Clifton Forge High School - Alleghanian Yearbook (Clifton Forge, VA)

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THE ALLEGHANIAN 9 little one-room school sat, and which is the site of the present building. Soon after the purchase of this acre, the little planked-up- and-down school house was replaced by another frame building of some pretensions. It was neatlv built, weather boarded, very well the south side, but these schools have long since been discontinued. Such were the conditions, however, up to the year 1896, when the need for increased facilities became so pressing that steps had to be taken to provide more room for the greatly Another Frame Building of some Pretensions. lighted and contained three rooms, two below, and one large room above. In this house was begun the first graded school of Clifton Forge. It must not be supposed that this three- room house was adequate for the accommoda¬ tion of all the pupils in the neighborhood, for there were at this time other public schools in immediately contiguous territory, which was not then in the town limits, but which is now a part of the city. For instance, on Au¬ gust 27, 1887, Air. R. P. Murray sold the dis¬ trict a lot for a school on the south side of the river, and on October the first of the same year, the District purchased from Peter A. Jackson another lot for school purposes on increased school population. It was then, that largely through the efforts of Captain . C. Moody, the present chairman of the City School Board, and who was then chairman of the District School Board, and of Mr. . . Pendleton, then superintendent of schools for Alleghany county, that the eight-room, brick school building, which forms a part of the present structure, was erected. This was a splendid building, steam heated, well equipped and modern in all respects. A building that reflected credit upon the town as it then was, and especially upon those who took such a deep interest in its erection. But this too, soon became inadequate. For three

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s - THE ALLEGHANIAN through the generosity of the Williamsons that a public school was first started in this community. I have mentioned the old log cabin in “Slaughter Pen Hollow’’ (which was then known as Hazel Hollow ), as being the first school house in this community, of which we have anv record. This house was one of the quarters used before the war for housing some of the slaves of Mr. Henry Smith, of whom he had a great number. The cabin was a typical one. Built of logs, chinked with mud, a door at one end and windows on each side. It had a large stone chimney, with a fire-place half as big as the end of the house on which it was located, though a stove was used when the house was adapted to school purposes. This house, if primitive in some respects, was modern in, at least, one respect. The light was admitted in a volume rather than bv several small openings. The windows were only about three feet high, but extended nearly two-thirds of the way across each side, thus actuallv exemplifying what has been more or less, a puzzle in modern school architec¬ ture. The extension of the railway, and the de¬ velopment of the iron industry in these parts brought many families here, whose children needed school facilities. It was to encourage the education of these that Mr. Williamson gave the use of this cabin to the school au¬ thorities. It was furnished with plain board seats, and in it was begun the school which is the real parent of its present giant off¬ spring. In this school were taught some of the present residents of the city, among whom I might mention Mr. David A. Williamson, Cap¬ tain Dan. Haynes, and perhaps, others who are among the older citizens of our compara¬ tive!}’ new city. A few years after the inauguration of this school, Air. Williamson gave to the school district a site for a new house, which was identical with the site now occupied, in fact the door of the school-room built thereon opened just where the eastern entrance of the present building is. The house erected upon this site was a one-room frame structure, about twenty-eight feet by twenty-six feet, planked up and down on the outside, and ceiled inside. It had a door in one end, a stove about the middle of the room, and had two windows on each side—a typical country school house of ten years ago. Mr. Ford also taught in this house for a while, and was succeeded by Mr. A ' athan Painter, who still lives in Clifton Forge. Quite a number of the present resi¬ dents of this city 7 were taught in this house, among whom were Mrs. Geo. M. Farrar, Miss Jean Williamson, Mr. Gill Davis, Mr. Hugh Gleason, Mr. Jno. A. Bowles, Mrs. G. E. Showalter, and many others. The increasing population and the more rapid increase of school children soon out¬ grew the capacity of this house, and need was felt for more ground upon which to build, so on the 8th day of March 1887, Air. Wm. M. McAllister, who was a Commissioner of the Court in the suit brought to settle up the af¬ fairs of the estate of Air. David Williamson, then deceased, sold to the Clifton School Dis¬ trict, for S100, an acre of land, on which the

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in • THE ALLEGE AKIAN or four years it was necessary to rent addi¬ tional rooms in nearby buildings to accommo¬ date the school children, until in 1907, the town of Clifton Forge, having then become a city, there was added to this building a twenty thousand dollars addition, doubling the ca¬ pacity of the house and giving to Clifton Forge the splendid building which we now enjoy. of the colonies, granted to his humble servant Robert Gallaspy in the latter days of colonial Virginia, and which we now call Clifton Forge. In the little log house in “Slaughter Pen Hollow there were scarcely more pupils than there are teachers to-day in the schools of this city. But the school which is the great great- Present Building. And so we see, in just a few years, the evo¬ lution of a modern city school house, splen¬ didly equipped, from the humble beginning in a deserted negro quarter, built of logs and “chinked with mud. But rapid as has been the development and enlargement of the school building, this pro¬ gress has been but little ahead of the demand. The writer does not believe that there is a spot on the face of the earth, on which school children multiply more rapidly than on the one hundred and fifty-five acres of land that George the III., King of England and tyrant grandchild of that humble parent enrolls eight hundred pupils who daily try the patience and threaten to midermine the sweet dispositions of fifteen teachers. I have reserved it for the last to speak of the various teachers and principals that these schools have had. I have mentioned that Mr. Jas. A. Ford was the first teacher in the little log house, and also in the planked-up-and- down house that was first built on the site of the present school, and that he was succeeded bv Mr. Nathan Painter, from him, in their order, naming the teachers up to the forma-