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Sawmill Lumber Facilitated Rapid Expansion of SchoolsAs the Charlotte Harbor frontier was settled after the Civil War, sawmill operators followed to fill the urgent need for lumber with which to build proper homes, churches, and schools. Such a mill was set up on the shore of Lemon Bay by the Heacock Brothers about 1889 to serve the growing towns of Vineland, Grove City, and Englewood. In that same year, William Goff sold his home on the bay to a phosphate prospecting company and bought 120 acres at what today includes the Tringali community center on McCall Road. There he built a frame home and laid out a farm he called Vineland. Eventually it included a store, post office, and turpentine still. William had eight school age children at this time (20 throughout four marriages) all needing education. A new village of Grove City was growing and several children lived there. Consequently, Goff built the first school house in west county in September 1890. This one-room frame building was located on a corner of his farm at what today is Tiffany Square shopping center on McCall Road, Charlotte County. Name of the first teacher is unknown, but most of the student body shared the Goff last name. Professor Edward B. Sanders, who had taught at Punta Gorda's first school since 1896, was the second teacher in 1903. The next school in the Lemon Bay Area was started by Carl B. Biorseth, a newspaper editor who came to the untamed wilderness with the Platt and Lampp families in 1894. They, too, had children whom they were anxious to be educated. A small school house was built for them in 1898 near the Heacock sawmill on Englewood Road, now Sarasota County, between Stewart and Harvard streets. Miss Mamie McCreary was the teacher for 10 pupils. Unfortunately, the teacher quit at Christmas because of ill health. Biorseth finished out the semester, but no teacher could be obtained for the 1899-1900 school season. For this and other reasons, Biorseth moved four miles north to an area known as Pinedale on the north fork of the Mystik Creek (now Forked Creek). He donated an acre of land for a school, which he and neighbors built. After its first year, the Pinedale school failed to enroll the minimum number of ten pupils required for county subsidy. By this time the Englewood school had qualified, and Pinedale children walked there every day. Englewood was the school center for 1902,3,4. Then it failed to qualify, and children there walked to Pinedale for the next six years. Grace Biorseth, at age 19, was a teacher at Pinedale in 1908. In 1910, the school enrolled 17 pupils taught by Julian Roberts. Grove City got a one-room school on San Casa Drive near the present Little League baseball field in 1900. Mrs. Isabelle (Johansen) Hanlon wrote in a memoir how she and her sister, living on Manasota Key, were rowed across the bay by their father early Monday mornings. Then the two girls walked to school at Pineland. They boarded with a Mrs. Kelly until school was out Friday afternoons. Then they walked back to Englewood where their father was waiting to row them home. Sometimes their teacher came with them for the weekend. * * *The first public school at Punta Gorda was launched in the fall of 1888 when the little class in the community meeting hall moved to its own frame building believed to be that still standing at the southeast corner of Marion Avenue and Harvey Street. It is likely the structure originally was of one story. The Punta Gorda Beacon of July 1889 referred to it as "the Municipal School just closed .... a successful experiment." A larger school, of one story, was built on Goldstein Street about 1896. It provided instruction in eight grades. The first teacher was a "bearded North Carolinian" named H. S. Lee. A somewhat later teacher was another man from North Carolinia named Edward B. Sanders. During the first years of Punta Gorda, approximately 200 North Carolinia fishing families migrated here. Undoubtedly they induced teachers to follow. Rapidly expanding Punta Gorda strained the Goldstein Street school. The Punta Gorda Herald reported in February 1902 that the school had an enrollment of 178 pupils --- "91 males and 87 females." The principal was "Professor" W. E. Bell. Local residents, backed by the newspaper, began a drive to raise funds for a new building, longer school term, and grades nine through twelve. The Herald took note of the situation in May:
With such support, the DeSoto County school board --- of which Punta Gorda then was a part --- authorized a large, two-story addition to the Goldstein Street school and instruction in the "high" subjects. The only other high school at that time was that at Arcadia, the county seat. Said the Herald in July:
Within a few years, the Herald's suggestion became reality. * * * At this time that the county's first school for African-American children was established at Punta Gorda. Albert Gilchrist, the surveyor who laid out the track for Florida Southern Railway with the help of an all-black crew, gave up his railroad job to speculate in Punta Gorda real estate. Most of his crew also relocated there. When Gilchrist was elected a state representative in 1903, he appointed Dan Smith to the school board. Smith was Gilchrist's former crewman, a member of the group that adopted the Punta Gorda city charter, and acknowledged leader of the African-American community. Rep. Gilchrist sent Smith to an educators' conference at New Orleans to find a Black teacher. There, Smith met Benjamin Joshua Baker, a 31-year-old teacher at Suwanee County's "colored" school. Smith persuaded Baker to come to Punta Gorda. Baker was born of former slave parents at Live Oak, Fla, in 1872. His mother and father could read and write --- a rare talent among African-Americans in those days. Education for slaves was prohibited before the Civil War because they tended to waste time reading and to want freedom. Little Benjamin learned to read and write from his parents. However, he was 10 years old before a segregated school was established at Live Oak. He applied himself diligently to his studies, and at age 19 passed the state examination for teachers at Lake City. He was hired for the Suwanee County school and taught there 12 years. The Punta Gorda "colored" school was built in the Fall of 1903 on Marion Avenue "near the beach" at the foot of Cooper Street. After a few years, enrollment there outgrew the original school. A two-room building was constructed at the northeast corner of Mary and Showalter Streets, now the location of the Cooper Street Community Center. This new school was widely called Baker's Academy. Baker, a stern but beloved educator, retired in 1940 after 49 years of teaching. He was the first teacher to receive retirement benefits under the 1939 Florida statute. He died in 1942 while a new school for African-American children was being built near his home on Charlotte Avenue. The new school was named for Baker. It continued as a segregated facility teaching grades one through seven. Senior-grade students were bussed to Dunbar High School in Fort Myers until Charlotte County schools were integrated in 1964. * * * The Herald of June 1904 devoted a front-page column to the first commencement at Goldstein Street school --- offering instruction beyond the eighth grade:
The teachers were Miss Ella Beesom, first grade; Miss Maggie Stetson, grades two and three; Professor J. Burdette Smith, grades four and five; Miss Cornelia Orr, grades six and seven; Miss Norma Pepper, grades seven and eight; Professor M.H. Smith, grades nine and ten. Total enrollment was 225. Note that there were no eleventh- and twelfth-grade students inasmuch as the eighth-grade students had not yet worked their way through the full range of instruction. Certificates of promotion were awarded at City Hall to "those finishing the grammar school courses." An admission of 10 cents was charged to help defray costs. The first --- and only --- high school graduate, in 1906, was Miss Ruby Hill. Albert Gilchrist presented her diploma. There were seven students in three grades of high school. One of the teachers at this time was Professor U.S. Whiteaker, who was to play a leading role in the next advancement of education at Punta Gorda: NEXT WEEK: The Modern Era of Schools Author: Lindsey Williams cutline 1 Photo by Lindsey Williams [This home on the southeast corner of Marion Avenue and Harvey Street, across from the City Hall, is believed to include the first public school building at Punta Gorda in 1888.] cutline 2 Photo courtesy of the Charlotte Harbor Area Historical Society [The first school in Charlotte County to provide instruction in the "senior grades" of nine through twelve, was this building constructed on Goldstein Street in 1896 and expanded in 1902.] williams --- skls2 for sunday --- Dec. 26 6 col head and byline logo for our fascinating past oooooooooooooo PART TWO OF A SERIES ooooooooooooooo With thanks to Donald Platt ooooo LINE SPACE ooooo |