Wortham Schools

The district history tells the Black school's story at more length than the plaque's one line. In 1932 F. W. Wheeler became principal and agriculture teacher of the segregated school and built an industrial program with a farm, a cannery, a broom factory and a print shop. The school was called the Tuskegee of the West Training School. He resigned on February 27, 1933, and the name returned to Wortham Colored School. A new building opened in 1957 and was named for Wheeler, and integration in 1966 sent its students to the main Wortham schools.

What the plaque says

Wortham Schools The first recorded school in the town of Wortham was a two-story frame structure built in the 1870s by the Masonic Lodge and local Methodist church. The Masons provided supplies and textbooks; ministers served as teachers. The first public school opened in 1883 in a one-room building; Professor Miller and Mrs. Thyrsia Garrison served as the first teachers. A two-story frame building was built in 1890, and in 1891 Wortham became the first independent school district in Freestone County. In 1902 the school building was destroyed and replaced by a brick structure with a bell tower. New facilities were built in 1922 to accommodate increased enrollment. The discovery of oil around Wortham in 1924 caused the town of 1,000 to swell to 20,000 almost overnight. The impact on the school was immediate; one classroom of 18 pupils increased to 84 in a four-day period. Through the years several rural community schools were annexed to and consolidated with the Wortham school system. In 1966 the F. W. Wheeler School for African American students merged with the main Wortham schools. Buildings were renovated and new structures were added to serve the district. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 0.8 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 12 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Old Fort Parker — 16 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 21 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.

More markers nearby

• The Wortham Oil Boom — steps away
• City of Wortham — steps away
• Mrs. Lucy Haggard Longbotham — 0.7 mi
• Robert B. Longbotham — 0.7 mi