The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-12-12


 Before dawn of gray November da.
 we started--two Hampton teachers-tt
 visit some of the schools and homes O
 former students. Taking train or
 the Norfolk and Western railroad we
 rode first through the peanut section ol
 Virginia-the counties of Norfolk
 Nansemond, Sussex, Southampton
 Prince George and Isle of Wight
 Thimble-shaped stacks stood in neat
 rows or in couples, or dotted at equal
 distances the ately-plowed fields
 Here and there colored women and
 children were sitting about bonfire,
 beginning to pick the crop, 6 white sun
 bonnet or red skirt lending color to
 the picture. Further west, near Peters
 burg, appeared the green aftergrowth
 of tobacco, covered with pink bloom, as
 yet untouched by frost. The forests
 through which the train hurried us wer
 dressed in soft warm shades of red and
 yellow and brown, and in many places
 strangely simulated spring, with their
 dainty tracery of vines and tender yell
 low-green foliage.
 Our first stop was at Farmville in
 Prince Edward county. Here the prin-
 cipal of the colored school is a Hamp-
 ton ex-student, w. H. Coleman, who is
 a property owner as well as teacher
 Rev. John Kirby, go, is pastor of the
 colored First Baptist church and is
 prominent in all good work-"a minis
 ter" said one who knows his life, "of whom I never heard anything amiss." Mrs. Louisa Epps Bethell, an early graduate, class of '79, dosing well as- sisting her husband in the restaurant business. Alfred Lancaster 'S9, who teaches near Farm vile, is good teacher, successful farmer, and a mis- sionary among his people, a workman who needeth not to be ashamed" His brother George, an ex-student, is farming in the same neighborhood.
 On an estate of nine hundred acres, eight miles from Farmville, but in Cumberland county, lived for many years Samuel Boiling, member of the state legislature and curator of the Hampton school. Mr. Boiling, when a slave boy, was taught the trade of brickmaking and bricklaying. Be- queathed to relative by his first mas ter, he was afterward sold, and with the money seventy acres of land were pur- chased. The slave lived to buy this very land from his master-the price of himeelf-and it now forms part of his estate. MT. Boiling, after emancipa- ton, started brick kiln of his own and had among his men his former master, to whom he paid $1.25 day. Mir Boll- ing practically supplied the city of Farmville with bricks, and was largely the cause, through his honest work and fair dealing, of obtaining for colored men a monopoly of the contracts for patchwork in that city. His business is continued by his nephew, who has all the work in this line that he can do. While he was engaged in brickmaking in Farmville, where he emained through the week, his farm was man. aged by his daughters One of them, Eliza, after cooking during the summer for the twenty five men of her fathers brickyard left in the fall for Hampton, where she paid by her own labor, near y half her expenses and, by teaching | afterward, paid back to her father the | remainder. After graduation she be- | .ame more than ever her fathers right | 1and man." keeping his accounts pay ng off the men, managing the farm, assisting her sister with the housework md teaching at the same time. Since Ter fathers death, she has attended to he transfer of the brickyard business, tnd as adminitsratrix is settling the ,,1f,,4 1f %I,a tofn hn fcJ fo tr,c | ,n a large scale, raising tobacco, oats, wheat and corn. In twenty-six years he family has bought but one barrel of lour, and that because some of their wheat was stolen. All the supplies for he table are raised on the place, ex- ept tea coffee, sugar, beef and nut on. We found that Miss Boiling who ( 5 a graduate of the class of 81, enjoys he respect and confidence of all class s of both races in Farmville and that CT credit Is good with business men, Ike her fathers before her. Her little ( ,g school-house on the estate, with it's z pen fire, whitewashed walls and neat ( 5-dressed, attractive children, is a Y ,odel of its kind. ( In Cumberland county also, we found | 1reo OLHer r1dIlplOll BIduudleS, w. b. l aylor, '93. a teacher and tobacco far r Ter, and Misses Margaret Ross, '95, and a late Moseley, '94, who are together | aching ninety children. This school as once taught by Major Robert R. .orton, '90, now the commandant of ca- ets at Hampton, and from it came to \ ampton John Diamond, 1900, who is ,w teaching carpentry at the Central college, and Edward Light ot, '99, who is at present earning oney to take course in medicine, ( to work his way rather than n cept aid kindly offered by northern e iend. Another pupil of this district ; hool who did not finish her course at II ampton is happily married and living n ar her home. That General Arm O. rong's influence still reaches these Il ckwoods school-houses is evident I' pm the fact that on the board wall, ove the blackboard, was written in Il ak one of his oft-quoted sayings, ol ind way or make one"-advice P 1ich we were obliged to follow literal s' ere our trip was done. In Mr. Tay- a $ little log school-house, pro- u' ., ammes for the celebration of General 'i .l nostrong's birthday were lying on the u