She early expressed the purpose of going to Africa as a missionary, but her friends regarded it as a youthful fancy. She was fond of visiting the sick and providing for the needy. Saturday afternoons she went around the neighborhood inviting children to Sabbath-school. Where they had no suitable clothing she begged half-worn garments from white families and made them over for the children upon condition of attending Sabbath-school. If any children failed to keep their promise Nancy took away the clothing she had given them.
In 1881 she entered Fisk University, and graduated from its normal course in 1886. Her summer vacations were spent in teaching country schools, where she stirred up the farmers to more thrifty ways of managing and their wives to better housekeeping.
In the fall of 1886, Miss Jones offered her services to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and was accepted. Her mother generously assisted in preparations for the outfit. On the route from Memphis to Boston Miss Jones spoke to several large gatherings of cultivated ladies, and made many warm friends for herself and her work. She sailed from Boston the last of January. At Liverpool she took steamer for Natal by way of Cape Town and reached Inhambane in the spring. At Kambini she joined Mr. and Mrs. B. F. Ousley. She lives by herself in a corrugated iron house (sent from Liverpool in sections) and receives children whom she can persuade to leave the kraals and make a home with her. These she teaches to work, to read, to sew. She also has a day school of forty or fifty children.
