The balance wheel

Front matter

A . Conilensed History of the Woman's Home Missionary Society of ^t Methodist Episcopal Church

ILEEN CQUGHLIN KEELER

%i-iW

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE BALANCE WHEEL 11

A Balance Wheel — How — General Condition of the Country, 1880 — Calls to the work — Organization^ — Beginnings

II Remodeling The Cabin

THAYER HOME— During the years 1879-1883, while the Woman's Home Missionary Society was developing into an organization, and women were casting about for the best means of handling these new educational problems, articles written by Dr. E. O. Thayer were appearing in the church papers on the need of *' Model Homes" as a practical solution for training girls in domestic arts. Later, Dr. Thayer, as President of Clark University, Atlanta, Ga., enthused the teachers of the school over the possibilities of a Model Home, and it was decided to solicit funds and build one on the grounds at Clark University. The first donor of $500 was to name the building. A Mr. Fisk of Boston claimed this privilege, and the first Model Home became Fisk Cottage.

At this point the teachers were in a quandary. The building was completed, but who was to furnish it and where would they get a superintendent. Mrs. Rust was on a visit to Atlanta at that time. She suggested that if they would give the Home to the Woman's Home Missionary Society, the Society would furnish the building, secure a superintendent and be responsible for her salary. This was done and the Woman's Home Missionary Society came into possession of its first property, — a '*Model Home" on the campus of a Freedmen's Aid Society school. At the first annual meeting of the Board of Managers, a letter was read from Miss Jane Bancroft, Dean of the Woman's College, Northwestern University, Evanston, 111., in which she offered to be one of forty to give $5.00 each to furnish the Cottage at Clark University. Eighty dollars was pledged at once. In four years the family became too large for the building. It was sold to the Freedmen's Aid Society for $500. Ground selected on another part of the campus was rented to the Woman's Home Missionary Society at a nominal charge of $ 1 . The new building was named Thayer Home in honor of the man who had taken such interest in this work. It is an interesting fact that when Thayer was remodeled in 1 898 the Negro men from the Trades School of Clark University did all the work under the direction of a white man. By 1907 Thayer Home was so crowded that fifty were turned away. It still remains in use as an industrial Home of the Woman's Home Missionary Society.

The terms ** Model Home" and ** Industrial Home" were often used interchangeably, yet there was a sHght difference. The ** Model Home" was supposed to accommodate from ten to sixteen girls only. It was conceived to be a pretty cottage with a kitchen, dining room, bed rooms and parlor, tastefully and economically decorated as a model for the girls. It was to be in charge of a matron, who gave special instruction in cooking, sewing and duties of housekeeping, in the economical use of money and care of the sick. The ideal family was to include no more than sixteen girls, that number being about all that could be satisfactorily handled in a living demonstration of a Model Home. So many girls sought admittance that Homes were enlarged from time to time to accommodate more girls, and classrooms were included in the new plans, where cooking and Bewdng could be taught. These latter homes were, strictly speaking, the Industrial Homes. *'The maximum cost, in 1885, of establishing an Industrial Home, associated with a Freedmen's Aid school, large enough to accommodate sixteen girls in the family and seventy-five in classes was less than $4,500. The insurance, repairs, salary and traveling expenses of the superintendent of the Home made the annual expenses of maintaining a Home about $500."

In the early stages of its history the Woman's Home Missionary Society confined itself to two kinds of work. First, the house to house visiting, during which the missionary taught the essentials of good home-making as best she could. Second, the opening of day schools for the neglected children who swarmed the streets. As visions of the work widened, the Society began to place Model Homes and Industrial Departments near each Freedmen's Aid school so far as practicable. There were sections of the South, however, where there were no schools of any kind. The missionaries reported such urgent need of schooling among the Negro population that the Society soon enlarged upon the idea of a Model Home and built Industrial Homes and day schools where there were no other schools.

Haven Home — In January, 1 882, two women were sent to Savannah, Ga., to begin work for the Woman's Home Missionary Society. Three thousand Negro children, for whom there were no accommodations in the pubHc schools, were roaming the streets of the city. The missionaries promptly turned teachers and opened a day school in an old dilapidated church, built by Bishop Gilbert Haven years before. The flimsy little parsonage had been mortgaged and would soon have been sold. The Bureau Secretary rented it as a home for the missionaries, the rent was applied on the mortgage and the parsonage saved. The popularity of the school was immediate. The older children were taught in the church, but the little ones had to be taken into the Home. They crowded the kitchen classroom, sitting under the table, behind the stove, wherever there was room. Reports tell us that **the Negro men and women were completely surprised when they heard that the Ten Commandments were from the Bible." They "thought only Massa and Missus said that"; had they known that these laws were from the Bible they would have '*behaved better."

Thoughts of a Model Home for this new mission crowded the minds of the workers. An opportunity came to purchase a good home at $7,000. It was put in repair and opened in March, 1885. The new * 'Haven Home" was soon filled to its capacity, the first Home to be established outside the precincts of a church school, and a day school was opened; chief among the household puzzles which presented themselves to the women in arranging for the * 'conduct of the home" was the question of maintenance of inmates. No data was to be had on which to base their estimates, so they finally settled upon five dollars a month for each person. The mothers' meeting, sewing classes, day schools and Sunday-schools grew splendidly. Religious teaching did much for the people. The earthquake of August, 1 886, thoroughly frightened them and they were even more eager to become Christians.

Haven Home soon established a mission five miles away at a little railroad station blessed with the picturesque names of ''Sandfly" and "Isle of Hope." Special mention should be made of this mission, as it was at first financed by the teachers and pupils of Haven Home with the help of friends. They opened Speedwell Mission in the small log house of a Negro. People sat on boxes and kegs, and children on the dirt floor. Then the missionaries and students built ai pretty white school house with trim, green blinds. There, even on Sunday afternoons, the house was full of men, women and children. They could not read, and the missionaries opened the school Sunday afternoon that they might learn to read the Bible. By 1891 it was quite evident that Speedwell should be a regular station, and the Home when built was called **Mary Haven Home."

Years of increasing growth, additions to the Home, enlargement of the teaching staff preceded a period of disasters for Haven Home. Five hundred girls and four thousand day school pupils passed through the Home, then **fire, earthquake, storm and cyclone came as emissaries of Satan to destroy it, but it has stood as a monument of God's purpose to redeem." In 1912 it was sold to the Board of Public Education of Savannah. The family was removed to the Mary Haven Home at Speedwell until a new building could be erected on a most desirable lot already in the possession of the Society. The new Haven Home was reopened in 1917 with fifty-one students. At present the Speedwell property is rented by the Board of Education and used as a school house.

The history of the Industrial Homes of the Woman's Home Missionary Society is an astonishing array of figures. We are amazed as we read of the number of girls who from therq received help, of the number v/ho passed through the day schools, of the amounts of money that came in from all over the country to build new Homes, — of heroic rallying of forces when disaster of fire or flood would sweep whole plants away. Always the building of better Homes, always students crowding the schools to the doors, a continual stream of supplies from East, North and West. Barrels of dishes, boxes of bedding for the Homes, yards upon yards of material for sewing classes were poured into the open doors of these wonderful centers of Christian light.

This meant industry, self-denial, untiring energy, unfailing response from the auxiliaries. The bureau secretaries recognized this as year after year they took their reports to the annual meetings, and when the reports seemed to have a sameness to them, the good women would remind their colleagues that there was much to be read between the lines. The peculiar charm of their story lies in the activities of the respective Homes ; in their living up to the distinctive purpose for which they were founded;

in new departures which supplied the Society with results as valuable as special research would yield.

BoYLAN Industrial Home and Training School — For the origin of Boylan Industrial Home, records lead us back to the work of a missionary in 1 885 who divided her time between teaching sewing classes at Cookman Institute, Jacksonville, Fla., and city missionary work. That she had a rare gift in winning her way is evidenced by her success in opening sewing classes, workers* clubs and temperance societies in four suburbs, Simpson Chapel, Oakland, Hansontown and Wrightsville. Very soon the Society recognized the need of a Home. A suitable house was rented and three Conferences, — Florida, New Hampshire and Vermont, — set to work to raise money for bedding, carpets and other furnishings. Mrs. Ann Boylan De Groot of Newark, N. J., became interested and gave $1,000 toward the purchase of the property which should bear her family name, saying that during dark days of slavery two large plantations had borne this name. She now desired to give it to a Home that would have for its object the uplifting and salvation of down-trodden humanity. Neighbors next to Boylan Home did not feel so kindly toward the education of the Negro. They erected a high board fence between the properties. This fence proved a protection, later, during the plague of 1888, by keeping the plagueridden winds away from the Home. Though the scourge claimed victims all around them, including the unfriendly neighbors, no one in the Home was sick. Some time afterwards the property on the other sid^ of the fence was bought for Boylan Home.

The next few years chronicle the beginning of three activities at Boylan Home and school, which later gained distinction for the institution. At the time when enlargements were asked for the Home, a new feature of the work was reported. A class of Negro women were taking special training for missionary work among their own people. The missionary spirit expressed itself among the girls of the Home in another way. They adopted and supported a nine-year-old child of India named Nati Nomi. In 1 902 a Chinese mission was reported at the annual meeting, with eighteen children in Sunday-school. The Chinese held meetings in the recitation rooms of the school because there was no other place in the city for them. People called the missionary who had charge of this branch of work, **The Chinese Bible Woman/' This missionary spirit took most effective form in Boylan Home Settlement. The students at the Home assisted teachers there and so were taught through practical work the great lesson of carrying healing and light and faith to the sin-sick world. This settlement commenced in Faith Cottage, at West Jacksonville, three miles from Boylan Home. It was opened in a small cabin and an old dilapidated church near by. The girls began by house to house visitation. Soon they had a day school, night school, Sunday-school, adult Bible class, mothers' meetings and a sewing branch. That this settlement was very dear not only to the hearts of the Boylan family but to the hearts of all the workers is seen in the fact that offerings from twenty-one different states came to Ingraham Faith Cottage. The fairest estimate of the school, however, was given by one of the students when leaving, who said, *Tve learned more sense here than in all my life before and I want to come back."

In 1 905 turpentine factories were planted in West Jacksonville, very near the Boylan Home Settlement. For a time these changes made day and night classes necessary, as well as reading rooms which could become a social center. But by 1910 the people had moved away and the settlement was closed after seven years of splendid work.

Brewster Hospital and Nurse Training School for Negroes — The next vision of the family of Boylan Home was a class in nurse training. In two years this class was a reaHty. Great interest centered around it. It had become a nurse training department and a medical mission for Negro people. When Jacksonville was visited by a great and terrible fire, the Home was saved, and it became a house of refuge during those awful days. The nurse group had an opportunity for great service and won praise and gratitude through their splendid response.

In 1 902 the class in nurse training had become Brewster Memorial Nurse Training Department. The design of this department was not only to train nurses but also to relieve suffering among Negro people. In another year it had become officially Brewster Training School for Nurses, in fact the one hospital for Negroes. De Witt and Mary G. Hill memorial rooms were in the building. A physician interested in the Woman's Home Missionary Society furnished a room for patients. Not only did the department care for the patients received in the training school, but it also did district nursing as well. In sijq years Brewster Memorial Nurse Training Department became Brewster Hospital and Training School, "a benediction to afflicted Negroes in all that part of the country.'* Recommendations have now been made that a new building be erected for Brewster Hospital and a conditional building fund of $50,000 has been appropriated. A third fortunate move was the inauguration of the custom to furnish girls who graduated with a teacher's sample outfit so that they could teach others.

Boylan Home offered a musical training to its students, who were beautiful singers. The sixteenth anniversary of the Home was celebrated by singing at a missionary concert. Fifty-five girls took part, fifty in costume. At the close of the concert, a workingman said, **I tell you people never got so fixed up in missions before."

Since its founding in 1 883, Boylan Home had occupied a whole square near the heart of the city. The location was so desirable that the property had increased in value, though the buildings were poor, having been erected originally for dwelling houses. Fire at Brewster had destroyed one wing of the building. It seemed an opportune time to make radical changes which would add to the efficiency of the institution. Lots were purchased in another part of the town in 1907, and three years later enough money was realized from the old property to build a fine new building, with ample school room and accommodations for one hundred girls. Sixty-six girls moved in at once. In 1914 the great joy of the Woman's Home Missionary Society in possessing such a "creditable plant" was turned to dismay by the passage of a law in Florida that no white teacher could teach in colored schools. For a time it seemed as if the beautiful new building and the precious work had received a mortal blow. But only for a time. It was the pride of the Woman's Home Missionary Society that many Negro girls had gone out from its schools trained to teach and equipped with teachers' outfits. And Boylan Home opened with one hundred and twenty-five students in the Home and a group of the best Negro teachers in the city. Soon it was crowded. Pupils came from all over Florida to **Boiling Home," as some one said. One woman, a cook, brought five girls not her own. The latest reports from Boylan state that ninety-eight girls are in the Home. On account of the exodus of Negroes from the South in the winter of

1917 some of the best girls left. As the result of a test case white teachers are now allowed at Boylan Home, as it is not supported by public funds.

Emerson Memorial Home — For some years Boylan Home, at Jacksonville, was the only Woman's Home Missionary Society Home in Florida. Another was needed and should be located nearer the centre of the state, since the cost of traveling from one end of the state to the other was very great. Belleview, a town in middle Florida, one hundred miles south of Jacksonville, made generous offers of land, labor and a sum of money to the Society toward the founding of a Home there. A house was rented there in 1 890, and a Home established, which took in ten girls. This was to be Emerson Memorial Home in honor of Mrs. Cecilia Emerson, the heroic woman who ** stood by" the family at Boylan Home during the long and trying yellow fever epidemic. During the year it became evident that Belleview was not a satisfactory location for the school, and Ocala was chosen for the site of the new Home and school soon to be built.

Ocala was twelve miles from Belleview, a central point on a railroad line, with a large colored population. In 1 89 1 two missionary teachers opened work in an old church building. One side was curtained off with sheets and six girls slept there. The other space was used for kitchen and schoolroom combined. The girls were very shy and like wild pigeons. One had never before been in the presence of a white person for a half hour. One hundred and twenty-five pupils entered the day school.

In 1902 Emerson Memorial Home was built, a plain, substantial building, much prized by the people at Ocala. Through a period of ten years this Home never presented a deficit and always had a balance, though small, in the treasury. It was a great factor in the development of the colored people, of whom it was said, **They are educating their children, buying homes, supporting churches and accumulating property."

When the Home was established, Ocala expected to become the capital of Florida. Street railways were built and the boundaries of the town were enlarged. But these great expectations came to naught. The arrested development left Emerson Home over a mile from the centre of the town, a long walk over a sandy road. No modern improvements were possible in that isolated place, but for a score of years Emerson Home inspired and equipped hundreds of girls for wholesome Christian living. After the splendidly equipped new Boylan Home was ready, the Society thought it wise to move Emerson Home from Ocala to some place farther South. A tract of land at Tampa, Florida, was offered but the Board of Trustees decided, in view of general financial conditions, to close Emerson Home with a view to opening it farther South later on.

Simpson Memorial Home — Differentiations in the type of work in the Model Homes of the Society had taken place by 1 886. Three possibilities lay before each Home at the time of its occupation. First, that of evangelistic work. The department of missionary work was systematized and carried on in conjunction with a church or a school. This had emphasis in every Home. Second, that of the day school, which could be in localities only where the church had no efficient school. Third, that of a department of domestic economy. This third possibility was often associated wath other schools of the church, with funds provided by them. In this way girls who attended school but did not live at the Home took the course in domestic economy at the Home and received credit as in other studies. Someone has said they were "trained for usefulness" while pursuing their studies. Although Simpson Memorial Home at Orangeburg, S. C, is a thing of the past, its history is most valuable to the Society as an example of a domestic economy department affiliated with a University.

Simpson Home was built at Claflin University, by the women of Philadelphia Conference as a memorial to Bishop Matthew Simpson. It was in all respects a Model Home, an Industrial Home, and soon had a department of domestic science associated with the university. It is interesting to note that as far back as 1888 the students at Simpson Home were instructed in the canning of fruits and vegetables along with other lessons in domestic arts.

Large classes of girls from the University were taught various grades of sewing at the Home. Early the Superintendent and managers of the Home wrestled with a series of difficulties which had to be faced by every Home so affiliated with a Freedmen's Aid school. It was a matter of delicate adjustment to secure for the girls in the Home requisite time for training in the domestic department. A wild rush to wash dishes, make beds and put the house in order before the school day began was hardly conducive to painstaking, accurate training in home science. One can easily understand the strain on the girls with a schedule such as many attempted, — the day in the schoolroom with recitation work, special attention to normal training in evening classes (if they were planning to teach), and training in domestic economy.

In view of the fact tliat Claflin was rapidly advancing in its standing as a university, that new buildings were going up, that the work of the institution was being placed on a high grade, that the future oudined for it was very ambitious, the Society in 1902 decided to make radical changes at Simpson Home in order to keep abreast of the advancement at Claflin. The faculty of Claflin had been anxious for some time that all the girls attending the university should live there. As the Model Home was no longer a necessity, partitions were knocked out and three fine, large classrooms were finished off and used for graded sewing classes, with three hundred pupils enrolled. The Industrial Hall was equipped for cooking classes and a lecture room, — and Simpson Memorial became a well-organized department at Claflin University under the care of the Woman's Home Missionary Society. It was the desire of the Society that the Home should not supplement the work of the Freedmen's Aid Society by providing separate boarding facilities for girls in their schools, but be a department of thei university having specific work in the line of domestic economy. They wanted the department to hold the same relation to Claflin as the theological, medical, agricultural and manual labor schools. The courses of study offered were as follows :

Sewing Course: Drafting, elementary sewing and millinery.

Cooking Course: Economic study of foods, housekeeping emergencies, home nursing and invalid cookery.

Laundr}) Course: It was voted to do away with scholarships and to ask for pledges of ten dollars each to provide material and appliances for industrial training for each girl. The results of this reconstruction were considered a great advance in industrial education, and everybody was happy. Two hundred and fifteen pupils enrolled in 1 904. The President of the college said it was "a most desirable departure from old Hnes, being more thorough, more scientific, and taking in more girls.'*

In 1907 the following announcement was made at the annual meeting of the Society: **Owing to continual difficulties in administration of work at Simpson Home and a growing conviction that the work should be under the control of the faculty of Claflin University, the Board of Trustees of the Woman's Home Missionary Society instructed the Secretary to close the Home and dispose of the property to the best advantage." The site was leased ground and reverted to the University. The Society's building was disposed of for $600. The furnishings and equipment were divided between Browning and Allen Homes. Simpson Memorial Home became a business college, and the domestic science building a kitchen.

Allen Industrial Home — To Rev. L. M. Pease and wife, founders of the famous Five Points Mission, New York City, is given the credit for the founding of Allen Home at Asheville, N. C. In 1887 they offered to the Society a property in that town with a substantial school building and small house, on condition that a graded industrial school for colored children should be conducted in which common English branches of study as well as religious and industrial training should be given. It practically meant that the Woman's Home Missionary Society should sustain a grammar school as well as an industrial school. The property was finally accepted. There were several reasons why Asheville was an interesting location for a Home missionary school. It was the **Saratoga of the South." Many visitors from all over the world came to this health-giving resort. It was an ideal place to demonstrate the work of the Society by supporting a thoroughly equipped, up-to-date! Home and school. The great numbers of colored people who were attracted to Asheville by opportunities for employment were intelligent and ambitious, offering the best type of material to work with. By the end of the first term two hundred and fortythree had enrolled in the school. The ages ranged from four to forty-five years. There were among them five former teachers and preachers, and twelve married women, two of them grandmothers. Some pupils walked great distances, even over mountains, to get to the school.

The Helen Hunt Band of Delaware, Ohio, sent charts, a manikin, geographical maps, and a globe. It took some time to classify and grade a course of study to fit such a variety of ages, but there soon evolved an orderly, disciplined school. To the special line of training called for, a course in plain sewing was added. To meet expenses and to develop in self-help, the older girls in the classes paid ten cents to enter the class; the younger girls paid five cents. After six years it was very evident that the work at Asheville should be enlarged. Many tourists who visited the Home received their first and possibly their only impression of the work of the Woman's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church from what they saw there. So it seemed strategically necessary to put that work on a broad, permanent basis. As the Secretary said, **We must acquit ourselves as though we believed that this was now our day for deep foundations."

In 1 893 the property at Asheville was looked over with the thought of making statesmanlike changes. It was reported to be valuable and well located, consisting of two frame houses, a small cottage, and a school building containing a chapel, a schoolroom and rooms foij sewing and kindergarten classes. A well-appointed, graded public school had been provided in the town. In the judgment of the Committee, it was felt that a ''Christian institution for girls, combining industrial and literary advantages that would fit young women for practical home duties, wa? needed." The plan included a! library and industrial department, teaching in sewing, cooking and millinery for advanced classes, kindergarten and kitchen-garden classes for young girls. The school was to be known as a boarding-school for young ladies. During the year $1,000 was given by Mrs. Marriage Allen of London, England, a tourist who already, while at an Asheville sanitarium, had made numerous gifts to the work. Other gifts and an appropriation of $5,000 rendered the new Allen Industrial Home a certainty.

As the workers and their charges entered the new Home they could look back upon eight years of splendid work. During that time 1 ,400 pupils had been sent out from the school and could be found in responsible places in stores, offices, hotels and markets. The dedication services were held February 9, 1897. During the years following, Allen Home seems to have had unusual results in developing ambition among the girls, for many of them went out into normal schools and other higher schools for advanced training.

Another step in development at Asheville was a fine, large building

Thayer Home, South Atlanta, Ga., 1889. The First Industrial Home built by the Woman's Home Missionary Society

Eliza Dee Industrial Home, Austin, Texas, 1917 known as the Lurandus Beach Industrial School, built in 1905, while across the street from the property of the Woman's Home Missionary Society the Negro Methodist church, Berry Temple, was built.

The new school building was soon equipped for a domestic science department including a model kitchen and dining-room. A glance at the alumnae record of Allen Industrial School is a strong justification for educating the Negro. Here we find names of teachers, bookkeepers, kindergartners, dressmakers, laundresses, trained nurses, wives of ministers and business men, while in 1910 two graduates of the school were principals and five were teachers in the Negro schools of Asheville. At the close of each school year there was a demand for every girl, either as a teacher for rural schools or in private homes. One recent graduate was offered $75 a month to teach sanitation in the schools of an adjoining county.