recently imported from Africa, a missionary had among his communicants
twenty blacks who well understood the English tongue.[3] The most
effective work of the Society, however, was in New York, where as early
as 1704 a school was opened by Elias Neau, a Frenchman who after several
years of imprisonment because of his Protestant faith had come to New
York to try his fortune as a trader. In 1703 he had called the attention
of the Society to the Negroes who were "without God in the world, and of
whose souls there was no manner of care taken," and had suggested the
appointment of a catechist. He himself was prevailed upon to take up the
work and he accordingly resigned his position as an elder in the French
church and conformed to the Church of England. He worked with success
for a number of years, but in 1712 was embarrassed by the charge that
his school fomented the insurrection that was planned in that year. He
finally showed, however, that only one of his students was in any way
connected with the uprising.

[Footnote 1: Russell: _The Free Negro in Virginia_, 138-9.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., 138.]

[Footnote 3: C.E. Pierre, in _Journal of Negro History_, October, 1916,
p. 350.]

From slave advertisements of the eighteenth century[1] we may gain many
sidelights not only on the education of Negroes in the colonial era,
but on their environment and suffering as well. One slave "can write a
pretty good hand; plays on the fife extremely well." Another "can both
read and write and is a good fiddler." Still others speak "Dutch and
good English," "good English and High Dutch," or "Swede and English
well." Charles Thomas of Delaware bore the following remarkable