lett, at one time a teacher in the Wayland Seminary, Washington, D. C., and afterward the principal of the Colored Orphan Asyhim of the same city.
Mrs. Colley was very carefully reared and trained by a faithful Christian mother, who spared no pains nor means to rear this child to be an honor to the home and community, and to be a faithful worker for God when converted.
She was converted at the age of eighteen, under the ministry of Rev. E. G. Corprew, who baptized her into the Zion Baptist Church, Portsmouth, Va., first Lord's day in December, 1876. Mrs. Colley grew up in the Sunday-school of Zion Baptist Church, and became a teacher in that school at the age of fourteen years; was elected teacher of the most advanced class of young women in the school; was also elected assistant superintendent of the same school, which position she held for one year.
Before the organization of the Virginia Baptist State Sunday-school Convention, while the work of Sunday-schools was reported to the State Convention of Churches, Mrs. Colley then, from twelve to fourteen years of age, competed for prizes in the conventions, winning the second prize in the convention at Lynchburg, Va., and the first prize in the convention at Danville, Va., for the greatest number of scriptural verses, repeated from memory, with the fewest mistakes, before "judges" apppointed by the Baptist State Convention. The first prize was won at Danville, Va., when she repeated the 119th Psalm without making a single mistake, several
