ealthy wholesale produce merchant of
Charleston. This pioneer was a man of fundamental education and
unusual native ability. He opened at Chapel Hollow, or Salines, two
and one-half miles from Malden, in 1865, probably the first Negro
school in the Kanawha Valley. He thereafter taught elsewhere and later
became the founder of the First Baptist Church of Charleston. The
following year Miss Lucy James from Gallia County, Ohio, opened the
first Negro school in Charleston. Among the first patrons were Matthew
Dillon, Lewis Rogers, Alexander Payne, Lewis Jones, Perry Harden,
Julius Whiting, and Harvey Morris. Mrs. Landonia Sims had charge of
the school one year also. At this time Rev. Charles O. Fisher, a
Methodist Episcopal minister of Maryland, had a private and select
school which was later merged with the free public school. Between
1866 and 1869 Rev. J. W. Dansberry, another Methodist Episcopal
minister from Baltimore, Maryland, belonging as did Mr. Fisher to the
Washington Conference, served also as a teacher while preaching in
this State. The Simpson M. E. Church, their main charge, was being
developed during these years and was in 1867 housed in a comfortable
building on Dickinson and Quarrier Streets. Mr. C. O. Fisher was a
well-educated man, but Mr. Dansberry depended largely on natural
attainments.

Rev. I. V. Bryant, who has toiled for many years in the Ohio Valley as
a Baptist minister, started his public career as a teacher at Baker's
Fort school, about two and one-half miles from Charleston. Rev. Harvey
Morris, another minister, opened a public school at Sissonsville in
1873, Rev. J. C. Taylor another at Crown Hill in 1882, and not long
thereafter this school was attended by such distinguished persons as
Mrs. M. A. W. Thompson and Dr. A. Clayton Powell of New York City.
This work in Kanawha County was accelerated too by the assistance from
the Freedmen's Bureau which sent to this section C. H. Howard, brother
of Gen. O. O. Howard, the head of the Freedmen's Bureau, to inspect
the field, and later sent one Mr. Sharp to teach in Charleston.[24]

One of the first schools in Kanawha County was organized at Malden.
Immediately after the Civil War this town had a much larger and more
promising Negro population than the city of Charleston. Many Negroes
had been brought to Kanawha County, and after their freedom many
others came to labor in the salt works. This private school at Malden
was conducted by Mr. William D