she moved to L Street into a room in the building
known as the "The Two Sisters," then occupied by a white family. But
the inconvenience of holding school in rented quarters of private
dwellings proved a very unpleasant one indeed; for not only did she
suffer the lack of comfort which such quarters naturally could not
offer, but found herself constantly harassed by the necessity of
moving to escape the enmity and persecution of her white neighbors.

A new day, however, was to dawn. With the aid of Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Dr. Gamaliel Bailey and a few such faithful Philadelphia
friends as Thomas Williamson, Samuel Rhoads, Benjamin Tatham, Jasper
Cope and Catherine Morris, enough funds were raised to purchase a site
of three acres or more for a permanent home on a lot near N Street and
New Hampshire Avenue, between Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets,
Northwest. Though the environment of this new home was most pleasing
and beautiful, being surrounded with flowers and fruit trees, the
enmity of the white hoodlums still followed her. She and her pupils
were frequently assailed with torrents of stones and other missiles.
Once threatened by mob violence, Miss Miner bravely and defiantly
exclaimed, "Mob my school! You dare not! If you tear it down over my
head I shall get another house. There is no law to prevent my teaching
these people and I shall teach them even unto death!" Testimony of
some of Miss Miner's former pupils upholds such a defiance as truly
descriptive of her fearless nature.

In its earlier days the Miner Normal School was supported by private
funds and directed by a board of trustees consisting of Benjamin
Tatham and H. W. Bellows of New York; Samuel M. Janney of Virginia;
Johns Hopkins of Baltimore; Samuel Rhoads and Thomas Williamson of
Philadelphia; G. Bailey and L. D. Gale of Washington; C. E. Stowe of
Andover; H. W. Beecher of Brooklyn, together with an executive
committee consisting of S. J. Bowen, J. M. Wilson and L. D. Gale of
Washington; Miss Miner, principal and William H. Beecher, secretary.

The curriculum of the school then embraced boarding, domestic economy,
teachers' training course and the primary departments. It is
interesting to note that some of the advanced ideas in education
today, such as student self-government, vitalized teaching, socialized
recitation, and civic as well as personal hygiene, were taught and
practiced by Miss Miner during the fifties of the last century.

As an illust