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Property Features
The first school in Burlington began operating in the summer of 1838 in a non-extant sixteen-foot square log cabin on the west side of Pine Street between Milwaukee Avenue and Mill Street. The following year, classes were held in a non-extant building on the north side of the White River in present-day Echo Veterans Memorial Park. Also that year, a brick one-room schoolhouse was constructed at 218 Madison Street and opened in 1840. For unknown reasons, however, classes were suspended at the end of that year until 1842. In 1855, the Burlington Education Society was formed and resumed teaching primary, middle, and senior classes in the brick schoolhouse on Madison Street. The building was used until 1859, when the public school relocated to the Burlington Union School on Kane Street.
During its early history, the school was also used as a Presbyterian church. After the school’s closing and with continued interior alterations, the building went on to be used as a place of worship, warehouse, home, and repair shop. In 1985, the Burlington Historical Society purchased the building, moved it the following summer to Schmaling Park at 449 Beloit Street, and restored the building to its original configuration as a one-room schoolhouse. It was dedicated as Whitman School in 1988, named after the building’s subsequent and longtime owners, and is used by the Historical Society for educational programs.
It was at a packed meeting in this building in 1847, arranged by Dr. Dyer, that a 25-year-old former slave from Virginia using the name "Lewis Washington" spoke while on a tour of what are now Racine and Kenosha Counties. Washington was accompanied by Chauncey C. Olin of Waukesha, who was then with the American Freeman abolitionist newspaper. It was Olin who, in 1854, conducted Joshua Glover from Waukesha to Racine after Glover had been broken out of the Milwaukee jail.
After a prayer by a local minister and an anti-slavery song by Olin, Washington spoke on the subject of Freedom in a general way, not only for the slave but for the whole human family, and called for the voters to leave the old parties and vote the anti-slavery ticket until "human bondage should be done away with throughout the United States and the whole Christendom."
National And State Register Of Historic Places Listings
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