Viewing page 27 of 262

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

and inexhaustible range, making it one of the best stock farms in all this section of the state. Influenced by these and other considerations a large number of Freedmen have applied to me for leases for a term of years on my place. Eight families have already settled upon the place and others are building - and I think it could comfortably provide for at least twenty families. They seem to be activated by a laudable desire to educate their children and thus while they are industriously engaged in cultivating the soil to advance as far as possible the interest of their children. They have requested me to assist in establishing a school upon the place. They take the sensible view that as they are by habit an agricultural people, it is better for them to remain upon farms than to bind and flock to the towns and cities, and while their children might be at school they would of necessity be in comparative idleness. I feel safe in saying that of those