For several years after 1911, the Federation gradually raised money for the establishment of a residential industrial school for the large number of young African-American girls that were being sent to jail. They planned to pay in full for land after five years of fundraising. However, in 1914, Barrett read in a newspaper that an eight-year-old girl had been sentenced to six months in jail and she immediately appealed to the judge in Newport News, Virginia, to send the girl to the Weaver Orphan Home in Hampton, where Barrett was living at the time. The judge reluctantly released the child into her care. The Federation quickly raised $5,300 and bought a farm in Hanover County, Virginia, and chartered their center.