Hampton and Its Students.
[Education]. Armstrong, Mrs. M.F. and Helen W. Ludlow. Hampton and Its Students. By Two of its Teachers. With Fifty Cabin and Plantation Songs. New York: Putnam’s, 1874.
8vo.; illustrated frontispiece of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, folded twice; green cloth, stamped in gilt, extremities lightly rubbed and bumped; spine slightly frayed; else fine.
First edition of this compilation of anecdotal, factual, and statistical essays, which illustrates the foundation of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, a Virginian Missionary institution, famous for its post-slavery education of minorities; an unusual relic. The Institute was founded by the American Missionary Association and General S.C. Armstrong, son of the Rev. Richard Armstrong who for nearly forty years lead the missionary on Sandwich Island in Virginia.
Following an annual American Missionary Association meeting in December 1961, General Armstrong and several members of the missionary resolved that “the new field of missionary labor in Virginia should be faithfully cultivated,” and that “the colored brethren there were fully entitled to the advantages of compensated labor.” Now that their escape from slavery had become a certainty, a training, which should as swiftly as possible redeem their past and fit them for the demands that a near future was to make upon them, was needed.
Armstrong donated his large estate to Hampton Institute, on which a small community of halls and housing for student and teachers were built. The institute aimed primarily at teaching advanced manual labor; however, Hampton Institute also hired farm-teachers, home-teachers, teachers of practical Christianity, to provide a diverse curriculum in post-slavery living.
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