Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1891-04-30
Bluchill, April, ls9l.
Letter from South Carolina Oolored School.
EARLY BR,>CW. Hampton
s Z. DC. u. lsI0.

EARLY BKt>CW. Hampton Co.
5. G., Dec. -. 1870,
Received my letters from home yc>ter-
day A. we are about two and half miles
from The pos,-ofilce We do not get our l,t-
t"r~ regularly. These people do not seem
70 send or receive any mail, 40 when they
60 for u they 90 on purpose. This morn
ing | walked up to the po,t-ot,ice myself,
getting there little while be fore the mail
train. They had oHe i,tt.r at the Office to
send and as | carried up f2ur it increased
their mail matter quite perceptbly.
think We shall be Il source Of reyeuue 20
the post master
will now try TO answer the questions
asked IN your last letter. Cuhy Bowles,
with whose family | am domciled at pres
ent, is a middle aged man. with wife and
ten children. Like ali the other negroes
about here, he slave till the war
closed. He now owns a plantation OF
about one hundred acres, on which he
raises rice corn. cotton and sugar cane.
His ncighbors all own their little planta-
tlons and seem to be in the same business
There few whites at Early Branch
station aud Cummings station, who
transact what little business is done. but
none nearer than those places. 50 see
scarcely any white people The,e people
are entirely illitcrate. am waiting for
blackboard before opening an evening
he ~ n
anxiou. 70 attend school. We don't
know nufiln, mum, and We knows it. but
We want, to learn" they say To ME. They
are exceedingly dull, but what else can be
expected of a race ia whom the brute part
alone has received attention and the intel
lectual has never received any! one said
10 me. Desc wuite folks cheats Us We
knows it, but We cant help il, cause We
don't know muffin about hggers. We want
our chilluns TO help themselves.
Mrs. Bowles was field and not house
Slave, 30 she does not know much about
cooking We have quite uniform diet
consisting principally Of boiled hominy
with sometimes boiled rice for change
We make as much a variety Of it as pos>-
bic. Their COW gives one quart Of milk a
day So we begin by eating hominy and
milk, then we change TO hominy and sy
rup, then back to hominy and milk.
If it were not for hoping to do these
people good, of course | should never
have come, and were it not for the thought
that it is for Christ's sake. | could not
stay now that have come. Tha bought
sweetens it all and while teachin. them
from books, also try to teach them from
that best of book, something Of Him who
would have US ito seek and to save even
such as they are Sometimes | think our
churches spend more time at home taking
care Of the ninety and nine than they dS
in going after the lost ones. These peo-
Pile take naturally the subordinate position
which belonged to them as slaves, and
though Miss Miller and are among them
and wish to do great deal to help them,
they do not expect us, of course, to make
equals of them. We eat in room by our
selves, iu the ''parlor," which think |
wrote you of. If not. why then it con-
eat, two beds and a Liberia" libraryl Of
three or four old books.
For many miles about here are beautiful
forests of hard pine, or pitch pine they
call It here. Last Saturday picked tea
roses and jessamines in bloom out Of doors,
at Mrs Latta's in McNeils. When | tell
you about that and what soft, beautiful
weather November and December nave
both brought US thus far you will not un-
derstand, perhaps, how it is that we suffer
SO with cold. 1t is because the houses are
built SO open | can put my I'm
gers through the vans and out Of
doors i'll many places in my room
At school We are obliged to have
the door open to see, and | took a
bad cold which laid me up for two days
Miss Miller teaching for me. The men
have sent for windows now, and we look
for more light when they come. l have
had forty y-eight pupils this week in a room
l5x22 feet and there are more to come
We have found another room and Miss
Miller is going to be my assistant for
while.
We look for Mrs. Steele down here in
about week. Miss Miller is writing to
her now. She has asked her to please
bring us some crackers and can Of soup"
Mrs. Steele has three schools along the
Port Royal railroad in this vicinity and
she is coming for her annual visit to them.
l have only colored pupils The whites
and blacks have separate school-houses
and separate churches in the south. Yes,
the color line is so rgidly drawn, that they
have separate waiting rooms at the depots
and separate cars, even. Society seems to
be in rather lawless state here One
negro shot another about four miles from
here the other day and he is still at liberty.
This is his third victim too.
"A Russian war ship, carrying "Mili-
"a, H. = ~f-