Extracts from Letters of Teachers and Superintendents of the New-England Educational Commission for Freedmen/Letters from Virginia
LETTERS FROM VIRGINIA.
For a week we heard, without anxiety the booming of the guns at Suffolk, and we begged to be allowed to remain on the Island (Craney Island), but the Doctor was decided, and General Viele and other officers urged the necessity of his sending us North. To that we demurred; but in spite of our unwillingness, we were kept for a week in durance vile at the Hygeia Hotel. We then returned to our work, though the authorities considered it unsafe so to do; and knowing we should soon be taken from the Island, we worked, for a week, ten or twelve hours a day; our pupils striving cheerfully all the while to keep pace with us. In that week, many to whom on Monday we gave their first writing lessons, learned to write me letters. Writing from memory, excited them amazingly, and writing "Newport News," "Hampton," and their other homes of refuge, was a delight to them. I don't tell you about my sister but her work tells here all the while. We want primers—one thousand of them, out of date books can be spared, I doubt not, from many Northern bookstores. You desire us to make our wants known to you. Can you help us in this instance, and that speedily?
Dr. Brown has six hundred and forty-five negroes upon the farms which he directly superintends—from one to five hundred upon each farm. He still has forty farms. Of fourteen a third of the produce is confiscated, and of those he has no oversignt. He himself is cultivating two thousand four hundred acres, with gram, vegetables, cotton and tobacco.
I asked, and it was given unto me. The books and slates came and were welcomed, and many of them are already worn in the service. Your help was so ready and efficient, in my hour of need, I incline to drive to your door again. The refugees, with their rags and vermin, are crowding into Norfolk. One hundred and twenty (or more), very destitute, have just gone to Craney Island from Suffolk, and we have nothing to spare from the farms wherewith to clothe them. It is almost certain, that the number will steadily increase. How shall we clothe them? They cannot be expected to pay for their clothing. We have at no time been able to meet a present need; and the prospect before us looks very naked. I am dropping my books and slates about upon the farms, but I cannot get a horse to keep constantly upon the road as I expected to do. However, we have work at home; but when I do get to the farms, old men and children flock to my side, and their interest and attention show tnat in one half hour they get a mighty impulse.
Four hundred refugees, released by colored soldiers, have just come, empty-handed, into our lines. In the jail-yard, where they once found chains and a lash, all the refugees now find a temporary home. The men and large boys go at once to the Government farms to build huts, and in due season to take their families to the house-warming. Twenty-five refugees came ten days ago; and more will come, from time to time, all winter long. They must be clothed; so, of Northern charity let there be no end.
Many of the negroes upon the Government farms will this month receive wages, and should have the privilege of paying something for their clothing. The number of needy will, necessarily, continue to be large, and it seems necessary to continue the practice of gratuitous distribution; but Dr. Brown unites with me in thinking it very desirable that a store should be opened here for all who hold a purse. He says if you will send a store-keeper, he will furnish him with facilities; and he can furnish you with free transportation from New York.
I have not told you that we present all the refugees with ABC's, and they snatch them greedily, astonishing my sister and myself; long-experienced though we are, with their amazing progress.
We shall continue our school through the holidays. A prospect of rest and vacation wearies us.
My sister went to Newbern for a day or two, a week or so ago. She had, for a few weeks, had the entire superintendence of a school of four hundred children. Small children, too, and raw. It was the reception school of the city. Thirty or forty new scholars came every day. A school that only one with a gift could control, and only one with a body could bear upon her shoulders. It was the school in which we had taught through the summer, giving our extra time to the refugees and the farms.
Difficulties and delays have blocked the path-way to our own special family school-house; but now we have one, the doors are open and by New 'Year's, we shall have a school-house of our own. At present, we are teaching in a church.
Three hundred more refugees came in on Tuesday; seventy wagon "loads" on Saturday; and one hundred and twenty "loads" a day or two ago. The Doctor drops them upon his farms now, that the city may no longer be over burdened.