"Susan Paul Vashon"(9-19-1838-November 27,1912)

Her father Elijah W.Smith was a musician composer and cornet player,her mother,Anne Paul

Smith,was the daughter of the Rev.Thomas Paul who was founder and pastor of the old Joy Street Church,Boston,where the American Anti-Slavery was organized.Susan lost her mother at an early age and was reared by her material grandmother,Kathrine Paul.At the age of of sixteen she graduated from Miss O'Mears' Seminary,Somerville,Mass.,the only African-American girl in her class and valedictorian.Her grandmother died and she went to live with her father in Pittsburgh,Pa.,where she was appointed teacher in the one African-American school of that city.Of that professor George Boyer Vashon was principal,who she married in 1857,and had seven children.Her earlier years gave to her character a puritanical cast,and all through her life she held close to the stable line.She was a mother,deeply so,and directed the lives of her children with the personal guidance and watchful care of tender love and wise caution.She blended domestic excellence with an active interest in all movements for the moral and social uplift of her people.The Home, the Church,and the community were the workshops,in which created.The mother's club to guide to develop literary taste,,the Women's Federation to accomplish a higher womanhood and the church were the fields in which she led and molded through and proved herself to be one of the most useful and cultured women of her day.Possibly the most far-reaching of Susan's public services was the direction of several sanitary relief bazaars that netted thousands of dollars for the care of sick and wounded soldiers of the Civil War,and for the housing of colored refugees at Pittsburgh,in the years 1864-65--the aftermath of the war between the states.She was widowed October 5,1878.Susan taught in the public schools of Washington,D.C.,from 1872 until 1880,being principal of the Thaddeus Stevens School.In the fall of 1882 she moved with her family to St.Louis Missouri,where she died.