"Jennie Serepta Dean"(April 15,1848-May 3,1913)

Was born into slavery in Loudoun County and was the daughter of Charles

Dean & Annie Stewart Dean.Having secured her freedom as a consequence of the America Civil War (1861-1865),she attended schools in Fairfax County and in Washington,D.C. Jennie worked as a domestic servant to help her family purchase a farm in Prince William County after her father's death and to pay for one of her sisters' schooling.She attended Sunday school at the first Congregational Church in Washington and later joined the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church there.She never married.Jennie began a lifetime of missionary work and dedicated to racial uplift when she founded a Sunday school in Prince William County about 1878.She established additional Sunday schools in the area several of which became congregations ,including Calvary Chapel (later Greater Mount Calvary Christian Church).Jennie raised money locally and in northern cities for construction of church buildings.She offered classes in cooking and sewing and as an outgrowth of her ongoing missionary work began to plan for a school that teach skilled trades to young African Americans.With the assistance of her sister,a public school teacher,and a white teacher from the county,in 1888 Jennie began to organize local support for idea among African American and white residents,including ministers.She and her group chose the site for the school,a farm located  mile for Manassas on the Southern Railway.Three years later Jennie traveled north to raise funds.She worked in domestic service in Boston and spoke at churches and other venues about her plans for the school.Dignified,sincere,direct,tenacious,she successfully generated contributions from local residents and northern philanthropists.Early in 1893 Orra Grey Langhorne,of Lynchburg,arranged for Jennie a presentation about the school at the annual meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association,held in Washington,D.C. there Jennie met Emily Howland,a New Yorker whose donation paid the balance on the farm and provided funds for building.Jennie's years of praying and planning came to fruition when the Manassas industrial School for Colored Youth received its charter in October 1893.A dedication ceremony for the school's first building,Howland Hall,took place on September 3,1894,and featured Frederick Douglass as the keynote speaker.The school welcomed its first students in October.Reflecting on Jennie's vision,the school aimed to provide education and training that would lead to employment.In addition to liberal arts courses,the school offered training in such occupations as dressmaking,child care,blacksmithing,cooking,carpentry,shoemaking,and farming.The school suffered two significant fires in 1895 and in 1900 that destroyed its first buildings.For many years Jennie served on the school's board of directors and executive committee,with the title of financial agent.Tireless in this role,she traveled to Boston,New York,Washington,D.C.,and the school's neighboring towns to promote her institution,raise funds,and served as an advocate for industrial schools in general.Jennie preferred being at the school itself,where she served for a time as matron and wrote a code of good conduct.As a delegate to the 1896 annual convention of the National Federation of Afro-America Women (later National Federation of Colored Women's Clubs),she spoke about her work at Manassas and urged the organization to get involved in establishing similar industrial schools.After 1907 Jennie's influences within the school's governing board waned and her health deteriorated.The significance of her career was underscored when she accompanied a group of the Manassas Industrial School's students and other faculty members to meet Theodore Roosevelt at the White House on February 14,1906.The meeting was arranged by Booker T.Washington,to whom Theodore favorably compared Jennie.Sharing Booker's belief in vocational education and hard work,she encouraged African American men and women to focus on becoming proficient in a trade,earning a living becoming landowners,and paying taxes before they objected to insufficient opportunities or become involved with politics.After several years of ill health and two strokes,she died of cerebral hemorrhage at her home near Haymarket.