Of African Methodists, Entomologists, and Iron Majors, Vol. IX
By David "Chet" Williamson Sneade Educator Sarah Ella Wilson was born in Worcester in 1874. She taught in the Worcester School System for nearly 50 years. Her parents, George and Elizabeth (Allen) Wilson, were freed slaves from North Carolina. "The couple had been resettled in Worcester by Lucy and Sarah Chase, prominent abolitionists, following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863," wrote William Coleman. Sarah Ella was named after Sarah Chase. According to the Centennial Encyclopedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church , it was Wilson's parents who "gave attention to Sarah Ella's early training in prayer, letters, art, music, and domestic science. "After completing the grammar school course, she encountered and was graduated from the Classical High School; thence to the State Normal School of Worcester [now Worcester State University], from where she took her diploma with honors in delivering her thesis, The Child's...