tailor's trade at
West Point and this proved a favorable introduction to his work among
the Choctaws. They were surprised and greatly pleased on seeing that he
had already learned the art of sitting on the ground "tailor fashion"
according to their own custom.

The academy under Reid enjoyed a prosperous career of twelve years. In
1861, when the excitement of war absorbed the attention of everybody,
the school work was abandoned. Reid, however, continued to serve as a
gospel missionary among the Indians until 1869, when he took his family
to Princeton, New Jersey, to provide for the education of his children.

While ministering to the spiritual needs of the Indians his sympathies
and interest were awakened by the destitute and helpless condition of
their former slaves. In 1878 he resumed work as a missionary to the
Choctaws making his headquarters at or near Atoka and in 1882 he was
appointed by the Foreign Mission Board, superintendent of mission work
among the Freedmen in Indian Territory. In this capacity he aided in
establishing neighborhood schools wherever teachers could be found. In
order that a number of them might be fitted for teaching, he obtained
permission of their parents to take a number of bright looking and
promising young people to boarding schools, maintained by our Freedmen's
Board in Texas, Mississippi and North Carolina. He thus became
instrumental in preparing the way, and advised the development of the
native Oak Hill School into an industrial and normal boarding school.

In 1884, owing to failing health, he went to the home of his son, Rev.
John G. Reid (born at Spencer Academy in 1854), at Greeley, Colorado,
and died at 72 at Cambridgeport, near Boston, July 30, 1890.

"He was a friend to truth, of soul sincere, of manners unaffected
and of mind enlarged, he wished the good of all mankind."

UNCLE WALLACE AND AUNT MINERVA

Uncle Wallace and Aunt Minerva were two of the colored workers that were
employed at Spencer Academy, before the war. They lived together in a
little cabin near it. In the summer evenings they would often sit at the
door of the cabin and sing their favorite plantation songs, learned in
Mississippi in their early youth.

In 1871, when the Jubilee singers first visited Newark, New Jersey, Rev.
Alexander Reid happened to be there and heard them. The work of the
Jubilee singers was new in the North and attracted considerable and very
favorable attention. But w