e troop of girls, dressed
uniformly, which was wont to follow in procession their pious and
refined teacher to devotions on the Sabbath at Holy Trinity Church.
The school comprised girls from the best Colored families of
Georgetown, Washington, Alexandria, and surrounding country. The
sisters of the Georgetown convent were the admirers of Miss Becraft,
gave her instruction, and extended to her most heartfelt aid and
approbation in all her noble work, as they were in those days wont to
do in behalf of the aspiring Colored girls who sought for education,
withholding themselves from such work only when a depraved and
degenerate public sentiment upon the subject of educating the Colored
people had compelled them to a more rigid line of demarcation between
the races. Ellen Simonds and others conducted the school a few years,
but with the loss of its original teacher it began to fail, and
finally became extinct. Maria Becraft is remembered, wherever she was
known, as a woman of the rarest sweetness and exaltation of Christian
life, graceful and attractive in person and manners, gifted,
well-educated, and wholly devoted to doing good. Her name as a Sister
of Providence was Sister Aloyons.

MISS MYRTILLA MINER'S SEMINARY

for Colored girls was initiated in Washington. This philanthropic
woman was born in Brookfield, Madison County, New York, in 1815. Her
parents were farmers, with small resources for the support of a large
family. The children were obliged to work, and the small advantages of
a common school were all the educational privileges furnished to them.
Hop-raising was a feature in their farming, and this daughter was
accustomed to work in the autumn, picking the hops. She was of a
delicate physical organization, and suffered exceedingly all her life
with spinal troubles. Being a girl of extraordinary intellectual
activity, her place at home chafed her spirit. She was restless,
dissatisfied with her lot, looked higher than her father, dissented
from his ideas of woman's education, and, in her desperation, when
about twenty-three years old, wrote to Mr. Seward, then recently
elected Governor of her State, asking him if he could show her how it
was possible for a woman in her circumstances to become a scholar;
receiving from him the reply that he could not, but hoped a better day
was coming, wherein woman might have a chance to be and to do to the
extent of her abilities. Hearing at this time of a school at Clinton,