of the Negroes that this
proved to be a most favorable community. Union was one of the first
towns in that section to establish a public school for Negroes. At
first there was some difficulty in having well prepared Negro teachers
in the county itself; for one John Didell, a white man, was the first
teacher of the public school. He had the support of such respectable
Negroes as Julius Smalls, Andrew Bailey, Malinda Campbell, Henry
Campbell, James Clair, Christopher Whitlock, and Charles Campbell. Two
of the products of this school are Miss Charlotte Campbell and Bishop
M. W. Clair of the Methodist Episcopal Church.[21] Among those who
came in later to stimulate the first efforts of the teachers were Mrs.
Leota Moss Claire, now a resident of Charleston, West Virginia, and J.
M. Riddle who, after having taught at Sinks Grove in Monroe county and
preached for several years in various parts of West Virginia, engaged
in the ministry in Ohio and later went to California, where he is now
serving as a State Missionary of the Baptist church.

In Summers County, the large settlement of Negroes was at Hinton. This
place had a Negro school of fifteen pupils as early as 1878, with one
T. J. Trinkle as instructor. He was a man of limited education, but
prepared to help those who had not made advancement in the
fundamentals. What he lacked in education he made up in moral
influence, and his career is still remembered as a success. The cause
of education among Negroes of Hinton was fearlessly supported by E. J.
Pack and C. H. Payne, once a teacher in a rural district in this
county himself and later a minister and a public servant in this
country and abroad. The school in Hinton began in a one-room structure
rented for four months, the length of the school term. Teachers were
paid at the rate of $15, $25 and $30 a month for third, second, and
first grade certificates respectively. It has recently developed into
a well-graded school having a junior high school running nine months,
with teachers paid at the rate of a combined monthly salary of $600.

The Negro public school experienced a later development in Fayette
County than in the case of the counties nearer to the eastern border
of the State or nearer the Ohio River; for, unlike those parts which
had a larger number of slaves than the central and northern counties,
Fayette County never before the eighties had Negro groups in
sufficiently large numbers to warrant an outlay in educa