Teenagers Who Vandalized Historic Black Schoolhouse Are Ordered to Read Books

(NYTimes) After five teenagers defaced a historic black schoolhouse in Virginia with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti last year, a judge handed down an unusual sentence. She endorsed a prosecutor’s order that they read one book each month for the next 12 months and write a report about it.

But not just any books: They must address some of history’s most divisive and tragic periods. Continued

Colora: The breezy ridge of Cecil County

(Cecil Whig) Vast and many have been the unique pronunciations of Colora but few are they who can, with any certain knowledge, define how the bucolic rolling village attained the romantic moniker.
The name derives from the Latin words "culmen aura," meaning "breezy ridge." According to Louis C. Whiteley in a 1986 issue of The Highline on the Pennsylvania Railroad, titled "Octoraro Odyssey," the village was renamed in 1869, having previously born the name West Nottingham and "took its name from the farm of Lloyd Balderston nearby," Whiteley explains. "A student of Latin, Mr. Balderston selected the words culmen aura, then shortened it to Culaura and, taking some liberty with the vowels, settled on Colora as more pleasing to the eye." Continued

Photos: Colora railroad station, school (Falmanac).

Johns Hopkins: His death and his philanthropy

(Wikipedia) ... Johns Hopkins died without heirs on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1873. He left $7 million, mostly in Baltimore & Ohio Railroad stock, to establish his namesake institutions. This sum was the single largest philanthropic donation ever made to educational institutions up until that time.
The bequest was used to found posthumously the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum first as he requested, in 1875, the Johns Hopkins University in 1876, the Johns Hopkins Press, the longest continuously operating academic press in America, in 1878, the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1889, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893. Continued

Dame Schools

(Wikipedia) A Dame School was an early form of a private elementary school in English-speaking countries. They were usually taught by women and were often located in the home of the teacher. ... In North America, "dame school" is a broad term for a private school with a female teacher during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The education provided by these schools ranged from basic to exceptional. The basic type of dame school was more common in New England, where basic literacy was expected of all classes, than in the southern colonies, where there were fewer educated women willing to be teachers. Continued

Hosanna School's 144th anniversary

(TheRecord) The celebration of the 144th anniversary of the Hosanna School in Darlington had a distinctly Havre de Grace flavor. Harford County Executive David R. Craig and Photographer Bobby Parker, two of Havre de Grace’s best known citizens, were among those honored April 1 at the Richlin Ballroom as the Hosanna School Museum marked the 144th year since the school began operating. It was one of three schools built for African-American students in Harford County by the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1867. Continued

One-Room Schoolhouse Near Sylmar Razed

(WoCCP) While Cecil County once had dozens of one-room schoolhouses serving rural areas and small villages, many of these structures have disappeared in recent decades. The most recent one, the old Cherry Grove School near Sylmar, was leveled during the past week or so. Built about 1881 for $680, it closed on October 24, 1931 when pupils were transferred to Calvert. For years it served as a private dwelling. Continued

Cokesbury Memorial UMC to Celebrate College's 225th Anniversary

(Talking about Abingdon, MD) Cokesbury Memorial United Methodist Church is gearing up to celebrate the 225th anniversary of Cokesbury College, the first Methodist college in the world on June 20. The celebration will begin with worship on the lawn at 10:30 a.m. with featured speaker the Rev. Dr. Laurence Hull Stookey. Following the service, a box lunch will be served and Bonnie McCubbin will give her presentation, “Mystery Unearthed: Cokesbury College An Investigation into the History and Demise of the First Methodist College.” The discussion will focus on the mysterious circumstances of the fire that led to the total destruction of the college in 1795. Continued

Photos: Falmanac

Mr. Johns Hopkins

(LoC) Johns Hopkins was born on May 19, 1795, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, to a Quaker family. Convinced that slavery was morally wrong, his parents freed their slaves. As a result, Johns had to leave school at age twelve to work in the family tobacco fields. Hopkins regretted that his formal education ended so early. Ambitious and hardworking, he abandoned farming, and, at his mother’s urging, became an apprentice in his uncle's wholesale grocery business when he was seventeen. Within a decade, he had created his own Baltimore-based mercantile operation. Hopkins single-mindedly pursued his business ventures. He never married, lived frugally, and retired a rich man at age fifty. A series of wise investments over the next two decades—he was the largest individual stockholder in the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, for example—further increased his wealth. He used his fortune to found The Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, incorporating them in 1867.
Hopkins died in 1873. His will divided $7 million equally between the hospital and the university. At the time, the gift was the largest philanthropic bequest in U.S. history. Hopkins also endowed an orphanage for African-American children. Continued

Thomas Wyatt Turner

(Wikipedia) Thomas Wyatt Turner (March 16, 1877 – April 21, 1978) was an American civil rights activist, biologist and educator. Born in Hughesville, Maryland, Turner attended Episcopal local schools after Catholic schools refused to admit him because of his race.
After receiving the proper credentials, Turner headed to the Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, where he taught academics in biology. Later, he gave service to various public schools in Baltimore, Maryland. From 1914 to 1924, he served as a Professor of Botany at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and also served from 1914 to 1920 as the Acting Dean at the Howard's School of Education. Continued

April Fool!

(LoC) April the 1st was dreaded by most rural school teachers. The pupils would get inside and bar the teacher out. The teacher, who didn't act on the principle that discretion is the better part of valor, generally got the worst of it. Mr. Douglass soon learned this, and, on April Fool's Day, he would walk to the school, perceive the situation, laughingly announce there would be no school until the morrow, and leave. Continued

Image: Cecil County School #12, Colora, Maryland

Ira Remsen: The Chemistry Was Right

(JHU Gazette) Ira Remsen was born Feb. 10, 1846, in New York City, of Dutch and Huguenot ancestry. Following education in the public schools, he attended the College of Physicians and Surgeons, from which he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1867. Although briefly a practicing physician, he had studied medicine only to please his parents. After satisfying this family obligation, Remsen left for Munich to pursue his real interest: chemistry. Continued

The Schoolhouse Blizzard

(Wikipedia) The Schoolhouse Blizzard, also known as the Schoolchildren's Blizzard or the Children's Blizzard, hit the U.S. plains states on January 12, 1888. The blizzard came unexpectedly on a relatively warm day, and many people were caught unaware, including children in one-room schoolhouses.

The stories:

• Plainview, Nebraska: Lois Royce found herself trapped with three of her students in her schoolhouse. By 3 p.m., they had run out of heating fuel. Her boarding house was only 82 yards (75 m) away, so she attempted to lead the children there. However, visibility was so poor that they became lost and all the children froze to death. The teacher survived, but her feet were frostbitten and had to be amputated.
  
• Holt County, Nebraska: Etta Shattuck got lost on her way home, and sought shelter in a haystack. She remained trapped there until her rescue three days later. She soon died due to complications from surgery to remove her frostbitten limbs.
  
• In Great Plains, South Dakota, the children were rescued. Two men tied a rope to the closest house, and headed for the school. There, they tied off the other end of the rope, and led the children to safety.
  
• Mira Valley, Nebraska: Minnie Freeman safely led thirteen children from her schoolhouse to her home, one half mile (800 m) away.^[1][2] The rumor she used a rope to keep the children together during the blinding storm is widely circulated, but one of the children claims that is not true. She took them to the boarding house she lived at about a mile away and all of her pupils survived. Many children in similar conditions around the Great Plains were not so lucky, as 235 people were killed, most of them children who couldn't get home from school. That year, "Song of the Great Blizzard: Thirteen Were Saved" or "Nebraska's Fearless Maid", was written and recorded in her honor by W.M. Vincent and published by Lyon & Healy.
  
• Ted Kooser, Nebraska poet, has recorded many of the stories of the Schoolhouse Blizzard in his book of poetry, "The Blizzard Voices".
  
• In 1967 a haunting mosaic mural by Jeanne Reynal was created for the west wall of the north bay in the Nebraska State Capitol building in Lincoln, Nebraska. It captures much of the mood and drama of the storm. The mural, executed in a semi-abstract style, portrays an incident that occurred in which a school teacher, Minnie Freeman, is supposed to have tied her children together with a clothes line and led them through the terrifying tempest to safety. Continued

Photo: Trout School, Felton, PA. (Falmanac).

Black Schools Restored as Landmarks

COLUMBIA, S.C. (NYTimes) - Until 1923, the only school in the largely black farm settlement of Pine Grove was the one hand-built by parents, a drafty wooden structure in the churchyard. Anyone who could read and write could serve as teacher. With no desks and paper scarce, teachers used painted wood for a blackboard, and an open fireplace provided flashes of warmth to the lucky students who sat close.
This changed after a Chicago philanthropist named Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck, took up the cause of long-neglected education for blacks at the urging of Booker T. Washington, the proponent of black self-help. By the late 1920s, one in three rural black pupils in 15 states were attending a new school built with seed money, architectural advice and supplies from the Rosenwald Fund. Continued

Photo: This Rosenwald School, in Abingdon, Maryland, was recently torn down.

Earl G. Graves, Sr.

(Wikipedia) Earl Gilbert Graves, Sr. (born January 9, 1935) is an American author, publisher, entrepreneur, philanthropist and founder of Black Enterprise magazine. He currently resides in Scarsdale, New York.
... While at Morgan State, Graves made a name for himself as an entrepreneur. Realizing that there was a big market for flowers during Homecoming Week, he went to two competing local florists and cut deals with both to sell flowers on campus. For a percentage of the profits, the florists provided the flowers while Graves covered the campus. Continued

Landmark status argued for carriage house

(Baltimore Sun) The 19th-century Farmlands Carriage House in Catonsville is at the center of a tug-of-war between pressing school needs and the wishes of preservationists. The solid stone building, one of the oldest in the county, served as a stable for a wealthy maritime merchant during the early 1800s. Today, the Baltimore County Board of Education owns it and uses it as a maintenance shed for Catonsville High School. Continued

Education pioneer Williams dies

(Aegis) ... Dr. Williams was one of 10 children of the late Hattie Brown and Vandellia Armitage Williams, a sharecropping farmer whose family was uprooted from the Perryman peninsula during the creation of Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1917 when Dr. Williams was just 3. The Williams children grew up in the era of segregation when black children in Harford County were not allowed to attend school with white children and were shunted into crowded, older buildings, where they were taught only by members of their own race and classes stopped at seventh grade. To earn a high school diploma, a black child had to leave the county to attend school in neighboring counties or Baltimore City, usually in a “colored only” school.
... The Harford County school system Dr. Williams left in 1962 was still segregated by race, even though the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the so-called separate but equal doctrine in education eight years earlier. The Harford school system was not fully integrated until the 1965-66 school year and then, only after pressure from the state department of education, of which Dr. Williams was then a part. Continued

Photo: Federal Hill Colored School, Route 165, above Jarrettsville, Maryland (Falmanac).

Anchors Aweigh!

(LoC) On October 10, 1845, fifty midshipmen and seven faculty attended the first term of The United States Naval School. Five years later, the school became the United States Naval Academy. From the Mexican War to the Persian Gulf War, officers trained at the Academy served in every major U.S. war. President Jimmy Carter holds the distinction of being the sole Naval Academy graduate elected president and commander in chief. Continued

Photo: Bancroft Hall, Annapolis Naval Academy c1911. (Library of Congress)

Sparks students celebrate old and not-so-old school buildings

(North County News) - Sparks Elementary School is throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of existence at its Belfast Road location and to honor the 100-year history of the stone building on Sparks Road that was destroyed in a 1995 fire.
The festivities are Oct. 3, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and include a visit from Joe Hairston, Baltimore County schools superintendent, as well as current and former students, teachers and administrators. Continued

Photos: Falmanac. We have more pictures of the old school building here.

Rainy Saturday Doesn’t Dampen Program at One Room Schoolhouse in Worton Point

(RoDP) - Although a series of thunderstorms brought heavy rain to Kent County this Saturday morning, the downpours didn’t stop a great day from taking place at the African American Schoolhouse Museum at Worton Point, MD. Continued

Related: Slideshow of the days festivities

Photo courtesy of Reflections on Delmarva’s Past

Mac McGarry

(Wikipedia) - Maurice J. "Mac" McGarry (born June 15, 1926) is the current host of the television quiz show It's Academic, which airs in Washington, D.C. on the local NBC affiliate WRC-TV. He has been the host of the show since it started airing in 1961.
Mac McGarry joined NBC in 1950 for what was then WNBW located in the Wardman Park Hotel. Continued

Photo: The Joy Boys