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236. Her father was a man of great native ability and a historic character in the story of "Negro Methodism in America," being pastor to Quinn Chapel, Chicago, many years ago, followed by pastorates at St. Paul's, St. Louis, and Bethel, Indianapolis. Her mother was a graduate of the well-known Quaker institution of learning, Spiceland University, of Indiana, and long before the public school system of Indiana was created became the first pay-teacher of the colored youth in Indianapolis, afterwards teacher in St. Louis and other cities.

Lillian inlierited to a marked degree her father's controlling traits of mind and at a very early age gave signs that she was the worthy offspring of a superior parentage. Her school-days were spent in her adopted city of Oshkosh, but she was not permitted to finish what from the beginning gave abundant promise to her preceptors of being a very brilliant course of study and application. Her favorite studies while at school were grammar and composition, although not behind the average student in all of the English branches. With completion of the junior course of the Oshkosh High School her days of schooling ended, in a palpable sense, by her marriage, which, in lieu of her youth and the probable distortion, from a practical stand-point, of a brilliant literary career, was regarded by her friends as a lamentable incident, but while she was no longer found in the school-room, in "reality her studies had but just begun, since, from that time to the present, she has been a most unflagging delver after knowledge, and