nephew of
Washington. Mrs. Lewis (Eleanor Custis) was the granddaughter of
Martha Washington. This school was not molested by the mob of 1835,
and it was always under the care of a well-bred and well-educated
teacher.

THE WESLEYAN SEMINARY.

While Martha Costin was teaching, James Enoch Ambush, a Colored man,
had also a large school in the basement of the Israel Bethel Church,
on Capitol Hill, for a while, commencing there in April, 1833, and
continuing in various places till 1843, when he built a school-house
on E Street, south, near Tenth, island, and established what was known
as "The Wesleyan Seminary," and which was successfully maintained for
thirty-two years, till the close of August, 1865. The school-house
still stands, a comfortable one-story wooden structure, with the sign
"Wesleyan Seminary" over the door, as it has been there for
twenty-five years. This was the only Colored school on the island of
any account for many years, and in its humble way it accomplished a
great amount of good. For some years Mr. Ambush had given much study
to botanic medicine, and since closing his school he has become a
botanic physician. He is a man of fine sense, and without school
advantages, has acquired a respectable education.

FIRST SEMINARY FOR COLORED GIRLS.

The first seminary in the District of Columbia for Colored girls was
established in Georgetown, in 1827, under the special auspices of
Father Vanlomen, a benevolent and devout Catholic priest, then pastor
of the Holy Trinity Church, who not only gave this interesting
enterprise his hand and his heart, but for several years himself
taught a school of Colored boys three days in a week, near the
Georgetown college gate, in a small frame house, which was afterward
famous as the residence of the broken-hearted widow of Commodore
Decatur. This female seminary was under the care of Maria Becraft, who
was the most remarkable Colored young woman of her time in the
district, and, perhaps, of any time. Her father, William Becraft, born
while his mother, a free woman, was the housekeeper of Charles
Carroll, of Carrollton, always had the kindest attentions of this
great man, and there are now pictures, more than a century and a half
old, and other valuable relics from the Carroll family in the
possession of the Becraft family, in Georgetown, which Charles
Carroll, of Carrollton, in his last days presented to William Becraft
as family keepsakes. William Becraft lived in