sufficiently large to necessitate educational facilities for their
children. A large one-room school followed and this had not been
established very long before it was necessary to employ two teachers.
Among the prominent laborers in this field were Mrs. Mary
Wilson-Johnson and Mrs. A. G. Payne. This work experienced most
extensive growth under the direction of Miss A. L. Norman, Miss M. E.
Shelton and Mr. A. C. Page.

There soon followed schools at Fire Creek, Hawk's Nest, Stone Cliff,
Nuttallburg, Sewell, Fayetteville, and elsewhere in Fayette County.
Prominent among the teachers serving in these towns were D. W.
Calloway, A. T. Calloway, Miss L. E. Perry, Mrs. Lizzie Davis, Miss
Bertha Morton, Mr. James Washington, Mrs. F. Donnelly Railey, Mrs. H.
C. A. Washington, Mrs. J. B. Jordan-Campbell, C. G. Woodson, and Mrs.
E. M. Dandridge. These teachers did not generally serve a long period
in any one place, as there was a difference in salary in various
districts and the best teachers usually sought the most lucrative
positions; and sometimes, in the battle for bread and butter, the
rather keen competition in certain districts led to the periodical
dismissal of teachers without justifiable cause.

To those mentioned above, however, is due the credit for the
development of the Negro schools in Fayette County. This is especially
true of Mrs. E. M. Dandridge, who doubtless had a more beneficent
influence in Fayette County than any teacher of color who toiled
there. She taught for twenty-five years at Quinnimont, where she was
not only a teacher but a moving spirit in all things promoting the
social, moral, and religious welfare of the Negroes of her own and
adjacent communities. She was fortunate in having a natural endowment
superior to that of most persons and enjoyed, moreover, educational
advantages considered exceptional for most Negroes of that day. She
still lives to continue a noble work well begun and to complete a
useful career in the same county where she cast her lot years ago.

For almost a generation earlier than this, Negro education had been
launched with much better beginnings in the county of Kanawha. There
were no free schools in West Virginia until 1866, but as in the case
of several other settlements in the State, private schools were
conducted for Negroes immediately after their emancipation. There had
come into the county of Kanawha Rev. F. C. James, an Ohio Negro, the
father of C. H. James, the w