This was a very, very sad disappointment and trial to us. It was two weeks before the State examinations would be held. We prepared as best we could, and as a result of the examination we were sent to Eatonville, Fla., to take charge of the public school there. Eatonville is a Negro town with colored officers, a colored postmaster, and colored merchants. There is not a single white person living within the incorporated city; it promises to be a unique community. It is situated near the center of Orange county, six miles from Orlando, the county seat, and is two miles from the Seaboard Air-Line Railroad, and one and one-half miles from the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.
It was said by the late Bishop H. B. Whipple, of Wisconsin—whose winter home for a number of years was a half mile from this place—who had helped the people of this community, and who was a constant helper and adviser to my wife and me in our work until his death, that you might travel the whole State over and not find a more healthy place. We were here but a few days when we decided that this was the place for us to begin putting into practise the lessons taught us at Tuskegee. We felt that we wanted to do something toward helping our people. We decided to cast our lot permanently at Eatonville.
Our first "industrial" service was done with the aid of the school children: we cleaned the street of tin cans and other rubbish.
We found the lessons in economy which we had received at Tuskegee very valuable to us at this trying time. We felt that if we would properly impress the lessons most needed we should own a home, a cow, some chickens, a horse, and a garden; we felt that there should be tangible ownership on the part of the people of some of these things, at any rate.
These things we started to get as soon as possible. We wanted to teach the people by example.
After talking in a general way for some days of the value of industrial education, coupled with that of intelligent class-room instruction, Mrs. Calhoun succeeded in getting four girls to come to her home for sewing lessons. That was the first step.
Incidentally, we heard of the philanthropic instincts of a gentleman, Mr. E. C. Hungerford, living at Chester, Conn., who had conditionally offered to another school twenty acres of land, and whose offer was not met. I wrote to him asking if he would give us the land. He replied that he would be glad to give us forty acres if we would use it for school purposes.
On February 24, 1899, having the deed in hand, a board of trustees was selected, and, with the aid of nine men who cleared one and one-half acres of land while their wives furnished the dinner, we started what is now the Robert C. Hungerford Industrial School. The new school now owns 280 acres of land secured as follows: From Mr. and Mrs. E. C. Hungerford, 160 acres; from Mr. and Mrs. T. W. Cleavland, 40 acres; from Mrs. Nancy B. Hungerford, 40 acres; by purchase, an additional 40 acres.
The school has two dormitories, Booker T. Washington Hall, the J. W. Alfred Cluett Memorial Hall, and six other buildings used for shops, barn, and dining-room. The total value of the property, clear of all indebtedness, is $22,445. We teach the boys blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, carpentry, agriculture, stock-raising, poultry-raising, and truck-gardening; the girls receive instruction in dressmaking, plain sewing, cooking, laundering, millinery, basketry, and housekeeping. We give no industry at the expense of the literary work.
The academic department covers a useful course of the English branches. The moral, religious, industrial, and financial influence of the school upon the community, as well as upon the students who have attended, who come from many counties in the State, has grown steadily as the years have come and gone. The school has at present forty-five young people in the boarding department, including seven teachers, three of whom have come from Tuskegee; a large enrolment of students from the immediate community and from the surrounding territory.