Sunday, October 30, 2016

O. E. Doolittle: October 22, 1863


Newbern, N. C, October 22d, 1863.

I want to tell you the great need of books in our Sabbath Schools; we have exhausted our supply, and in the name of fourteen hundred Sabbath School Scholars, I pray you send us a quantity. I have four Sabbath Schools under my charge, and as soon as I receive the books necessary to do so, I shall establish two or three more. At one of the Sabbath Schools there is an average attendance of over six hundred scholars; at each of the others, two hundred. We need tracts, primers, testaments, singing books, and papers, and need them immediately. The Sabbath Schools are co-agents with the day schools, and it is very desirable to keep alive the deep interest felt in them.

There are now five day schools in full tide of operation here, and the scholars are making wonderful progress in their studies. If the predictions of many prove true, it will not be necessary to send North for teachers bye and bye. At the evening school which is under my direction, there is an average attendance of over three hundred scholars. It is a highly interesting and popular school. I have the aid of thirty officers and privates (belonging to regiments in this vicinity) in this school.

O. E. D.

SOURCE: New-England Educational Commission for Freedmen, Extracts from Letters of Teachers and Superintendents of the New-England Educational Commission for Freedmen, Fourth Series, January 1, 1864, p. 9

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