ree people
of color was established in 1812 to maintain a Free Orphan School in
New York City and employed two teachers; and there were three other
schools which they supported with their tuition fees, while those who
were not sufficiently well circumstanced to educate their children
sent them to the African Free Schools maintained by the New York
Manumission Society.[10]

These African Free Schools were conducted in such a way as to have a
direct bearing on the economic improvement of the Negroes. In 1818 the
New York Mission Society informed the American Convention of Abolition
Societies that the former had devised a plan of extending their care
to certain children of color who had completed their course of
instruction in the New York African Free Schools "in putting them at
some useful trade or employment." These friends of the race in New
York said that it had long been a regret that Negro children "educated
at their schools had been suffered after leaving it to waste their
time in idleness, thereby incurring those vicious habits which were
calculated to render their previous education worse than useless." To
remedy this evil they appointed an Indenturing Committee, whose duty
was to provide places for these children and put them at a trade or
some other employment when they had completed their education. The
Committee took special care that the persons with whom children might
be placed should be those of good character and while on the one hand
they insisted that the children demean themselves with sobriety they
extended their guardian care to them so that they might not "become
subjects of oppression and tyranny." This Indenturing Committee in
reaching its decision as to the sort of occupations to which the
children could be apprenticed expressed a decided preference for
agricultural pursuits, being persuaded that an occupation of this
nature was far more conducive to the moral improvement of these
Negroes than the pursuits of the city under the most favorable
circumstances. This plan upon being presented to the parents and
guardians of these children was favorably received, but it does not
appear that a large number of them thereafter participated in
agriculture.[11]

The activity of the girls who had received instruction in household
economics in free schools showed progress in another direction. They
formed a society under the name of the African Dorcas Association for
the purpose of procuring and making ga