University of Virginia Library

6. Chapter Sixth
Our Homes and School Houses

Our first home was in the large brick building
described in a previous chapter and known as the
Mudwall, or Delavan. It was three stories high and there
were eight rooms on the 2d floor and the same number
on the 3d. The lower floor was described in Chap. 2d
There was also a basement with several cellar-like
rooms where some of the very poorest colored people were
allowed to burrow while the property was held by the
U. S. government. The rooms above were all exactly
alike. A door opened from the hall, opposite which
was one large window. A fireplace was built across the
corner of the room, over which was a mantel. There
were no closets nor anything to take away the
bare appearance of the plastered walls. My
room was furnished at first as described in Chapter 2d
but I gradually accumulated a few necessary articles
as a desk, an extra chair or two etc. It did not r
equire much to make me comfortable then, and
bare walls, and barer floors were circumstances

hardly worth considering as I mentally contrasted
the luxury of our surroundings with the homeless
life of the poor soldiers whose toil and sufferings
had made this opportunity possible. This was our
home for the first year and a portion of the second.

Our schoolrooms were in the
long building mentioned in a previous chapter.
My own was at the front end to the left of the
hall. Mrs. Gibbons' one of the colored teachers was
opposite mine at the right. Miss Gardner at the
extreme rear at the left, and Mr. Pratts (previously
taught by Mr. Musgrove a citizen of the place, and
after Mr. Pratt left by Paul Lewis one of Miss Gardners
pupils) was opposite hers. Between my room and
Miss Gardners were two large rooms, which served
as a place for the pupils wraps, a storage for fuel
and other purposes. The large space between
the two schoolrooms on the right was used for a
time by the colored people for a Baptist church.
While Mr. Woodman taught there his school was
upstairs on the right side at the front. Paul
Lewis with his family hadliving rooms up there, and also
his father and mother, who had with them a daughter

son and grandson. Beside the rooms I have
mentioned there was a large amount of unoccupied
space until the Delavan, where we lived was
ceded back to the original owners by the United
States government when Miss Gardner and I had
each two rooms fitted up there for our own use.which we occupied April 5th 1867

These rooms were quite large. My sitting room
had two windows at the north and two looking
east — my bedroom one window only facing
east. This rear room was my dining room and
storage place as well as chamber. The two occupied
the space immediately above my schoolroom. The
inner walls of the whole building were clap-boarded
like the outside of a house. These wall were freshly
whitewashed every year as long as we lived there, and
the school-rooms were decorated with wreaths and
arches of evergreen which the boys would go out and
gather at stated times when all hands would
go to work to decorate. One huge wreath made
on a barrel hoop was hung from the ceiling in
the centre of the room. Arches were placed
above each door and window, and large
wreaths hung in the spaces between. The effect

was very pretty and cheerful taking away
the grim unfinished look of the rough walls.
We were too much interested in our work and
too busy to let our imagination dwell upon
the dark stains here and there upon the floors,
stains as un-removable as those upon the keys
of Bluebeard — and as significant, but the superstition
of some of our colored friends peopled the building
with phantom soldiers who flitted restlessly about
the place at night. Poor fellows! If they did gather
about the last scenes of their life on earth, they
kindly refrained from disturbing us, and we
lived there as serenely as if there were no phantoms
of friends or enemies about us.

For some years our school furniture consisted
of rough benches without backs or desks and a few
rough tables doing duty as desks. Indeed we had little
else until we built a school house some years
later. The furnishings of my sitting room
consisted of an air tight stove, a long narrow
rough table which I covered with a green cloth
and upon which I kept books, ornaments etc. a small
table, four or five chairs and a wood box. Anything

served as an ornament for the walls — wreaths
pictures cut from magazines and papers etc. This
was our home and work shop for some three years
or a little more andI will try to give here a rough
outline of the building as I recall it now after the
lapse of more than thirty five years.

[Description: Pencil drawings of first and second floors with descriptions of rooms written in ink. The drawing on the left side of the page is of the "First Story" with Front Door, Rear Door and internal doors marked and most windows noted with a "W." Rooms on the left of the center hall are labeled "School room Mrs. G. "Bap Church" "School room Mr. M., Mr. P and P. Lewis." Rooms on the right of the center hall are "School room Miss C." two storage rooms (with a hall to an exterior door between them) both identified as "Rear room" then "School room Miss G." The drawing on the right side of the page is identified as the "Second Story" with internal doors and windows marked. Rooms on the left of the center hall are "School room one year Mr. W. an unmarked room, "Bedroom Miss Gardner and "Miss G. sitting room." Rooms on the right of the center hall are "Miss C. sitting room" "Bedroom Miss Carkin and four rooms marked in two places as "P. Lewis rooms."]

The points of the compass on these rough
plans (drawn mostly in pencil for convenience)
are those used on maps so one can see
that the house fronted north or nearly so.
The Orange & Alexandria R. R. passed directly
in front of the building not more than
a rod from the door, and there was a large
open lot between the railroad and the
street which our pupils used as a playground.

On the east of the school-house was a small
brick yard, and there was quite an extent
of open ground at the west and south. At
the end of the time mentioned above the U. S.
government gave the building for a school, and
with help from the Freedmens Bureau and the
aid gained through friends at the North and
some work on our own part in getting up
entertainments of various kinds we got the
means to buy the land and take down and
rebuild the house in a manner better suited
to the purposes of a school. This wasmostly done during the summer vacation of three months although we found quite a little to be completed

when we returned to our work in October.

The new house had two schoolrooms in the
first and two on the second floor. In the rear
of the lower schoolrooms were two living rooms for
the janitors family — Paul Lewis one of the
teachers acting in that capacity at first. Miss
Gardner and I each had a sitting room above the
janitors rooms and we also each had a
rough room fitted up as a sleeping room in
the loft. By this time we had begun to come
to an appetite for a few simple luxuries, so I
got wall paper and put it on myself and we
each indulged in a modest carpet. Miss Gardner
bought a second hand lounge, and I got together
some pieces of timber and boards, and with the
aid of one of the boys built one for myself stuffing
and covering it nicely, so at last we began to live in
a civilized way. Aside from one or two slight changes
we had made in the building everything seemed
settled for the rest of the time we remained
there. The changes consisted in enlarging
one of the lower rooms by taking in the hall
which gave space for a small stage or platform

where we could have entertainments or other
gatherings. A piazza was also built each side
of the projecting porch, and doors were cut from
our living rooms up stairs into our school-rooms.
The schools were all furnished with plain
double desks black boards and maps, and a
few pictures. A small library was collected
for the use of the schools, and later a Worcesters
Unabridged Dictionary and a magnetic gloveglobe
were sent us as well as a few other necessary
small articles.

We used as text books Hilliards
Readers, Kerls Grammar, Greenleafs and
Robinsons Arithmetics, Colton & Fitchers Geography
various books on U. S. History, Geology, Algebra
Philosophy, Botany, Literature etc. In short we
were not confined to special text books, but
read and taught from what seemed to offer the
best instruction. We naturally became much attached
to the homes and schools that had grown up under
our hands, and gained in usefulness and
comfort with the years, and although some
of the details of that old time picture cannot
now be accurately recalled, the general idea

of the whole seems to stand out as clearly as
ever. In a sense our home there was more to us
than it might have been under other circumstances
for we had little or nothing outside our home
and our work, except as it reached out and
included the social religious and political
life of the people: and although these lines of
work reached far out into the country about us, they all
centred in the spot where we lived and worked.

[Description: Pencil drawing of new school building lower floor with rooms labeled in ink. Drawing is marked with North, East, South, West. Windows are indicated with "W" and doors and central stairs noted. On the North side there is written "Piazza door Porch door Piazza." The room on the West is "Mrs. Gibbons School room Primary" and on the East "Paul Lewis School room Primary." This room was enlarged by a section of hallway identified as "Platform or stage" Two smaller rooms on the South side are labeled as "Janitors Rooms"]

This is a very crude
and imperfect
outline of the
lower rooms of
the new house.
I never had the
measurements and
I can see that I

have failed to get the right proportions — but it

[Description: pencil drawing of second floor of school house with rooms labeled in ink. Drawing is marked with North, East, South, West. Windows are indicated with "w" and doors with "D." The room on the West is "Miss. C. School room Grammar Later Miss C. High" and on the East "Miss Gardners School room High Later Miss Holmes Grammar." The two smaller rooms on the South side are labeled on the West "Miss C. sitting room" and on the East, "Miss G. sitting room later Miss H." In the central hallway near the connection to the smaller rooms on the South side there is an indication of a stairway to the attic where the Northern teachers had their sleeping quarters.]

will give some idea of the form and
arrangement of the rooms. The upper hall
should have been made wider with little ante rooms
at the entrance to the school rooms. There was a
stairway leading to the attic near the entrance of the
rear hall and under the whole school house was a
basement wood room