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

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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-

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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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THE ALLEGHANIAN 11 tion of the graded school and the principals thereafter, were Charles Vines, Ashby Payne, Thos. Xuckols, J. Lucien Hamilton, J. H. Kit- tinger, A. S. Beckner, Rev. Mr. Gray, Miss Bessie Bryant, Miss Ella Anderson, James Downer. N. C. Scott, A. B. Chandler; E. A. Armistead, and the present incumbent, W. E. Gilbert. Concerning the faithful teachers that have taught under the principals I have named, in these later years, space forbids that I should tell you of their fidelity and their worth. Suf¬ fice it to say that some have come and some have gone, while others like Tennyson’s “The Brook. have staid on forever. A due regard for personal safety, coupled with a holy dread of ostracism, prevents me from saying just how long some have been teaching in the schools of Clifton Forge, but I will venture so far as to ' say that some have been there “since time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” and the writer hopes that no inducement strong enough to prevail upon them to give up the work will come for many, many years, for their continued fidelity to the welfare of the youth of this city is an earnest desire that the future of Clifton Forge schools will be as inspiring, as noble and as brilliant as that of her brief past. E. W. IC.