File:First identifiable public school in old Berlin..jpg

Summary

This is the first of a number of photos from the 1965 BHS yearbook, the last year of the old high school on the hill. In it, the students and teachers chronicled the history of Brunswick education, including elementary and parochial schools, noted principals, teachers and other trivia.

Pictured here is the first identifiable public school in old Berlin. It was a log cabin structure on the corner of Maple Avenue and West B Street. The Frederick County Board of Commissioners obtained title to the school and replaced it with a one-room framed building in 1869. The school was in use until 1890.

The first known public school teacher here was Ellen Theresa Brady, who retired from teaching when she married William Waltman Wenner, who donated the land for West Brunswick Elementary School that was completed in 1905, and still stands on Brunswick Street.

We wonder if the original one-room schoolhouse was enlarged into the current building, which was the Sunday School Building for the First Baptist Church. It’s situated in a similar way to the original.

According to Nancy Merchant Langley: “When I went to Vacation Bible School there, the only way to get upstairs was by using the outside stair case. The downstairs could have been the one room schoolhouse and when they added another story they just put the stairs on the outside so it wouldn't take away any space in the downstairs. “

(Photo from the 1965 Railroader Yearbook via Sherry Bowers Stull; information courtesy of the Brunswick Heritage Museum and “Brunswick: 100 Years of Memories” by the City of Brunswick MD History Commission

Peter Wenner: In doing research on the photo of the original schoolhouse, I see that Clarence JD and Ella Shewbridge later conveyed the property to Bessie Wigington in 1920 and it was referred to as the “school lot”.