Lincoln’s New Opening: An event of Extraordinary Importance to the Colored People of Wheeling
Lincoln’s Opening - A public school, a public memory, and a day Wheeling’s Black community refused to let disappear
In the April 7, 1894, Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, advertisements for spring suits, carpets, bicycles, insurance and household goods surround a remarkable sight: a drawing of the new Lincoln School, opened for Wheeling’s Black children.
The headline was simple: “Lincoln’s Opening.”
The article called it “an event of extraordinary importance to the colored people of Wheeling.” That phrase matters. It tells us that even in 1894, the opening of this school was understood as more than a building dedication. It was a civic moment. It was a public acknowledgment that Black children in Wheeling belonged inside the story of education, progress and citizenship.
The newspaper described Lincoln School as the “finest school house for colored pupils south of the Ohio River.” That may have been newspaper flourish, but the pride behind it was real. The building stood on Chapline Street, broad and visible, with eight rooms, classrooms, halls, cloak rooms, stairways and a tower. It was built of brick and stone. It was heated by steam. It had indoor conveniences. It was described in the language usually reserved for public investment and civic achievement.
For the Eugene and Beverly Stradwick Heritage Foundation, this clipping is powerful because it captures a moment when Wheeling’s Black educational history was printed openly, celebrated publicly and treated as news.
A school with a history before its doors opened
Lincoln School did not appear out of nowhere in 1894.
Its story reaches back to the fall of 1866, when the Wheeling Board of Education established the city’s public school for Black children. That fact remains central to the Foundation’s research. The school was created by the public school system, with public tax dollars, in the years immediately following the Civil War and the end of slavery.
John W. West became the first teacher of the Wheeling Colored School. Through the Freedmen’s Bureau records, we can see him as a working educator whose school reported to Washington along with Black schools across the country. Those reports remind us that Wheeling’s school was part of a national story: formerly enslaved people and free Black communities claiming education as one of the first great promises of freedom.
West’s advocacy for his brother Robert, who later joined him as an instructor, adds another human layer. Two brothers teaching in the same Colored School in Wheeling, only a short time after the Civil War, is a remarkable image. It speaks to family, ambition, public service and the urgency of education in that moment.
The importance of Wheeling’s school was recognized almost immediately. In 1867, the Freedmen’s Bureau’s reporting on Black education described Wheeling as having “a good School House well fitted up, and a good School, taught by Mr. West a colored man.” The same federal report noted that money from the city school tax was “fairly divided with the colored people,” helping build the schoolhouse and pay the expenses of the school. That language is extraordinary. At a time when Black education across the country was often fragile, improvised, underfunded or violently resisted, Wheeling’s publicly supported Colored School drew federal attention as an example worth recording.
That does not mean Wheeling was free from racism, inequality or struggle. It means the archival record gives us something precise: by 1867, the United States government, through the Freedmen’s Bureau, had noticed that Wheeling’s Board of Education had done something significant. The city had established a tax supported public school for Black children, placed John W. West in the classroom, and created a structure strong enough to be praised in a national system of reporting on freedpeople’s education.
By 1894, that early school had grown into Lincoln School. The building dedication was a new chapter in an older struggle.
The decision to rebuild
A year before the grand opening, the Board of Education was still working through what Lincoln School would become.
In April 1893, the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer reported on a Board of Education meeting under the headline “Lincoln School Will Be Rebuilt.” The question before the board was whether to rebuild Lincoln School on its old site or pursue another location.
The matter had been tabled at the March meeting, which tells us this was not a small or automatic decision. Board members were weighing cost, location, building plans and the conditions surrounding the school.
Mr. Eilingham reported that he had spoken with architect Mr. Geisey, who believed a new building could be constructed on the old site with eight rooms and a pressed brick front for not more than $13,000. Eilingham favored rebuilding Lincoln School there and, in the newspaper’s summary, wanted to give “the colored people as good a building as there is in the city.”
That sentence is worth pausing over.
It shows that before the grand opening ceremony, before the songs and speeches, there was a public debate about whether Black children in Wheeling should receive a school building equal in quality and dignity to the city’s other schools.
Judge Boyd then introduced a resolution directing the building and grounds committee to secure plans for a new Lincoln School on the old site, at a cost of no more than $14,000, and report back at the next meeting. In today’s dollars, that $13,000 to $14,000 estimate would be roughly in the range of $450,000 to $500,000 by a basic consumer price comparison.
That figure is only an approximation, and the true civic weight of a public school construction project is larger than a simple inflation conversion can fully capture. But even the rough number helps modern readers understand that this was a serious public investment.
The article also noted opposition to rebuilding on that site because of the “immorality of the surroundings.” That detail is uncomfortable, but it belongs in the story. It reminds us that Lincoln School stood inside a real urban environment, and that the Board’s decision involved more than architecture. It also reminds us that Jim Crow's America was alive and well in Wheeling at the time.
The article reports that a member believed those surrounding conditions could be addressed through appeal to the chief of police. After the discussion, Judge Boyd’s resolution passed, 14 to 3.
That vote gives the 1894 opening a deeper meaning. The grand dedication was not simply the unveiling of a finished building. It was the result of public debate, cost estimates, site concerns, architectural planning and a formal Board of Education decision.
The building that opened in 1894 had already been argued for in 1893, and the record shows that at least some board members framed the issue clearly: Wheeling’s Black children deserved a school as good as any in the city.
The opening program
The newspaper printed the day’s program in full. That detail is worth preserving because it shows how carefully the ceremony was organized and how many people took part in giving the new school public meaning.
The program was listed as follows:
Song — “America”
Prayer — Rev. P. G. Walker
Song — “Land of the Free”
Delivery of keys to Superintendent City Schools — Myron Hubbard, Esq., member Board of Education
Keys turned over to Principal Lincoln School — Supt. W. H. Anderson
Acceptance of keys — Principal J. McHenry Jones
Dedication address — Rev. P. G. Scott
Song — “The Red, White and Blue”
The article also listed a flag presentation by the G.A.R., the Grand Army of the Republic:
Song — “Star Spangled Banner”
Presentation of flag — Prof. H. Crago
Responses — Principal J. McHenry Jones and Rev. Dr. A. B. Riker
This was a deeply American program: “America,” “The Star Spangled Banner,” “The Red, White and Blue,” a flag presentation by Union veterans, public officials, ministers, teachers and students.
For Black Wheeling, the ceremony placed Lincoln School squarely inside the language of citizenship.
The first graduates in the new building
The timing makes this clipping even more powerful.
The new Lincoln School was dedicated in April 1894. The recovered list of the Class of 1894 gives us four names:
Fannie Jennings Dolan
Annie Caines
Jennie Baldwin Scott
Mary Williams Richardson
If these students graduated in May, just weeks after the building opened, they were very likely the first class to graduate from the new Lincoln School building. That gives the dedication an even more human meaning. The newspaper shows us the building, the speeches, the songs and the public ceremony. The graduate list gives us the children who would have walked out of that new school as its first completed class.
Their names deserve to sit inside this story.
For the Foundation, this is the kind of discovery that turns a building back into a community. Lincoln School was not simply brick, stone, tower and classroom space. It was Fannie, Annie, Jennie and Mary. It was families waiting to see what this new public investment would mean for their children. It was a school year ending almost as soon as a new chapter began.
Dr. Hupp’s long shadow
The 1894 opening also belongs in conversation with Dr. John C. Hupp, one of Wheeling’s important white allies in the fight for Black education and civic equality.
More than twenty years earlier, in the famous “A Doctor Caned” article, Black citizens honored Dr. Hupp with a cane for his advocacy. His remarks that day were powerful because he spoke of education as essential to liberty. He warned that freedom without education could not fulfill its promise. In that sense, the dedication of Lincoln School was exactly the kind of public progress Hupp had argued for years before.
Dr. Hupp did not found Wheeling’s Colored School. The record does not support that claim. But he did use his standing and voice in defense of Black causes in Wheeling. The opening of Lincoln School gives us a way to see both truths clearly: the school was a public institution created by the Board of Education, and its survival and growth were strengthened by Black families, Black educators and allies who understood what education meant in a city still shaped by race.
The people inside the picture
The article names Principal J. McHenry Jones, Superintendent W. H. Anderson, Rev. P. G. Walker, Rev. P. G. Scott, Prof. H. Crago and Rev. Dr. A. B. Riker. These names matter because they remind us that a school opening is never only about walls and windows. It is about the people who made the building meaningful.
Principal J. McHenry Jones stands especially large in this story. He would become one of Lincoln’s defining leaders, a nationally respected educator and one of the great figures in West Virginia Black education. Seeing his name here, accepting the keys to the new Lincoln School, gives the moment a special weight.
The article also tells us that the dedication was expected to draw large attendance. That detail feels almost understated. For families who had watched the school grow from its earliest years, this building must have felt like proof that their children’s education had permanence.
The Foundation’s work is to recover that permanence.
Why this opening matters to us
This clipping matters because it gives us a public snapshot of Black Wheeling at a turning point.
It shows a school born in Reconstruction growing into a major institution. It shows Black education moving from early struggle into a visible public building. It shows ceremonies, songs, flags, speeches and formal recognition. It shows a community insisting that its children deserved a school worthy of their future.
It also reminds us why careful history matters.
For generations, parts of this story have been blurred, simplified or incorrectly credited. The archival record gives us a clearer view. Wheeling’s Colored School was created by the public school system in 1866. John W. West was its first teacher.
The school reported through the Freedmen’s Bureau. Black educators, families and students sustained it. Allies such as Dr. Hupp gave voice and support. By 1894, Lincoln School stood as a public monument to all of that work.
The opening of Lincoln School was not the beginning of the story. It was a milestone in a much longer journey.
And because the newspaper preserved it, we can now return that day to its rightful place in Wheeling’s memory.
-T
Sources
“Board of Education: Lincoln School Will Be Rebuilt,” Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, Wheeling, West Virginia, April 21, 1893, p. 5.
“Lincoln’s Opening,” Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, Wheeling, West Virginia, April 7, 1894, p. 5.
Freedmen’s Bureau report on Colored Schools in the Department, Washington, May 1, 1867, including observations from Wheeling, West Virginia.
“A Doctor Caned,” Wheeling newspaper clipping, November 25, 1873.
Class of 1894 graduate list, Lincoln School, recovered image provided to the Eugene and Beverly Stradwick Heritage Foundation, September 2026.
Eugene and Beverly Stradwick Heritage Foundation research notes on the Wheeling Colored School, John W. West, Robert West, Freedmen’s Bureau school reporting, Dr. John C. Hupp and Lincoln School.
