ALABAMA.
Emerson Institute.
MISS EMMA R. CAUGHEY, MOBILE.
Emerson Institute, formerly occupying Blue College, which was burned in 1876, is now in the third year of its progress and growth, the present school building being dedicated in May, 1878.
During the years 1876-1878 the work never ceased; the workers having put their hands to the plow did not look back nor abandon the labor to which they had consecrated themselves. Under many difficulties and discouragements the school did not wholly lose its organization. For a time after the fire a small church opened its doors for its accommodation. It was afterward removed to a little corner grocery, which was secured and made as inviting as possible. The third removal was to rooms in the present “Mission Home.” Now we rejoice in a comfortable and convenient brick building, in a very pleasant part of the city, in the midst of a grove of pine and live-oak trees. This present year our work has been assuming new proportions, which, although a cause for great encouragement, involved us in new difficulties. Early in the year, for lack of room, we were obliged to refuse forty or fifty pupils admission to the intermediate and primary grades. In the course of a few weeks the A. M. A. sent us another teacher, and a new department was at once formed. But where should it find a home? Our walls would not expand. Again the basement room of a church near by furnished a haven, and the primary department, numbering between seventy and eighty, has been receiving instruction there. In the meantime, arrangements have been made for the removal of our own Congregational church from its old site to a place by the side of our school building, where it will be fitted up to answer the double purpose of chapel and schoolroom; and the primary department will find more commodious and convenient quarters, and hope, in the course of a few weeks. Up to this time we have had enrolled 300 pupils, under the instruction of six teachers, two of whom are teachers in the Normal room, so that the pupils must all be seated in four different rooms.
Many friends from the North have been generous to us this year, and we wish to acknowledge their kind donations and express our hearty appreciation of their gifts through the columns of the Missionary. The cow purchased with money received by Miss Boynton from various friends at the North, has been a great luxury and comfort to us at the Home.
One five-dollar bill given to Miss Boynton, designed especially for table use, provided us with various essential articles: jelly cups being exchanged for drinking glasses, a needed coffee-pot, tea-pot, cups, saucers, etc. A set of silver teaspoons helped to supply a deficiency. Sheets, pillowslips and towels replaced worn out articles of prime necessity. Thus, while our personal wants have been so thoughtfully provided for, other friends have generously remembered the poor and needy Freedmen among whom we labor, very many of whom are suffering for the necessities of life. Within a week two well-filled boxes of good second-hand clothing came to Rev. O. D. Crawford, forwarded to him by friends in Dubuque and Waterloo, Iowa, the distribution of which has called forth tears of gratitude, and invoked blessings on the heads of the donors from many a poverty-stricken soul. I would that space permitted me to depict some of the distressing needs of the poor right at our own door, that the generous heart of the North might be opened to relieve. I shall hope to avail myself of a future opportunity to give a more minute account of our work, its growing needs and opportunities.