Fruitville Elementary School, the largest elementary school in Sarasota County in 1989, began as a converted corn crib in the late 1880's when Charles L. Reaves, a pioneer of the Fruitville area, and his wife Martha Tatum of Tatum Ridge established the school, hired Miss Josie Clower as the first teacher, and sent their three children along with seven neighbor children. The school soon moved to Friendship Baptist Church at the present-day intersection of Honore Avenue and Palmer Boulevard, where it remained until 1898. The church had been built in 1887 on land donated by the Florida Mortgage and Investment Company after its manager, John Hamilton Gillespie, offered land for the church and adjoining cemetery so the graves of two infant sons of Charles and Martha Reaves could be moved from their yard. In 1898, the Manatee County Board of Public Instruction built the Live Oak School about one mile west and hired Frances Roberts as teacher, and under the primitive conditions of the time, with no window screens, no paved roads, no electricity, and no heat in the school, winter classes met around a school-yard bonfire. In 1905, the school board erected a new school west of Simmons Avenue and north of Fruitville Road on land donated by Charles Reaves, who had become postmaster in 1895 and handled mail for 115 residents from his home in the community he named Fruitville. Called the Fruitville School, the new school enrolled about 20 students. In 1937, Fruitville community citizens petitioned the Sarasota County Board of Public Instruction for a more modern school, and with Work Projects Administration funding a new stuccoed concrete block school was built at its present location on about one acre bought from Otis and Bernice Howell for one dollar and other valuable consideration. Completed in 1941, it contained six classrooms, an auditorium, a small library, an office, and flush toilets, included grades one through six, consolidated the Tatum Road and Miakka elementary schools, became the county's first school to serve migrant worker families, and continues to educate children of circus performances.