Fruitville Elementary School

Fruitville Elementary School. . (Side 1) , Fruitville Elementary School, the largest elementary school in Sarasota County in 1989, began as a converted corn crib in the late 1880's. Charles L. Reaves, a pioneer of the Fruitville area with his wife Martha Tatum of Tatum Ridge, established the school and hired Miss Josie Clower as the first teacher. Their three children and seven neighbor children attended. The school soon moved to the Friendship Baptist Church at the present-day intersection of Honore Avenue and Palmer Boulevard where it remained until 1898. The church was built in 1887 on land donated by the Florida Mortgage and investment Company. FMI's manager, John Hamilton Gillespie. had offered the land for 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 a school about one mile west called the Live Oak School and hired Frances Roberts as the teacher. Reflecting the primitive conditions of the time-no window screens, no paved roads, no electricity, no heat in the school-winter classes met around a school-yard bonfire., (Side 2) , 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 in 1895, had become postmaster and had handled mail for 115 residents from his home for this community which he named Fruitville. The new school was called the Fruitville School and enrolled about 20 students. Fruitville community citizens petitioned the Sarasota County Board of Public Instruction in 1937 for construction of a more modern school. Built with Work Projects Administration funding, this school was built at its present location on about one acre of land purchased from Otis and Bernice Howell for the sum of "One dollar and other valuable consideration." Built of stuccoed concrete block, the new Fruitville Elementary School contained six classrooms, an auditorium, a small library, an office and flush toilets. Completed in 1941, the new school included grades one through six and consolidated the Tatum Road and Miakka elementary schools. Fruitville Elementary was the county's first school to serve migrant worker families and continues to educate children of circus performances.