Lucy Chase and Sarah Chase

[8] According to academic Richard L. Zuber, "They wrote home frequently, long newsy letters, full of the type of description that warms the historian's heart—pictures of the living conditions, and the attitudes and aspirations of the freedmen.

[4] Only once basic needs were met could the sisters begin to act on their "optimistic assurance that the primer and schoolbook were the keys to the black man's future; to this they had dedicated themselves.

"[16] Historian Martin Schlegel credits the sisters for being remarkably free of race prejudice for the time and place: "Their sympathy for the Negro does not lead them to minimize his faults or exaggerate his virtues.

"[17] According to historian Larry Gara:[18] Despite the markedly paternalistic attitude that colored much that the Chase sisters wrote, their letters add considerable detail to our knowledge of life in the contraband communities.

The years of service volunteered by Lucy and Sarah Chase and thousands like them made slight atonement for that 'heap'...[18]Other notable Northern female-schoolteacher letter writers from the Reconstruction-era south include Laura M. Towne and Charlotte L.