ches and succeeded in interesting them so that
several shiploads were sent. My father and mother and three
children were of the number. I was an infant in arms.

I received an education there and after I grew up was variously
employed as bookkeeper, clerking in dry goods stores, in the City
Hall, overseer on sugar estate, coach and sign painter, was
afterwards sent for by my father who was at the gold mines of
Caratal in Venezuela and on my return to Trinidad visited several
other islands of the West Indies.

I next returned to America my natal home the second year of
Andrew Johnson's term.

I have not since led an idle life. For nearly 25 years I have
been engaged as an itinerant private tutor teaching adult folks
and I flatter myself that I was very successful among the
hundreds of my pupils.

I found on my arrival in America that education was at a very low
ebb amongst the members of my race perhaps not more than 15% of
adult folks one would encounter in the streets could read and
write.

When the Amendments were passed by Congress conferring
citizenship upon colored people I threw myself into the political
current and was the first vice president of the 11th ward of
Baltimore city which a few years subsequently chose a colored
councilman, Harry Cummins.

I became a merchant meanwhile experimenting in groceries, but
after a year relinquished this for dry goods for which my early
acquaintance therewith amply fitted me. I kept a dry goods store
in Baltimore for seven years then went to Jacksonville, Fla.
where I successfully continued the business for eighteen years.

While I was in Baltimore I twice passed the Civil Service
examination with a handsome percentage this I did simply from
curiosity. I kept strictly to merchandise and have never earned a
dollar of Uncle Sam's money.

In 1909 and again in 1912 myself and wife, both of us having a
knowledge of French and Spanish and I a little Italian made a
tour of Western Europe viz, Gibralter Italy Switzerland France
Germany Holland Belgium and England plodding on foot amongst the
common people studying sociological conditions and comparing with
our own people. I find the contrast of the humbler class of
Europe also the colored races of the West Indies and South
Am