D. C. B. Connerly

D. C. B. Connerly was an educator and the principal of the Birmingham Free School.

Connerly settled in Summerfield (Dallas County) in 1837 after graduating from the University of Alabama and took up the call as a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church and master of the Centenary Male Institute. He resigned in order to enlist in John T. Morgan's infantry company during the Civil War. He was engaged in battles at Missionary Ridge, Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga and Franklin, among others and was held prisoner and eventually paroled at Selma.

In 1874 Connerly advertised in the Birmingham Iron Age that tuition to Birmingham's new public school would be free to all white children in Jefferson County and that the school year would open on March 9, 1875. He served as the first principal until he was succeeded by F. M. Grace.

He founded the Stonewall Institute, serving as principal as well as on the faculty, leaving in 1875 to establish schools in Arkadelphia and Hamburg, Arkansas. In 1882 he moved to Austin, Texas, and died five years later in Camden, Arkansas on his way to visit his son, John Curtis Connerly and family.

Connerly and his wife, Ellen Taylor Connerly of South Carolina, had seven children (John Curtis, Alice May, Frank L., Mary K., Robert H., Bessie L, and Fred T.)

References

• Roden, Ella Didlake. "First Schools" in Early Days in Birmingham (1968) Birmingham: Southern University Press.