First Public Schools Here Built in 1869 by a Yankee

First of a Series

Imagine that you, your spouse and several children have moved to a wilderness frontier. Four or five other families are a mile or so distant in all directions. After building a cabin for yourself, what public structure would you and your neighbors build next.?

The first settlers around Charlotte Harbor usually erected a "meeting hall" that served as a school on weekdays and an inter- denominational church on Sundays. Often, the building was a rustic cabin with a thatched roof and shuttered windows instead of glass.

The Charlotte Harbor area was reserved for Indians until the Battle of Peace River ended the Seminole wars in 1856, Thus, the first American settlers did not take up land on the last frontier here until after the Civil War.

A cattle dock and general store was constructed at Hickory Bluff --- now Charlotte Harbor Town --- in 1862 to run cattle and supplies for the Confederacy past the Union blockade at Boca Grande Pass. Homes were built when Nathan H. DeCoster, a former Yankee officer at Fort Myers, returned in 1866 to establish a steam-driven saw mill.

DeCoster's home and mill were adjacent to the lagoon just northeast of Tamiami Trail and Melbourne Street. He married Emily Phillips of Key West in 1869. She had nursed him back to health after he was wounded at the battle of Fredericksburg and sent to the Union hospital at Key West to recuperate.

Another Fort Myers officer played a key role in establishing the first public schools along the Peace River and Charlotte Harbor. He was John F. Bartholf who also had been wounded at Fredericksburg and transferred to Fort Myers to command one of two companies of African- American troops there. After the war he married Mary Daniels of Fort Ogden, a Union sympathizer who had taken refuge at Fort Myers.

Bartholf became involved in Reconstruction politics and was appointed clerk of court at Pine Level for Manatee County. Pine Level, 10 miles west of Tater Hill (Arcadia), has disappeared. At that time, however, it was the center of government for the area now including Charlotte and six other counties.

Bartholf also was appointed superintendent of schools in 1869. Schools then were few and far between --- with haphazard schedules contingent upon private donations.

According to Historian Canter Brown, Jr., in his book Florida's Peace River Frontier, Bartholf built the first "free" schools in the county. Within the first year he recruited teachers and trustees for log schools at Sweet Water, Charlie Apopka Creek, Fort Hartsuff, Fort Greene, Joshua Creek, Fort Ogden and Pine Level.

The school at Pine Level was typical of wilderness schools.

Joseph Patten, the teacher, complained that "the school house is uncomfortable, inconvenient, and will need rebuilding. There is a great need of a privy." Bartholf reported the school situation to the Manatee County Board of Instruction in 1872 with a mixture of frustration and optimism:

"Owing to continued sickness in the neighborhood, attendance at Pine Level became so much reduced the teacher kindly consented to annul his contract. I am making every possible effort to put the number of schools designated in operation, but fear very much that I shall not be able to obtain teachers. What we are to do, I do not know.

"The utmost amount of funds that we can realize will scarcely enable us to establish even three months of school. Even if we had the means, I doubt very much if the attendance would be sufficient to justify the expense, as people here will not send their children to school during the cropping or cow-pen season.

"Due to the area being flooded with water from about the first of June until the first of October, it is extremely inconvenient for the parents to send them during that time.

"In some neighborhoods, I am happy to say this is not the case. People show a disposition to make every sacrifice, submit to any inconvenience, in order to send their children regularly to school."

The following year the Board voted to subsidize schools with an enrollment of not less than 10 pupils. The Board stipulated that the school be "conducted strictly according to law, and the teacher making monthly returns certified by a majority of the patrons as correct." The allowance was $1 per student per month for five months --- the total not to exceed $25 per month. Parents were expected to match the grant.

With this help, five log cabin schools were replaced with "sawed lumber" structures. Hickory Bluff got its first school in 1873 --- sharing a "small box-frame palm-thatched" meeting hall with Trinity Methodist Church organized at that time. Lumber came from DeCoster's saw mill. The structure was located on the property of M/M Mathieu and Mary Giddens near the mill "beyond the cemetery." Attendance at Manatee County's nine free schools totaled "200 white pupils." Bartholf tried to obtain funds from a northern benevolence society for a couple of "colored" schools, but without success.

In his 1875 report, Bartholf proudly announced:

"Free schools have been established every winter and, by my individual efforts, a liberal appropriation secured to aid us in their maintenance. The people generally are very much interested in the cause of education. I believe that if some good teachers would locate here they could get schools the best part of the year."

Bartholf gave up his political appointments in 1876 and devoted his energies to selling real estate on Charlotte Harbor's north shore. In a promotion brochure titled South Florida, the Italy of America, published by him and Francis C.M. Boggess in l881, he describes Hickory Bluff:

"As we approach the mouth of Peas Creek (original name of Peace River), we come in sight of the principal settlement extending about four miles immediately on the water. Hickory Bluff comprises about one dozen families, its store, post office, church and school house.

"There are several new and handsome private residences which would reflect credit upon any locality. In addition, there is an extensive cattle wharf from which load after load of fine beef cattle is annually shipped to Cuba."

Upon rumors that the Florida Southern Railway was going to extend its tracks to Charlotte Harbor, DeCoster in 1884 bought 160 acres east of Hickory Bluff. He platted it into home sites named Harbor View. The rail road veered around the north shore to Punta Gorda in 1886, but by 1890 enough families had located at Harbor View to support a school.

In that year, new schools were built at Hickory Bluff (by this time renamed Charlotte Harbor Town) and Harbor View. A new Methodist church and a two-room school next door were built at Charlotte Harbor Town on land donated, again by the Giddens, the present location of Trinity. A one-room frame school was built on Rowland Drive at Harbor View.

Miss Jean Whiteaker, later Mrs. Cleve Cleveland, was a teacher at Harbor View in 1911. Years later she related that underage children were enrolled in order to meet the quota of pupils. There was no blackboard because imported slate was expensive. Students had hand-held slates on which they could write with another piece of slate.

Miss Esther Oswald, later Mrs. Samuel McCullough, was a teacher at Charlotte Harbor Town in 1914-16.

"I had a little difficulty getting used to the grunts and squeals of hogs which made their home under the building," says Mrs. McCullough. "But I got to where I didn't notice them. Part of my duties was to sweep the floors and wash the windows."

Teacher with Mrs. McCullough in 1914 was Mrs. Betty Blanchet, daughter of an Episcopalian minister homesteading at Woodrow near the Lee County line. Sharing teaching duties in 1915-16 was Mrs. Rose Hopper. She and her husband homesteaded at Bermont near S.R. 74 and 31. He drove her and their children in a mule-drawn wagon to the dock at Punta Gorda in the dark of Monday mornings. Mother and children were rowed across to Charlotte Harbor Town where the family had rented a small house. The kids went to school with Rose. On weekends they returned to Bermont. The two daughters, Minta and Ethel, became teachers at Punta Gorda.

It was customary for board and room to be furnished teachers by families of the students. Jean Whiteaker lived close by her school, but Miss Oswald and Miss Hopper stayed with the Knights or Giddens. Seamen rowed them also across the harbor on Sunday and Friday.

Both early schools were abandoned when the Charlotte Harbor School was built in 1917 at what is now the School House Shopping Center. The school next door to Trinity was demolished. The Harbor View school was moved to the waterfront and converted into a home by Henry Sias.

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The second public school in what is now Charlotte County met in a meeting hall built by Punta Gorda's founder, Col. Isaac Trabue in 1887. Inter-denominational church services were conducted on Sundays. The Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians trace their origins to that humble structure.

An article in the Punta Gorda Beacon of July 1889, indicates the school there started in the fall of the preceding year:

"The success of the Municipal School of Punta Gorda just closed, although but an experiment, has proven a wise movement on the part of the Council. All due credit should be accorded them."

Teacher at this school was a bearded North Carolinian named H.S, Lee. Mrs. Corbett, daughter of the C.W. Conollys, who came to Punta Gorda in 1888, wrote:

"The Methodist Church was a school house as well as a church. When it became just a church (after 1888 when the Baptists organized their congregation) it was very nicely fixed up."

The Punta Gorda school, however, was not entirely satisfactory.

Several private schools were started to provide a better education.

The Seventh Day Adventists started a parochial school at Punta Gorda in 1895. There were 13 students in eight grades. The teachers were Mrs. C.B. Stephenson and Miss Cora Patrick. Mrs. Stephenson wrote her own textbooks by longhand. She and her husband, Claiborne Stephenson, led in pioneer evangelistic, educational and medical work in South Florida for more than 50 years.

Her son, Charles, was born in 1901 in Punta Gorda, and she only took off three weeks. She then went back to the little school house to teach but rode her bicycle back home every few hours to nurse Charles.

Shortly after this, the Stephensons moved to Brooker, Florida, where they opened a boarding school in their home.

The Adventist school then was carried on for a time by a Mrs. Honeywell. It was located across from the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church on Cross Street.

The most successful private school was that started in 1896 when Col. John C. Pepper, an Illinois attorney, retired to Punta Gorda with his three daughters. One of them, Norma, opened a "primary" school patronized for many years by Punta Gorda's prominent citizens.

Miss Pepper was a beloved, but strict, teacher in private and public schools at Punta Gorda for nearly a half century. It was said that "she believed in teaching her pupils to THINK. She was a definite advocate of reading, writing and arithmetic."

Her school was a one-room building on Olympia Avenue across from the Court House. The Punta Gorda Herald reported that "Miss Norma Pepper's primary school has a full attendance. She has all the pupils she wants and often has to refuse to take additional ones."

A severe hurricane in 1910 blew the Pepper School off its foundations. Classes continued thereafter in the parlor of the Pepper home on the southeast corner of Cross Street and Retta Esplanade. The home was widely known as the "inside-out house" because the studding was exposed for many years to the elements. The inside walls of pine panelling were weather tight so Col. Pepper never got around to putting on sheathing.

NEXT WEEK: Schools at Turn of Century

Author: Lindsey Williams

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Photo courtesy of Charlotte Harbor Area Historical Society

[The 1890 "free school" at Harbor View where Miss Jean Whiteaker taught in 1911. Structure later was moved to waterfront by Henry Sias and converted to his home.]

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Photo courtesy of Mrs. Esther McCullough

[This school built in 1890 replaced a 1873 palm-thatched "meeting hall" serving students on weekdays five months of the year and the Holy Trinity Methodist congregation on Sundays. Miss Esther Oswald, right, was one of two teachers in 1914-16.]

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Photo courtesy of Charlotte Harbor Area Historical Society

[First public school at Punta Gorda of 1888 started in the "meeting hall" built the previous year by the town's founder, Col. Isaac Trabue. Inter-denominational church services were held there on Sundays. When Baptists formed their own congregation in 1888, Methodists bought the hall and added a bell tower and chiorary.]

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optional --- one col.

Photo courtesy of Charlotte Harbor Area Historical Society

[John F. Bartholf]

williams --- schools

for sunday --- Dec. 19

6 col hed and byline logo for our fascinating past

With thanks to Charlotte County Retired Teachers Assn., L.A. Ainger, U.S. Cleveland, and Esther McCullough.

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