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

Summary

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 City of Brunswick MD History Commission) Thanks to Smoketown History