[1] Prominent
among these seekers of better opportunities were the parents
of Richard De Baptiste. His father was a popular mechanic of
Fredericksburg, where he for years maintained a secret school.[2] A
public opinion proscribing the teaching of Negroes was then rendering
the effort to enlighten them as unpopular in Kentucky as it was in
Virginia. Thanks to a benevolent Kentuckian, however, an important
colored settlement near Xenia, Greene County, Ohio, was then taking
shape. The nucleus of this group was furnished about 1856 by Noah
Spears, who secured small farms there for sixteen of his former
bondmen.[3] The settlement was not only sought by fugitive slaves
and free Negroes, but was selected as the site for Wilberforce
University.[4]
[Footnote 1: Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, Johns Hopkins
University Studies, Series xxxi., No. 3, p. 492; and _Acts of the
General Assembly of Virginia_, 1848, p. 117.]
[Footnote 2: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 352.]
[Footnote 3: Wright, "Negro Rural Communities" (_Southern Workman_,
vol. xxxvii., p. 158).]
[Footnote 4: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, p. 373; and
_Non-Slaveholder_, vol.
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