Halltown, West Virginia in the late 19th century was a small community of approximately 100 residents. The primary employer was the Virginia Paper Mill (formerly a grist mill), now known as the Halltown Paper Mill. The land on which the Halltown African-American Free School (Free School) stands was purchased by freed slave Thomas Edwards from Virginia Bedinger Lucas's nearby Rion Hill estate. Ms. Lucas was known as the "Pastoral Poet of the Valley." After her death at age 30 in 1867, her brother, Daniel B. Lucas who served as a West Virginia Supreme Court Justice, published her poetry along with some of his original poems under the title "The Wreath of Eglantine."

In western Virginia before 1860 and before West Virginia became a state, state-sponsored education for African-Americans did not exist. In 1863, the West Virginia Constitutional Convention, as part of its responsibilities to form and establish the new state of West Virginia, directed the legislature to "provide as soon as practicable, for the establishment of a thorough and efficient system of free schools." On December 10, 1863, the West Virginia legislature passed the State's first school law that established a system of instruction for six months of the year. However, this system was segregated by race, and townships with at least 30 African-American children were required to supply buildings and teachers separate from facilities used by white children. By 1876, Jefferson County had ten schools and eleven teachers assigned to educating the area's African-American children.

Mr. Edwards built the Free School on the Old Smithfield-Charles Town-Harpers Ferry Turnpike with his personal money in 1870 to educate his large family, including 13 grandchildren. The Free School is a rectangular-shaped one-story structure. The exterior walls are red brick, constructed on a concrete foundation, and the roof is covered with slate shingles.