For more than 100 years, German School Road has been a Southside curiosity, running from north to south between Jahnke Road and Midlothian Turnpike in a part of Richmond annexed from Chesterfield County in 1970.
Kristen Donovan, who works in the area, contacted VPM News with a simple question: “I wanted to know where the German school was that German School Road was named for.”
“Every time I drive by German School Road, I wonder, ‘Where is it?’” Donovan said. “It bothers me, it never fails — every time I come by, I think about this mysterious German school.”
It is a souvenir of a German community that settled in Central Virginia during the mid-1800s, according to Lilian Mullane, a volunteer with the Chesterfield Historical Society of Virginia.
Many Germans settled in the area for religious reasons, but Mullane pointed out that the origins or even existence of a German school were elusive.
“I like a mystery. You can always say that,” Mullane told VPM News.
Her research showed that the land the road is on was owned by a German Catholic immigrant named Ignatius Schutte, who came to Virginia in the mid-1800s. According to Dany Schutte, a descendant of his who researches genealogy, he came from the northwestern village of Hopsten, just over 25 miles from the Dutch border.
She said growing up, she heard stories about the school.
“Family legend says my grandfather’s generation went to primary school there,” she told VPM News in an interview.
Ignatius was what was known in the area at that time as a “truck farmer”: He’d load asparagus he grew onto a truck and drive it to market in downtown Richmond.
Donald Traser, another Schutte descendant, said Ignatius was prosperous.
“At a time when asparagus sold for five cents a bunch, he made 85 bucks a week on asparagus alone,” he said.
Traser said he spoke to an aunt when he was a young man who was aware of the school, which was named St. Ignatius — after the farmer who donated the land the school was built on.
“She remembers the school standing into the 1950s,” he said. “It may not have been in use as a school by that time, but she remembers the building.”
At the time Ignatius Schutte came to the United States, Richmond had a significant German population, and churches and synagogues offered services in German. Traser said Schutte was a member of St. Mary’s Catholic Church on 316 E. Marshall St., which celebrated Mass in German.
Mullane said there were a few red herrings in her research into what happened to the German school. She found a blurb suggesting it was named for the Bauhaus School — except the road was on the map in 1900, and Bauhaus wasn’t founded until 1919.
Mullane found a passage in a Richmond history book that confirmed Traser’s aunt’s recollection.
“Another school connected to St. Mary’s Church is kept in Chesterfield County,” it read. “A lady is in charge of it, and the pupils number 20.”
Mullane said the school operated for about 20 years between 1900 and 1920, and was affiliated with St. Mary’s. At that time, it was wholly in Chesterfield County. Richmond annexed the city of Manchester in 1910, followed by a portion of Chesterfield where the road’s located in 1970.
Liess Van der Linden-Brusse, the Chesterfield Historical Society’s librarian, said the school was a log structure located where German School Crescent currently stands.
VPM News visited the property, which is now the site of the James River Pointe apartment complex.
Evidence of the school that once stood there is no longer visible.
This story was produced as part of the VPM News series Curious Commonwealth.
