ORPHAN ASYLUM SOCIETY--FOREIGN MISSIONARIES--LETTERS.
On the 15th of March, 1806, the female subscribers to proposals for providing an asylum for orphan children met at the City Hotel; Mrs. Graham was called to the chair, a society organized, and a board of direction chosen, Mrs. Hoffman was elected the first directress of the Orphan Asylum Society. Mrs. Graham continued in the office of first directress of the Widows' Society, but took a deep interest in the success of the Orphan Asylum also; she, or one of her family, taught the orphans daily, until the funds of the institution were sufficient to provide a teacher and superintendent. She was a trustee at the time of her decease. The wish to establish this new society was occasioned by the pain which it gave the ladies of the Widows' Society to behold a family of orphans driven, on the decease of a widow, to seek refuge in the almshouse; no melting heart to feel, no redeeming hand to rescue them from a situation so unpromising for mental and moral improvement.
"Among the afflicted of our suffering race," thus speaks the constitution of the society, "none makes a stronger or more impressive appeal to humanity than the _destitute orphan_. Crime has not been the cause of its misery, and future usefulness may yet be the result of its protection; the reverse is often the case of more aged objects. God himself has marked the fatherless as the peculiar subjects of his divine compassion. 'A Father of the fatherless is God in his holy habitation,' 'When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.' To be the blessed instrument of, divine Providence in making good the promise of God, is a privilege equally desirable and honorable to the benevolent heart.'"
And truly God has made good his promise towards this benevolent institution. He has crowned the undertaking with his remarkable blessing. It was begun by his disciples in faith, and he has acknowledged them in it. Having for fourteen months occupied a hired house for an asylum, the ladies entertained the bold idea of building an asylum on account of the society. They had then about three hundred and fifty dollars as the commencement of a fund for the building; they purchased four lots of ground in the village of Greenwich, on a healthful, elevated site, possessing a fine prospect. The corner-stone was laid on the 7th of July, 1807. They erected a building fifty feet square; from time to time they proceeded to finish the interior of the building, and to purchase additional ground as their funds would permit; and such was the liberality of the legislature and of the public, that the society soon possessed a handsome building and nearly an acre of ground, all of which must have cost them little short of twenty-five thousand dollars. In that house Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Hoffman spent much of their time; there they trained for eternity the children of those whose widowed dying mothers they had cheered with the hope that when they should be taken away, God would fulfil his gracious promise and preserve their fatherless children alive.