MARY WORMLEY'S SCHOOL.
In 1830, William Wormley built a school-house for his sister Mary, near the corner of Vermont Avenue and I Street, where the restaurant establishment owned and occupied by his brother, James Wormley, now stands. He had educated his sister expressly for a teacher, at great expense, at the Colored Female Seminary in Philadelphia, then in charge of Miss Sarah Douglass, an accomplished Colored lady, who is still a teacher of note in the Philadelphia Colored High School. William Wormley was at that time a man of wealth. His livery-stable, which occupied the place where the Owen House now stands, was one of the largest and best in the city. Miss Wormley had just brought her school into full and successful operation when her health broke down, and she lived scarcely two years. Mr. Calvert, an English gentleman, still living in the first ward, taught a class of Colored scholars in this house for a time, and James Wormley was one of the class. In the autumn of 1834, William Thomas Lee opened a school in the same place, and it was in a flourishing condition in the fall of 1835, when the Snow mob dispersed it, sacking the school-house, and partially destroying it by fire. William Wormley was at that time one of the most enterprising and influential Colored men of Washington, and was the original agent of the "Liberator" newspaper for this district. The mob being determined to lay hold of him and Lee, they fled from the city to save their lives, returning when General Jackson, coming back from Virginia a few days after the outbreak, gave notice that the fugitives should be protected. The persecution of William Wormley was so violent and persistent, that his health and spirits sank under its effects, his business was broken up, and he died a poor man, scarcely owning a shelter for his dying couch. The school-house was repaired after the riot, and occupied for a time by Margaret Thompson's school, and still stands in the rear of James Wormley's restaurant.
BENJAMIN M'COY'S, AND OTHER SCHOOLS.
About this time another school was opened in Georgetown, by Nancy Grant, a sister of Mrs. William Becraft, a well-educated Colored woman. She was teaching as early as 1828, and had a useful school for several years. Mr. Nuthall, an Englishman, was teaching in Georgetown during this period, and as late as 1833 he went to Alexandria and opened a school in that city. William Syphax, among others now resident in Washington, attended his school in Alexandria about 1833. He was a man of ability, well educated, and one of the best teachers of his time in the district. His school in Georgetown was at first in Dunbarton Street, and afterward on Montgomery.
The old maxim, that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," seems to find its illustration in this history. There is no period in the annals of the country in which the fires of persecution against the education of the Colored race burned more fiercely in this district, and the country at large, than in the five years from 1831 to 1836, and it was during this period that a larger number of respectable Colored schools were established than in any other five years prior to the war. In 1833, the same year in which Ambush's school was started, Benjamin M. McCoy, a Colored man, opened a school in the northern part of the city, on L Street, between Third and Fourth streets, west. In 1834 he moved to Massachusetts Avenue, continuing his school there till he went to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the autumn of 1836, to finish the engagement of Rev. John F. Cook, who came back to Washington at that time and re-opened his school. The school at Lancaster was a free public Colored school, and Mr. McCoy was solicited to continue another year; but declining, came back, and in 1837 opened a school in the basement of Asbury Church, which, in that room and in the house adjoining, he maintained with great success for the ensuing twelve years. Mr. McCoy was a pupil of Mrs. Billing and Henry Smothers; is a man of good sense, and his school gave a respectable rudimental education to multitudes, who remember him as a teacher with great respect. He is now a messenger in the Treasury Department. In 1833, a school was established by Fanny Hampton, in the western part of the city, on the northwest corner of K and Nineteenth streets. It was a large school, and was continued till about 1842, the teacher dying soon afterward. She was half-sister of Lindsay Muse. Margaret Thompson succeeded her, and had a flourishing school of some forty scholars on Twenty-sixth Street, near the avenue, for several years, about 1846. She subsequently became the wife of Charles H. Middleton, and assisted in his school for a brief time. About 1830, Robert Brown commenced a small school, and continued it at intervals for many years till his death. As early as 1833, there was a school opened in a private house in the rear of Franklin Row, near the location of the new Franklin School building. It was taught by a white man, Mr. Talbot, and continued a year or two. Mrs. George Ford, a white teacher, a native of Virginia, kept a Colored school in a brick house still standing on New Jersey Avenue, between K and L streets. She taught there many years, and as early, perhaps, as half a century ago.
DR. JOHN H. FLEET'S SCHOOL
was opened, in 1836, on New York Avenue, in a school-house which stood nearly on the spot now occupied by the Richards buildings at the corner of New York Avenue and Fourteenth Street. It had been previously used for a white school, taught by Mrs. McDaniel, and was subsequently again so used. Dr. Fleet was a native of Georgetown, and was greatly assisted in his education by the late Judge James Morsell, of that city, who was not only kind to this family, but was always regarded by the Colored people of the district as their firm friend and protector. John H. Fleet, with his brothers and sisters, went to the Georgetown Lancasterian School, with the white children, for a long period, in their earlier school days, and subsequently to other white schools. He was also for a time a pupil of Smothers and Prout. He was possessed of a brilliant and strong intellect, inherited from his father, who was a white man of distinguished abilities. He studied medicine in Washington, in the office of Dr. Thomas Henderson, who had resigned as assistant surgeon in the army, and was a practising physician of eminence in Washington. He also attended medical lectures at the old medical college, corner of Tenth and E streets. It was his intention at that time to go to Liberia, and his professional education was conducted under the auspices of the Colonization Society. This, with the influence of Judge Morsell, gave him privileges never extended here to any other Colored man. He decided, however, not to go to Liberia, and in 1836 opened his school. He was a refined and polished gentleman, and conceded to be the foremost Colored man in culture, in intellectual force, and general influence in this district at that time. His school-house on New York Avenue was burned by an incendiary about 1843, and his flourishing and excellent school was thus ended. For a time he subsequently taught music, in which he was very proficient; but about 1846 he opened a school on School-house Hill, in the Hobbrook Military School building, near the corner of N Street, north, and Twenty-third Street, west, and had a large school there till about 1851, when he relinquished the business, giving his attention henceforth exclusively to music, and with eminent success. He died in 1861. His school was very large and of a superior character.
CHARLES H. MIDDLETON'S SCHOOL
was started in the same section of the city, in a school-house which then stood, near the corner of Twenty-second Street, west, and I, north, and which had been used by Henry Hardy for a white school. Though both Fleet's and Johnson's schools were in full tide of success in that vicinity, he gathered a good school, and when his two competitors retired—as they both did about this time,—his school absorbed a large portion of their patronage, and was thronged. In 1852, he went temporarily with his school to Sixteenth Street, and thence to the basement of Union Bethel Church on M Street, near Sixteenth, in which, during the administration of President Pierce, he had an exceedingly large and excellent school, at the same period when Miss Miner was prosecuting her signal work. Mr. Middleton, now a messenger in the Navy Department, a native of Savannah, Ga., is free-born, and received his very good education in schools in that city, sometimes with white and sometimes with Colored children. When he commenced his school he had just returned from the Mexican war, and his enterprise is especially worthy of being made prominent, not only because of his high style as a teacher, but also because it is associated with
THE FIRST MOVEMENT FOR A FREE COLORED PUBLIC SCHOOL.