Gilman, Louise Lane, 1838-1922.

With the fall of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, many northern reformers shifted their focus to the problem of educating the vast numbers of newly freed men, women and children. In 1866, Brig. Gen. Samuel C. Armstrong, who had organized and commanded several "colored" regiments during the war, secured an appointment as agent for the Freedmen's Bureau and Superintendent of Schools in Virginia, and turned his considerable energies to the task. Within a year, Armstrong had persuaded the American Missionary Association to purchase 159 acres near Hampton, Va., as site for a permanent school for African-American and Native American students, and he put into practice his beliefs that the standard academic education was less relevant to the needs of freedmen than the provision of a base level of literacy and some form of useful, industrial or agricultural skills. The Hampton Institute officially opened in April, 1868, was incorporated by the state two years later, and graduated its first class of men and women in 1871.

In January, 1869, Louise Lane Gilman, a sister of Daniel Coit Gilman, was offered a five-month teaching position at the Hampton Institute through the efforts of a friend, the well-known Civil War nurse, Georgeanna Woolsey. The Gilmans, a politically active family with strong abolitionist ties, supported the decision of their youngest daughter to accept the post, and at the end of January, Louise left her home in Norwich, Conn., for the south.

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