[Albumen Photograph Featuring Rev. J.L.A. Fish and His Wife Posed with Their African American Students Outside a "Colored School"]

[N.p., but likely Live Oak, Fl.], 1880. Very good.. Albumen photograph, 4.5 x 7.75 inches, mounted on card. Card trimmed, with pinholes at corners, remnants of printed caption in bottom margin, slight surface soiling and spotting. Penciled annotation on verso. A stunning original photograph featuring Rev. Joseph Leroy Atwell Fish (1828-1890) and his wife and children posed amongst their African-American students at an unnamed "colored school," which was very likely the Florida Baptist Institute. The images captures Fish, his wife, and probably his daughters in the middle of the frame, standing in front of a large two-story schoolhouse, surrounded by about eighty young Black men and women in suits and dresses. Revered Fish was a graduate of Amherst College and the Newton Theological Seminary who was ordained a Baptist minister in 1856. Fish was also a teacher who helped found Florida Memorial University (Florida Baptist Institute) in Live Oak in 1880, where he served as first president of the institution until his death there on March 26, 1890. Florida Memorial University is the only HBCU in the southern part of the state. The penciled annotation on the present photograph provides some information on the photograph, but is probably ultimately misleading in one regard: "Rev. J.L.A. Fish & wife In Virginia teaching a colored school -- He married my Father & Mother Mr. & Mrs. Milan Hills (Lucy M. Williams) Dec. 21, 1875."

The latter part of this inscription is indeed true. Reverend Fish married Milan Hills and Lucy Williams on December 21, 1875, in Hebron, New York where he was serving as a church pastor. But the historical record does not indicate that Reverend Fish ever taught at an African-American school in Virginia (if he did, it was so brief that it is now lost to history). Fish's first known foray into teaching African American students was a brief six-month stint in Natchez, Mississippi in 1879. Immediately thereafter, Fish was appointed to the Florida Baptist Institute, where he served the last decade of his life. As such, it is far more likely that the inscriber here meant to say that Reverend Fish and his wife were "In FLORIDA teaching a colored school."

Reverend Fish's work at the Florida Institute is covered in the Obituary Record of Graduates of Amherst College for the Academical Year ending June 27, 1883: "His chief work was with the Freedmen as he brought Florida Institute out of all its troubles, financial and social, changed the feeling of the whites from hatred to sympathy with his work and put the school on a permanent foundation. His aim was to educate leaders for the race and the principal effort of his school was to train teachers and preachers to go out through the state and by their example to lift up and educate both intellectually and morally the colored people. His influence was felt throughout the state both through his training of teachers and preachers and through his counsels given at conventions, associations, and other gatherings of the colored men and in private. He is mourned by both white and black. By the whites because they knew his teachings would help the colored people without causing trouble to them. By the latter because they miss their leader, teacher and friend. (Inventory #: 4993)