File:Josephine Cleaton to Alice Mary Longfellow, 19 February 1906 (be542b49-6a2b-429b-81df-7058baa5814e).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1007.001/002.003-001#095

[printed letterhead: Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute / Hampton, Virginia]
Feb. 19 1906
My dear Miss Longfellow –
Again has come the pleasant duty of thanking you for your very great kindness in paying my scholarship.
Last June when school closed I went to Oscawama on the Hudson to cook in a summer school for white teachers. The season proved a very trying one in many respects. The [p. 2] great trouble was in getting efficient help. Our lady did not feel that she could afford to get my second girl from Hampton. So she, I should say they, for I had eleven girls and boys during the four months, came from New York. I did my ordering and catering and I now feel that the whole experience was exceedingly helpful. Our greatest number of boarders was forty, of course at times [p. 3] we had only eighteen or twenty, many of them were southerners.
The first four months of this term I spent in the training school which is connected with this institution. I taught literature, composition work, geography and agriculture in the ninth grade. Those children are expecting to enter the normal school next [p. 4] fall. Never in my life did I enjoy anything more than this work. My children were so interesting and so good!
The first of this month I began my classroom work: economics, literature, composition, ancient history, drawing book-keeping, animal industry and domestic science.
If all goes well I expect to graduate in June. I shall go north to work during the summer [p. 5] months but shall teach next winter if I can get a school, which of course is not a very hard matter for a Hampton graduate. I do hate the idea of leaving not to come back in the fall. Yet I know that I must be helping someone else who is not so fortunate as I have been. [p. 6] Never before in my life did I realize how little I do know, but wherever I am placed I shall try to do each day’s duty as it comes.
Thanking you again with all my heart.
I am your
Grateful,
Josephine Cleaton.

• Keywords: alice m. longfellow papers (long 16173); long archives; document; education; correspondence; subject; hampton institute; Manuscripts (1007.001); (LONG-Subcollection); Correspondence (1007.001/002); (LONG-SeriesName); Scholarship Student Correspondence (1007.001/002.003); (LONG-SubseriesName); Letters to Alice Longfellow (1007.001/002.003-001); (LONG-FileUnitName)