During my visit home I sold Raisin Institute and ten acres of land, with an excellent orchard, to the State Freedmen's Aid Commission for an orphans' home. I donated three hundred dollars of the purchase money to this enterprise, stipulating that the premises were to be used for no other purpose. In my absence the friends gave the asylum the name of "Haviland Home for Homeless and Destitute Children." This home I intended as a nucleus for a State Orphan Asylum, as the war had increased the necessity for such an institution. After two weeks' absence I returned with supplies. Spring was lessening the suffering, yet sickness from long exposures still prevailed. Miss Fidelia Phillips, a teacher, came with a letter from the Michigan Freedmen's Aid Commission, for us to locate and secure board, which duty fell upon me. I hired a conveyance and took her to Oskaloosa, Jefferson County, and found board for her in the kind family of Dr. J. Nelson, who proposed to assist the colored people in securing a house for the school at once. I found here a poor sick woman with her five children, who was ordered out of her cabin, as she could no longer pay the rent. Dr. Nelson promised to see that she was not disturbed until she was able to be moved, when he would take the family to Leavenworth to go with me to our Home for Homeless Children in Michigan. Her husband was in the army, and she had not heard from him since he enlisted. On my return to Leavenworth I received an order from our Freedmen's Aid Commission, to send twenty-five children with five mothers to assist in caring for them. I accompanied them as far as Quincy, Illinois, with Mrs. Lee and a teacher who had been in the work a few months. They pursued their journey, and I went back. On April 15th the sad news reached us of the assassination of President Lincoln! A nation in mourning! Every house of any note or size was draped with black.