[Footnote 6: "While at this place we made our headquarters at Isaac J. Rice's missionary buildings, where he had a large school for colored children. He had labored here among the colored people, mostly fugitives, for six years. He was a devoted, self-denying worker, had received very little pecuniary help, and had suffered many privations. He was well situated in Ohio as pastor of a Presbyterian Church, and had fine prospects before him, but believed that the Lord called him to this field of missionary labor among the fugitive slaves, who came here by hundreds and by thousands, poor, destitute, ignorant, suffering from all the evil influences of slavery. We entered into deep sympathy with him and his labors, realizing the great need there was here for just such an institution as he had established. He had sheltered at his missionary home many hundred of fugitives till other homes for them could be found. This was the great landing point, the principal terminus of the Underground Railroad of the West." See Coffin's _Reminiscences_, p. 251.] [Footnote 7: _Ibid_., pp. 249-251.] [Footnote 8: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 202.] [Footnote 9: Haviland, _A Woman's Work_, pp. 192, 196, 201.] [Footnote 10: Haviland, _A Woman's Work_, pp. 192, 193.] With these immigrants, however, this was not a mere passive participation in the work of their amelioration. From the very beginning the colored people partly supported their schools. Without the coöperation of the refugees the large private schools at London, Chatham, and Windsor could not have succeeded. The school at Chatham was conducted by Alfred Whipper,[1] a colored man, that at Windsor by Mary E. Bibb, the wife of Henry Bibb,[2] the founder of the Refugees' Home Settlement, and that at Sandwich by Mary Ann Shadd, of Delaware.[3] Moreover, the majority of these colonists showed increasing interest in this work of social uplift.[4] Foregoing their economic opportunities many of the refugees congregated in towns of educational facilities. A large number of them left their first abodes to settle near Dresden and Dawn because of the advantages offered by the Manual Labor Institute. Besides, the Negroes organized "True Bands" which effected among other things the improvement of schools and the increase of their attendance[5]. [Footnote 1: Drew, _A North-side View of Slavery_, p. 236.] [Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 322.] [Footnote 3: Delany, _The Condition of the Colored People_, etc., 131.] [Footnote 4: Howe, _The Refugees from Slavery_, pp. 70, 71, 108, and 110.]