I
thanked him for his advice, and proceeded on my journey.
The first place I went to in the North, was Northampton, Mass.,
where I spent nearly a half-day in looking for a coloured family
with whom I could board, never dreaming that any hotel would
admit me. I was greatly surprised when I found that I would have
no trouble in being accommodated at a hotel.
We were successful in getting money enough so that on
Thanksgiving Day of that year we held our first service in the
chapel of Porter Hall, although the building was not completed.
In looking about for some one to preach the Thanksgiving sermon,
I found one of the rarest men that it has ever been my privilege
to know. This was the Rev. Robert C. Bedford, a white man from
Wisconsin, who was then pastor of a little coloured
Congregational church in Montgomery, Ala. Before going to
Montgomery to look for some one to preach this sermon I had never
heard of Mr. Bedford. He had never heard of me. He gladly
consented to come to Tuskegee and hold the Thanksgiving service.
It was the first service of the kind that the coloured people
there had ever observed, and what a deep interest they manifested
in it! The sight of the new building made it a day of
Thanksgiving for them never to be forgotten.
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