File:M. J. Sherman to Alice Mary Longfellow, 13 March 1891 (8b2294ce-8b06-4c71-89f9-7320a4cba460).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1007.001/002.003-001#037

[printed letterhead: The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute]
Hampton Va, March 13, 1894
Dear Miss Longfellow,-
I send you to-day letters from Chas. Washington and Rebecca Jones, the two students who wrote you last year.
Rebecca is a good girl and though not a bright scholar is doing fairly well. She may, however, need to spend a second at middle work.
Washington is a remarkable boy in some ways. He has a bright, thoughtful mind. His English is faulty, and he will have to spend a second year on Junior studies but that [p. 2] is what many of our Indians have to do. Our motto is not how much, but how well.
Very truly yours,
M. J. Sherman.
P.S. Since writing the above, I have called at the home of Mrs. Janie Porter Barrett, whose tuition you paid through her entire course a number of years ago. I wish you might see her neat, tasteful home, her beautiful baby, and her own dear, sweet self. She is the wife of one of our clerks. I had forgotten that she was supported by you, until she was showing me their library, a very good one too for young people, and from between the leaves of a volume of your father’s poems, produced the letter you wrote her so long ago, and which she treasures so greatly. I thought you would be interested to know what had become of one of your Hampton girls.
M.J.S.
[opposite p. 2, printed letter titled “To Contributors of Scholarship Gifts of Seventy Dollars.”]
Please find enclosed a letter of acknowledgment, original and uncorrected, from a student who has been assigned this year as your beneficiary, and who writes to express ........ appreciation, and to give some account of.... ........ While free tuition is thus provided, the student is responsible for board, books and clothes, the cost of which is chiefly worked out in the labor departments. Colored students earned last year on our farm and in our household industries and twelve workshops $55,345.20. The earnings of Indians (whose board and clothing is provided by the government) are given them that they may learn the use of money, one half being kept until they return home.
The course of study begins with one year in night school, except that apprentices to the trades spend all day from two to four years in the shops, two years in night school being about equivalent to one in day school ; the work in the former being most earnest and satisfactory, even after ten hours of hard labor.
The Junior Class, made up chiefly from the night school, is followed by the Middle Class, which is sent out for one year's practice, to teach in the public schools of this and other states. Then those who desire come back and enter as Seniors. The plan has, for years, worked admirably, bringing back a class of thoughtful students, who know their needs, and graduate far better qualified to teach than if their course of study had been unbroken.
Among the best workers we have sent out are those who have been full-grown on entering but backward in study, poor spellers and writers, but faithful and steady. Dullness and character often go together; we are surest of the least brilliant- the plodders; while those of fine ability are not uncommon, and have made noble records among their people.
Many have to repeat their Junior or Middle year. The three year's course is too short for about one third of our students, the dull ones who need to review i he year's work to be well grounded in all its studies.
Unless a definite promise has been made, no one is considered as pledged ahead for a scholarship contribution.
No reply to this letter is expected, yet an answer would be greatly enjoyed. Much good has resulted from the relations established by these letters.
Since students, especially new comers, need several months' training in expression by language and writing, scholarship letters are not sent until February ; and then that the work of sending over three hundred may be done with the least interruption to teaching and study, they are all, or nearly all, prepared and sent at once. Hence the response to a scholarship gift made any time after July 1st, the beginning of the fiscal year, is delayed for several months.
S. C. ARMSTRONG,
PRINCIPAL.
Hampton, Va., February, 1891.
[opposite p. 1, printed message]
More than one has said or thought, “The Hampton School has so many friends that it does not need a scholarship from me this year.”
So long as this school has the entire responsibility for board, clothing, etc., (besides tuition at $70.00 per year) of five hundred Negro youth and the tuition of one hundred and thirty-four Indians, it must ask of its friends the sum of sixty thousand dollars a year.
Colored students earn annually in our sixteen industrial departments about fifty-five thousand dollars; but nearly half of it is non-productive, while most useful and instructive training; it saves the employment of outside labor. Of our eighty teachers and officers, about one half are in the industrial work. This drill of hand as well as of head and heart is expensive, but pays in the end.
The total income from scholarships last year was $27,566.66. In 1887 it was $29,800. Thus the school's chief reliance is not holding its own, while the work is steadily improving, and as vital as ever to the country.
We are compelled to use unrestricted bequests, in sums of from $500 to $5,000 for current expenses, to the amount of $12,000 or $15,000 a year, which we would gladly convert into interest bearing funds. All legacies given for endowment or other specified purposes are strictly applied to the object designated.
It should be remembered that large bequests referred to in the newspapers are likely to be several years in bearing fruit. These reports, in some ways, weaken us. The school to-day owes about fifteen thousand dollars, and its appeals for help must be as vigorous as ever.

• Keywords: long archives; document; alice m. longfellow papers (long 16173); education; hampton institute; organizations; correspondence; 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)