Old Wallville School ready to help educate a new generation

Out and About

Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2009

There, just across the school parking lot from the current elementary school facility, the newly renovated one-room Old Wallville School sat in its new home. Thanks to the long, hard work of many countians — individuals and businesses, as well as the state and county governments — this relic of a period in Calvert's history again will be providing lessons to a new generation.

This tiny 1890s-era one-room schoolhouse looks like a delightful anachronism in its new setting, like an illustration in a book of classic nursery rhymes. But its actual history is quite different, and its restoration hasn't got much to do with simple nostalgia. Old Wallville School was a segregated school for many of Calvert's African-American children. Students, in grades 1 through 7, were packed into a space no larger than the master bedroom in many modern houses. Miss Regina Brown, one of the two extraordinary Brown sisters — both dedicated educators — who made such a difference in the lives of many local children, taught the school until its closing in 1934. Brown left an oral record of her experiences as a teacher with the Calvert County Historical Society. Her recollections of her teaching years at Old Wallville include the following:

"… I was principal, teacher, secretary, custodian and trouble-shooter. The room was about 15-by 15-feet; with space for only a dozen double desks … The smaller children sat three at a desk. On days of good attendance the overflow sat on the floor in the aisle and used flat-topped logs for desktops. Our supplies consisted of textbooks, a register, one box of white chalk, a water pail and dipper, and one corn broom. The customary airtight stove was the only source of heat."

Because Saturday was so wet, the formal opening event for the completed renovation of the schoolhouse was in the elementary school auditorium. Harry E. Wedewer, a member of the board of the Friends of the Old Wallville School, has been one of the driving forces who has kept the project moving along, served as the program emcee. Wedewer thanked all of the many volunteers, officials, agencies, corporations and businesses that had given materials, funds, grants, expertise, and physical labor to make the restoration possible. This event is the culmination of more than 10 years of working and planning, all done by volunteers in many capacities, including those who did the sweaty physical labor of rebuilding, roofing and painting.

Madison Brown Jr., a cousin of the Misses Brown, came up from North Carolina to congratulate Calvert on the restoration, and to share some of his memories of Regina and Elizabeth Brown, who were known within the family as "Libby and Gene." Brown remembered that when he visited the Calvert family, the sisters always asked him questions that showed their deep interest in his education and his future.

"Children want to know someone really cares about them," Brown remembered.

He and his siblings always wrote to Regina and Elizabeth when they got their report cards. "And you knew they'd [grades] had better be good," Brown chuckled.

The sisters recognized Brown as the family historian, and began giving their important papers into his keeping, including their correspondence with Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who'd been their NAACP attorney in the 1930s when Elizabeth sued the county to get the same rate of pay for black teachers as for the white teachers.

The schoolhouse reconstruction was based on oral histories from Miss Regina Brown, former students, photographs and other documents. The Rev. Irvin Beverly, who gave the closing prayer for the event, remembered his days as a student in a one-room segregated school similar to Old Wallville. Beverly didn't attend Old Wallville, but went to the one-room schoolhouse in Port Republic. The county will use Old Wallville Schoolhouse as an educational instrument, incorporating it into the public school curriculum. The schoolhouse also will be opened for public tours.

Today's school kids will be flabbergasted by a first-hand look at how their ancestors got an education. Some Calvert Elementary art classes already have had a peek inside Old Wallville. Where were the bathrooms, they wanted to know, and the computers, the auditorium and gym? A thoughtful elementary student, Paige Wagner, who came to the opening event with her mother, was very interested in the schoolhouse, and carefully read all the information panels outside the schoolhouse. When asked if she'd like to go to school there, she thought she'd like to go for about a week, indicating that would be enough of sitting in poor lighting with spotty heating, no modern study aids and no cooling except open windows.

Once upon a time, rural schools were all more of less like Wallville. For many farm families — black or white — education beyond the basics needed to run a successful farming operation was considered all right, if there was time for it, but not a necessity. In many communities students went to school only when they weren't needed to work on the farm; in fact, the school schedule to this day is based on schools closing through the summer months, when farm families needed every possible pair of hands, even small ones, to raise and reap the annual crops which were the families' livelihood. In a segregated community, however, community expenditures for education were considerably less for the black schools than for the white schools.

Segregation didn't end in Calvert until the school years 1965-66. In the intervening years since then, the Calvert public educational system has pushed light years ahead to have exceptional schools, expanding from 12 schools total in the county to the system today. What is interesting is how far we've come, and what the current student generation thinks is ancient history isn't that far away in time.

On a personal note, our daughter began school in 1968, the first year the county had a public kindergarten. By then, all twelve of the county public schools were integrated, from kindergarten through high school. And, although our daughter was too young then to remember her, Miss Elizabeth Brown was her school's principal.

patullberg@comcast.net