Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1890 — A Strange Colony. [ARTICLE]

A Strange Colony.

Surgeon J. W. Ross, who is generally considered as one of the best yellow fever experts in the Government service, called on Secretary Tracy, says the Washington Star, accompanied by Surgeon General Browne, and made an appeal in behalf of a colony of people living on the navai reservation at the Pensacola Navy Yard, Fla., about eight miles from Pensacola. These people, he says, number about 1.30 U, and- are ex! Tremely poor, being the dependants of the employes of the Pensacola Navy Yard, which was closed almost immediately after the war and has remained so since. They have built and bought little homes, which they hold without much expense,.and their living, such" as it is, is obtained from their work as fishermen.

A few of them scratch the soil and but the existence is a sort of hand-to-mouth life that is made even more precarious by the occasional ravages of yellow fever, which has swept the little colony several times. The navy yard offers employment only for a few men who are engaged in making repairs, but the others have been waiting in the footsteps of their fathers before them, for ' the reopening of the yard in the hope of obtaining positions. Micawber• 1i ke they remain, clinging to their hard homes rather than go to the city, where they would be obliged to pay rent But their physical condition, bad as it is, is not so bad as their mental state, and that is the inspiration of Dr. Ross’s advocacy of the colony’s needs.

The trouble lies in the fact that, being squatters on a Government reservation, they are not regarded as citizens of the State, and are consequently ineligible to the advantages of the State’s public schools. For years they .have gone along without any sort of education, even of the most primitive character, until they have reverted, after a couple of generations, to a condition of semi-savagery. Their ignorance is pitiful, resembling that of peasants in some of the more unenlightened countries of the east. This condition of affairs grows worse yearly, a 3 all etfoMte to obtain aid from the State of Fteridtt have failed. Dr. Ross has aroused the interest of the Commissioner of Education. who has promised to ask for a small appropriation for some school facilities in the colony if the Secretary !of the Navy would recommend it, this j deference to Secretary Tracy being due j to-The fact that he has jurisdiction 1 over the reservation. The Secretary said that he would offer no objections to the granting of aid to these leI nighted people. As the colony is I about equally divided between the white and colored races, two schools will be required, one for each class.

Dr. Ross has been ordered to duty at Pensacola for the purpose of aiding in the preventive measures that are to be adopted in order to insure safety from the Cuban fevers. He said that he did not think there was much danger at present, as there is a very well organized State Board of Health that has taken vigorous steps already to keep the disease out of the country.