NEW BUILDING AT ATHENS, ALA.
TRINITY SCHOOL BUILDING, ATHENS, ALA.
Trinity school building at Athens, Ala., a cut of which is given herewith, has accommodations for 200 day scholars, and the family of missionaries who have charge of A. M. A. work at Athens. Its history is somewhat unique and altogether encouraging. The old building, where Miss Wells, the principal, had managed the school since 1866, was insufficient and scarcely tenable. The debt of the Association and the claims of larger institutions were such that for a time it seemed almost inevitable that the school must be given up. Miss Wells, however, and the brave people whom she had been serving, determined to rally their forces and save the enterprise at all reasonable hazards.
Preparations were made for furnishing bricks; volunteers offered themselves for all sorts of needful work; some labored in clay pits, some in kiln, some went to the woods for the fuel required to burn the brick, while the women and girls contributed their dimes, nickels and half-dollars to raise a fund to have the wood hauled. In this way the colored people made two hundred thousand bricks, “mixing the clay by the tramp of their one small steer.” Meanwhile, Miss Wells spared no effort in interesting friends at the north to come to her relief. As a result the building was completed last spring at a cost of only $8,000 to the Association, in addition to what was furnished by the colored people. From the time the corner-stone was laid till the opening of the building, a good number of prominent towns’ people manifested their interest in and approval of the work.