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Submitted by Georgia Historical Society
March 17, 2023 – The Georgia Historical Society will hold a dedication for a new historical marker: The Montmollin Building and Bryan School. Please join GHS as we dedicate this historical marker in partnership with the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Savannah. The dedication will take place on Wednesday, April 10, 2024, at 2:00 p.m., near 23 Barnard Street in Savannah, Georgia. The event is open to the public and media.
If you go:
April 10, 2024 at 2 p.m.
Savannah City Market
23 Barnard Street, Savannah, GA, 31401
The marker is meant to illustrate the building’s use as both a brokerage that held and sold enslaved people, as well as its time as Bryan School, a school for freed Black people in Savannah after emancipation.
As historian Jefferson Hall wrote, “From slave house to school house, this building stands as a testament to the very best—and the very worst—of the African-American experience in Savannah.”
Located at 23 Barnard Street in City Market, the building was constructed in 1856. The marker will read as follows:
The Montmollin Building and Bryan School
Banker and slave trader John S. Montmollin commissioned the adjacent building (c.1856) for his business. After Montmollin’s death, Alexander Bryan continued using the building to hold and sell enslaved people. When US General William T. Sherman captured Savannah in December 1864, the US government, implementing emancipation, confiscated the building and provided it to Savannah’s African-American community, which formed the Savannah Educational Association (SEA) to fund and establish schools. This building became the site of Bryan School. On January 10, 1865, at the school’s opening, hundreds of Black children marched here from First African Baptist Church. SEA schoolchildren publicly showcased their knowledge of grammar, history, geography, arithmetic, and other subjects in July 1865. The American Missionary Association, a northern benevolence organization, absorbed SEA and founded the Beach Institute in 1867, consolidating several schools, including Bryan School.
Erected by the Georgia Historical Society and the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Savannah
The petition to install the marker was approved by the Savannah City Council on Feb. 8
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