Lost Capitol Hill: The First School on the Hill

If you have a couple of hours to kill, I can highly recommend the website Shorpy. Filled with pictures from bygone eras, it captures everything from the earth-shaking to the mundane. I was happily paging through it the other day when I came across a picture of a rather ordinary wooden building with two men posed in front of it. What caught my eye, however, was the caption.

Taken ca. 1917, the picture is, according to its caption, “Said to be the first school in the District of Columbia, 4th & C Streets S.E.” Was that really true? Was the first school in D.C. actually here on the Hill?

The answer to the latter question is indeed ‘yes’ – to an extent. On December 5, 1804, the D.C. City council met and signed off on an “Act to establish and endow a permanent institution for the education of youth in the City of Washington.” According to it, there was to be a school board consisting of 13 members, and they were to run an academy, which would consist of “as many schools as circumstances require.” This would be, to begin with, two: One in the western part of the city, within a half mile of the President’s House, the other in the eastern section, within a half mile of the Capitol.

The school board (or trustees, as they were called then) met for the first time in August, 1805. While their nominal head was none other than President Thomas Jefferson, the meeting was graveled to order by Robert Brent, a local landowner and businessman. Jefferson was – according to a history of the D.C. schools written for the 100^th anniversary of their founding – “prevented from ever discharging [his] duties by ‘others of paramount obligation.’” The first meeting took place in the Supreme Court chambers of the Capitol.

According to the National Photo Company, this is “Said to be the first school in the District of Columbia, 4th & C Streets S.E.” (LOC)

The trustees got to work rapidly, and so the school in the eastern portion of the city, usually referred to as the Eastern Free School, opened its doors on May 19, 1806, “in a commodious brick building owned by Daniel Carroll, north of Stelle’s Hotel.” This is pretty much where the Supreme Court is today.

The head teacher of the Eastern School was, on that day, Robert Elliott. Two teachers had been hired previously, but had both backed out for one reason or another.

Robert Elliott was, at the time, chaplain of the House of Representatives and later served as chaplain of the Senate for a year. How long he served as Eastern’s teacher is impossible to determine. A Robert Elliott received a commission in the Army as a Chaplain in 1813, and served for about five years, but there is no proof that this is one and the same. Furthermore, while the Western School changed Principal Teachers every year or so, each new appointment being carefully noted, there is no further evidence of any teachers at the Eastern School.

Sadly, this poor state of record-keeping was not just confined to the identities of the teachers at the time, but also to the more permanent structures related to the school, as we will see next week.