“How happy, for never before had he handled so much money in all his life, and how happy was he when he could, after each payday, run home and place in his mother’s lap every dollar of his earnings, knowing as he did that she knew better how to spend it, which she always did for the benefit of her children. If when I gave her the money she thought I needed anything in the way of clothing, she would go to the store and make her selection. It was not always what I wanted, but I was trained to take what she gave without a frown on my face. However I felt like objecting or frowning, the objecting or frowning had better be hidden behind a countenance of complete satisfaction, supplemented with a smile of approval. She did not believe in dressing her children up in fashionable dress and high-priced clothes, but in living within your means and in looking out for a rainy day, a lesson she taught all of her children in our home school of economics (a word with which our dear mother and none of the children were at that time acquainted but unconsciously practiced) and day after day brings to us who are still alive some new lesson in economy.
”
In 1875, with his younger sister Catherine’s encouragement, he got serious about education. They both graduated from the rigorous
Students at the Hampton Institute
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in 1878. The American Missionary Association had opened that school in April 1868 with fif-
along, George Washington Fields. He was pivotal in getting George summer work as a waiter up North.
teen students and five teachers. The students had to be of good character, able to read and write at a fifth-grade level, and be 15-to-25 years old. The teachers provided a threeyear program. The school’s success owed in good part to its first principal, Brevet Brigadier General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, who moved quickly to attain independence from the AMA. The school prospered. By 1887, the school was roughly at the level of a high school.
Immediately after graduation, George headed north for fulltime work. A series of jobs as waiter at famous resorts and as manservant for prominent families led to a position from 1881 through 1887 as butler for the governor of New York, Alonzo B. Cornell.
Armstrong took great interest in his students. Booker T. Washington ’75 owed him much. But that exceptional student was not alone in getting attention. Armstrong also helped, and pushed
After hours, George consumed more education from tutors and from schools, studying everything from French to medicine. But law was what grabbed him. Soon he was reading law with a lawyer.
WORK and SCHOOL UP N O R T H : 18 7 9 –18 9 0
Fall 2013
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