Black Home Owners of Truxton Circle- Willie T. Schools

Portion of Sq. 553

The next owner in this series was just a few doors down from our last subject Mrs. Christina Mack at 113 O St NW.

The land records tell a very short story. The story was Sq. 553 old lot 3 (it looks like lot 802 on the image above), was sold or transferred in 1923 to the District of Columbia by Mrs. Willie T. Schools, a Black dressmaker. There are two documents, the one I mentioned and a release. The release doesn’t say how much she borrowed and she didn’t borrow from an institution.

Nor do the land records give the name of her late husband. She is called a widow in the release and an unmarried woman on the deed.

She was a home owner for a few years. Prior to O Street she was at 1332 2nd Street NW from at least 1899 to 1910. In the 1915 city directory they had her at 123 O St NW. The 1924 city directory had her at 113 O St NW.  I’m not going to guess what was going on there. I’ll assume the directory was wrong because 123 O St NW was old lot 4, not 3. And the land records actually had 113 O Street NW.

She disappears from the record after 1924.

Mrs. Schools had a son named William Schools, who listed her as his next of kin when he was a private in the Summer of 1918 and in 1919. He listed his mother’s address as 123 O St NW.

Once again, by looking at the son, I find an interesting history of the mother. William R. Schools has a family tree on Ancestry and that lead to a 1910 census  which has his mom Willie as Lillie. It also says that her maiden name was Willie T. Byrd. Unfortunately, there was another Willie Schools (what are the odds) in DC living at 444 Q St NW, the widow of Macon Schools, and some of her data gets mixed in with the O St Willie Schools. And that’s where I’m going to end it.