Goochland County's First Union School gains historic recognition

First Union School in Crozier is one of Goochland County’s four Rosenwald schools, a designation that ties a 1926 schoolhouse to the county’s Black education history and to decisions about what local landmarks survive. The building was erected with assistance from the Rosenwald Fund, built to a standard two-teacher plan, and used by the Black community for more than 30 years before it closed in 1958. First Union Baptist Church dates to about 1868, placing the building inside a longer Crozier history of church, school and community life.

First Union is not the only Rosenwald site still standing in Goochland County. In western Goochland, the Second Union Rosenwald School Museum is rehabilitating a 1918 school that is structurally unaltered and unusually well-preserved. Its National Register documentation puts the school’s operation through 1959, and a historical marker identifies it as the oldest-surviving of the 10 Rosenwald schools built in the county. The restored building will be used as a museum for Black education in Goochland County, and the Goochland County Historical Society continues to support the work.

The museum estimates that no more than 10 to 12 percent of Rosenwald schools remain standing. Preservation Virginia’s survey found 382 Rosenwald schools and auxiliary buildings in Virginia, with 126 still standing and 256 demolished. Fifty-one percent were two-teacher schools, the basic design used for First Union.

The broader Rosenwald program began in 1912 as a collaboration between Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, and Virginia ultimately received funding for 382 schools and auxiliary buildings between 1917 and 1932. The National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Rosenwald schools on its 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list in 2002, and Congress later authorized the National Park Service’s Julius Rosenwald special resource study in Public Law 116-336. The Second Union museum uses oral histories from former students and community members who lived through segregation, awards two scholarships each year to Goochland High School graduates in memory of Dr. James H. Bowles, and delivered back-to-school supplies to county elementary schools while holding its annual Black History program in February.