Name/Title
LetterEntry/Object ID
2017.9.1R9Description
Published letter, "To The Honorable, the Senate and the House of Representatives of the State of Pennsylvania.
The Undersigned, Trustees of the Property, now occupied as the State School Home for Colored Soldiers' Orphans, beg leave respectfully to represent to your Honorable Bodies, that, at the beginning of the year, 1868, three years and seven months after the Act providing for the education and support of our Soldiers' Orphans had gone into effect, and that, while under it, 3427 white Soldiers' Orphans had been distribute into 39 different schools, and $825,000 had been expended on their education and support, no school had been provided for our colored soldiers' orphans.
That it had become known to the Undersigned and others that such orphans existed, widely scattered through the State, to the number, as has since been ascertained, of more than 300.
That the mothers of these children were totally ignorant of their rights in this matter, and were incapable from poverty and the want of proper advice and assistance, of availing themselves of these rights, had they been known to them.
That a Committee of Ladies and Gentlemen having discovered the neglected and helpless condition in which these Children, undertook at the time aforesaid, to gather them into a School Home, at its own expense.
That, as no proper building could be rented for their use, because they were Colored, and the Act did not authorize the purchase of one by the State, the aforesaid Committee raised the sum of more than $20,000 with which they bought the property, near Bristol, in Bucks County, called Bristol College, fitted it up, and had it accepted by the State Superintendent, and, on the 18th of June, 1868, more than four years after the Act in question had been passed, began to gather our colored soldiers' orphans into it.
That, during the next two years, the Committee aforesaid, placed in this School, at its own expense 187 of these orphans.
That the School was then full, containing 162 children, several, in the meantime, having left on age, and from other causes.
That a report made by an agent of the Committee, on the 1st of December, 1870, represented that there still remained out, in various parts of the State, 108 more of these children, for whose reception no place was provided."
The letter continues with a plea for the continuance of the School, and includes a series of lines of text crossed out. It continues "The Undersigned, therefore, respectfully petition that your Honorable Bodies will be pleased to make such special appropriation for the continuance of the Colored Soldiers' Orphans School, as the facts and statements herein set forth, may seem in your wisdom to require.
And your Memorialists will ever pray."
[Signed] Edward S. Buckley, William W. Justice, James A. Wright, and William Still, Trustees, March 1877.
Is included in bound pamphlet format, 12 pp. sewed and glued together, 5.5 x 9".Collection
Pamphlet Box Collection