Do you remember your first school days? Did you walk a mile or two and carry your lunch and your "Blue-Black Speller?" Did you ever take a paw-paw to the teacher or maybe some chesnuts? Well, those were the golden days, if you remember.
Life seemed hard without the modern day push buttons, but then they knew nothing of the luxuries of today and worked hard for an education. The picture shown here is a group of Harlan County's first teachers attending an Institute at the Presbyterian Academy. The Institute was held one week of each year for the teachers to get together and discuss their problems.
Most of the teachers walked to their schools or rode horseback. Some of them boarded a week or a month before coming home. Cora Gish, Matt Smith and Charlie Smith taught in the town school.
Taught At Wilhoit
G.W. Blackburn taught at Wilhoit, Cawood and across Pine Mountain. One of his pupils remembered how he used to copy the sentence, "George Washington was the first President of the United States."
Frankie Skidmore's school was on Pine Branch and Betty Nolan taught on Poor Fork. D.Y. Turner was a teacher on Catrons Creek. Dr. Daniel Coldiron, who sent the picture all the way from Oklahoma taught at Gap Ridge on Poor Fork.
All of the schoold were one room buildings with the exception of the Presbyterian Academy in Harlan and Black Mountain Academy at Evarts. The Evarts school had eight rooms. It was the largest frame building in the county. Professor Dizney taught there.
Sutton starts Building
The Rev. Sutton, of Williamsburg, started the building in the later part of the '80's. The logs cut in the mountains for the school had to be floated down the river and sawed into lumber.
Nannie Smith taught at the head of Martin's Fork. Press Hall and Lewis Hall were teachers on Poor Fork. Turner Howard taught at Cranks.
The earlier one-room schools were very crude. Most of the school terms consisted of three months while some of the schools managed to get in six months. The schools were made of beech logs which were sawed by hand using a"whip saw." A "broad axe" was used to hue the logs.
One particular school was enlarged during the sumer and a space of five or six feet was unfloored. The hard clay was used for part of the flooring. When the weather got a little chilly the boys gathered logs and built a fire on the hard clay. there was plenty of space between the cracks in the logs for the smoke to escape.
The children sat on homemade benches. The Blue Back Speller was the"main lesson" taught. They wrote on slates about 10 inches square with slate pencils. The boys went to the slate banks and cut out slate to write with. For many years they used slate to write with until the stores began to sell "brought on ones."
The boys made a hole in their slate and strung a piece of ground hide hide through it could be hung up. They used the ground hog hide for their shoe strings also.
The little ones envied them and longed for the day when they would be old enough to "ciper." One of the boys went away to school and when he returned he could "cipher" up to a thousand. That was an accomplished feat.
"Fodder Time"Dismissal
One week in the school year school was dismissed. That was called "fodder time" for winter. They also had to grind cane for molasses. People for miles around came to the"stir offs" when it was molasses making time.
One of D.Y. Turner's schools was on Catrons Creek near the river. Some of the boys from town went paw-paw and chesnut hunting and had to walk by Mr. Turner's school. The boys knew very well when they passed the door what was going to happen. they yelled "school butter" at the boys inside and out they came after them.
It was time to run or get ducked into the nearest river. "School butter" meant fighting words all over the county. You could expect to be ducked or a good fight would ensue if you couldn't run Many a boy has gone home with wet clothes from being ducked. Some of them today remember those experiences.
Sunday November 23, 1952
Volume 51
