Name/Title
LetterEntry/Object ID
2017.9.1R.13Description
Printed letter, approximately 8.5 x 10.5" and is folded horizontally into roughly three equal parts. The undated letter bears the header "To the Honorable, the Senate and the House of Representatives of the State of Pennsylvania" and begins with "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, 3,427 white Soldiers' Orphans had been distributed into 39 different Scholls, and $825,000 had been expended in their education and support, no school had been provided for our Colored Soldiers' Orphans.
The letter then breaks down/ itemizes the various expenses the School has had to bear, without funding from the State [Commonwealth] of Pennsylvania.
It closes with "The Children are rapidly arriving at the age of 16, and leaving the School, until now the number is becoming so reduced that regular State advance will no longer support the institution even with the aid the undersigned can give. The Schools for the White Orphans are consolidated as they become too small to be profitable to the Principal, but this would not be advisable wit that of the Colored Orphans.
You are respectfully and earnestly asked to make an appropriation of Thirty Thousand Dollars, (30,000.) to the undersigned, and to allow them to retail in the School until they are 17, such Colored Orphans as may be benefited thereby, at the expense of the State of Pennsylvania.
And your memorialists will ever pray." [Signed with print]: Edward S. Buckley, William W. Justice, James A. Wright, William Still, and B. P. Hunt.Collection
Pamphlet Box Collection