NEW  ARTICLE 6/112020

The advocate. [volume] (Charleston, W. Va.) 1901-1913, April 27, 1911, Image 1

Image and text provided by West Virginia University

Persistent link: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85059812/1911-04-27/ed-1/seq-1/

Published book to pay college expenses
negroe student who hoboed from Mississippi adops unique method to defray his expenses.
Boston MA April 27th 1911
Edward J Smyth Jones

who beat his way here last summer from his home in Mississippi in order that he might prepare for Harvard University,
has published a book of his adventures entitled the Sylvan cabin..Jones was arrested on his arrival here and
charged with vagrancy but dismissed from custody by judge Arthur P Jones associate justice of the third District Cour
t in Cambridge and as a graceful Remembrance of his benefactor he inscribed the book for the judge.

.Persons who have become interested in the young Mississippian when they heard of his long journey in order to get an education,
secured a position for him as a janitor at Harvard University. He is now at the boys Latin school preparing for Harvard
and hopes to realize enough money by the sale of his book to finish his education in the University.

GOOGLE SEARCH

Edward Smyth Jones (1881-1968) was born in Natchez, Mississippi to slave parents. In 190
he brought out a book of poems under the pseudonym Invincible Ned entitled The Rose That Bloometh in My Heart (1908). … Google Books

Originally published: 1911

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The Princeton union. (Princeton, Minn.)  July 24, 1913,

Image and text provided by Minnesota Historical Society; Saint Paul, MN

Persistent link: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016758/1913-07-24/ed-1/seq-2/

SAM M’CALL, EX-SLAVE,
IS A FARMING WONDER.
An Illiterate Alabama Negro’s Crop
Achievements Amaze Experts.
Sam McCall is an ex-slave, illiterate
and seventy-five years old, but he is
teaching the farmers of the world
some noteworthy lessons. He has won
fame by producing on his little farm
in central Alabama the largest amount
of cotton to the area ever grown in
the United States. This is one bale
to an eighth of an acre of land. The
importance of this achievement may
be understood when it is known that
the average yield for the United
States is only two-fifths of a bale for a
whole acre.
Sam McCall has developed a method
of cultivation on once worthless land
which is so successful that he thinks
nothing now of producing three and
one-half to four bales of cotton an
acre or eighty bushels of oats or corn.
The average in the southern states for
corn and oats runs fifteen to twenty
five bushels an acre.
When Sam was made free he bought
land to the amount of 160 acres. He
cultivated forty acres and the first
year made hardly enough to keep him
self. He concluded that with his limied
equipment and in view of the fact
that he was doing practically all his
own work it would be wise for him to
reduce the amount of land He grad
ually brought his cultivated farm down
to two acres and for twenty-two years
on this plot has spent all of his time
and energies in what farm experts call
one of the most interesting examples
of intensive farming carried on in the
United States
According to some who have gone to
Alabama to study his methods, the
reason for the ex-slave’s success in ag
riculture is due largely to the fact that
he has manufactured nitrogen in the
soil unknowingly by feeding the soil
bacteria with carbohydrates and cellu
lose, coming from the refuse of th
crops.
McCall’s land is part of an abandon
ed farm. Before he began to cultivate
it the soil was perhaps as bad as any
that can be found on any farm in the
southern states The former slave
knew nothing of scientific methods of
cultivation, but was a good observer.
He noticed white farmers in his sec
tion gathering leaves in the fall to
spread over their land to form humus
in the soil Sam never heard of the
word humus, but he concluded the
white farmers knew what they were
doing, and he followed suit He later
decided to use the refuse of all crops
as a natural fertilizer At the time he
began to cultivate his land commercial
fertilizers were little known, and the
ex-slave has never made use of them

SHORT DIRECTORY OF 19TH CENTURY BLACK INVENTORS
http://mentalfloss.com/article/86923/11-african-american-inventors-who-changed-world
https://www.biography.com/people/groups/famous-black-inventors
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-four-black-women-inventors-reimagined-technology-home-180962060/

Negro Invents a. New Ore R_e
duction Process.
Proving by tests that he does the
work for 90 cents a ton and gets an
increase of 20 per cent in value, D.
Robertson, a Leadville negro min
er, promises to revolutionize the
reduction of ore by a new chemical