Pioneer Birdville Schools

The plaque follows Birdville Academy and leaves out the school Black families built nearby. The Handbook of Texas says Major Cheney, an African American landowner, gave land for the first school for Black children at Birdville in 1891, and in 1896 to 1897 that school had fourteen pupils and one teacher, against seventy-seven pupils and two teachers at the White school. NBC 5 reports that Cheney, born in 1856, and his family petitioned Birdville ISD and donated land because the district had no school for Black children. The district named an elementary school for him in 2009.

What the plaque says

Pioneer Birdville Schools The community of Birdville, named for pioneer Jonathan Bird, became the first seat of Tarrant County in 1851. It continued to hold that position until 1856, when an election changed the county seat to Fort Worth. Located within the community, on this site known as Birdville Hill, was a school operated by Professor William E. Hudson. Named Birdville Academy, the school opened in 1858 and attracted students from Tarrant, Dallas, Parker, and Denton Counties. The school grew quickly from a one-room wooden building to larger facilities serving an increasing student population. By 1919 the need for additional room resulted in a bond election which authorized the erection of a new brick building adjacent to the original school site. In 1926 the Birdville Independent School District was incorporated, and additional school facilities were added to the property in later years. In 1961 Birdville High School was renamed Haltom High after a second high school, Richland High, was opened. Still occupying the original Birdville School site, the school district now includes facilities throughout Haltom City and retains the Birdville name. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — 5.4 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 5.6 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 7.5 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 7.9 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.

More markers nearby

• West Fork Baptist Association — steps away
• Birdville Church of Christ — steps away
• Dr. Riley Andrew Ransom — 2.2 mi
• I. D. Parker Public Cemetery and Homestead — 2.9 mi