Over 5,000 schools for African American students were built between 1917 and 1931 across the southern United States through the collaboration of educator and author Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, President of Sears, Roebuck, and Company. The Rosenwald Foundation provided matching grants to over 150 school projects in Maryland, including the Oldfields School.
Oldfields is a historically Black community located at the intersection of New Windsor and Coppermine Roads, near Libertytown. Several families in Oldfields joined together to purchase land in 1871 “for the purpose of erecting a house thereon to be used for a school house and to worship in.” In 1883, Keys Chapel was dedicated on this site.
Families in Oldfields raised funds and secured a grant from the Rosenwald Foundation in 1918 to build a larger dedicated school building. As seen in this photograph, the new school contained a classroom and two cloakrooms and was built using plans prepared at the Tuskegee Institute.
The population of Oldfields declined during the Great Depression and the school closed in 1935. Four years later, County Superintendent Eugene W. Pruitt proposed using the Oldfields building to replace the century-old segregated school in New Market. During the fall of 1939, contractor William Cookerly moved the structure over ten miles from Oldfields to New Market and constructed an extension to accommodate a second classroom.
After the integration of New Market Elementary School in 1961, the former segregated schoolhouse was acquired by New Market United Methodist Church. Today, the structure is the only surviving Rosenwald School in Frederick County.
This article by Jody Brumage, Heritage Frederick Archivist and Museum Manager, was originally featured in the August 2026 edition of Frederick magazine. To see the original article, click here >>