On resuming work under our Freedmen's Board the first year was spent at Nottoway, near Burkeville, Nottoway county, Virginia.
The next year, 1897, the Mary Holmes Seminary, destroyed by fire at Jackson Jan. 1, 1895, was rebuilt and re-opened at West Point, Miss., by Rev. Henry N. Payne, D. D. and she became the principal teacher in that institution. On March 6, 1899, their principal building was again destroyed by fire. After three years of faithful service and another sad experience that tended to impair her health, she became in 1901 principal at Oak Hill Academy, Indian Territory, but after two years, by special request, returned and resumed her former position as leading teacher at West Point, taking with her two pupils from Oak Hill, Lizzie Watt and Iserina Folsom.
In the fall of 1905 she returned to Oak Hill Academy and remained until the month of February following, when she was called to the bedside of the late Mary Holmes at Rockford, Illinois.
Her work since that date has been limited to more healthful localities, namely Gunnison, Utah, and the Spanish Mission in Los Angeles, California. At both of these places she served under commissions issued by our Board of Home Missions.
She is now enjoying the rest of a quiet and frugal life in retirement at Escanto, California, within easy distance of a brother and wife, whose kindness is constant, and having as a companion, a friend, who is as a sister in their modest home.
Her last teaching among the Freedmen was at Oak Hill Academy and she seemed to have a special interest in the young people of that section. This interest was awakened by the fact that during her first term of service at West Point several girls were sent there from the vicinity of Oak Hill, which was then represented as a new country, without previous educational and good church privileges.
She had the earnest desire to follow these girls when they returned to their home communities to see to what extent their christian training at West Point would tend to elevate and ennoble their own lives and through them the lives of others.
This is the desire of every friend of Christian education. It cannot be given too great emphasis. Pupils that give assurance they will "make good" find that there are friends somewhere, when their need is known, ready to "help them to help themselves." It ought to be a source of constant and life-long encouragement to every pupil, specially aided by friends in any of our christian educational institutions, to know that the personal interest of their teachers and friends follows them through life to see and know, that they have profited by their youthful christian training. They are expected to be teachers and leaders in thought and action in their respective communities.
