Midlothian Public Schools
Midlothian, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Early education in the area included a 1850 one-room log cabin in the Hawkins settlement, serving as a school and church. Its location was where south 14th street in Midlothian is now. The Hawkins settlement was later named Lebanon. A new school began in Midlothian upon its founding. Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad President George B. Sealy donated Block 59, at the intersection of West Avenue F (College Street) and North 1st Street, for educational purposes. Professor William Works opened the Polytechnic Institute there with 40 students.Public schools were at the southeast corner of South 2nd Street and West Avenue H. The campus gradually expanded eastward and is now called the J.R. Irvin Campus. The frame schoolhouse there burned in 1893, and the students finished the year attending classes in the Methodist and Presbyterian churches. The Midlothian Independent School District formed in 1906. A new two-story brick schoolhouse, designed by C.H. Page of Austin, was completed in 1907. African American students were taught at a separate campus, later renamed the Booker T. Washington School, before integration. As enrollment grew, additional buildings included a grammar school with auditorium (1915) and an elementary school (1920), donated by Tom and Mattes Dees, who daughter, Dell Mason Dees, had died of measles at age three. A stadium near the east end of East Ohio Street was the home field for Midlothian Panthers football and baseball games. Other longstanding traditions included the May Fete, begun in 1920 by the Parent-Teacher Association as their primary fundraiser. Enrollment has continued to grow, and more than a century after its founding, Midlothian Independent School District continues to educate and train leaders of tomorrow.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Education in the Midlothian area began in an 1850 log cabin that served as both school and church in the Hawkins settlement. After the town's founding, railroad president George B. Sealy donated a block for schooling, and by 1906 the Midlothian Independent School District had formed, opening a two-story brick schoolhouse in 1907. Black students, taught at a separate campus later named for Booker T. Washington before integration, were part of a system that grew through grammar schools, an elementary school, and beloved traditions like the May Fete.
Why it matters
The district's evolution—from a frontier log cabin to a segregated modern school system—mirrors the broader story of public education and racial division in small-town Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The story of schooling in this corner of Ellis County begins in the simplest structure the frontier could offer: a one-room log cabin, built in 1850 in the Hawkins settlement, that served as both school and church. On the frontier those two roles almost always shared a roof, because a young community could rarely afford separate buildings for learning and worship — and it needed both to feel like a community at all. That settlement was later named Lebanon, and its cabin stood where South 14th Street in Midlothian runs today.
The decades this marker spans — from that log-cabin beginning, through the Reconstruction and Gilded Age years, and into the Progressive and Modern eras — were exactly the period when America was building the idea of public education itself. What started as scattered, informal schooling gradually became something organized, tax-supported, and permanent. Midlothian's schools grew up right alongside that national transformation.
The town's founding gave that growth a push, and so did the railroad. When the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad reached the area, it did more than move freight; it reshaped where towns grew and how they prospered. In Midlothian, the railroad's influence touched even the schoolyard, as the next chapter of this marker makes plain.
People & events
A key turn came when George B. Sealy, president of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad, donated Block 59, at the intersection of West Avenue F — also called College Street — and North 1st Street, for educational purposes. On that donated ground, Professor William Works opened the Polytechnic Institute with forty students, giving the young town an ambitious start toward real schooling.
What followed reads like the ordinary, hard-won drama of a growing school system. The public schools stood at the southeast corner of South 2nd Street and West Avenue H, and the campus gradually expanded eastward into what is now called the J.R. Irvin Campus. When the frame schoolhouse there burned in 1893, the students simply finished the year in the Methodist and Presbyterian churches — the community improvising, as frontier communities did, so that no year of learning was lost. In 1906 the Midlothian Independent School District formally took shape, and in 1907 a new two-story brick schoolhouse, designed by an Austin architect named C.H. Page, replaced what the fire had taken.
As enrollment grew, so did the campus and its traditions. A grammar school with an auditorium opened in 1915, and an elementary school followed in 1920, donated by the Dees family in memory of their young daughter, who had died of measles at the age of three. A stadium near the east end of East Ohio Street became the home field for Midlothian Panthers football and baseball. And beginning in 1920, the Parent-Teacher Association's May Fete became a beloved annual fundraiser — one of those local rituals that stitch a school into the emotional life of a town.
Its place in the American story
Midlothian's schools tell, in one town's worth of detail, the national story of how America built public education. The progression here — from a shared log cabin, to a professor's private institute on donated land, to a chartered independent school district with a brick schoolhouse — is the same arc that played out across the country as communities decided that educating their children was a public responsibility worth taxing and building for.
The railroad's fingerprints on this story are also distinctly American. In the Gilded Age, rail lines and the men who ran them shaped the fate of countless towns, and a railroad president donating a block of land for a school is a small, telling example of how deeply the railroads were woven into everyday civic life.
But the marker also records a harder national truth without flinching from it. African American students were taught at a separate campus, later renamed the Booker T. Washington School, before integration. That single sentence carries the weight of the entire era of segregated schooling in America — a system of separate and unequal education that shaped generations. Naming it here, on the same marker that celebrates the district's growth, keeps the full story intact rather than the comfortable half.
If you visit
Explore Midlothian with this marker as your key, and the modern streets start to reveal their older selves. The very first schoolhouse, that 1850 log cabin, stood where South 14th Street runs now — a good place to begin, imagining a single room doing double duty as school and church for the settlement that became Lebanon. From there you can trace the school's migrations across town: the donated Block 59 at College Street and North 1st, the early public school site near South 2nd and West Avenue H, and the eastward-growing campus now known as the J.R. Irvin Campus.
As you move, watch for the layers of time. The 1907 two-story brick schoolhouse rose from the ashes of a fire; later came a grammar school with its auditorium in 1915 and the elementary school of 1920. Each building marks a decade when the town grew enough to need more room for its children.
Seek out the site of the Booker T. Washington School as well, and let it slow you down. It is a reminder that this town's educational history, like the nation's, includes a long era of segregation that a full visit should not skip. Round out the trip with the local traditions the marker preserves — the stadium off East Ohio Street where the Panthers have played, and the memory of the May Fete that once drew the whole community together each spring. Taken together, they turn a simple drive through Midlothian into a walk through more than a century and a half of American schooling.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · George B. Sealy
- · William Works
Themes & tags
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Founded in 1883 by local educator W. W. Works, Polytechnic Institute was a private, coeducational school built by area stockholders who raised a two-story building at this site. After Works died young in 1895 the school carried on as Whitten Institute and Midlothian College, until the building was dismantled in 1907–08 and the grounds eventually given to the city as a park.