them and teach school.  I travelled through Canada, Michigan and Indiana, looking for a suitable location, and finally settled here, thinking this place contained more natural advantages than any other unoccupied country within my knowledge.  In 1835, I made the first purchase for colored people in this county.  In about three years, they owned not far from 30,000 acres.  I had travelled into almost every neighborhood of colored people in the State, and laid before them the benefits of a permanent home for themselves and of education for their children.  In my first journey through the state, I established, by the assistance and cooperation of abolitionists, 25 schools for colored children.  I collected of the colored people such money as they had to spare, and entered land for them.  Many, who had no money, afterwards succeeded in raising some, and brought it to me.  With this I bought land for them.

“’I purchased for myself 190 acres of land, to establish a manual labor school for colored boys.  I had sustained a school on it, at my own expense, till the 11th of November, 1842.  Being in Philadelphia the winter before, I became acquainted with the trustees of the late Samuel Emlen, of New Jersey, a Friend.  He left by his will $20,000, for the “support and education in school learning and the mechanics arts and agriculture, such colored boys, of African and Indian descent, whose parents would give them up to the institute.”  We united our means and they purchased my farm, and appointed me the superintendent of the establishment, which they call the Emlen Institute.’

“In 1846, Judge Leigh, of Virginia, purchased 3,200 acres of land in this settlement, for the freed slaves of John Randolph, of Roanoke.  These arrived in the summer of 1846, to the number of about 400, but were forcibly prevented from making a settlement by a portion of the inhabitants of the county.  Since then, acts of hostility have been commenced against the people of this settlement, and threats of greater held out, if they do not abandon their lands and homes.”—­Howe’s “Historical Collections of Ohio,” pp. 355-356.

Coming to Shelby county the same historian did not fail to mention a settlement of prosperous Negroes who were keeping pace with their white neighbors.

“In Van Buren township is a settlement of COLORED people, numbering about 400.  They constitute half the population of the township, and are as prosperous as their white neighbors.  Neither are they behind them in religion, morals and intelligence, having churches and schools of their own.  Their location, however, is not a good one, the land being too flat and wet.  An attempt was made in July, 1846, to colonize with them 385 of the emancipated slaves of the celebrated John Randolph, of Va., after they were driven from Mercer county; but a considerable party of whites would not willingly permit it, and they were scattered by families among