 Wormley was instrumental, in 1871, in getting Congress to fund the city's first public elementary school for black students, the Sumner School, and chaired the committee that oversaw its construction.The Wormley Hotel was at on the southwest corner of 15th and H streets of the northwest quadrant of the city.The hotel was the site of the Wormley Agreement, which resolved the disputed presidential election of 1876, contested between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden, and this resolution led to the end of the Reconstruction period in the South.