Living Jackson Magazine : Teaching History - Jackson County's Old Schoolhouses

Teaching History

Jackson County's Old Schoolhouses Preserve The Past

By Gail Ellen Daly

Photos by Joshua T. Barnett

At one time in its early history, Jackson County’s children went to one of 118 white and 29 black schools—one- and two-room schoolhouses scattered throughout its numerous communities.

By 1915, that number had dwindled to 59. After consolidation, children were bused to the larger public schools and the years took their toll on the early structures. Most were torn down, fire destroyed some. In any case, some buildings were no more than a memory. But five former schoolhouses still exist and are in use today. Each has a different purpose, but these symbols of Jackson’s past remain.

Bachelors Academy, proudly positioned on Ethridge Road as a part of the Shields Ethridge Heritage Farm, served the community’s schoolchildren from 1909 until 1950.

Of the five, only Bachelors Academy has been completely restored as a two-room schoolhouse.

Sitting proudly on Ethridge Road close to the Shields-Ethridge Heritage Farm Complex, the white church-like structure educated children in grades one through seven from 1909 until 1950.

When no longer needed as a school, the building reverted back to the family. Although formal classes no longer take place inside the wooden building, groups of children come and tour both the school and the farm complex.

Today’s youngsters can see where cloaks were hung, where water was drawn from a well and where the potbellied stoves warmed the rooms. They gather in the small rooms with wood floors and wood walls and can sit at the old wooden desks where three or four grades learned lessons from the school’s two teachers.

A small room at the rear between the two classrooms held little treats for the “model” students.
Plays and spelling bees took place in an auditorium with a small stage. The room also served as a community center where box suppers and barbecues were held.

An old teacher’s desk complete with a handbell and writing slates recreate the school atmosphere at Bachelors Academy.

With no electricity, large windows let in as much light as possible.

Susan Chaisson, whose ancestors began farming the land in 1799, explained how the school was named and why it sat so close to the family farm.

“There was no school close by, so two of the Shields brothers each donated an acre of land so citizens in the community could build the school,” she said. “And they were bachelors.”

Until 1938, only white children attended Bachelors Academy and the teachers lived in the family farmhouse.
Once the white children were bused to Jefferson’s Martin Institute in 1938, black children attended the small school. Their teachers lived in a house on the Shields land, a short walk away.

Chaisson noted that the building’s restoration was made possible through a 1996 $12,000 matching Georgia Heritage 2000 grant.

A foundation oversees the farm buildings and 150 acres. The entire farm is 500 acres.

“This land has been farmed continually since 1799,” Chaisson said proudly, “and by the same family.”

Miles from Bachelors Academy, the former Dry Pond School is in its third reincarnation.

Drive down Hwy. 82 toward I-85 and a red brick building with the sign “Porterhouse Restaurant” comes into view.

Formerly a schoolhouse, the Dry Pond School is now the Porterhouse Restaurant.

With its original bead board walls and ceiling, antique decor and country charm, it is currently owned and operated by Marc Skinner. A visitor can learn about the former four-room schoolhouse as Skinner serves Carlene Porter Loggins’ original recipes.

Loggins, whose family has lived in Dry Pond for generations, previously owned the restaurant. She pointed out that the brick school, which opened in 1928, was the third school built at the same location.

Located near a church—as were most of the early schools—its history began in 1870 when Henry Barnett bought 110 acres, donating six acres for a school.

“That was a one-room facility,” Loggins said. “Then in 1899, Dry Pond High School was built.” The Odd Fellows Love Lodge owned the top floor of the two-story wooden building until 1925.

The Dry Pond District was three and-a-half miles in each direction, with taxes levied for the school. Because of the community’s growth, in 1927 voters approved building a larger school.

These terra cotta bells greet diners at the Porterhouse Restaurant.

Grades one through nine attended the school with two grades in each of the four classrooms except that grades seven, eight and nine were together. The principal, who had a small office off the foyer, also taught ninth grade.

A large auditorium in the center of the building is now the restaurant’s main dining room.

Fifty-two eight-foot windows let in the light and transoms above the front door and inner doors served as ventilation during the hot months.

“Students raised the flag outside each morning, sang songs and read from the Bible,” Loggins said. “There was a hand pump for water and privies were out in back.”

As at all the schools, classes let out in the spring at cotton planting time, resumed for six weeks during the summer, then let out again in the fall to free the students to pick the cotton.

An interesting note: O.C. Aderholt, longtime president of the University of Georgia, began his career at Dry Pond School.

In 1958, when the county consolidated all the small community schools, Dry Pond School closed. It sat empty for many years. Eventually Loggins’s mother, Allene Porter, converted the building into apartments.

“There were seven apartments of 800 square feet each,” Loggins said.

In 1982, she began the enormous task of converting the interior into a restaurant. “We sandblasted off many coats of paint, replaced 100 panes of glass.”

Despite the time-consuming hard work, her labor of love paid off with the building’s complete renovation.

Richard Orcutt’s faithful shop-cat is a favorite at Countryside Antiques in Braselton.

The ambience diners enjoy at Skinner’s Porterhouse Restaurant is duplicated at Countryside Antiques in Braselton.

Built in 1933, the former four-room Braselton School sits just off Hwy. 53. The dirt road is now a paved highway and the dense woods are gone, but the old building draws customers inside.

Richard Orcutt, who has owned the shop for three-and-a-half years, talked of the awful condition when he assumed ownership.
“The school closed in the mid 1950s and was a flea market for 25 years,” Orcutt said. “It also was a sewing plant for a time.”

Photos taken before renovation show collapsed floors and spotty paint jobs. Once the structure was back in shape, he painted the bead board walls white, the trim and columns barn red.

But the kitchen and lunchroom section had decayed so badly, Orcutt had it removed. The former home economics building—a few steps away from the school—served as Braselton’s library. Since the new library opened, it sits empty.

Jane Duck, formerly Jane Forrester, recalls the dense woods behind the building with trails. “And legend said wild things in the woods would eat you.”

Jane Duck remembers her years at the Braselton School and is delighted at its reincarnation as an antique store.

“I’ll bet there weren’t 20 students in each class,” she said. “I remember skipping school on April’s Fool Day and I mostly remember April 6, 1936, when I was 11 and it turned so dark. The teacher made us put our heads on our desks. And it was raining so hard.”

That date marks one of the state’s worst tornadoes—the disastrous day Gainesville was literally flattened.

“There was no plumbing,” said Duck, who graduated high school in 1943, “and each room had a wood burning stove.”

Basketball was THE sport, she said, and despite its small student body, in the early 1950s the team won a state title and played in a national championship. Twenty-six former students have visited the shop and signed Orcutt’s memory book. All have fond memories of the school.

Miles from Braselton, north of Commerce in Berea Community, the former Wilson Junior High School became the Berea Community Center.

The former Wilson Junior High School sits in the midst of farmland in Commerce and serves as the Berea Community Center.

Despite its current use, one of the four classrooms remains an old school room—complete with blackboards and wooden desks with attached chairs.

Although its name says junior high, the building opened in 1936 and housed grades one through nine until it closed in 1963.
Betty Ann Poole knows her grandfather George Hawkes donated land for the Berea Baptist Church and, she believes, also for the school.

“I started school here,” said Julian Bridges. “I even remember the teachers’ names.”

Bridges ticked off the names of Helen Wilhite, Julia Langford, Mrs. Dunson and Mrs. Shankle.

“We had a roomful of students,” he said. “They came from Commerce down the road and from the upper road.”

Bridges recalled the coal stove in each room and drawing water from the well.

“We had to bring in the coal, clean out the ashes and clean the floor,” he said. “We got a whipping if we acted up, but we were allowed to bring knives and toy cap guns to school.”

Julian Bridges stands on the same steps he did as a schoolboy at Wilson Junior High School in 1936.

Bridges also recalled that during World War II, Mrs. Shankle’s son flew B-17 bombers, so his class learned “a lot about the war.”

There was no electricity or indoor plumbing. Students had an hour for lunch and two recesses. “We played baseball and marbles and were allowed to leave school for church revivals and picking cotton.”

When no longer needed, the county sold the building to the church for $1, Poole said.

The fifth still-standing old schoolhouse in Jackson County is located near the Apple Valley Baptist Church. Motorists leaving Berea, who drive through Commerce toward Jefferson on State Route 15A, might miss the small dark wood building set back from the road.

Elizabeth Colquitt Smith’s great grandfather William Jones Colquitt donated land for the small community to build a church and a school.

The Apple Valley School is now used as a hay barn for Tom Wright’s five horses

“I don’t know what year that was,” she said, “but my father went to school there and so did I until sixth grade.”
The school had three classrooms and Smith recalls the names of several teachers—Ruby Isbell, her mother Sarah Colquitt, Sarah Montgomery and Opal Sheriden.

After consolidation, her father bought the building back from the county, Smith said. The building has been stabilized, but not renovated, and Smith’s cousin Tom Wright stores hay for his five horses in the old schoolhouse.

Restored schoolhouse, antique shop, restaurant, community center, hay barn. They all are different. They all preserve a piece of history.

Gail Ellen Daly, a long-time reporter for the Chronicle, a daily newspaper serving northeastern Connecticut, recently moved to Jackson County with her husband. They live just a short walk away from the old school in Apple Valley.