organized. The same year, in order to prepare Negro young men for the ministry, the Thompson Bible Institute was established on Bayou Teche, Saint Mary's Parish. This school was later discontinued. In New Orleans Dr. John P. Newman, afterward Bishop Newman, founded a Normal School. The work grew for several years. In 1873 Dr. Joseph C. Hartzell, later Bishop Hartzell, bought a block and a half of land on which stood an old Southern mansion on Saint Charles Avenue, and secured a charter for "New Orleans University." To this location the Normal School was moved, and the development of the present institution began.

The first catalogue of the school listed a Commercial Department, a Classical Department, a Scientific Department, a Preparatory Department, a Normal Department, a Biblical Department, a Medical Department, and a Law Department. All of these departments, with the possible exception of the Law Department, were or became actual realities, so that the school was in a real sense a university. Later the Biblical Department, so far as it represented actual training for the ministry, was discontinued in favor of Gammon Theological Seminary, and the Medical Department (Flint Medical College) was transferred to Meharry Medical College.

GILBERT ACADEMY

For many years Gilbert Academy and Agricul

tural College, located at Baldwin, Louisiana, was associated with New Orleans College, serving both as a preparatory school and feeder to the college and as an agricultural and industrial branch of it. The story of the institution is unique. It grew out of a movement begun before the close of the Civil War to care for and educate the orphans of colored Union soldiers. General N. P. Banks really initiated the movement in 1863 by providing for the gathering together of these neglected children in the city of New Orleans. Before that time they had often become scattered and lost, and some of them had been found dead by the roadside, famished while their mothers looked for work. Soon after this work was begun a Frenchman who chanced to be in New Orleans visited the Marine Hospital in which the children were established. His heart was touched, and he offered to give ten thousand dollars to purchase a farm home for the orphans on condition that twenty thousand dollars more should be raised to supplement his gift. Dr. John P. Newman, later Bishop Newman, took an active part in securing the needed money, and a large sugar plantation one hundred and four miles west of New Orleans, which had witnessed the joys and sorrows of generations of masters and slaves and which was now being sold by the sheriff, was purchased and became the Orphans' Home. The plan was to make the institution self-supporting from the proceeds of the sugar industry. However, the premature with

drawal of public funds from the support of the institution, an explosion which wrecked the sugar house, and other contributory causes placed the institution in jeopardy, and in the year 1874 it became necessary to place a considerable number of the orphans in private homes for care.

At this juncture it chanced that Mrs. W. D. Godman of Berea, Ohio, was stopping at the institution. During her stay she had occasion to employ a colored laundress. One evening when this colored woman returned with the clothes she brought also a carefully wrapped bundle. She seemed to have something which she very much wanted to say, and at last she unwrapped her bundle to reveal a large old Bible and hesitatingly pleaded, "Please, would you learn me just one verse from God's word?" The appeal was too direct to be resisted and before the old woman left that night she had the joy of reading a verse from the New Testament. This led as the days passed to other verses. Other Negro women came, and night after night they sat in an old building, with a dim light and with a boy stationed close at hand to kill any approaching snakes, and labored that they might learn to read. This was not the beginning of edu cational work at the orphanage, for the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church had from the first provided teachers for the orphans. It was, however, the beginning of an interest on the part of Mrs. Godman and of her husband, who was then president of Baldwin University in Berea,

Ohio, which brought them permanently to the Southland and led them to give many years of devoted and effective service to the colored people of Louisiana. Under their leadership La Teche Seminary was opened on the plantation in April, 1875. The name of the school was later changed to Gilbert Seminary in honor of the Hon. W. L. Gilbert of Winsted, Connecticut, who gave generously to the school. Still later Gilbert Seminary became Gilbert Academy and Agricultural College. Throughout the years the school has retained its relations with New Orleans College, and the school has now been moved to New Orleans and combined with the college. The Woman's Home Missionary Society has taken charge of the orphanage work which was so long carried on and will continue this work on the Baldwin site.

A NEW NAME

New Orleans College has throughout the years endeavored to adapt its program to changing conditions. One of the circumstances of this changing situation has been the tendency to centralize the work of professional training. In the working out of the general scheme it appeared that the large contribution which New Orleans College could make was in the field of training teachers. One of the crying needs of the entire area is for teachers, and it was felt that the largest service could be rendered by producing here thoroughly trained young men and women to go out to teach the people

of their own race. In accordance with this plan the normal and educational courses have been revised and strengthened. The name of the school has been changed to New Orleans College and Gilbert Academy. Under the new plan, special emphasis will be put upon normal training. In ad

dition to this main emphasis of the school there are also offered a regular college course, junior college course, college preparatory course, a pre-medical course, a domestic science course, and special work in domestic art, music, elocution and commercial subjects. Instruction is also given in grades five to eight, and this work may be extended to include all of the elementary grades in order to provide an