AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION

[s. 55] : American Mi ionary A ociation was formed in Albany, N. Y., September 3, 1846. It was preceded by four recently established mi ionary organizations, subsequently merged The the result of the growing di atisfaction with the comparative silence of the older mi ionary societies in regard to slavery, and as a grotest against it. The first of these, the Amistad ommittee, secured the liberation of forty-two negroes who had risen upon their captors in the Spanish slave schooner “Amistad” that was bearing them into slavery, and were finally sent by the Committee to their native land, accompanied by three mi ionaries. The other organizations were the Union Mi ionary Society, formed in Hartford, Conn., the Committee for West India Mi ions among the recently emancipated slaves of Jamaica, and the Western Evangelical Mi ionary Society for work among the American Indians. In the Foreign field, in addition to the mi ions received from the societies named, it took under its care one mi ionary in the Hawaiian Islands, two in Siam, and a number of mi ionaries arid teachers laboring among the colored refugees in Canada so that in its Foreign Department in 1854 its laborers numbered seventy-nine, located in Africa, Jamaica, the Sandwich Islands, Siam, Egypt among the Copts, Canada among the into it, — — colored refugees, the Indians. — and in North America among The Home department embraced two distinct the west and the south, and the largest number of home mi ionary workers employed by the A ociation was 112 in 1860, 15 of them being located in the slave States and in Kansas. fields, In 1859, as the crisis in the slavery question approached, the Society closed its work among the Copts and Indians, and directed its attention As the war distinctly to the colored people. commenced, in 1861, the A ociation felt itself specially called and providentially prepared to work for negroes, and the first systematic effort for their relief was made by it. Large numbers American FrlenilsAmerican Mi ionary “contrabands,” or escaping fugitive slaves,, were gathered at Fortre Monroe and Hampton,. The Va., and were homele and destitute. A ociation sent Rev. L. C. Lock wood as a mis He reached sionary, to make investigations. Hampton September 3, 1861, and the next day arrangements were made for meetings in several places, the house of ex-President Tyler being one of them a new use for that mansion, and a new of — era for the colored people. But the great event in Mr. Lock wood’ s mi ion was that on the 17th of September, 1861, he established the first day school among the freedmen. The teacher of that humble school was Mrs. Mary S. Peake, an intelligent Christian woman. Her mother was a free colored woman, her father an educated English man. That little school laid the foundation for the Hampton Institute, and was the forerunner of the hundreds that have followed. The school-house stood on the coast where, two hundred and forty-one years before, the first slave-ship entered the waters of the American Continent. That first slave-ship and this first negro school will hereafter be contrasted as the initiators of two widely different eras of barbarism and civilization. During the war the Society extended its work as rapidly as po ible, and at its close was in the front rank of the various organizations at work among the freedmen, turning: its attention specially to education and the establishment of a high grade of schools. As a. result the A ociation founded Fisk University,, — Tenne ee; Talladega College, Alabama; Tougaloo University, Mi i ippi; Straight University, Louisiana; and Til lots on College, Texas, together with forty-five normal and graded schools and twenty-seven common schools, scattered over the South. Theological departments also were established in Howard University, Fisk University, Talladega College and Straight University, with an aggregate of 69 students. Industrial instruction first began in Southern mi ion schools in Talladega, Ala., and was early introduced into many other schools, and has been constantly extended. Talladega College and Tougaloo University have In all the larger institutions and large farms. normal schools, mechanical arts are taught to the boys, and household work, cooking, sewing, washing, nursing, etc., to the girls. From these schools go forth annually hundreds of well qualified teachers and ministers. When General Grant, in 1870, invited the religious and mi ionary bodies to a ist in the work among the Indians, the A ociation took up again the department which it had dropped, and, in 1882, by an arrangement with the ABCFM it a umed the care of its mi ions among those’ people, withdrawing itself from the foreign field. It was also a pioneer in work among the Chinese In 1875 a special in California as early as 1852. superintendent was appointed, and the work was soon greatly enlarged. Parallel with these lines was the Society’s work among the mountain whites of West Virginia, parts of Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tenne ee, Georgia and Alabama. With the opening of Alaska, in 1890, it pre ed to its westernmost limits at Cape After the war with Spain, by Prince of Wales. arrangement with the Congregational Home Mi ionary Society, it took Porto Rico as its field, leaving Cuba to the other Society. The Bureau of Woman’s Work, organized in American Tract Amparibe work of the 1883, conducts that part of the through A ociation, by direct appeals and Women’s State Mi ionary Unions. sho%vs that A summary of the Society’s work schools with 480 in the southern States it has 79 churches, 139 teachers and 14,048 pupils, 230 members, and ministers and mi ionaries, 12,155 among the 17 311 Sunday school scholars; 2,661 Indians 20 churches, 1,453 members, pupils, Sunday school scholars, 6 schools, 342mi ion47 white and 41 Indian teachers and among the Chinese 33 American and 11 aries; 10 teachers; in Porto Rico, 2 schools, Chinese teachers, 343 pupils. organ of the Society: monthly, New York. Official. The American Mi ionary. 56