(EDUCATION) Letter from a teacher at a coloured school in an

Sale 2598 - Lot 229

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(EDUCATION.) Letter from a teacher at a "coloured school" in antebellum Georgia. Autograph Letter Signed from Shale G. Hillyer to Colden Ketchum of Augusta, GA. 3 pages, 9 1/2 x 8 inches, on one folding sheet plus address panel on final blank bearing inked Athens postmark; minor foxing and wear, seal tear affecting a few words on third page. Athens, GA, 24 November 1831

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This letter was written by Shaler Granby Hillyer (1809-1900), a white man who was at that time a self-described "school-master" in Athens, Georgia. His letter contains one intriguing passage: "Our coloured school has adjourned till the 1st Sabbath in Jan. We were compelled to do this from total want of teachers. Miss J. Cosby & myself were all we could procure for a constancy. Dr. Linton is married, Miss Calloway has gone to Salem N.C, Sarah N. has gone to Milledgeville, and Miss J. is all that is left for me to confide my troubles, and she is at present unwell."

We can find no record of any educational institution for Black students in Athens before emancipation, and there must have been few if any throughout the South. As this school was held on the Sabbath, we suspect it was a Bible study class, which would be unusual enough. Hillyer was a southerner from a Yankee family (his middle name was taken from a town in Connecticut); he became a Baptist preacher in 1832 and continued for a remarkable 68 years.