Women of distinction/Chapter 14

CHAPTER XIV.

MRS. SARAH J. W. EARLY.

Sarah J., the fifth daughter of Thomas and Jemima Woodson, was born near the city of Chillicothe, Ohio, November 15, 1825. Early in life she exhibited remarkable

MRS. SARAH J. W. EARLY.

intelligence for a child and a peculiar aptness to learn whatever came within her observation. Her parents were not only devoted Christians, but zealous 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 increased with her years, and in 1851 she entered Albany Academy, in Athens county, Ohio, and began a course of study. After passing through the preparatory department she repaired to Oberlin, Ohio, in the year 1852 and on the 3d of May entered a regular course of study, which continued without intermission for four years. In August of 1856 she graduated with an honorable degree of scholarship and entered immediately upon the duties of teaching public schools for colored youths, opened about this time in Ohio, and as there were but few teachers among them then she had a fair opportunity to show her ability as a scholar and teacher. After teaching intensely for three years in different cities of the State with remarkable success she was elected to hold a professorship in Wilberforce University, being the first colored teacher to fill such a position; this was in the year 1859. In the year 1861 the war commenced, and the hostility being so great between the North and the South, and as the students were from the South, and could not pass the lines, the school was stopped. Miss Woodson was appointed principal of the colored public school of Xenia, Ohio. In 1865 Wilberforce University re-opened and she was elected to the position of female principal. She filled this position with much acceptance for two years. She was then called by the Freedman's Aid Society to be principal of the colored school of Hillsboro, North Carolina, for it was impossible then to keep male teachers there. Her labors were very successful, though attended with danger and difficulties. In September, 1868, she was married to Rev. J. W. Early and removed to the State of Tennessee and was principal of one of the public schools of Memphis. She continued the work of teaching in Tennessee for eighteen years, having taught in all thirty-six years. During that time she instructed more than six thousand scholars, being principal of very large schools in four different cities. In the year 1886 she was elected superintendent of the temperance work among the colored people of the Southern States by the National Women's Christian Temperance Union. In the year 1890 she was appointed by the National Temperance Missionary Society to travel and lecture among the colored people of the Southern States in the capacity of superintendent and also of missionary. In four years she has traveled in seven States, accomplishing many thousand miles, and has lectured more than one thousand times to very large audiences; has visited and talked to more than five hundred schools and conferences of religious bodies; has visited two hundred prisons and talked to the inmates, besides doing an immense amount of writing and other work in which she is now actively engaged.

The facts of this life of usefulness are very strong evidence of the very remarkable ability of this noble woman. She was a woman in the field when it cost something to be a woman, and when only such brave and invincible characters as she could stay in the field. In the midst of threats and suspected bodily harm by night and by day, in those dark days of our history, Mrs. Early stood like a granite wall in the defense of right and truth.