tion of Detroit by the British in 1796, and his military training may have contributed to the sterling uprightness of his character and his inflexible will. His daughter Clara was the youngest, by seven years, in a family of two brothers and three sisters. She was early taught that the primeval benediction, miscalled a curse, which requires mankind to earn their bread, was really a blessing. Besides domestic duties and a very thorough public school training, she learned the general rules of business by acting as clerk and bookkeeper for her eldest brother. Next, she betook herself to the district school, the stepping-stone for all aspiring women in New England. She taught for several years in various places in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
One example will show her character as a teacher. She went to Bordentown, New Jersey, in 1853, where there was not and never had been a public school. Three or four unsuccessful attempts had been made to establish one, and the idea had been abandoned as unadapted to that locality. The brightest boys in the town ran untaught in the streets. She offered to teach a free school for three months at her own expense, to convince the citizens that it could be done. They laughed at her idea as visionary. Six weeks of waiting and debating induced the authorities to fit up an unoccupied building at a little distance from the town. She commenced with six outcast boys, and in five weeks the house would not hold the number that came. The commissioners, at her instance, erected a large brick building, and early in the winter of 1853-4 she organized the city free school, with a roll of six hundred pupils. But the severe labor and the great amount of loud speaking required in the newly plastered rooms destroyed her health and for a time destroyed her voice—the prime agent of instruction. Being unable to teach, she left New Jersey about the first of March, 1854, seeking rest, quiet ana" a milder climate, and went as far as Washington.
