Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1888-06-14
The First Normal School in Ohio.

The First Normal School in Ohio.
John Hancock, in Ohio Educational Monthly.
The death within the present year OF
Mrs. Jane Donaldson McNeeley furnish
! es the occasion for the history of an ed
ucational movement in Ohio that has
had no parallel in any other State-a
movement in which the lofty spirit of
this noble woman and her immediate as
sociates, as well as of the teachers con-
cerned in it, shines with peculiar lustre.
The memory of the older teachers among
US cannot fail to turn back to that peri
cd with high satisfaction; and to the
younger the narrative may prove sug-
gestive.
CARLYLE asks in that wonderful book
of his, Sartor Resartus, "How, then,
canst thou warm another, that hast no
live coal in thine own bosom?" 1t is
people with live Goals in their bosoms
who set the world on fire for the COM
mission of good deeds. Let us, then,
draw near, and be warmed by a pure
flame which burned only for the good of
man.
Jane Donaldson was born in England
in 1903. She had one sister, Mary, and
four brothers, Frank, William, Christian,
and Thomas. In 1920, her parents with
their children moved to America, and
settled on a farm near New Richmond,
in Clermont county, Ohio. William and
Christian, after the lapse of few years,
left the farm, and taking their sisters
with them, engaged in a prosperous
hardware business in Cincinnati.
When William Lloyd Garrison set on
foot that great Anti-Slavery crusade
which had its emulation at AppOmat-
tox, the whole Donaldson family became
at once deeply interested in the move
ment, Christian and William especially
being very prominent workers in it.
Birney was broken up and thrown into
the river, at Cincinnati, in 1886, by
mob, the violent rabble supposing Mr..
Birney might be at the Donaldson home,
rushed thither, clamoring for him and
Christian Donaldson. All the men-folk
happened to be out OF the city; but Jane,
by lady friend, met and
addressed the angry mob with such self
possession and quiet firmneSs that the
rough men who composed it, struck with
retired without inficting any
damage to property, and with hearty
cheers for the courageous woman who
had met them without blanching.
In 1887, Jane Donaldson was married
to Cyrus McNeely, of Harrison county,
in this State; and a more perfect union
never took place. In all their after as
pirations and labors the two were indeed
as one.
To write extravagantly of the great
and beautiful characteristics of this
gifted and lovable woman would scarce
ly be possible. Yet were she alive, and
her wishes consulted, she would insist
that the record of her life's work should
be set forth in sober phrase, with only so
much of her personal history as might
be necessary to make that record fully
But it does not seem well
that the life of one whose wisdom ''be-
longeth only to the children of the king
dom," and whose ''feet always ran swift
to do good" should drop out of the mem
ory of men. 1t is such lives as hers,
brave, self sacrificing, and given to all
charitable works, that reconcile US to
our race. Courage and endurance of
weakness and pain were her most strik-
ing characteristics; and in her were cour-
age and kindness, blended in most beau
tiful proportions. Her spirit never quail
ed in the face of any danger; and her
heart never listened to the story of the
poor and oppressed unmoved. She pos
sessed, too, that higher intelligence which
always Ito use Mathew Arnold's phrase)
.thinks clear and straight intelli-
gence not to be deceived by any sort of
sophistries. And her moral forces were
even greater than her intellectual. Hav-
ing made up her mind as to what was
the right thing to be done, she was to
be turned aside neither by the blandish
ments nor the frowns of society. With
the rare gifts and accomplishments
which would have enabled her to take a
high place in social life, she consecrated
her time and herself first to the service
e.
cause of education.
Though, as has been already said, she
connected herself in the very beginning
with the movement against that supreme
sin of the nation, slavery, and was the
intimate and trusted friend of those i'm
mortals, Garrison, Gerrit Smith, Wendell
Phillips, and Frederick Douglas, she
never failed to see things in their just
relations to each other. 1t is not unfre
quently the case that those who devote
themselves to single purpose in life,
if they be people of tender
fall into striking eccentric
tiles of thought and action. Their one
cause so swells out as to fill the whole
universe, shutting out the view of every
thing else. Such was not the case with
Mrs. McNeely, Hating slavery as she
did, and treading the thorny way in
which the early abolitionists were COM
compelled to walk, her mind never lost
its healthy eguipose. Like the Christian
Knight in the picture by Albrecht Durer,
she set her face serenely to the front, and
went forward undisturbed by the tur
moil about her. But profoundly inter
ested as she was in the cause of the slave,
she did not, as will be seen presently,
shut herself up to that alone, but was
able TO turn her attention to other work
which lay closer to her, and needed a
strong and willing hand, with a like
noble zeal.
There was q charm in all that Mrs.
McNeely said and did that was irresisti-
bile to all who came within its gracious in