business, so confident of success, that he pleaded for consent to return. He argued that his father and mother were both growing old. It was not right that he should be dependent upon them when they were every year needing more and more the assistance he could render. It was with great regret that his father finally consented that he should give up his college course and return to New Orleans. With his New England energy and thrift, he was very successful in business, and at the age of twenty-one bought out his brother's interest. He was very prosperous in the wholesale and commission house of Ferguson and O'Dowd. He returned home at intervals, always showing unfailing interest in the comfort of his parents. His last visit to them was in the summer of 1857. During the following winter he contracted a severe cold, which developed into pneumonia, and he died after an illness which lasted but a few days. The following obituary notice appeared in the New Orleans paper the day after the funeral:

"The remains of the late James A. Ferguson were followed to their last resting place by a concourse of friends who esteemed and loved him while living and deeply lament his untimely end. There are few gentlemen in our commercial community who have been more highly esteemed and respected. None had a higher reputation for straightforwardness, truthfulness and integrity. His word could always be relied upon. There was nothing exacting or grasping in his disposition; on the contrary, he was liberal in his dealings, and was marked by a cordiality of manner in his business intercourse which was the natural expression of a warm and genial nature. He was an honorable merchant, a faithful friend, and exemplary in all social relations " The child of James A. and Claudia (Churchill) Ferguson:54. LOUISIANA CHURCHILL, born Oct. 16, 1857, in New Orleans, La.; died Mar. 5, 1910, in New Orleans, La.

22

Abbie Park Ferguson3, born April 4, 1837 in Whately, Mass.

She prepared for Mount Holyoke Seminary, from which she graduated in the class of 1856. After her graduation, she taught for a time in Ohio and Michigan. Returning to New Haven, she was engaged in teaching until 1869 when she went abroad to travel with and superintend the studies of two young ladies from New York. They spent the winter in Paris and in the early spring left for Hanover, Germany. They tarried for a little in Geneva and were there when war was declared between France and Prussia, and were detained in Switzerland until the victorious German army had passed South and the way was open for them to continue their journey. They were in Hanover when peace was declared and Germany became a united Empire. The great work of her life, for which her other experiences seemed a preparation, came later. More than fifty years ago an English teacher near Cape Town heard, through an American missionary, of the beginning of higher education for young women in America. She came to the United States and took back to South Africa the "Life of Mary Lyon," the founder of Mt. Holyoke College. She lent the book to Rev. Andrew Murray, who said at once-"This is what we want for our daughters." He wrote to Mt. Holyoke for a teacher, Miss Abbie P. Ferguson and Miss Anna E. Bliss, graduates of Mt. Holyoke, went to South Africa together in Sept., 1873, and opened the school in 1874. The institution was named the Huguenot Seminary in memory of the French Huguenots who form so large an element in the country.

The teaching of Mary Lyon-"To go when others are

not willing to go, to do what others are not willing to do" has always been the spirit inculcated by the Huguenot Seminary. The Institution has been a great blessing to South Africa, from all parts of which its pupils have come. They have gone out as teachers and missionaries through Cape Colony, the Transvaal, Natal, the Orange Free State, to Nyassaland, Rhodesia and the Zambesi River. One has been a missionary in Mombassa, one in Persia, one in Ceylon, one in Japan and one has gone to the Soudan. More than half of the five thousand who have studied in the Huguenot Institution have become teachers. One of the B. A. graduates is Professor of Botany in a young men's college in Cape Colony and is doing research work in the Government Agricultural department and incidentally helping in a little church in the suburbs of Pretoria. One who married a nephew of Dr. Andrew Murray, has helped her husband reduce a native language to writing and has written a grammar of the language, which is authority at all the mission stations where that language is spoken. One has had charge of a circuit of native schools in Nyassaland, training the native teachers; she has lately assisted in forming an educational code for that part of Rhodesia and is to write one of the required text books.

It was five years after the Seminary opened before a class of four graduated in a high school course of study. There have been graduates ever since. The standards have steadily progressed and many in South Africa have learned the importance of advanced education for women. In 1898 a college department was established with one building as the house for students-the gift of friends in America. In 1907, a class building, Ferguson Hall, was erected and, with the help of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, payments upon it were completed in 1909.