members of the A. M. E. Church. Their house was always a house for ministers and a sanctuary for devout Christians. Thus she was early brought under the best moral and religious influences while her heart was susceptible to the unction of the divine spirit. Thomas Woodson, being an intelligent man, had an intense desire that his children should be well educated, and as colored children were not admitted into the public schools he, with others, made peculiar efforts to supply them with the best instructors in the sciences. These they obtained from Oneida College, in New York, and Oberlin, Ohio. They were abolitionists and mostly of the best families, who brought with them their piety, their intelligence and their culture, and diffused them in the communities in which they labored. These schools she attended until she reached her fifteenth year, when the anti-slavery question was agitated with such vigor and the hostility became so great on the part of the pro-slavery element of society that the schools were closed and the young-colored people had no other resources to improve their minds but from the reading of the best selected books and the exercises of good literary societies, which they never failed to form for that purpose. In the year 1837 she made a profession of religion and became a member of the A. M. E. Church, and from thenceforward became a zealous worker, both in church and Sabbath-school. The frivolous amusements of youth had no charms for her. Her pleasures arose from the practice of Christian virtues and diligence in the cultivation of her mind. Her desire for better educational privileges
