The yellow building across the street is also significant to the Black history of Oxford. Currently a private residence, it began as the elementary school in 1899 for the Black children of Oxford and was one of the centerpieces of life in the Black community.
“That’s the elementary school on Tilghman Street. We had first, second and third on the first floor and fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh on the second floor. And everybody walked. If you out town, you walked, because we didn’t have a car. And in the wintertime it was cold, it was so cold we had a potbellied stove that they put coal in to heat it and the boys would go and make a fire before the children got to school ... it take me almost half a day to get warm, but it was a nice school and the kids and teachers were very good... they had a teacher for the downstairs and Cousin Ginny, she had upstairs. Before Moton High School in Easton was completed in 1937, the eighth grade was the highest level of public education in Oxford or any Talbot County town that a Black child could achieve. The school instructed Black students from 1899 to 1934.” Alice Banks.
After the school closed in 1934, the small structure between the house and street was moved here by the owners from Market Street where it had been an ice cream shop.
“After Miss Nellie Leatherberry bought the schoolhouse and the man had a little shop for sale (up on Market Street) she bought the little shop and moved it on to the property of the schoolhouse. So she didn’t have a permanent job, she decided that she would feed, have something for the oystermen to eat, a kind of place for them to come eat. She started making soup then she got involved in sandwiches, started cooking fish, and then she made pies and got involved with chicken and then somebody wanted her to fix muskrat and it just went from one type of thing to another.”
Meanwhile, the top floor of the main building became a sail loft. Operated by Downes Curtis and his brother Albert, African American sailmakers, made the building where they had been educated into their shop and sail loft. They cut sails in the loft which had no heat in winter nor any air conditioning in summer. Downes Curtis was well respected in the sailing community and made sails for many local yachtsmen as well as celebrities including Errol Flynn.
In 1928, the young Downes Curtis asked David Pritchett, an Englishman who had a sail loft near the Oxford Boatyard to make a set of sails for his small boat. Pritchett agreed under the stipulation that Downes would become his apprentice, which he did. Pritchett died in 1936 and Downes Curtis took over the business with his brother Albert assisting. The Curtis brothers worked into the mid-nineteen nineties when they retired. After Downes Curtis' death, the building fell into disrepair until 2001 when it was purchased and renovated as a private residence.
Continue up Tilghman to the corner of Banks Street, which used to be called Shell Road because it was constructed of crushed oyster shells. Turn left and walk to the corner of Market Street.
(Stop #21)
