In the midst of the Great Depression, with five small children and another on the way, Jessie Boynton talked her way into a job which would have gone to a man — superintendent of the Fulton County almshouse in Buckhead.

The job previously belonged to her husband, Henry Clay Clark, who died in 1932. Boynton raised her family there while providing care to the home’s sick and indigent residents.

The almshouse’s building, called the Gresham Building today, now serves as a place of learning for more than 700 students at the Galloway School, which opened there in 1969.

In celebration of the building’s 100th anniversary last year, the school formed a committee to look into its history. In the past year, the committee learned Boynton’s story and more.

“We’re in this really well-preserved building where there’s so much evidence of the past,” said committee member Marcia Kochel, the school’s head librarian. “How [its original residents] lived and were taken care of is interesting.”

Charlene Leistl, Boynton’s youngest child, now resides in Sun City Center, Fla. She lived in the almshouse, called Haven Home, from birth until age 7 and visited daily until she was a teenager.

“It was a great place to grow up,” she said. “There were so many old people there and they were like a bunch of grandmas and grandpas to me. I pretty much had free rein to run around. My mother knew there were people watching over me.”

Haven Home was divided into two buildings based on race. White residents lived in the building located on Galloway’s campus while black residents lived in the building which now houses the Chastain Arts Center.

Leistl said the home’s staff consisted of Boynton, a full-time nurse, four or five paid workers and about 40 women prisoners who lived in a special ward of the black almshouse.

Despite the dire straights of Haven Home’s residents and most of its staff, Leistl said she remembers it as a loving place.

“You learned early on everyone got sick and everyone got old. It didn’t matter who you were or where you were from. Everyone was equally important,” she said. “It was such a home for the patients. There was a lot of love there. Some had some family, but most didn’t have visitors. There was family there.”

The house operated until the early ’60s and its building served briefly as a storage facility for Theatre of the Stars and the Atlanta Ballet before Galloway opened.

Leistl said her mother had several conversations with the school’s founder, Elliot Galloway, before her death.

“My mother knew [the school had opened] before she passed away and she was really happy about that,” Leistl said.

The building turned 101 on Jan. 11. The school hosted a celebration this year after a snowstorm forced it to cancel the 2011 event.