Evening star., 1939-04-23
son, Sarah E. Tolbert, Annie M.
Whitemore, Ada H. Wiley and Ella
M. Williams.
Wilson Made Address.

N. williams.
Wilson Made Address.
"Supt. Wilson addressed the class,
congratulating them on being the
first graduates of the Normal School
of this District, and expressing his
best wishes for their future welfare
and happiness.
Gen. Eaton followed in a brief ad-
dress, stating that though it was
his business to care for the interests
of the schools throughout the whole
country, yet he felt peculiar inter-
est in the success of the schools Of
this District.
HE rejoiced that a school had been
established in this District to prepare
young ladies for the honorable pro-
fession of teaching, and he bade the
trustees Godspeed in their impor-
tant work."
Many will recall the Rev. j. E.
Rankin, who delivered the invo-
cation at these exercises. He was the
pastor of the First Congregational
Church, and wrote God Be With
You Till We Meet Again." first sung
here in 1882. Prof. Henry Donch,
whose band furnished the music,
later played concert and dance
music for excursionists to Marshall
Hall and River View.
The second class, which graduated
in 1875, also held their exercises at
Lincoln Hall and included the fol-
lowing: Sarah Bartlett, Mary w.
Burchard, Sallie S. Childs, Mary K.
Garst, Olivia Hambly, Isabella v.
Helmsen, Florence Hinton, Gather
inc F johnson. Mary E. McKenny,
Theresa A. McGill, Annie L. Mc1n-
tire, Nellie M. Mack, Mary Moran,
Julia I. Murray, Kate Reyburn,
Helene I. Schimmelfennig, Cora
Stutzman, Evelyn M. Van Doren,
Annie M. Wilson and Katie A. Will
son.
Many will recall old Lincoln Hall
where these exercises took place. 1t
stood on the northeast corner of
Ninth and D streets NV, where was
later the Academy Of Music, and at
present the Strand Theater.
Y. M. c. A. Headquarters.
Lincoln Hall was completed in 1859
the year 1t was formally dedicated,
and the Young Mems Christian AS
sociation took up its headquarters
in the building, where it maintained
parlors and lecture rooms, and where
were heard lectures by such cele-
brated speakers as Henry Ward
Beecher, T. De Witt Talmadge and
Frederick Douglass. Later the great
diva, Christine Nilsson, sang here In
concert, and to vary the program on
January 81, 1880, the National Wom-
an Suffrage Convention was held
here. A few days later q meeting
was held in this hall in favor of suf-
frage for the District. On December
5, 1885, the 5th Annual Convention
Of Labor Unions opened here, and IT
was also in the old building that the
project for erecting Garfield Memor-
ial Hospital was crystallized at q
mass meeting held on the evening
of October S, 1881, less than a month
after the death OF President Gar
field.
For many years the third floor OF
this building was used as the head
quarters of the Grand Army Of the
Republic. This organization and
many other tenants finally crowded
out the Y. M. c. A., whose struggle to
carry on there was not successful.
Evidently the G. A. r. also vacated
at an early date, for in 1881 we find
the two upper floors taken by Prof
Henry G. Spencer for his Spencerian
Business College, and it was In his
classrooms on this corner that many
Of Washington's most successful men
acquired their business education.
In 1884, the main hall In the build
ing was rented to Daniel Hersos Of