Solving a Riddle

Records available to us indicate that there were no graduating classes at Lincoln School between 1868 and 1890. Initially, this seemed odd: that over a period of 22 years there were no graduates?

More careful research and analysis explain exactly what happened. When the school operated as a publicly owned facility from 1874 to 1887, the AMA had little to do with the upper school; therefore, there were no reasons for them to keep records of classes of essentially another institution.

One discovers that those listed as Lincoln Normal School graduates in 1890 would have been in the ninth grade at the time of the State Normal School for Colored Students demise in Marion in 1887. So, therefore, the 1887 ninth grade class became the graduating class of the re-organized Lincoln School in 1890, once again under the aegis of the American Missionary Association.

Something else also emerges with clarity. We already knew that from 1868 through 1874 - a period of only six years, there were no Lincoln School graduates. Those were difficult years for the school. The school was probably teaching youths, fresh out of slavery how to read, write and cipher. It is likely that none qualified for high school graduation during that period. Furthermore, students were busy during the planting and harvesting seasons, and probably did not attend classes with regularity. Classes were probably not well organized with a shortage of teachers, and classes often did not run for full semesters.

The State of Alabama Department of Archives and History was contacted in the early summer of 1995. In September of 1995, the Department of Archives and History honored the request by mailing to us the Catalogue of the State Normal School for Colored Students (1899-1900), The Thirty-Seventh Annual Announcement of the State Normal School for Colored Students, (1911-1912), and the Catalogue of the Faculty and Students (for 1921-1922). All graduating classes are listed in those documents from 1880 through 1887.

These are the years the normal school operated as "Lincoln Normal University" with courses that allowed one to teach school upon graduation. You will find the members of those graduating classes listed in The Lincoln School Alumni Directory.

It is believed that most of them were probably from Perry and Hale Counties. Many of the surnames common at the time are common in Marion even to this day: Webb, Moore, Parrish, Tarrant, Jeffries, DeYampert (Deyampert), et al.

One young woman went to teach at Tullibody Academy in Greensboro that had been established by Patterson. Three of the class of 1881 became principals: Wilbur S. Sullivan in Marion; Miss Mary F. Crecy in Greensboro; and John H. Howard became principal of a school in Lancaster City (near Dallas), Texas.

John W. Beverly of the Class of 1882 obtained a Bachelor of Philosophy (Ph. B.) at Brown University and returned to teach at the State Normal School for Colored Students. Miss Louisa Berry (Mrs. A.B. Royal), also of the class of 1882, became a teacher in Uniontown.

The Classes of 1884, 1885, and 1887 boasted of six physicians and one dentist: Dr. F.B. Huckaby, Class of 1884, and Drs. Frank L. Watkins and W.E. Steers from the Class of 1885. The Class of 1887 produced three physicians: Ellis A. Dale, Joseph M. Harris, and William P. Curtis. Also from the Class of 1887 was Dr. Thomas A. Curtis, a dentist.

The Curtises were brothers, the children of Alexander Curtis whom we have already written much about. It is also believed that Ellis Dale was a son of Nicholas Dale, an original trustee of Lincoln School; and that Joseph M. Harris was a son of David Harris, also an original trustee.

These several youths were the reasons why a Lincoln School teacher was given to comment in 1872: "It seems as though their children ought to suffer with the rest. Really, don't you think others ought to have a chance to attend before the Trustees' children?"

Others from the classes named went on to become ministers, farmers, and storekeepers. Several of them combined teaching and farming.

It is also clear that they were personally driven to become successful and were motivated, in part, by parental expectations and seeds sown by the American Missionary Association as far back as 1868 in Perry County. Can you imagine five physicians and a dentist to come out of three classes with all totalling only 39 students in rural Alabama? The fact is just short of amazing for the Black Belt of Alabama. On the other hand, perhaps it isn't amazing - not for Lincoln School anyway, full of the Protestant Ethic by the Baptists and Methodists; guided, and driven by Congregationalist schoolmarms early on. As a public institution there were certainly other teachers as well who provided inspiration. No matter how one looks at it, the accomplishment shows an amazing thirst for knowledge and achievement. I have taken space to make this accounting because it somehow fits in, fills in the vacant parts, and even glorifies old Lincoln School, once settled among "cotton fields and roses." We are her children.