White Marsh One-room Schoolhouse
School # 3; District # 5

Whitemarsh One-room Schoolhouse, circa 1989;
Photo courtesy Regina Hammett, History of St. Mary's County Maryland 1634 - 1990

Located just off old Rte. 5 in Mechanicsville and built in the 1860s, this one-room log cabin served as the first Ebenezer A. M. E. Church. Sometime after 1900, grades 1 - 3 met in the old log cabin (still standing).

Grades 4 - 7 met in a building about 500 feet away. UCAC informants Ralph Butler and Phil Scriber attended this school. A new White Marsh school was built in 1956.

The sign over the door reads:

Dedicated October 15, 1961
Here in this log cabin 100 years ago in this little
patch of woods, a group of free humble pious
colored folk met, catching the spirit of Richard Allen
in Philadelphia, a hundred and fifty miles away.
They organized the Ebenezer A. M. E. Church, the first
of its denomination in Southern Maryland.
In this hollowed spot their spirits were enshrined
forever, tho' their names and faces have been forgotten
and dimmed by time; nature in this glade still catches
their voices in the murmuring breeze; reverberates their
song and praise along the leafy turf, while the trees, silent
and still around the cabin wait as sentinentals for the final shout.