[Footnote 1: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 379.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, 1871, p. 379.]
Some of the philanthropists who promoted the practical education
of the colored people were found in the Negro settlements of the
Northwest. Their first successful attempt in that section was the
establishment of the Emlen Institute in Mercer County, Ohio. The
founding of this institution was due manly to the efforts of Augustus
Wattles who was instrumental in getting a number of emigrating
freedmen to leave Cincinnati and settle in this county about 1835.[1]
Wattles traveled in almost every colored neighborhood of the State and
laid before them the benefits of permanent homes and the education for
their children. On his first journey he organized, with the assistance
of abolitionists, twenty-five schools for colored children. Interested
thereafter in providing a head for this system he purchased for
himself ninety acres of land in Mercer County to establish a manual
labor institution. He sustained a school on it at his own expense,
till the 11th of November, 1842. Wattles then visited Philadelphia
where he became acquainted with the trustees of the late Samuel Emlen,
a Friend of New Jersey.
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