Site of Early Bay City School

By the 1930s Bay City ran two school systems. The Handbook of Texas reports that in 1937 and 1938 thirty-eight teachers taught 1,146 white students through grade eleven, while ten teachers taught 377 Black students through grade ten. A museum photograph shows the old school at Cottonwood and Eighth Streets being moved for use by Black students, undated. The eight-room school of 1901 was later called Pollard School, the district opened a Jefferson Davis School in 1905, and in 1948 it built Hilliard School on LeTulle Street, later Washington-Hilliard High School.

What the plaque says

Site of Early Bay City School In 1901 this land was a pastoral scene of trees and a strawberry field outside the city limits. That year the Bay City Independent School District purchased most of this block for $300. A two-story, eight-room frame school was erected here, and classes were transferred from a two-room schoolhouse at Avenue D and Eight Street, which had been used since 1895. One of the teachers, Miss Tenie Holmes (1874-1952), began her career in 1896 at a private school in Bay City. From 1898 she taught public classes at Avenue D, then moved to the first school on this site, which served from 1901 to 1905. She retired from Bay City schools in 1936, then conducted a private school until her death. An elementary school was named for her in 1952. Additional lots and a second block were acquired here in 1930, and "Bay City High School" was built on this site. The one-story structure was designed by architect Harry D. Payne, and exhibited Spanish colonial revival details in brick, cast stone, and tile roofing. The campus expanded in 1937 with the purchase of a third block. The 1930 building was converted to a junior high school in 1949, and in 1962 it became "John H. Cherry Elementary School". The structure was demolished in 1986. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 19 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 23 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.

More markers nearby

• Bay City Library — 0.5 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Bay City — 0.5 mi
• Matagorda County — 0.5 mi
• Bay City Methodist Church — 0.5 mi