Woodworth Cottage

Woodworth Cottage was built circa 1870 by New Market resident Jessie Rupert and served after the Civil War as a Freedmen's School for African American children. Rupert, an ardent pro-Unionist in an overwhelmingly pro-Confederate town, had moved to New Market in 1858 to become principal of the New Market Female Seminary, but by 1867 she was widowed with two small children, ousted as principal, and evicted. With financial assistance from the Freedmen's Bureau, the American Missionary Society, and members of the 34th Massachusetts Infantry who fought in the Battle of New Market, she built the Cottage Institute, where she operated a day and boarding school for white children and a night school for black children known as the Woodworth Cottage Institute. The Freedmen's Bureau, created by Congress to help former black slaves and poor whites in the South after the Civil War, established and helped support schools to teach African Americans. In an April 1870 report to the Bureau, Rupert said she had 29 black students and 17 white students. On February 22, 1870, she and her students hung an American flag from the attic window to celebrate George Washington's Birthday, and when Ku Klux Klan members came to remove it, she met them at the door with a loaded revolver and warned that the first man who tried to take in the flag would likely be a dead man, after which they left. The institute soon closed because of declining funding and enrollment, and Rupert continued to live there until her death in 1909, supporting herself by giving lectures in northern states about her experiences.

New Market, Virginia · United States