• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar

New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

  • Email
  • RSS
  • Adirondacks & NNY
  • Capital-Saratoga
  • Mohawk Valley
  • Hudson Valley & Catskills
  • NYC & Long Island
  • Western NY
  • History
  • Nature & Environment
  • Arts & Culture
  • Outdoor Recreation
  • Food & Farms
  • Subscribe
  • Support
  • Submit
  • About
  • New Books
  • Events
  • Podcasts

North Country Teacher Taught Southern Freedmen

September 4, 2014 by David Fiske 1 Comment

coitphoto2Back-to-school time perhaps brings back, for adults, the memory of a favorite teacher. But of those who are so warmly remembered, how many can elicit this wish by a former student of a 19th century teacher?

“If I could be permitted, how gladly would I again fill up the wood-box in your room and kindle the fire on your hearth…”

Those words came from the prestigious African American preacher, Rev. Daniel Webster Shaw (who, interestingly, was the son of a former slave, Harriet Shaw, with whom Solomon Northup was acquainted in Louisiana). “If I have done anything, or come to anything worth while, it is all mainly due to your timely helpfulness and godly admonition,” Shaw wrote. “I think of the school days on the Tache [Teche, a bayou in Louisiana], and all the kind ways in which you helped me to start out in life.”

The teacher, so touchingly commended by Shaw, was Rosetta Ann Coit. Coit was a daughter of James J. Coit, a native of Connecticut who had moved to Hastings in Oswego County in the 1820s. Her father worked a farm, but taught school during the winters. He also filled various official positions, including serving as an Assemblyman, and he had a role in the formation of the Republican Party.

Though her father was a devoted Presbyterian, Rosetta converted to Methodism as a child. It was her relationship with the Methodist Episcopal Church that later put her in a position that earned her the praise of Shaw and many others.

Coit grew up in a family with a strong commitment to education. Her father, James, was an advocate of the common school system, and nine of her ten brothers and sisters taught school at some point during their careers. Her sister Amelia was associated with the Porter School in Syracuse for many years.

Coit attended Falley Seminary in Fulton, and also served as an instructor there. The 1860 Federal Census shows her teaching at a Common School in Hastings. All together, she taught for 42 terms while in New York State.

Following the conclusion of the Civil War, her involvement with the church led to her taking her teaching talents to the South, where she educated African Americans in schools sponsored by the Freedmen’s Aid Society of the Methodist Church. She first served schools in Fernandina Beach and Green Cove Springs in Florida, then was briefly at a school in Alexandria, Virginia.

neworleansunivIn the 1870s, she became an educator in Louisiana, and various officials and students praised her efforts there. She ran a school on Bayou Teche in St. Mary’s Parish, and also a school for the training of teachers in New Orleans. The latter, Union Normal School, was poorly equipped at the start, but was nursed along by Coit until it became a thriving institution that evolved into New Orleans University (today’s Dillard University).

Her perseverance in these efforts, in spite of prejudice and run-ins with the Ku Klux Klan, earned her great praise. A person connected with a black church in Baldwin, Louisiana, wrote to the Freedmen’s Aid Society, asking if they could have her come back to teach the next year. She had “efficiently looked after the spiritual and temporal interests” of the community.

An official report on Louisiana schools called her “a highly accomplished lady of sweet Christian spirit.” Another report remarked on her commitment to the “important charge of training the young and preparing them for educators to their race.”

Besides the touching remarks by Shaw, cited above, the Rev. Dr. John Wesley Edward Bowen, the prominent black preacher and theologian (and also a former student) had this to say about Coit: “I had been under the direction of a blessed woman….This Christian woman had prayed for me and exhorted me.” She “seemed to have the patience of Christ….I hope that my life will, in some way, reward her for her sacrifices.”

Even when she had chances to return to New York for visits, Coit talked to everyone she met about the need for education of the freedmen, and did what she could to garner support in the North for such endeavors.

Her southern activities concluded in 1875, when she returned to Oswego County. She was active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and especially the Methodist Women’s Foreign Missionary Society for the Oswego District.

The 1880 Federal Census for Hastings shows her and her aged, twice-widowed father living together, and she cared for him in his declining years (he died in 1884). Before long, poor health visited her as well, and curtailed her activities. She moved to Pulaski to live with the family of her married sister, Caroline Morris. In the 1890s, newspapers recorded visits paid to her by several of her sisters, and noted that she was sometimes too ill to attend events related to the missionary work which she loved so well. Her passing came on May 23, 1905, following an unspecified protracted illness. Though Coit never married, she left behind many former students whose lives she had positively impacted.

Illustrations from The New Orleans Book, by Emma C. Richey and Evelina P. Kean, 1915.

 

 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Filed Under: History Tagged With: Abolition, Black History, Fulton County, Oswego County, Political History, Religion, Slavery, womens history

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Beverly Harris says

    February 7, 2019 at 4:43 PM

    Are there other images of Rosette Coit? I work at Dillard University. We are pulling together all the women who held the presidential role rather it was Union Normal, New Orleans, Straight or Dillard in celebration of DU 150th year.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Help Support The Almanack

Subscribe to New York Almanack

Subscribe! Follow the New York Almanack each day via E-mail, RSS, Twitter or Facebook updates.

Recent Comments

  • Michael A Mazza on French Canadian Rev War Veteran Antoine Paulin’s Grave Being Marked in Champlain
  • peter Waggitt on Raines Law, Loopholes and Prohibition
  • Anthony St Phillips on War of 1812: Carrying the Great Rope
  • Kenneth Boede on When Sullivan County Was A Sportsman’s Paradise
  • Robert Hunt on Westchester County’s Katharine Harrison, Accused Witch
  • Lisa Nevins on Westchester County’s Katharine Harrison, Accused Witch
  • Nancy Begley Pennell on Irish Immigrant, Medal of Honor Winner Terrence Begley Being Honored in Albany
  • arc skuta on MicroHistory and Migration: From Moltrasio to London, New York and Montreal
  • Nancy Robinson on Former Saratoga and North Creek Railway Purchased
  • Bernard McCann on Zoar Valley Improvements Update

Recent New York Books

Major General Israel Putnam hero of the American Revolution
v is for victory
The Motorcycle Industry in New York State
Unfriendly to Liberty
weeds of the northeast
Putting Out the Planetary Fire: An Introduction to Climate Action and Advocacy
Seneca Ray Stoddard An Intimate Portrait of an Adirondack Legend
rebels at sea
The Great New York Fire of 1776
politics of trash

Secondary Sidebar

Mohawk Valley Trading Company Honey, Honey Comb, Buckwheat Honey, Beeswax Candles, Maple Syrup, Maple Sugar
preservation league