While students are usually happy to see the school year end, it was bittersweet for the dozens of schools whose doors closed long ago for the last time in the Fork, the Knox County lands between the French Broad and Holston Rivers.
Wooddale and Union are Fork schools that have been gone for many decades. Fork native Luther Johnson, who was mentioned in my May 13 article, said that he was glad to transfer from Presbyterian-related Wooddale Academy to Union School in 1892, because Union did not restrict its teachers to any one denomination. He recalled how at one Friday afternoon’s recitations, he and his classmates performed a 15-minute mock church meeting, complete with preaching, shouting, amens and handclapping, for the amusement of their peers. Albert Bales had memorized a sermon, which he delivered with perfection.
However, the students and teacher got into trouble over it with the local churches, who threatened to “church” everyone who had participated in “desecrating a religious service.” Of course, it was determined that they meant no harm. Union existed as early as 1872, but the newer brick building was constructed in 1936, because of the campaign of its principal, William Daniel Claxton, who taught in Knox County for 51 years. Both schools were later consolidated into the new Sunnyview on Bagwell Lane.
Bethel, too, was a church-affiliated school, located on Kodak Road, while Smith and Midway were additional schools in Tuckahoe on the roads that still bear their names. The brick Midway School was constructed in 1908, and Roy Raulston was its first principal. The abandoned Mt. Vernon School, also off of Kodak Road, was bought by Angus Frazier in 1917, and its bell now rings in French Broad Methodist (formerly Riverdale Methodist) Church.
Students at Smith School
Because students had to buy their own books in the late 1800s, Luther would set traps for rabbits, which he would carry 10 miles to sell in Knoxville for book money. Students attended school as they were able between the demands of farm work. As a result, piecing together an education took much longer, and some students continued to attend after they were grown.
Fork resident Harmon Kreis told how he learned at an older age how to read and write in the late 1800s in order to have a job as a timekeeper at nearby Knoxville Marble Company, where he soon rose through the ranks to quarry owner. His lessons were at the Ramsey’s old stone house, then owned by the Keeners, who were educators. Perhaps Kreis’s experience was what caused him to later provide a school on Thorn Grove Pike near his quarry.
“Miss Keener’s School” met at Asbury Methodist Church, as reported in an 1873 article regarding its end-of-year examinations, which received a glowing review. However, the writer mused that he would like to know that the boy who “bursted a firecracker” under his horse and caused it to break a bridle would “leave that thing at home,” because he didn’t like having to share a horse and sit behind the Rev. George D. French on the return ride. Miss Keener’s school was probably the forerunner of the Asbury public school, where a new brick building was dedicated in 1932.
Times surely have changed, and many old schools have been forgotten in the Fork, whose additional schools will be discussed in another article.
Jan Loveday Dickens is an educator, historian, and author of Forgotten in the Fork, a book about the Knox County lands between the French Broad and Holston Rivers, obtainable by emailing ForgottenInTheFork@gmail.com.
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