Ask Margaret
Lucky you to discover one of our area’s
historic treasures. The Old Schoolhouse,
or Little School Building, was built circa
1855 to house a school that had gotten its
start a few years earlier, serving as the
Tampa area’s first school to be located on
the western side of the Hillsborough River.
The building was probably originally
situated closer to the river, but is currently
located on University Drive on the campus
of the University of Tampa between the
historic Plant Hall, formerly the Tampa
Bay Hotel, and the John H. Sykes College
of Business, formerly the City of Tampa
Municipal Auditorium. According to Brad
Massey, Ph.D., who is a professor of history
and the Saunders Foundation curator of
public history at the Tampa Bay History
Center in Tampa, the pre-Civil War Old
Schoolhouse is especially important to
our area’s history, since it is one of the
first structures to be built in Tampa that
is still standing.
The Old Schoolhouse officially belongs
to and is maintained by the De Soto
Chapter of the Daughters of the American
Revolution (DAR), which was organized
as Hillsborough County’s first chapter of
the National Society DAR in 1903, and
nationally chartered in 1912 with Mrs.
James McKay as its first regent. City of
Tampa leaders and then-Mayor Donald
Brenham McKay gifted the historic
building to this local DAR group in 1931.
The schoolhouse was relocated to its
current position and restored by its new
by Margaret Word Burnside
What can you tell us
about the cute little white
cottage we passed when
we were on the way to
an event at the
University of Tampa?
B.T., Westchase
owners in 1932, under the direction of the
chapter’s then-regent Mrs. R.A. Ely and
restoration chair Cornelia C. Pickett.
The pint-size structure is important to
our area’s history and has been listed on
the National Register of Historic Places
since 1975. A freestanding bronze marker
140 TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE | MARCH/APRIL 2020
to its left, placed there by the DAR’s De
Soto Chapter in 1982, tells a bit of the
Old Schoolhouse’s history and National
Register pedigree. The chapter members
were also responsible for placing additional
smaller markers on the school’s facade that
verify its national status.
The Old Schoolhouse was constructed
for Gen. Jesse Carter. He was a pioneer
mail contractor, who had been appointed
as a civilian special agent by the relatively
new state of Florida’s Gov. James Broome
to oversee the mostly volunteer troops
during the Third Seminole War that took
place between 1855 and 1858. Carter was
responsible for developing the wilderness
on the western bank of the Hillsborough
River in Tampa. He constructed his
family’s home and several other structures
on the heavily overgrown land that became
known as the “Gen. Jesse Carter tract.”
To ensure that his daughter Josephine
would receive a proper education, Gen.
Carter also added the little wooden house
to be the area’s first school on the river’s
western side. He brought Louise (or
Louisa) Porter, a young educator from
Key West to his new school to instruct
Josephine and her classmates, who were
the daughters of friends and not so nearby
neighboring pioneer families. The school’s
early students, including Janie Givens,
Mary Kelly, Mary Lesley, Hayden Porter,
and Eugenia and Lizzie Spencer, are among
the ancestors of people who later became
prominent Tampa citizens.
If you have any questions about the
people, places or things in the Tampa
Bay area, please send them to
“Ask Margaret” at Tampa Bay Magazine,
2531 Landmark Drive, Suite 101,
Clearwater, Florida 33761.
We regret that not all questions
can be answered.