Goose Creek School Community No. 9

Goose Creek School Community No. 9. . As early as 1841, school district boundaries were defined by justice precinct boundaries, with the Baytown area comprising School District No. 8. The 1876 State Constitution and school law abolished these districts and created what were called school communities. Thirty-five such entities were established in Harris County to serve children between ages 8 and 14 for the four-month school year, Goose Creek School Community No. 9 was created on November 22, 1876., During that year, Mary Smith McCrory Jones, widow of the last President of Texas, Anson Jones, and the future president of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, donated one and a half acres of her farm inside the bend in the road to Harris County for a public school. The schoolhouse, known locally as the Briar Patch School, was funded and built by parents and friends of the fourteen students who enrolled in the first class. The small wood plank building contained two rows of homemade benches and a teacher's desk. The books were donated by Cedar Bayou Methodist Church. Classes were held here through 1896, when the building was moved to land behind today's George Washington Carver Elementary School. From 1897 until sometime after 1900, the school served as the first public school for African American children in Goose Creek., Through the late 1910s, an influx of oil field and refinery workers and their families moved to the area after oil was discovered, increasing the student population dramatically. The old schoolhouse underwent repairs and upgrades, and other buildings were rented and built to conduct classes. In 1922, a school bond passed to construct several new schools. The old school house, no longer in use by 1923, represents the beginnings of public education in Goose Creek.