Women of distinction/Chapter 68
CHAPTER LXVIII.
MRS. ROSETTA E. COAKLEY LAWSON.
The very acute little girl who grew to womanhood and by perseverance has come to the mark of distinction was born in King George county, Virginia, and was taken by her mother to Washington, D. C., in 1862 in the fifth year of her age, her father having fled for freedom when she was only two years old.
She attended the schools of the District until the plan of opening a public high school for colored children was completed, when she entered the highest grade in the public grammar schools in order to be eligible for admission into the high school. She pursued the studies of the preparatory high school for two years, and during the third year was made assistant to the principal of the grammar schools from which she had been transferred. Her services seemed to be satisfactory in this position, for in less than five months she was promoted to the charge of a school with an increase of $15 per month in salary. The work in the office of the General Superintendent being very burdensome, in reviewing each teacher's record-book for the year so as to insure accurate statistics, many of the best teachers were detailed at the end of each year to assist in this work. In 1873, Miss Coakley was among the number thus chosen, and her efficiency and fondness for the work so pleased the Superintendent of Public Instruction that he asked the Board of Trustees to detail her indefinitely for clerical work in his office. His request was unhesitatingly granted, and she served in the Superintendent's office for twelve long years, and severed her connection with the public schools of the District of Columbia at the close of the school year in June, 1885. The opportunity for meeting people from every land and clime while acting as assistant to the Superintendent of the Public Schools for twelve years was great and did much to broaden her ideas of life and of men as well as of women. The cares of a home to be maintained for an aged mother and a still more aged grandmother rendered it quite hard for her to let go the hold which she had upon the then incoming salary which she was then earning that she might continue her studies. Many a time she resolved to borrow sufficient money to keep herself in school and at the same time keep her home going. But Ben Franklin's "He who goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing," which she had been taught during her tender years, deterred her.
But the Chautauqua idea caught her attention, and from 1880 to the close of 1884 she pursued the course prescribed for the C. L. S. C. She went to Chautauqua, N. Y. , and was graduated with the class of 1884, otherwise known as the "Irrepressibles." During her single life she was active in both church and Sunday-school work. Since her marriage to Mr. Jesse Lawson, of Plainfield, N. J., she has devoted her time almost entirely to the domestic cares, which have left her no time for purely literary work. Nevertheless she has ever been faithful to the cause of temperance, to which she still clings with a fondness and patience characteristic of a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Mrs. Lawson may be regarded as one thoroughly alive to the needs of the race. She is full of holy race pride, and is ever ready to lend a helping hand to any effort that has in view the elevation of the Afro-American and the betterment of the condition of mankind. To say that she is liberal, wise, kind, prudent and just is to tell only a part of her good traits.