One Teacher, Many Grades: The Early Struggles of Wheeling’s Colored School

Two newspaper accounts from January 21, 1870, reveal a young public school carrying an enormous responsibility without the staff necessary to fulfill it.

On the evening of January 20, 1870, the Wheeling Board of Education assembled for its regular monthly meeting in the Council Chamber. Much of the business sounded routine: committee reports were received, bills were considered, teachers were confirmed, and the superintendent presented statistics from across the school district.

Buried within those proceedings, however, was a revealing discussion about Wheeling’s Colored School.

Two local newspapers—the Wheeling Register and the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer—reported on the meeting the following morning. Read together, their accounts provide a rare glimpse into the practical challenges confronting the school only a few years after its creation.

They also expose a difficult truth: establishing a public school was one achievement; giving that school the resources necessary to succeed was another.

A Public School Established in 1866

Wheeling’s Board of Education established the Colored School in the fall of 1866. It was a tax-supported public school created and operated by the city’s school system—not a private charity or an informal classroom organized outside the public structure.

John W. West became its first teacher. He submitted reports concerning the school to the Freedmen’s Bureau, as teachers of Black schools across the country were expected to do during Reconstruction. In 1867, West also advocated for his brother Robert, who was subsequently hired by the Wheeling Board of Education to teach at the school.

These records place the school firmly within the earliest years following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Black families who had long been denied equal educational opportunities were sending their children into a newly created public institution and expecting that institution to grow with them.

By January 1870, however, the school was experiencing a serious staffing problem.

“Having No Assistant”

Superintendent F. S. Williams reported that the teacher of the Colored School was working without an assistant and was responsible for students at several different grade levels.

Williams wrote:

“Inasmuch as the teacher of the colored school, having no assistant, is required to give instruction to classes of several grades, I would recommend that instruction in this school be confined to the common English branches—spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and grammar—until such time as the Board may deem it expedient to employ an assistant teacher.”

The statement is remarkable for what it reveals.

One teacher was expected to instruct children of different ages and levels of preparation. Within the same classroom, some pupils may have been learning basic spelling and reading while others were ready for more advanced work. The teacher had to prepare multiple lessons, maintain order, evaluate progress, and move students through a curriculum that could not easily be compressed into a single course of study.

This was not a criticism of the students’ abilities. Nor did the superintendent describe the teacher as unwilling to provide advanced instruction.

The problem was capacity.

The school had only one teacher.

Williams’s proposed solution was to restrict instruction to what he called the “common English branches” until the Board decided to hire an assistant. In practice, that would have placed a ceiling over the education available to Wheeling’s Black children. Students could receive instruction in reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, geography, and grammar, but more advanced subjects would have to wait.

The most important words in the recommendation may have been “until such time as the Board may deem it expedient.”

No deadline was given. No promise was made that another teacher would be employed immediately. The advancement of the students depended upon a future decision by the Board.

A Striking Contrast Within the Same Report

The superintendent’s report contained another staffing matter that makes the Colored School’s situation especially revealing.

Williams described the recent employment of W. C. Kryter as an assistant teacher of German in the Madison and Washington township schools. According to the report, the German classes had been divided and reorganized so that students could receive “more thorough instruction,” while the new assistant relieved another teacher of excessive labor.

Williams concluded that the arrangement’s results “cannot be otherwise than beneficial.”

The Board then confirmed Kryter’s appointment at a salary of $300 per year.

There was nothing improper about providing an assistant for German instruction. Those pupils and teachers also deserved adequate educational support. But the contrast preserved in the same meeting record is difficult to overlook.

The school system recognized that an assistant teacher could reduce excessive labor and improve the thoroughness of instruction in its German classes. At the same time, the teacher at the Colored School was working alone across several grades, and the proposed response was to limit what could be taught.

One part of the system received additional instructional capacity. Another was asked to narrow its ambitions.

The newspapers do not explain why the Board had not supplied the Colored School with another teacher. They do not identify the teacher involved, report the school’s enrollment, or tell us how long the staffing shortage had existed. Historical integrity requires that we acknowledge those silences.

Nevertheless, the disparity recorded that evening speaks for itself.

Two Newspapers, Two Versions of the Decision

The two newspaper accounts also differ in an important way.

The Wheeling Register reported that, on the motion of Board member Mr. Bickel, the superintendent was authorized to confine the Colored School’s teacher to the elementary branches in accordance with Williams’s report.

The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer offered a more complicated sequence.

According to the Intelligencer, Mr. Pollack first moved that instruction at the Colored School be confined to the elementary branches until an additional teacher could be employed for the advanced subjects. That motion “did not prevail.”

Mr. Bickel then offered a narrower motion: that the teacher be confined to the subjects specified in his teaching certificate. That motion was adopted.

This is more than a minor journalistic difference.

The Register made the decision appear to be a straightforward acceptance of the superintendent’s recommendation. The Intelligencer reported that the broader proposal failed and that the Board instead imposed a limitation based upon the teacher’s certificate.

We cannot determine from these two articles alone which account most precisely reflected the official action. Read together, however, they establish that the Board debated both the curriculum and the teacher’s authority to provide instruction beyond certain approved subjects.

They also illustrate why historical research should not rely upon a single newspaper report when additional accounts survive. Two reporters could attend—or receive information about—the same meeting and leave later generations with meaningfully different versions of what occurred.

At minimum, we can say that the Board imposed some form of instructional limitation connected to the teacher’s certification. Whether it also fully adopted the superintendent’s proposed elementary-only policy is less certain.

Ambition Inside the Classroom

The discussion raises another intriguing question: Why was it necessary to restrict advanced instruction at all?

The surviving articles do not answer that question directly. Yet the controversy would make little sense unless advanced work was already being offered, attempted, requested, or anticipated.

Somewhere within that school, there may have been students who had progressed beyond the most elementary lessons. Their educational ambitions were pressing against the limits of a one-teacher system.

That possibility changes the way we should read the Board’s discussion.

This was not simply a struggling school unable to master basic subjects. It may have been a school growing faster—in enrollment, academic range, or aspiration—than the Board was prepared to support.

Black families had embraced the opportunity created in 1866. Children were advancing.

Their teacher was attempting to serve several grades. The emerging problem was not a lack of interest in education, but whether Wheeling’s public institutions would provide enough teachers to sustain that interest.

Public Recognition Did Not Guarantee Equality

The Colored School’s status as a tax-supported public institution was historically significant. A Freedmen’s Bureau visitor in 1867 had praised Wheeling for maintaining a well-equipped school financed through a city school tax that was reportedly divided with the Black population.

That recognition should not be minimized. In the immediate aftermath of slavery, Wheeling had created a public educational structure for Black children and employed Black educators such as John W. West and Robert West.

But the January 1870 meeting reminds us that public recognition did not automatically produce equal treatment.

A school could be officially established and still be understaffed. It could be supported by tax revenue and still have its curriculum restricted. Its students could be welcomed into a public system while remaining separated from the larger body of pupils and denied comparable instructional capacity.

The promise of public education was real. So were its limitations.

The Foundation Beneath Lincoln School

The Colored School described in these articles belonged to the institutional history that would eventually lead to Lincoln School and Lincoln High School. Its later accomplishments were built upon the work performed during these difficult early years.

Every lesson taught in that multi-grade classroom required unusual preparation and persistence. Every student who advanced beyond the elementary subjects demonstrated why a broader curriculum was needed. Every family that continued sending children to the school strengthened the argument that Black education deserved permanent public investment.

The story should not be romanticized. One overburdened teacher serving several grades was not an ideal educational model. Restricting instruction was not an adequate substitute for hiring the assistance the school required.

Yet neither should these records be read only as a story of deprivation.

They also document demand, growth, ambition, and determination. Only a few years after slavery ended, Wheeling’s Black children were occupying public classrooms, progressing through multiple levels of study, and creating an educational need that the Board could no longer ignore.

The challenge before the Board in 1870 was not whether those children were capable of learning. It was whether the public school system was willing to provide the people and resources their learning required.

A Record of Both Progress and Pressure

The same-day reports of January 21, 1870, preserve a moment when the promise of Wheeling’s Colored School came under institutional pressure.

The school had been created. A public building and tax support had been secured. Black teachers had entered the classroom. Black families had entrusted their children to the new system.

But the work of equality remained unfinished.

One teacher could not indefinitely carry the needs of several grades. Elementary instruction could not satisfy every student forever. A public school worthy of its pupils would have to expand rather than restrict their opportunities.

That is what makes these newspaper accounts so important. They allow us to see the Colored School not as a completed accomplishment frozen in 1866, but as a living institution struggling to grow.

Its earliest years were marked by progress, but also by persistent questions:

Who would be permitted to teach?

What subjects could be offered?

When would another teacher be hired?

Would Black children receive the same opportunity to advance as other pupils in the district?

Those questions would follow the school through generations of change. The answers would be shaped by educators, students, parents, allies, and an African American community that continued insisting that public education must mean more than an open door.

It must also provide a path forward.

To learn more about the resolution to the struggles the Wheeling Board of Education identifies, read this blog post on the hiring of Alfred B Wilson in 1871.

-T

Historical Note

This post is based upon two accounts of the Wheeling Board of Education meeting held January 20, 1870, published the following morning in the Wheeling Register and the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer. The newspapers differ concerning the precise motion adopted by the Board.

The term “Colored School” is used when referring to the institution by its historical name. Elsewhere, this post uses Black or African American to describe the students, families, teachers, and community it served.