hornsby1973

@Article{ hornsby1973,
    author = {Alton Hornsby Jr.},
    title = {The Freedmen's Bureau Schools in Texas, 1865--1870},
    journal = {Southwestern Historical Quarterly},
    volume = 76,
    number = 4,
    month = {April},
    pages = {397--417},
    year = 1973,
}

p. 402: J. B. Kiddoo’s report to Bureau in January 1867 shows his support for Black teachers in Bureau schools. Simultaneously, “General Kiddoo made arrangements with the American Missionary Association to furnish and pay teachers during the 1867 term at a rate of $15 per month.”1

p. 405 - yellow fever epidemic in summer of 1867 had disastrous impact on Texas schools.2

p. 409 - School inspector C. H. Howard visited Houston towards end of 1868 and reported that “he found a board of Negro trustees holding a lot, but waiting for Bureau aid in building, which he promised to urge,” undoubtedly a reference to the Gregory Institute board.3

p. 411 - By April 1867, AMA had 20 teachers in Texas. “Galveston and Matagorda listed eight each, and Houston was next with four. … Houston’s four teachers were all women, only one of them married. Galveston’s teachers hailed from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois; Matagorda’s and Houston’s came from Minnesota and Ohio as well as the aforementioned states.”

p. 413-414: C. H. Howard reports in eighth semi-annual report on ostracization of AMA teachers: “the wife of Judge Foyle (of the district criminal court) is the only white lady of Houston who has called upon the missionary ladies during the two years of their labor there.”4

  1. The same report noted that before Kiddoo’s appointment, “The freedmen for some reason were dissatisfied, and the schools rapidly fell off in numbers and attendance. We can scarcely account for this disastrous failure.”↩

  2. According to Alvord’s fifth semi-annual report on schools, Gen. Charles Griffin, assistant commissioner of the Bureau in Texas, was one of the victims; succeeded by Reynolds. And it was followed, according to the next report, by the failure of Kiddoo’s AMA plan, leading to “distrust and dissatisfaction” and a return to “self-supporting,” tuition-based schools. The same July 1868 report noted that “With the exception of the schools at Houston, which for special reasons will be suspended for the months of July and August, we are carrying them forward without vacation.”↩

  3. See Howard’s report in Seventh Semi-Annual Report on Schools, 36. The same report said a new school house had been built in Austin “on a lot donated by the city council.”↩

  4. In the same report, he also notes property holding in Austin and Houston, and quotes from a James Burke letter to the AMA about the reception of the missionary teachers. Howard found four Sabbath Schools in Houston—“one in the Baptist, one in the Methodist Episcopal church, where the day-schools are also held, one in an old hospital building, and one in a private building of the poorest sort, occupied by an old freedman.”↩