St. Paul’s second school was located on the eastern end of Wise Street. The pre-1920 image above shows the school, its students, and faculty (names unavailable). When new, the two-story wooden building contained four classrooms. Obviously, this was quite a step up from the town’s original one-room school. Even though the building was larger, St. Paul grew rapidly following the completion of the Carolina Clinchfield & Ohio Railway. A wing was subsequently added at the rear of the school building to provide additional classroom space plus a room for assemblies and community events. The photo below shows the school’s new wing and the exterior stairway that provided an alternate entrance to the second-floor assembly room.

Students’ desks in the school were of the old-fashioned type. They featured a seat for the student in front behind which there was a writing surface for the student in back. The desks were attached to the wooden classroom floor, possibly to keep them from being used as weapons when “disagreements” broke out among our much more well-behaved (or so we are told) ancestors.

Years ago, a friend of my family owned some of the desks formerly in use at St. Paul’s second school. As children, we used the desks as props when playing school. In addition to the inkwells, the desktops were liberally inscribed with the initials of pocketknife-toting little boys. The exterior walls of the school building were also decorated with graffiti carved by the same youngsters who desired to “mark their territory” to the limits of their juvenile reach. Imagine how creative grandpa might have been if aerosol paint cans had existed when he was a boy!

WHAT WAS TAKING PLACE AT THE ST. PAUL GRADED SCHOOL DURING THE 1909-1910 TERM?

Miss Georgia Gravely was teaching first grade (22 pupils), second grade (17 pupils), and third grade (28 pupils), presumably in ONE ROOM. That’s a total of 67 students! How did she do it?

Mrs. O. E. Jett was teaching fourth grade (19 pupils), and fifth grade (21 pupils).

Miss Mable Mays taught sixth grade (8 pupils), and seventh grade (14 pupils).

Mr. H. C. Williams of Jonesville, Virginia was the St. Paul graded school’s first principal. Students addressed him as “Professor Williams,” a courtesy title customary at that time. In addition to his duties as principal, Professor Williams was teaching grades eight (5 pupils), nine (1 pupil) and ten (5 pupils).

Members of the tenth-grade class during the 1909-1910 school term were: Vera Eugenia Duff, Audrey Olive Hillman, Lora Delle Fraley, Ella May Fraley Earnest, and Myrtle Marie Musick. For these students, successful completion of the 10th grade marked the end of their local scholastic careers. Further education required the ability, financial means, and determination to attend either college, or a college preparatory school.

The school term lasted 180 days, from early September until the end of April. When school was in session, children converged upon the two-story wooden building each weekday morning. Many of those children walked long distances, arriving (hopefully) before the tolling of the school’s large bell. Some of the younger students from outlying areas boarded with families in St. Paul.

The faculties of local schools typically consisted of young unmarried women, widows, and a few men “of good character and reputation.” Some had received only two years of higher education and weren’t much older than their students.

Teaching was one of the few professions open to single women in the eraly 1900’s. Married women were expected to be financially supported by their husbands, and fully occupied with the care and management of their children and homes.

In September of 1911, twenty wide-eyed first-graders walked through the doors of St. Paul School, including: Daisy Couch, Gertrude Dickenson, Herbert Addington, George Breeding, Clarence Tate, Nora Couch, Ruth Jessee, Everette Dishman, Pearl Meade, Mary L. Dye, Paul Thompson, Leonard Dye, Walker Ramey, James Tipton, Frances Breeding, Beatrice Combs, Lakie Dishman, Clevie Taylor, Tyler Dishman, and Eva Finch. In addition to her twenty first graders, Miss Sneed also taught twenty second grade students – all of them in the same classroom. A pupil-to-teacher ratio of 40:1 during the two most important years of scholastic development would be impossible and perhaps even illegal today. Somehow Miss Sneed, made it work out despite very little time for individual instruction and with few books or materials. She did all this in return for a very meager salary.

Teaching multiple grades in a single classroom was far from ideal for both faculty and students. In 1913, faculty-member J. B. Peery noted that “None of our grades in high school did full work, owing to too-short periods. With three grades to one teacher, twenty minutes was the most to be devoted to any class, except perhaps mathematics at times.” Peery taught a high school curriculum consisting of arithmetic, reading, English, Latin, history, spelling, algebra, and geometry.

The concept of “No Child Left Behind“ was unheard of in 1911. At the end of St. Paul’s 1910-1911 school year, 47% of the students were not promoted to the next grade level. In the roll book, a teacher noted that one boy “…has been in the fourth grade for three or four years. I suggest you try to give him a chance in the fifth. I believe he will do better (if the Principal approves).” Children in the lowest primary grades might range in age from 6 to 16, and some remained there until they were old enough to drop out. The principal’s job was to maintain discipline and ensure that the required curriculum was presented by the faculty. The responsibility for “getting it” rested squarely upon the shoulders of the student.

Then as now, some teachers were more skilled and interested than others. Most boarded with local families, or lived in rented rooms at the town’s smaller (and cheaper) hotels. During the summer months, some teachers returned to their hometowns to stay with their families. For the town’s better class of bachelors, the unmarried young ladies who came to St. Paul or Temple Hill to teach comprised a “marital sweepstakes” of sorts. One winner of this sweepstakes was Dick Richmond who met and married a teacher named Julia Shackleton.

Poverty, death, and illness within the family frequently brought an end to a child‘s education. In those days children were expected to help out at home, regardless of whether they lived in town, in a coal camp, or on a farm. There was plenty of work to be done by even the smallest hands. Staying in school and making passing grades required considerable effort. Years later former students of this time period would reflect back upon their school days and remark, “What I learned in school, I learned well.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

NOTE: Information for this article was gathered from the pages of the original enrollment book for the second St. Paul School, spanning the years 1910 to 1923.