom, that the iniquitous statute was to be regarded in the letter only. The most sensitive New England conscience felt that in the spirit it ought to be violated with impunity. In a way, so far from being a hindrance, it gave fresh impetus to the effort of helping those who were encountering all sorts of risks to escape slavery.

        In large cities like Boston where anti-slavery meetings were regularly held, they were not only attended by the townspeople, but by those living in outlying towns like Canterbury and Kingston. Persons traveled miles to hear the scathing indictments of a Garrison, the impassioned oratory of a Phillips, the pathetic pleadings of a Lucretia Mott, the dignified utterances and unassailable logic of a

Douglas. Having renewed their vows to continue steadfast in the fight to extirpate the nation's obliquity, having had explained and emphasized the part each individual had to perform in the premises, they returned to their respective homes fully imbued with the resolution to discharge to the utmost the "duty lying next." For women this involved the procuring of garments for change and disguise, the collection of extra food, the selection of places for hiding and security, last but not least, the proffer of first aid service to weary travelers long deprived of the barest opportunities for cleanliness either of person or clothing.

        For men it meant sudden, often dangerous trips, midnight watchings and waitings that sorely taxed body and mind. None knew until the very last moment when action would be required, but each one was aware that almost every day some would come seeking good offices. This was the responsibility undertaken by Sarah Fayerweather, and the discipline resultant made her alert, discreet, sympathetic, untiring. In addition to the ordinary wear and tear of family support and oversight, came the exigencies of this extraordinary current of under life.

        Each family had silent advisers and informers in the guise of the newspapers of the times; the "Liberator," the "Anti-Slavery Standard," the "Colored American," and "New York Tribune," kept them in touch with the trend of affairs. No child old enough to have any measure of confidence reposed in him ever hesitated to take the usual lengthy walk to and from a village post office; to read any portion of a newspaper was ample reward. In such an atmosphere of unselfish service a spirit of race consciousness was developed. One daughter for many years a successful teacher in Wilmington, Del., transmitted to a second generation all that was valuable in the training she had received from her parents who upheld an ideal of self-respect and self-sacrifice. The eldest son, Prof. Geo. H. Fayerweather, was for a long time a member of the Board of Education at New Orleans, La. His assistance in the conduct

of affairs in this department was greatly facilitated by the impressions he had received during the formative periods of childhood and youth.

        Mrs. Fayerweather's sisters were fortunate in their children, who wherever they located, became valuable residents of their respective localities. The daughters of Mrs. Celinda Harris Anderson, were not only successful in teaching, but won reputations as devoted race women. As such they are still remembered in Washington and New York City.

        Within the precincts of the Fayerweather homestead noted groups often assembled. Wm. Wells Brown and Wm. C. Neal enjoyed infrequent, brief vacations there. Leading anti-slavery women paid visits to Kingston exclusively to talk with "Friend Sarah." There the famous Hutchinson family sang their songs of freedom while all the neighborhood entered fully into the spirit of the occasion.

        Personally, Mrs. Fayerweather presented a very distinguished appearance. She was tall, fine looking and had a voice of peculiar sweetness. Her favorite attitude was sitting erect with clapsed hands, while her steady gaze seemed to pierce far below the surface of things. She made a beautiful picture with abundant gray hair framing an almost colorless ivory face, whose smile redeemed it from severity. She could listen as well as converse and had the happy faculty of eliciting confidences unasked.

        This woman was representative; such were to be found everywhere. Their lives presented a grand illustration of faith reinforced by fidelity. This makes the memory of Sarah Fayerweather and her noble band of sisters a precious legacy to our women of today and should incite in them a spirit to do, to dare, and to suffer, and to become strong.

        Our country has not yet attained the supreme position of a consistent republic. The "duty of the now" is the teaching of an axiomatic doctrine. "So long as one chained and oppressed man in any part of the world remains bound

and unredeemed, no army is invincible against him and no cause is just but his own." All women who are lovers of fair play should teach and preach this: white women from a patriotic desire for the permanent establishment of civic justice; colored women for their self-preservation and the moral safety of their men fresh from the struggle to keep inviolate in foreign climes that very consistent democracy so conspicuous by its absence at home. Women at large ought to help to justify their contention to be accorded places side by side with men in administering the affair of government.

DINAH COX

1804--1909

        Dinah Cox was born in Roanoke, Virginia. She was the slave of John Randolph, and was freed by the terms of his will when he died in 1833. The first item of that famous document reads as follows:

        "I give and bequeath to all my slaves their freedom, heartily regretting that I have ever been the owner of one."

        He also provided that a portion of his wealth be given to them namely:

        "Forty acres of land and to each slave a portion of the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

        After fourteen years of litigation caused by relatives who sought to break the will, the Executors purchased a tract of land in Mercer County, Ohio, and the slaves prepared to start for their future home.

        Aunt Dinah, as she was called by every one, was a fearless leader among the people. She was also famous for her knitting and quilting. An incident occurred which showed her spirit. She was told that she would have to go out to work to help herself and family get ready to move. She said, "Oh, no, John Randolph left enough for me, and, besides, I must get my children's clothes ready. I won't have time to work." There were more than three hundred in the party, men, women and children.

        As they started from the old plantation, sorrowful at leaving the only home they knew, they sang:

                         "Don't weep, don't cry,
                         I shall never turn back any more."

        The poor whites who came to jeer and ridicule broke into tears so great was the effect of that song.

        They traveled on foot and by wagons, the latter being for the old people and children. They went by river to Cincinnati and from there by canal boats to New Bremen. Here they met great hostility. The old Dutch settlers of Mercer County came out in force, with their muskets patroled the banks of the canal and refused to let them settle on their own purchased land. The weary travelers' dismay and disappointment can never be told.

        They finally settled in Miami County near Piqua, Ohio. The Mercer County land was sold and resold and is now said to be the finest farm land in that county and all that the slaves, now free-men, received was their fare from Roanoke, Virginia, to Piqua, Ohio.

        In 1917 an effort was made by the descendants to recover their possessions. It was carried to the Supreme Court and decided in favor of the present owners, the verdict being that the time was so long that it was outlawed. Dinah Cox had carefully preserved her "Free Papers" which played an interesting and important part in the "Famous Randolph Will Case." This document is in the possession of her great grand-daughter, Mrs. Amy Logan, in Springfield, Ohio.

        Aunt Dinah was the mother of fourteen children. Only three, however, lived to come to Ohio with her. She had an interesting personality, ready in conversation and possessed a remarkable memory. She distinctly remembered when the soldiers of the War of 1812 halted at the Randolph plantation. She was a devout Christian and a member of the Park Baptist Church. She lived to see her fifth generation, passing away at the great age of 105 years.

SARAH ELIZABETH TANNER

1804--1914

        Sarah E. Miller was born in Winchester, Virginia. She was one of six children. In 1843 the family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She attended the day school and later Avery College. When she was sixteen years of age her father, Jefferson Miller, died. Sarah was compelled to stop school and became a teacher.

        In 1858 she was united in marriage to a promising young minister, Benjamin Tucker Tanner who later became a successful pastor, Editor of the Christian Recorder, The Church Review and finally a Bishop of the A. M. E. Church. For some years they lived in the cities of his pastorate and in 1872 made a permanent home in Philadelphia remaining there till death.

        Mrs. Tanner was the mother of nine children, two of whom died in infancy. She was in the truest sense of the term a home-maker, devoting her whole time to the welfare of her family. The residence, 2908 Diamond Street, Philadelphia, was for over a quarter of a century a haven of rest to the traveler and a solace to the family. She was tutelar angel of inspiration and light to that hearth-stone. Her cheerful, unselfish spirit was manifest at all times. Her high ideals, her lofty concept of life, her refined and elegant manner made lasting impression upon all who came within her charmed circle.

        She also possessed great business ability which exceeded that of her learned husband and he, realizing this, relinquished the family finances to her which she so ably managed, and demonstrated her all-around domestic capacities.

        She devoted herself almost exclusively to her domestic affairs.

        Her one sole exception was the church to which her consecrated service was unreservedly given. As a teacher in the Sabbath School she taught many little lips to lisp the name of the Redeemer of the world.

        In the church was the Parent Mite Missionary Society, in which she held offices for years, first as president and then as treasurer. Her children remember the quarterly occasion which called their mother to the missionary meetings. Such outings were events of great moment in the family history.

        When her children were grown she felt that she could devote more time to the cause of missions and travel in its interest. Accordingly she redoubled her efforts. As the years sped by she gave her whole time and full energy to the work. Like the Psalmist, she could say, "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." With her husband, Bishop B. T. Tanner, she traveled extensively carrying the gospel to missions throughout the country to the women who sat in darkness, thus she claimed "His promised blessing the brightening little while."

        She lived to see her children reach manhood and womanhood. Lived to see three of them attain more than ordinary distinction. Her eldest daughter, Dr. Halle Tanner Johnson, became a physician; Reverend Carl Tanner a minister of his mother's church and her eldest son, famous on two continents, Henry O. Tanner, the gifted artist.

        Her children rise up and call her blessed.

CHARLOTTA GORDON MACHENRY PYLES

1806--1880

        Down below the Mason and Dixon's Line, near Bards-town, in the good old state of Kentucky, among the various Negro families, who lived on the plantations, was one named Pyles. This family of father, mother and twelve children was one of those favored families before the war. I say favored because they did not have to suffer many of the hardships of slavery. The father, whose name was Harry MacHenry (Pyles) happened to be the offspring of his master, who was William MacHenry and hailed from Scotland, while his mother was a light colored maid, who worked in the home. Is it any wonder then, that the son had blue eyes, fair complexion and all the ear marks of his white ancestry, and his father, in order to atone for his sin, declared him free and allowed him to roam where he would? The father not only did this for him, but saw that his son had good training in the harness and shoe mending industries and gave him a shop where he worked for the plantations, far and near, and thus supported his family in a comfortable way.

        Tall and majestic as a straight pine was his good wife, Charlotta Gordon, with the high cheek bones, the copper colored hue and straight, glossy black hair, which denoted Indian extraction. Her parentage, while different in some respects, was similar in others to that of her husband; for her father was a mixture of German and Negro, while her mother had been a full blooded squaw of the famous Seminole tribe of Indians. Coming from such parentage it was not surprising that later in life, she displayed such courage and endurance in the face of difficulties,

as would have defeated other hearts less brave than hers. She received the name of Gordon from the white family that owned her. The Gordons were Wesleyan Methodists and the father of this splendid old family was as fine a Christian man as you would meet anywhere. It was because of his great faith in humanity that when he died he left Charlotta Pyles and her family as a heritage to his only daughter rather than to two sons, and as the daughter's heritage she and her little family were blessed. They attended the same church with Miss Gordon, enjoyed many privileges and were never made to feel that they were slaves.

        Miss Gordon was a very conscientious young woman and promised her father on his death bed that she would free this family according to the Wesleyan Methodist Manumittant Law for slaves a few years after his death.

        Charlotta had married a John McElroy before she met Harry MacHenry; and had one daughter by this union. The girl's name was Julian.

        The ten children who blessed the union of Charlotta Gordon and Harry MacHenry were as follows: Emily, the eldest, Barney, Benjamin, Pauline, Sarah Ann, Mary Ellen, Henry, Charlotta, Elizabeth and Mary Agnes.

        In the year 1853, Miss Gordon decided to give them their Manumittant papers. In order to do this, it was necessary for her to move the entire family North.

        In those days when pro-slavery sentiments were at fever-heat, on account of the activities of the Abolitionists and the Underground Railway, it was very dangerous for colored people, and especially free ones, to move about from place to place without a pass.

        Miss Gordon happened to have several brothers who did not share her religious opinion and who had always coveted the MacHenry family as a fine possession. One of the sons of the family, Benjamin, who was a tall, light complexioned man with blue eyes, straight brown hair and fine physique was caught one evening by some of the brothers

and sold to a slave driver in Mississippi. This cowardly act of her own relatives caused Miss Gordon to take action promptly, for she began a lawsuit shortly afterwards to have her possession of the entire Pyles family established by law. To keep them safe, she accompanied them to jail in Springfield, Kentucky, and there had the entire family incarcerated for a couple of days and remained with them to protect them from the kidnapping tactics of her brothers.

        Harry MacHenry Pyles was not allowed, as yet, to have charge of his family, though permitted by his father to go and come as he pleased and no one dared to molest him.

        Miss Gordon finally won the lawsuit and began preparations to take the family North. The laxness of the laws concerning slaves at that time, and the fear of her brothers caused Miss Gordon to send to Ohio and have a white minister, Rev. Claycome, come to Kentucky and start with her family northward. Before starting, Grandma Pyles, who was one of the famous old Southern cooks, had prepared meats, ginger bread, cakes and food of every description, enough to last the family on their trip; so it would only be necessary to cook a few corn pones and make coffee from time to time to supply the travelers. Occasionally, when their paths happened to cross that of a deer, they would have an addition of venison to their store of food.

        You can here, perhaps, let your imagination supply the details of this wonderful trip, beset on every side by the dangers and treachery of the old slave law, the wild animals lurking in the forests; and the lawless renegades who often roamed about at will. Yet who would exchange even this apparent wild flight for freedom for the hideous nightmare of unending slavery and degradation which remained behind? Many at this time had lost their lives in a similar flight for freedom. To go or to die a moral death was the question before them. And they determined to go, because they felt that God was with them.

        The most noted of this party was the noble hearted white woman, who was willing to brave the scorn of her relatives, the criticism and reproach of neighbors, and to sacrifice friends, all for the sake of giving this Negro family the heritage, which was theirs by right. Then there was the minister, reverend in appearance, who was also impelled by a bond of sympathy for the unfortunate, to leave his home and come to Kentucky and travel thence through the dangers and wilds of an unknown land in order to perform this heroic deed.

        The family consisted of the father, mother, the eleven children, and one small daughter and son, Thermon and Louanne belonging to the older daughter, Julian; and three small boys, John Wesley, Daniel and James T., sons of Emily. Both of these daughters had married, but their husbands were slaves belonging to other masters and therefore could not accompany them.

        In one of the old time-worn schooner wagons drawn by six of the best blooded horses that Kentucky could afford with four in the rear as a supply for the others when they became tired, with all their household goods neatly packed in the wagon, the women and children were crowded in and started off on their journey to the Land of Promise.

        It was in the early fall of the year 1853 that the family started out on their eventful trip.

        I have often heard my mother, whose name was Mary Ellen, say that when they arrived at Louisville, she thought it was as near like the "Torment" as any place she had ever seen, because of the smoke and fire she saw belching from the chimneys of the factories and distilleries, and she told how none of the children strayed far from the wagon because they were too afraid they would be burned up.

        As they proceeded on their journey Miss Gordon discovered that she had forgotten her register and they turned back to secure it. When they arrived at Bardstown, she

was told she could not get it, so incensed were the officials in the court-house over what they considered a very foolish act--that of giving her property away. She therefore proceeded without it. The party traveled overland to Louisville, Kentucky, the people of their neighborhood all regretted their going bcause they had filled such a useful place. Aunt Charlotta, as she was commonly called, made the best ginger bread of any one round about and at all the basket meetings, protracted meetings and other gatherings, both white and black, she was always there to sell her famous ginger bread cookies and other delicacies. Uncle Harry was missed for his tradesmanship, too, for it would take a long time for the white people of the plantations to find some one to make harness or half sole shoes as neatly as he had done it.

        At Louisville, after they had finished all negotiations with the state officers as to their right to leave the place, they boarded one of the old sidewheel boats, so common on the Ohio in those days, and traveled to Cincinnati, thence to St. Louis.

        When they finally reached St. Louis, they met a white man by the name of Nat. Stone, who promised to pilot them all the way to Minnesota for the sum of $100, which Miss Gordon agreed to pay. Later on in the journey, he attempted to be treacherous and held that unless they gave him $50 more, he would turn them over to some slave holders in Missouri. So afraid was Miss Gordon that her plans would be frustrated, that she paid the extra $50 and they continued their journey. After leaving St. Louis, they again started overland in their schooner wagon traveling in Woodford County, Saline County, across the Missouri River on the ferry to Howard County, then Shelby, then Monroe. This was a very tiresome and difficult journey and ofttimes, it was necessary for them to throw out some meat and use powder as well, to keep the bears and wolves away from the wagon, but after many trials and difficulties, such as are encountered by all pioneers, going into a new and

sparsely settled country, without any of the conveniences of this progressive age, they finally crossed the Des Moines River and arrived at Keokuk, Iowa. Many times they were stopped in Missouri because it was a slave state, but when they saw the two white men and the white woman with these colored people, they were permitted to go on grudgingly but unmolested.

        It had been their aim to go on to Minnesota, but when they arrived at Keokuk, which was then a mere trading post with one small tavern on the river bank, the winter had set in with all its severity for it had taken them many months to come so far.

        Any one who has taken a trip in a schooner wagon with only canvas covering for its protection and encountered the blizzards of the northwest, which almost cover the wagon with snow and ice, will realize that such weather must be considered before it is encountered. The older boy, Barney Pyles, was the main driver all the way from Kentucky and he it was who looked after the women and children and assisted the father with the chores and work on the trip. After arriving in Keokuk, the father being somewhat of a carpenter, as well as having a very thorough knowledge of some of the other trades, proceeded at once in the spring to build a substantial little brick house on Johnson Street for Miss Gordon and the family.

        During the next year, he found it an ever increasing burden to take care of, not only his own family, but that of the two daughters and their children as well, even though the oldest son, Barney, had a very lucrative position of hauling all the freight overland from Keokuk to Des Moines, because there were no railroads through at that time.

        The mother finally devised a plan whereby the burdens of the two oldest daughters' families could be shifted to those who should really care for them. She had letters written to the owners of Catiline Walker, the husband of her daughter Emily and Joseph Kendricks, husband of

Julian and found that these two men could be bought for $1500.00 each.

        Meanwhile she received a letter from her long lost son, Benjamin, who had been sold into Mississippi and who in some way or other found out that she was making plans to buy the sons-in-law and decided that if this were true, surely she would be willing to buy her own son. He therefore wrote her that he could be bought for $1500.00 also and suggested that only one of the sons-in-law be purchased together with himself, leaving the other man to trust his fate. Grandma Pyles, however, felt that as her son Benjamin was not married and had not little ones to care for it would be easier for him to liberate himself than for the others to do so. Hence, she wrote him that if he would only trust in God, a way would be provided. This irritated Benjamin and they never received any direct communication from him again. They did hear, indirectly, that he was sold into Fayette County, Missouri, and known as Benjamin Moore and from that all trace of him was lost; and while inquiries made through various channels to determine his whereabouts, no word has ever been received from him.

        Charlotta Gordon Pyles in her plan to go out and raise the money to buy the sons-in-law had secured good letters of recommendation from Major Kilbourne, Gen. Scoeffield and other prominent white citizens, and armed with these good letters, she started out on a trip to the East, traveling through Pennsylvania, where in the city of Philadelphia, she was hailed with delight by the Quaker families, residing there at the time, many of whom threw open their doors and entertained her. She also had the pleasure, though a poor slave, of speaking in Old Penn Hall in which hangs the famous Liberty Bell. The good people of Philadelphia not only entertained her, but allowed her to speak in church, hall and home against the wrongs of slavery and provided her with means to go on and tell her story to others as she traveled. And ofttimes in her

travels, she met and exchanged confidences with that fearless and dauntless advocate of liberty, Frederick Douglas. Night after night, I have listened to my mother, as we sat around her knee and heard her tell how kind friends used to have grandma take off her black bonnet, which she invariably wore, and how they stroked her glossy black hair, while she told of her travels and the distance that separated part of her family from her and how she was trying with might and main, though ignorant, to unite that family again. Through all the state of New York and through the New England states, made famous at that time by such strong characters as William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe and others, who spoke out in all the intensity of their souls against slavery, this good woman traveled. She numbered as her personal friends, John B. Gough, Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglas and Susan B. Anthony. These knew her, and admired her, and made her way easier by preparing and arranging various audiences to hear her and today we, as her offsprings, have as our most precious heirlooms the photos and recommendations of these beloved men and women, given to her as a personal reminder of their association and contact with her in her noble cause.

        It was a difficult task for a poor ignorant woman, who had never had a day's schooling in her life, to travel thousands of miles in a strange country and stand up night after night, day after day before crowds of men and women, pleading for those men back in slavery and for the union of their wives and children. So well did she plead, however, that in about six months, she had raised the $3000.00, retraced her way to Iowa and then to Kentucky and there she bought the two men from their owners and reunited their families.

        Her activities in this holy cause did not stop here, but many a slave, coming from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, found at the gateway into Iowa an enthusiastic member of their own race in the person of Grandma Pyles

who received them into her own home and in connection with the many white friends whom she had made in the East, enabled them to secretly make their way into Canada. It seems to me that I can now hear ringing in my ears the song which my mother said the slaves would sing when they were enroute through this channel. The lines were:

                         "O, fare-you-well Kentucky,
                         You are not the place for me,
                         I am on my way to Canada,
                         Where colored men are free."

        It would be impossible to tell you the many good deeds which Grandma Pyles performed for her own people for she was a quiet, home-loving body and modest in all of her good deeds and no record of them has been preserved.

        Among her daughters was one, who had the same indomitable spirit which characterized her mother. Her name was Mary Ellen. She was seventh in age of the sons and daughters and had always been a great favorite with Miss Gordon.

        It was she who was chosen to live in the Big House with Miss Gordon and whenever the latter went to church or visiting, she always took Mary Ellen with her, for she was so fair with her gray eyes and light hair that she could easily pass for a white child. I have heard my mother tell how, after Miss Gordon's father died and she lived in the house with Miss Gordon, often in her childish fancy she would imagine she heard a heavy step like that of Mr. Gordon coming down the steps and the latch of the stair door raised and she would expect to see his ghostly self finish his nightly vigil, but nothing would happen, and then she would steal to Miss Gordon's side to receive her kindly embrace and be assured that it was nothing but her childish imagination, which ofttimes comes when a death has occurred in the family.

        Again, mother would tell the children of a famous old

wizard who lived not far from Miss Gordon's and whose name was Rhinehearson. She was mortally afraid of him because he walked on both his hands and feet with his body and head turned upwards and back turned to the ground. He was a white man and whenever anything was lost, stolen or killed, both white and black would consult Rhinehearson and he would stop them a long way off before they arrived and tell them why they came. He was the authority on all mysteries and it is said that he never laughed until after he was seven years old. The incident which provoked his laughter was that of his father attempting to climb over a stake and rider fence with a small barrel of whiskey, when the latter fell out of his grasp, rolled down the hill and spilled its contents and left his father in great confusion.

        Miss Gordon thought so much of Mary Ellen that she never allowed her to be punished, and even one time when she failed to get the water from the spring, which was her daily task, and it had been reported to her mother and Grandma Pyles was about to give her what she needed, Miss Gordon intervened and said, "Let her go this time, Charlotta, and next time she must be attended to."

        When her mother brought her from the South, Mary Ellen was about seventeen years old and had never attended school, but she had a great thirst for knowledge and a determination to get an education at any cost. She finally heard of a Quaker family in Salem, Iowa, who needed a girl to help with their housework and they also offered the extraordinary inducement of a school education. Mary Ellen immediately had a letter written to them offering her services and was accepted. Thus, the dream of her life began to materialize and after she had been there awhile, she pleaded for her younger sister, Mary Agnes by name, that she might also come. This was finally allowed and she redoubled her efforts by working both for her own and her sister's board. The two sisters attended four terms of school in this way, but the younger sister became

homesick and returned home. Mary Ellen remained until she had secured a good education such as was to be had in those days, for schools were few and far between for colored people; and so Mary Ellen's gaining an education was looked upon as a great achievement.

        The Pyles family not only fraternized with the Indians, farmed and worked for their right as pioneers of industry, but they were also pioneers for the cause of education. Small wonder again that in the year 1876 Charlotta, the namesake of Grandma, who had sent her oldest boy to the very inadequate colored grade school in Keokuk and after he had finished the eighth grade of this school, as they had no colored high school, she appealed to the white high school for admittance of her son, Geroid Smith. When she found the doors of this institution securely closed against him because of his color, in the same business-like manner that had characterized her mother's spirit she took the matter to the courts of Iowa and secured the decision of opening the Keokuk high school to white and black alike; and thus her son became one of the first colored high school graduates in the state of Iowa in the year of 1880.

        Let us now for a few minutes go back to the history of the noble soul, Miss Gordon, who brought the family North and after reaching Keokuk gave each his freedom. The family kept these Manumittant papers till after the colored people were free, but so great was their abhorrence of the idea that they had ever been considered slaves, that these papers were destroyed and thus only the tradition remained. Miss Gordon, however, continued to live with the Pyles family, visiting her rich relatives in Kewanee, Illinois, at stated periods, and died in the early '70's in the home of the family she loved so well. Both she and Grandma Pyles, belonged to the First Baptist Church of Keokuk, for at that time there was no other church there. And the same pallbearers, who carried the remains of Miss Gordon to their last resting place, also did this same service for

Grandma Pyles at her death in the year 1880 at the advanced age of seventy-four.

        The spirit of Grandma Charlotta Pyles still goes marching onward in that of her grand children who are engaged in the work of educating the Negro race in the Piney Woods School, Mississippi.

MRS. JANE ROBERTS

1809--(?)

        "The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here."

        Mrs. Roberts was the wife of the first African President of Liberia. She was an American as was also her distinguished husband, Joseph Jenkin Roberts, a Mulatto born in Virginia in 1809. He went to Liberia in 1829 and engaged in trade. At the death of Thomas H. Buchanan, as Governor of the Commonwealth of Liberia, Mr. Roberts was appointed Governor by the Colonization Society of America and held the office for six years. He was at the head of the Liberian force in its war against the Golah Chief, Gatumba.

        During his governorship Mr. Roberts visited the United States and made a good impression and met the lady who later became his wife. As a result of his visit an American squadron visited the Coast of West Africa. Governor Roberts found the English and other foreigners unwilling to pay customs duties, on the ground that Liberia was not an actual government and had no right to levy duties on shipping and foreign trade.

        A crisis was reached. In 1846 the Colonization Society resolved that it was expedient for the people to take into their own hands the management of their affairs and severed relations which had bound Liberia to it.

        The Liberians themselves called for a Constitutional Convention which began its sessions June 25, 1847.

        On July twenty-sixth the Declaration of Independence was made and the Constitution of the Liberian Republic was adopted.

MRS. JANE ROBERTS
Wife of the First President of Africa

        "The flag consisted of eleven stripes alternately red and white; the field, blue, bore a single white star. It is suggested that the meaning of the flag is this: The three colors indicate the three counties into which the Republic is divided. The eleven stripes represent the eleven signers of the Declaration and the Constitution; the lone star indicated the uniqueness of the African Republic."

        The election was held in October and Joseph Jenkin Roberts, the governor of the Commonwealth was elected to the new office of President of the Republic. One of his earliest acts was to visit Europe in order to ask the recognition of the new nation by European countries. The first to recognize the Republic was Great Britain in 1848; the second, France in 1852; the United States in 1862. In 1858 Mr. Roberts was appointed president of Liberia College. In 1862 was sent to Europe and appointed Belgian Consul.

        In 1872 he was re-elected president for the fifth time. President Roberts was a superior man in intelligence and moral integrity. His excellence in conversation and elegance of manners rendered him popular in the Courts of France and England.

        During his long and eventful public life, he was ably assisted by his excellent wife, the subject of this sketch.

        Mrs. Roberts graced the Executive Mansion with ease and dignity. She spoke English and French fluently and in all respects was well-bred and refined. She accompanied her husband on many of his visits and was the recipient of great attention wherever she appeared. She had the distinction of being twice presented to her Majesty Queen Victoria, once with her husband on the Queen's royal yacht. At the conclusion of that visit to England, the President and Mrs. Roberts were courteously returned to Monrovia on the British war-ship Amazon.

        Her second appearance before the British Queen was no less interesting. An African woman by the name of Martha Ricks, famous for her patch work quilts, had for twenty-five years been piecing an intricate pattern, which

she declared when completed was to be a gift to Queen Victoria. The good woman grew old as she pieced and stitched and quilted, never wavering nor doubting. It became a standing joke--Aunt Martha's quilt--"Is Aunt Martha still quilting?" "When will Aunt Martha finish her quilt?" were questions often heard.

        Thus a generation passed until at last it was finished and Aunt Martha unfolded a most beautiful creation. A quilt which showed a complete coffee tree all in green and yellow on white ground--its branches and leaves perfectly formed, the flowers at the root of the leaves and its berries--exquisite in tracery and workmanship.

        The design was so unique and true to nature that it was admired by all who saw it.

        The laugh was turned, but how was the Queen to get it? "I shall take it to the Queen myself," said Aunt Martha. Again the joke went around--"Aunt Martha's going to take her quilt to England," they laughed and joked. Mrs. Roberts saw and admired the quilt, heard the story and the way was found. She and Aunt Martha embarked for England carrying the much prized quilt. On reaching London a meeting was arranged and Aunt Martha stood in a palace and had the joy, after years of patience and perseverance, to present in person her quilt which was graciously accepted by that noblest of sovereigns, the Queen of Great Britain and Empress of all India, Victoria Regina. Today the workmanship of this humble African woman adorns a niche in the art collections of Windsor Castle. Mrs. Roberts and Aunt Martha, the latter laden with gifts from the royal household, were returned to Monrovia, by her majesty's command, on a special ship with royal escort.

        On reaching her home, Clay-Ashland, a great concourse of people, men, women and children were at the wharf to greet Aunt Martha, while Sunday school scholars sang a song of welcome.

        The writer during a visit to London in 1910 met Mrs. Roberts at the home of Mr. William Archer the first colored

man to become Mayor of Battersea, a district of the Metropolis.

        Mrs. Roberts, notwithstanding the weight of ninety-one years, was clear in mind and wonderfully active. She related the story of Aunt Martha among other incidents of interest. She was in England on official business.

        In previous years she had secured considerable money to erect a hospital in Monrovia and was endeavoring to enlist the support of English friends to supplement the same through generous gifts.

        Whenever Mrs. Roberts went abroad she was spoken of as "the sweet old lady who looked so much like the Queen."

        She passed away in London, never returning to the land of perpetual verdure, the country she loved so well and to which she had given the best years of her life to redeem.

HARRIET TUBMAN
"General Moses"

MRS. HANNAH McDONALD
"Aunt Mac"

MRS. ELIZABETH WEST GROSS
"Granny Gross"
Aged 109

AUNT MAC

A LIFE IN THREE CHAPTERS

CHAPTER I.

        It was about the 1st of April, in the year 1820, that an emigrating party started from Green Springs, Virginia, to the State of Kentucky. It consisted of Col. Richard Morris, his six children and their mother. There were twenty other families, making a total of 100 persons. Their route was overland, being undertaken in wagons and carriages. The spring season being unusually early the journey was a very pleasant one. Their way lay through the charming, rolling land of Virginia, now fording a muddy, dashing brook, and again riding over some mountain spur.

        When eventide began to settle heavily around them, they halted amid a thickly sheltered wood, near some friendly, gushing spring, and when the eastern sky was crimsoned by the blush of the coming morn, the party resumed its journey. How eagerly they drank in the balmy spring air, and how they admired the beauteous scenes as they arose, one after another, like some grand panorama. The Cumberland Mountains loomed up before them with its shaggy brows, and vehicle after vehicle rolled through its noted gap.

        One month was thus spent, the party reaching its destination the first of May. They settled on a farm consisting of three thousand acres, which was situated six miles below the city of Louisville.

        The parents of the Morris children died shortly after their arrival, leaving them under an executor's care, who was to educate them and see that the estate was equally

divided among them. The agreement was not kept. The children received no education at his hands and were defrauded of thirty thousand dollars. They were thus thrown upon their own responsibilities, and let it be known that each attained honorable manhood and womanhood.

        Our sketch has to do principally with the second child, Hannah. She was born in the year, 1810, and consequently was ten years old when the family removed to Kentucky. Her home was with her eldest brother, Shelton Morris, until her marriage to Mr. McDonald, which occurred in the year 1833. Albany, Indiana, was chosen as their future place of abode, and here seven years--golden years of joy and happiness--sped swiftly by, when her companion was called from labor to reward. The desolated home was abandoned and Mrs. McDonald removed to Cincinnati, where she became an inmate of her younger sister's house.

        Here she began living only for others and wholly forgetting self--one of her loveliest traits that shone out in every action. How weak are the words employed and how short the space allotted to tell the half of this dear saint.

CHAPTER II.

        Several years have elapsed since the closing events of chapter one. We find ourselves standing in a large grove where tall symmetrical trees nod and wave to each passing breeze. Nicely-kept paths intersect each other, winding here and there and leading to the neat cottages that stand in orderly rows on either side of the campus. Before us, some distance back, a large brick building--a central one flanked on each side by a wing--raises itself even beyond the tallest forest tree.

        A wide carriage drive rolls from the road to the building and the whole is surrounded by a white, paling fence with its neat stiles and wicket gates. The dew trembles on every leaflet and blade of grass; the day king mounts higher and higher, while the feathery songsters warble their most tuneful lays. What an enchanted spot is this! Can

you not recognize the place, dear friend? Ah! yes, you say, 'tis the name so dear to many, the oft-repeated name of Wilberforce. It is here we find Mrs. McDonald in the home of her sister, Mrs. D. A. Payne.

        Mrs. McDonald, did we say? How strangely that sounds. Scarcely one in a score knew that she had any other name save Aunt Mac. She was everybody's Aunt Mac, from the hoary-headed man to the prattling babe. But the pleasant sitting-room is before us now, and the low rocking chair in which she used to sit and knit. How the needle would click and fly. The stockings and mittens piled on each other, came as if by magic. Everywhere and always could be heard her firm elastic step going on some errand of mercy, to relieve some heavy heart by her deeds of kindness and by that sweet happy face over which no shade of sorrow ever seemed to pass. All the little ones for miles around knew and loved her. She had a kind word for Willie and a caress for Jennie, and when in the height of their childish sports her laugh would ring out and mingle with theirs in innocent glee. And such a laugh! I wish you might have heard it! It was like the rippling of some happy stream, so cheery its sound and so full of hearty good will. She was the very providence, too, of the whole neighborhood. Her clear head and peace-loving spirit has helped overcome many straits and brought about numerous reconciliations. She--our dear Aunt Mac--loved us all and wished there were more to love. A great expansive heart was hers beneath that stately black, or the folds of that plainer Quaker dress. We can see her today, those soft brown eyes with more beauty in them than time could touch, those eyes that had both smiles and tears within the faintest call of every one she loved. Her charity was even more beautiful than her patience or kindness. There was no hut so mean, or its occupants so poor, that had not a claim upon her. It was at such doors that her faded and tremulous hands tapped the oftener for admission.

        From her capacious pocket and basket that dear hand

was ever withdrawn closed, only to be opened in some little toddler's with nuts, the little egg she had found, or the cakes she had baked. And how the mother's eyes would shine with gratitude as she received the warm shawl or frock that Aunt Mac had brought. This, dear reader, is no fiction, but a glimpse only of one of the most beautiful, Christian characters that was ever perfected for immortality.

CHAPTER III.

        A pretty home with many a cluster of shrubs and cedars. May flowers fill the air with fragrance. 'Tis Evergreen Cottage--Aunt Mac's home. But why are the shutters closed, and what means that bow of heavy crape? We enter--a death-like stillness pervades. Then we learn that she has flown--that our dear Aunt Mac is with us no more. "It was only this morning she went," says one. A loving hand penned a letter she dictated, and then--a look of recognition, a smile and that sweet spirit took its gentle flight into the fullness of life. Her work was done and nobly done. She was not left to suffer, but while fond hearts would detain her and loving hands were clinging to her to keep her from dying, she silently vanished from our sight, and we can hardly see to write for the memory of her, though it is an arm's length till sunset. It is only a short time since we folded her in the soft gray robe--a short time since we placed her within the casket and gazed affectionately upon the serene face whose youth and freshness seemed to return and made her even more beautiful in death than in life.

        So vivid is it all before us, that we are again in the past and beside her. The white hands are so meekly folded upon the still bosom that there seems to be prayer in them there. All lips are mute and all hearts are touched. Even merry, rollicking Dash quits his sports and whines piteously. The pet canary has ceased its song, while the lofty pines outside sing a sad refrain as we bear the dear form from

the home she has gladdened for forty long years. The college bell sends out its solemn toll, as the casket is rested near the alter, and that good man the preacher, repeats words of consolation that fall like balm upon our wounded hearts. Then the funeral train moves slowly to the cemetery, that peaceful city of the dead, where the tall grass bends in sadness and the willows sob and sigh; there we laid her. No, no; not her, only the tenement. "That home above; that scene of love"--is thine, forever, Aunt Mac. Thou art "robed in whiteness, clad in brightness, sweeping through the gates." No memorial services were held over her, no resolutions printed, but she was "one of them"--the blood-washed, whose works do follow after them.

        Aunt Mac is no more and we shall miss her forever, but each of her loved ones can set up a tablet in the heart and write upon it simply this:

        Sacred to the Memory
of
OUR DEAR AUNT MAC

HARRIET TUBMAN

HARRIET--THE MOSES

1821--March 10, 1913

        When America writes her history without hatred and prejudice she will place high in the galaxy of fame the name of a woman as remarkable as the French heroine, Joan of Arc, a woman who had not even the poor advantages of the peasant maid of Domremy, but was born under the galling yoke of slavery with a long score of cruelty.

        Her service to her race and country are without parallel in like achievements by any member of her sex in the history of the world.

        Harriet Tubman may be justly styled a Homespun Heroine.

        This historic character is in a class to herself. She had the skill and boldness of a commander,--the courage and strategy of a general. A picturesque figure standing boldly against the commonplace, dark background of a generation in which her lot was cast.

        Stranger than fiction have been her escapes and exploits in slavery.

        She was called "Moses" because of her success in guiding her brethren out of their land of Egypt.

        She was also called "General Moses"--an Amazon in strength and endurance and is described as a woman of no pretensions, a most ordinary specimen of humanity. Yet in point of courage, shrewdness and disinterested exertions to rescue her fellow men she had no equal.

        Harriet appears to have been a strange compound of practical shrewdness and of a visionary enthusiasm. She

believed in dreams and omens warning and instructing her in her enterprises. At times she would break forth into wild and strange rhapsodies which to her ignorant hearers seemed the work of inspiration, to others a power of insight beyond what is called natural, to excel in the difficult work she had chosen for herself. The first twenty-five years of her life were spent as a slave on a Maryland plantation.

        She worked beside oxen and horses as a field hand and developed a strong muscular body and at the same time an unconquerable spiritual force which was regarded as dogged stubbornness in not submitting to the lords of the lash. One fair morning Harriet left for freedom. She managed it so easily that she began planning to help others. She worked in Northern hotels till she saved enough money to pay the expenses of a trip to her old neighborhood.

        The first to be rescued were her own family at different times. Her three brothers left under her direction hiding for days in their father's corn crib, among the ears of corn. The father was in the secret but they feared to trust their mother's excitable nature lest it betray them.

        The boys could see their mother come out shading her eyes and gazing down the long road, in the fond hope of seeing her boys coming home to spend the Christmas with her.

        The father pushed food through the chinks but took care not to set eyes on them, that he might be able to swear when the time came for questions. At night they started looking through the cabin window at the poor old mother crooning over the fire, pipe in her mouth, rocking her head on her hand mourning that the boys did not come.

        The father went some miles blindfolded, the sons holding his arms and when they took leave of each other he could still say he had not seen them.

        Notwithstanding all this precaution the old man came under suspicion and was to be tried for helping fugitives slaves. At this juncture Harriet came to settle the matter

by "removing the case to a higher court." In an old broken down sort of a wagon she quietly drove off with her parents and seemed to have met no trouble in reaching free soil.

        For two decades, prior to the Civil war, Harriet made many journeys to the South and brought four hundred slaves to the North and Canada not one of whom was caught nor did she ever fall into the hands of the enemy, though at one time twelve thousand dollars reward was offered for this mysterious "black ghost." Along the route this modern Joan of Arc marched without an army or panoply of war; with niether shield nor spear, but many lurking foes and hidden perils to be met and overcome.

        Swamps and tangled brush their bed at night, preferring the company of the wild t