There was a time when the more rurally you lived, the more likely it was that you learned your first letters and numbers and, maybe, how to sign your name, from someone in your immediate family. For a good number of folks, and for a right good while, that sufficed. Having “smarts” wasn’t only about information learned in the pages of a book.
Meanwhile, by the latter 1800s, some folks in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western Albemarle County began to take schooling matters into their own hands. On the South Fork Moorman’s River Road, near its intersection with Turk’s Gap Road, a half-acre tract was deeded by John T. and Ellen (Craig) Ballard to the school trustees of White Hall School District in July 1894. Likely, this parcel became the site for Bellwood School.
Louise Wood Austin, daughter of Joe and Winkie (Belew) Wood, told interviewer John Dooms, in 1975, while visiting the site of her family’s homeplace on the South Fork Moorman’s River Road, “There was a little one-room school right back up here called Bellwood School… The school teachers boarded with us.”
Among those who taught at Bellwood through the years, J.E.K. “Ned” Flannagan, of Richmond, began teaching there in 1920. The News-Virginian reported, in February 1921, “Mr. Charlie Wolfe has moved to the Stewart Wagner place on top of the mountain, so he can send his children to school at Bellwood.” John Edward Knight Flannagan later became a doctor specializing in tuberculosis and X-ray work.
Over on the North Fork Moorman’s River Road, Christopher C. and Melinda (Marshall) Via deeded land for Via School as well as for nearby Wayside Brethren Church. William A. “Will” Via farmed and operated his father Chris Via’s sawmill on “Via Mountain.” Will and his brother Robert H. “Bob” Via constructed the school alongside North Fork Moorman’s River. Bob Via, farmer and orchardist, in turn, hired that school’s first teacher, Charlotte “Lottie” Maupin (Knight). She was a daughter of Rev. George Maupin, pastor of Free Union Church of the Brethren. Teachers at Via School boarded with Will and “Molly” Mildred (Sandridge) Via.
When Albemarle County Schools assumed administration of Via School, it was renamed Black Rock School by virtue of its proximity to Black Rock Gap Road, on the east side of the Blue Ridge. Black Rock School was later targeted for condemnation for the establishment of Shenandoah National Park. Land evaluations made during 1926–1928 described it as “tract #218”, a “frame dwelling, 20x30x12’, two rooms, metal roof, brick flues, ceiled, poor condition, spring water supply, pillar foundation.” The assessment further noted, “This lot and building has been used for many years for public school purposes. It can probably serve as a school house as long as there will be need for such a building at that point.”
The Commonwealth’s relentless eminent domain land condemnation process accelerated the depopulation of the Blue Ridge Mountains and, subsequently, the public schools therein. The Daily Progress reported in November 1929, “A thriving school conducted for years at Brown’s Gap, near the line dividing Albemarle and Rockingham counties, has been abandoned for want of children. The school near Black Rock Springs, not far from the Albemarle-Augusta line, has likewise passed into history.”
For some north fork Sugar Hollow families with school age children, such as widowed Minnie Garrison Via, the Albemarle School Board’s preemptive closing of Via/Black Rock School also abandoned those families with student-age children whose homes were not included in the Park’s condemnation process. That board told the Daily Progress, in 1934, “It appears from a request made that three families live some five miles above the city’s watershed on Moorman’s River. It was the opinion of the school board that this area will be in the Shenandoah National Park, and that the families will be removed from the community.”
In lower Sugar Hollow, below the confluence of the north and south forks of Moorman’s River, a public school was available, for white students only, beginning in the late-1880s. Begun in a small, rough log building near the river’s second ford, it moved into a former church before finally occupying its own cement block building near the hollow’s third river ford in the 1920s.
Miss Sarah Dunn, age 24, of Free Union, entered her fourth year of teaching in 1930. Typical of other rural one-room school teachers, at Sugar Hollow School she had 19 students enrolled in grades one through seven, whose ages were between seven and 15. Students walked between ¼ mile and two miles to start their school day at 9 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. Miss Dunn, single-handedly, led 24 classes each day and supervised two recesses and lunch period.
Apart from her teaching duties, she was responsible for light maintenance of the building and its regular cleaning, including starting a fire in the woodstove (where a pot of hot soup was cooked some days) and making certain that the stove was extinguished at day’s end. Her salary for a five-month term of teaching was $77.50/month, $20 of which she paid monthly to John and Sadie (Thurston) Wood, who hosted her room and board during the school’s sessions.
White students who desired to continue their education beyond seventh grade could attend White Hall School, four miles away, before continuing high school-level classes at Crozet High School. The first floor of White Hall School, containing three rooms, was built in 1908. An upper floor was added in 1920, requiring three teachers for grades one through nine.
No African American schools of record were established in upper or lower Sugar Hollow. Home schooling was their only option until c.1890, when a public school for African American students was established on a ¼-acre lot, deeded by John T. and Maria “Lizzie” (Wood) Blakey to the White Hall District School Board in 1889. That parcel, off of Sugar Hollow Road, bordered the south side of Mount Olivet Baptist Church’s lot.
Classes continued at this location until a one-teacher, cement block Rosenwald School was constructed in 1922-23, on two acres of land on the south side of Moorman’s River, off Brown’s Gap Turnpike at White Hall. Its first teacher was Miss Blanche Watson. This school served the community through the 1948-49 school term, when its students were transferred to the Crozet Elementary School for African American children.
In August 1915, the Daily Progress reported, “In the Union Ridge community, west of [Charlottesville], a building is being erected that is of more than local interest to the colored people of the county. This school formerly had three teachers, but through the assistance of the Slater Fund… and through contributions from the colored schools in all parts of the county, a very well equipped two-room addition is being made to this school, and the school will henceforth be a training school for colored teachers of the county. This will be the only school outside of Charlottesville within a radius of five counties that will offer work more advanced than the Seventh Grade for colored children. A fourth teacher has been appointed, and upon the completion of the course [at Albemarle Training School], the State Educational Department will award a teacher’s certificate.”
There were other small schools, public and private, in the nearby region, each one doing its utmost to train up those children entrusted to its care to go forth and take their place in the world.
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