The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 08, August, 1879Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 08, August, 1879
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
In February, 1878, we printed a letter from our Bro. Cutler, in
which he spoke of a young girl who wanted to get an education, but
who was entirely without means. He procured for her half enough
to keep her at study for a year, started her on her course, and
pronounced her “the happiest girl in the land.” The following
description of her first field and work as a teacher will certainly
interest those who aided Tennie Morford, and, we think, many
others.--EDS.:
There is situated in the eastern part of Tennessee a beautiful,
lonely, little valley, called the Sequatchie Valley. It is sixty
miles long and five miles wide, containing about four hundred
inhabitants. This is one of the by-ways of Tennessee, or, as it
seems to be, from the condition of the people, Africa at home. It
is hedged about with mountains, and its inhabitants scarcely hear
of any other place than their own valley. They are very ignorant,
and their chief occupation is farming.
I spent my last vacation among them, and tried to teach and show
them the need of an education. There were persons who were forty
and sixty years old who could not count a hundred. Scarcely any of
them had seen a steam-boat or car. They know only of the wilds of
Sequatchie, where they have spent their lives. Near the head of the
valley was my place of work, principally inhabited by drunkards of
both colors, who spent their Sabbaths in intoxication and in the
use of profanity. Their places of enjoyment were three still-houses
about half a mile apart, where the price of their labor was given
in liquor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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