OUR CLAYBROOK HERITAGE
(Madison County, Tennessee)
SCHOOLS
(Page 31)
Until 1838 there were few schools for the young people to attend in Civil Districts 12 and 13 of Madison County and those must have been truly inadequate. The act of the Tennessee legislature passed January 24, 1838, establishing a system of public schools in the state, provided some funding for the operation of these schools. Under this system, several school commissioners were elected from each civil district, men who would employ teachers and see to it that pupil attendance was rewarded by at least adequate instruction.[1] Although men served exclusively on these early school boards it may be fairly assumed that the women of the community generally encouraged their menfolk to establish and maintain these little "halls of scholars."
The first such school commissioners for Civil District 12 were Thomas Barham, John Barnett, Andrew Stewart, William B. Godwin and Wyatt Mooring; those for Civil District 13 were John Woolfolk, Benjamin P. Ballard, John G. Thornton, William B. Dickson and William D. Gillaspie.[2] In 1830, Civil District 12 maintained one school under the supervision of one male teacher, with twenty pupils. It is likely that this school was in or near the village of Spring Creek.
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CIVIL DISTRICT 12 |
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The following is a list of children with parents & guardians names reported by the school commissioners in civil District No. 12. N. W. Copeland. July 1, 1838. |
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JAMES C. ROSS |
4 |
JANE JONES |
2 |
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CIVIL DISTRICT 13 |
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/Children in this district, enumerated with their parents or guardians. June 30, 1836/ |
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JOHN G. THORNTON |
2 |
WILLIAM GOPHER |
5 |
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Names of District Commissioners: William D. Gillespie, J. G. Thornton. B. P. Ballard. John Woolfolk, N. B. Dickson |
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The fortunes of the public schools fluctuated for years but with the strong support of Governor Andrew Johnston a firm tax base for funding these schools was passed by the state legislature in 1854.[3] Schools were largely suspended during the Civil War and were solidly rejuvenated only when the legislature once and finally established a state-wide public school system in 1873. It was headed by a state superintendent of education and by county superintendents; locally the schools were governed by district school commissioners in the civil districts.
(Page 31)
These school commissioners were elected by those persons qualified to vote in the districts. Annual reports were made by these commissioners, especially providing the county superintendents with the scholastic population (young people, aged 6-21). The superintendent would then make a countywide [report] to the state department of education. Teachers were required to be examined and certified by the superintendent, although would-be teachers sought the support by the district school leaders for their jobs. Black and white schools, after 1873, were kept separately but operated, in theory at least, under the same general provisions.[4]
The school at Claybrook was held in the meetinghouse of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church that was built in 1870. Early in January of 1871, Martin B. Key went into Jackson and bought a wood-stove for the church. His sons started to school there, January 16th.[5] After a few years, a separate frame schoolhouse was built near the church. One of the teachers in the Claybrook school during the 1890s was Sallie May Kimbrough (1875-1963), native of Giles County, Tennessee, who later married Warner E. Dunlap and lived many years in Humboldt, Tennessee.[6]
In 1907 the state's schools were placed under the county-wide boards of education, replacing the old, fragmented civil district system.[7] In that year, Claybrook had a one-teacher school. At that time too there were 55 small schools, with 68 teachers serving in them, in Madison County. Children generally walked to their community schools, but in 1909, wagonettes were provided for children living some distance from their schools. These were replaced in the 1920s by motor-buses but it wasn't until 1935 that the wagonettes disappeared completely from the county scene. It wasn't unusual for young people to ride their own horses to school while they spent the day learning and the horses grazed freely or were kept up in small sheds. After all, these were rural schools; children "understood" animals.
The Claybrook school had become antiquated so that in April of 1910, the school board approved the building of a new schoolhouse, with James C. Pearson (board member, 1908-1916) appointed "to make agreement" with the owner of the site selected for the school; thus the Claybrook citizenry had to provide the campus for their little school.[8] The site chosen was beside the Jackson-Lexington Road in Claybook itself, on the land of Dr. Dudley H. Pearson. A large frame, two-room building was erected there and it served its purpose well for a good many years. (Even after school sessions were not held in this schoolhouse, it was used as a meeting place and the poll/voting center for Claybrook until that function was moved to the Claybrook Gin Company in January of 1932. Later the poll was moved to L. L. (Babe) Pearson's store, then to Spring Creek, then to the old Brown's School and in recent years to the nearby fire-station.) The Claybrook schoolhouse gradually fell into delapidation after it had been abandoned.
(Photo too poor to reproduce)
The woe-be-gone pile that once was Claybrook School
(1992)
(Page 33)
In October of 1919, the county provided a wagonette for pupils who lived between Claybrook and Spring Creek, with the provision that this convenience didn't jeopardize the stability of the Claybrook school. Parents had to pay the expense of the wagonette and driver.[9]
The school board adopted a policy on March 31, 1927 that "all one-teacher schools not able to maintain an average daily pupil attendance of ten and all two-teacher schools not able to maintain average daily pupil attendance of 20 to be closed by order of the Board of Education."[10] This policy then closed the white Claybrook school in 1928, the pupils of the neighborhood then attending Brown's Church School (and this was the official name of the Brown's school over the years).[11] A high school had been established at Brown's, 1912-1913.[12]
For years the elementary and high school grades met in the same large frame building at Brown's, across the road, southwest from Brown's Methodist Church. Late in the night of July 27, 1939 it burned completely.[13] At the request of the school board, the county court appropriated ten thousand dollars in August towards the construction of a new brick-veneer schoolhouse (eight classrooms and an auditorium) at this same location. Insurance ($9000) covered the rest of the cost of construction. Classes began in September and were held temporarily in the frame gym, located across the road, to the east, and in the teacherage (principal's house). The new school building was ready for occupancy in 1940.[14]
It had long been the custom as well as school policy to start black and rural white schools several weeks earlier, in the steaming months of July and August, than other schools. These schools would adjourn towards the time of harvest in the fall, principally for cotton-picking and then resume classes before Thanksgiving. Each district and later each school might adjourn and resume classes as local circumstances seemed to dictate. This procedure was continued for black and a few white schools until the schools were desegregated.
The Claybrook community elementary-age children continued to attend Brown's until it closed in 1968 when it was consolidated with Oakfield, Spring Creek and part of the Fairview schools to form Nova School which opened in the late summer of the same year. The last faculty at Brown's: Mrs. Hester (Parish) Exum, principal and teacher, grade 5; Mrs. Judy Freeman, grades 7-8; Mrs. Margaret Williams, grades 3-4; Mrs. Katherine Winslow, grades 1-2; Mrs. Elizabeth Williams, grades 6-7.[15]
The high school department at Brown's closed in the spring of 1943. The Huntersville, Pope, Fairview, Brown's and Spring Creek high schools consolidated to form North Side High School in north Jackson.[16]
The county schools were racially integrated in the mid-1960s. "During and after the school year /beginning in/ 1963 compulsory segregation based on race /was/ abolished in the public schools of Madison County, Tennessee."[17] The plan for desegregation was implemented over the next two or three years. Faculties as well as student bodies were integrated in the process.
The Claybrook black school was held in a small frame house which was later replaced by a large block schoolhouse, located a short distance north of Berry Zion C. M. E. Church. For many years all black youth attending high school had to board in Jackson and attend Merry High School there. Despite this inequity and inconvenience, there were young blacks ambitious for getting a secondary education (and beyond). The Claybrook school, grades 1-8, taught by Mrs. Nettie Donnell Mathis, its principal, closed in the spring of 1960. Its pupils then attended Tri-Community School. The old schoolhouse gradually fell into disrepair.
(Page 34)
Brown's black elementary school, for the children of that community, was located close to the juncture of Brown's Church Road and North Parkway. The school board provided a new frame, one-teacher school there in 1941.[18] This school consolidated, in 1956, with the Tri-Community School.[19]
The first PTAs were organized, in 1929, at the Lanier, Brown's and Bemis elementary schools.
The Jackson and Madison County school systems merged to become the Jackson-Madison County School System in July of 1989.
CLAYBROOK TEACHERS
1907-1928
(with monthly salaries, it known)
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1907-1906: |
Louise Dinwiddie, $40 |
Several known black teachers in the Claybrook elementary school (black) during this period were Mary and Sarah Willis, Helena Bennett, Roxanne Ellison and Vashti (Willis) Barnett.
REFERENCES
1. DEVELOPMENT OF THE TENNESSEE STATE EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION, 1796-1929, by Robert H. White (Kingsport, Tenn., 1929), page 47. Cited hereafter as Education, White.
2. Jackson/Madison Co. School System: Common School Record Book, 1838-1846, page 1.
3. Education, white, pages 70-71.
4. CODE OF TENNESSEE, 1884, by W. A. Milliken and John J. Ventrees (Nashville, 1884), pages 220-228.
5. "Diary of Martin Bibb Key, " FAMILY FINDINGS, Mid-West Tennessee Genealogical Society, volume 14, #4, October 1982, pages 132-133.
6. Conversation, circa 1960, the author with Sallie May Kimbrough Dunlap in her Humboldt, Tennessee residence; also, with her grandson, Kimbrough L. Dunlap, Jr., in Humboldt, Tennessee, April 20, 1993.
7. MADISON COUNTY EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, John L. Mays, chairman, Madison County Board of Education. Bulletin I, 1941, page 19. Cited hereafter as Madison Co. Ed. System.
8. Madison Co. School Board Minute Book 1, 1907-1919; April 2, April 10, 1910 entries.
9. IBID., 2, 1919-1921. October 1919 entry.
10.. IBID., 4, 1925-1930. March 31, 1927 entry.
11. Madison Co. Ed. System, page 21.
12. IBID., page 28.
13. THE JACKSON SUN, July 28, 1939. "Brown's School Destroyed by Fire Last Night."
14. IBID., August 18, August 24, 1939. Also, School Board Minute Book, Jan. 9, 1935-July 23, 1945, pages 105, 137, 139.
15. Madison Co. School Board Minute Book, July 14, 1965-Dec. 27, 1968. Addenda. Also, conversation, author with Hester (Parish) Exum, August 2, 1993.
16. IBID., book, July 15, 1960-May 18, 1965, page 279.
17. IBID., page 47.
18. IBID., page 223. Also, conversation, author with Marie (Atwater) Williams, spring 1993. Mrs. Williams taught her first school at Claybrook in 1929.
19. Madison Co. School Board Minute Book, Sept. 15, 1952-June 16, 1960, page 153. Effective, July 23, 1956.
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