He resumed his work with broad and elevated ideas of his business. This is clearly seen in the plan of his institution, embraced in the printed annual announcements and programmes of his annual exhibitions, copies of which have been preserved. The course of study embraced three years, and there was a male and a female department, Miss Catharine Costin at one period being in charge of the female department. Mr. Seaton, of the "National Intelligencer," among other leading and enlightened citizens and public men, used to visit his school from year to year, and watch its admirable working with deep and lively interest. Cook was at this period not only watching over his very large school, ranging from 100 to 150 or more pupils, but was active in the formation of the "First Colored Presbyterian Church of Washington," which was organized in November, 1841, by Rev. John C. Smith, D.D., and worshipped in this school-house. He was now also giving deep study to the preparation for the ministry, upon which, in fact, as a licentiate of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, he had already in some degree entered. At a regular meeting of "The presbytery of the District of Columbia," held in Alexandria, May 3, 1842, this church, now commonly called the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, was formally received under the care of that presbytery, the first and still the only Colored Presbyterian church in the district. Mr. Cook was elected the first pastor July 13, 1843, and preached his trial sermon before ordination on the evening of that day in the Fourth Presbyterian Church (Dr. J. C. Smith's) in the city, in the presence of a large congregation. This sermon is remembered as a manly production, delivered with great dignity and force, and deeply imbued with the spirit of his work. He was ordained in the Fifteenth Street Church the next evening, and continued to serve the church with eminent success till his death in 1855. Rev. John C. Smith, D.D., who had preached his ordination sermon, and been his devoted friend and counsellor for nearly twenty years, preached his funeral sermon, selecting as his text, "There was a man sent from God whose name was John." There were present white as well as Colored clergymen of no less than five denominations, many of the oldest and most respectable citizens, and a vast concourse of all classes white and Colored. "The Fifteenth Street Church," in the words of Dr. Smith in relation to them and their first pastor, "is now a large and flourishing congregation of spiritually-minded people. They have been educated in the truth and the principles of our holy religion, and in the new, present state of things the men of this church are trusted, relied on as those who fear God and keep His commandments. The church is the monument to John F. Cook, the first pastor, who was faithful in all his house, a workman who labored night and day for years, and has entered into his reward. 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.' 'They rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.'"
In 1841, when he entered, in a preliminary and informal way, upon the pastorate of the Fifteenth Street Church, he seems to have attempted to turn his seminary into a high school, limited to twenty-five or thirty pupils, exclusively for the more advanced scholars of both sexes; and his plan of studies to that end, as seen in his prospectus, evinces broad and elevated views—a desire to aid in lifting his race to higher things in education than they had yet attempted. His plans were not put into execution, in the matter of a high school, being frustrated by the circumstances that there were so few good schools in the city for the Colored people, at that period, that his old patrons would not allow him to shut off the multitude of primary scholars which were depending upon his school. His seminary, however, continued to maintain its high standard, and had an average attendance of quite 100 year after year, till he surrendered up his work in death.
He raised up a large family and educated them well. The oldest of the sons, John and George, were educated at Oberlin College. The other three, being young, were in school when the father died. John and George, it will be seen, succeeded their father as teachers, continuing in the business down to the present year. Of the two daughters, the elder was a teacher till married in 1866, and the other is now a teacher in the public schools of the city. One son served through the war as sergeant in the Fortieth Colored Regiment, and another served in the navy.
At the death of the father, March 21, 1855, the school fell into the hands of the son, John F. Cook, who continued it till May, 1857, when it passed to a younger son, George F. T. Cook, who moved it from its old home, the Smothers House, to the basement of the Presbyterian Church, in the spring of 1858, and maintained it till July, 1859. John F. Cook, jr., who had erected a new school-house on Sixteenth Street, in 1862, again gathered the school which the tempests of the war had dispersed, and continued it till June, 1867, when the new order of things had opened ample school facilities throughout the city, and the teacher was called to other duties. Thus ended the school which had been first gathered by Smothers nearly forty-five years before, and which, in that long period, had been continually maintained with seldom less than one hundred pupils, and for the most part with one hundred and fifty, the only suspensions being in the year of the Snow riot, and in the two years which ushered in the war.
The Smothers House, after the Cook school was removed in 1858, was occupied for two years by a free Catholic school, supported by "The St. Vincent de Paul Society," a benevolent organization of Colored people. It was a very large school with two departments, the boys under David Brown, and the girls under Eliza Anne Cook, and averaging over one hundred and fifty scholars. When this school was transferred to another house, Rev. Chauncey Leonard, a Colored Baptist clergyman, now pastor of a church in Washington, and Nannie Waugh opened a school there, in 1861, that became as large as that which had preceded it in the same place. This school was broken up in 1862 by the destruction of the building at the hands of the incendiaries, who, even at that time, were inspired with all their accustomed vindictiveness toward the Colored people. But this was their last heathenish jubilee, and from the ashes of many burnings imperishable liberty has sprung forth.
About the time that Smothers built his school-house, in 1823,
LOUISA PARKE COSTIN'S SCHOOL
was established in her father's house on Capitol Hill, on A Street, south, under the shadow of the Capitol. This Costin family came from Mount Vernon immediately after the death of Martha Washington, in 1802. The father, William Costin, who died suddenly in his bed, May 31, 1842, was for twenty-four years messenger for the Bank of Washington in this city. His death was noticed at length in the columns of the "National Intelligencer" in more than one communication at the time. The obituary notice, written under the suggestions of the bank officers who had previously passed a resolution expressing their respect for his memory, and appropriating fifty dollars toward the funeral expenses, says: "It is due to the deceased to say that his colored skin covered a benevolent heart"; concluding with this language:
"The deceased raised respectably a large family of children of his own, and, in the exercise of the purest benevolence, took into his family and supported four orphan children. The tears of the orphan will moisten his grave, and his memory will be dear to all those—a numerous class—who have experienced his kindness"; and adding these lines:
"Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part—there all the honor lies."