When there were 67 schools: A look at the Scott County School System through the years
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Back when there were 67 schools in Scott County…
The Scott County School System looks much different today than it did in 1912. That year, 113 years ago, the county school system was at its peak in terms of the number of schools: 67 of them!
As transportation systems improved throughout the 1900s, school consolidation followed. This consolidation was best symbolized in 1971, when the county’s new consolidated high school — Scott High School — opened in Helenwood, and high schools in Huntsville, Norma and Robbins closed their doors. But elementary school consolidation had been going on long before that. Some of the elementary schools that were still open in 1971 — including schools at Straight Fork and Capital Hill — have closed since then, and today there are only seven schools in the Scott County School System: Burchfield (PreK-8), Fairview (PreK-8), Huntsville Elementary (PreK-5), Huntsville Middle (6-8), Robbins (PreK-8), Scott High (9-12) and Winfield (PreK-8).
In 1912, though, there was a school in every far-flung community in Scott County — including in communities where there are no longer people living, like No Business, Station Camp and Capachene. Many of those schools — almost all of them, in fact — were one-room schools. Some of them doubled as church houses for Sunday worship.
The schools located furthest west in Scott County included Burke (located in far northwestern Scott County, in what is now the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area near Rock Creek), Blevins (which we now know as Bandy Creek in the Big South Fork NRRA), White Pine (near Blevins), and Honey Creek. The schools located furthest east included two schools at Capachene (Upper Capachene and Lower Capachene), Baird Creek, Roach’s Creek (near Montgomery Junction) and Smokey Junction. The southern-most schools included Hembree (on Smokey Creek), Shannon (near Brimstone) and Griffith (also near Brimstone).
The formation of the school system
The Scott County School System was created by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1867. Prior to that, there were a number of individual school systems in Scott County — peaking at 19 in 1853 — with each electing three commissioners who were responsible for hiring the teachers to serve in their schools.
The first school superintendent in 1867 was a Helenwood attorney named James C. Parker (1841-1906). He was born in the Sheep Ranch area of southern Scott County before moving to Helenwood and becoming a prominent attorney. He would later serve as Scott County Judge, and still later as judge of Tennessee’s 3rd Judicial District.
In those days, the school superintendent was chosen by Scott County Quarterly Court — which we know today as Scott County Commission. The superintendent served a two-year term. Parker served one two-year term and was replaced in 1869 by Lafayette Sproule, a physician who grew up in Whitley County and moved to Scott County after marrying Didama Marcum — the sister of Civil War heroine Julia Marcum of Smith Creek.
School superintendents continued to be appointed by the county quarterly court throughout the latter 1800s and early 1900s. Most of them served a single, two-year term. The first to serve more than one term was Jasper Q. Cross, a lumberman who served as a road commissioner, deputy marshal and constable during his adult life. He served two terms, from 1875 to 1879.
It was Melva Lawson McDonald Sr. who was the superintendent of schools in 1912, when Scott County had 67 different schools. He was a lifelong resident of Huntsville who had been elected to the Tennessee General Assembly in 1902, and later served as postmaster in Huntsville. He was school superintendent from 1909 to 1917.
Beginning in 1924, the superintendent of schools became an elected position. The first school superintendent who was elected by the voters of Scott County was Ovia Cross in 1924. He had organized the first four-year high school in Scott County, and also coached the county’s first high school basketball team. He was from the Jellico Creek area, the son of Rev. Harrison Maynard Cross and Cordelia Adkins, and later taught in the Oneida Special School District. He finished his teaching career at Oneida, retiring in 1960 after 28 years.
Cross was elected to a second term in 1928, after O.E. Jeffers served from 1926 to 1928, and remains the only person to serve two separate stints as school superintendent in Scott County.
In 1952, Ora Shoemaker Robbins became the first — and only — woman elected superintendent of schools. She was from Robbins, the daughter of George Alvin Shoemaker and Mona A. Ellis, and married Jasper Robbins. She was a charter member of Mountain View Missionary Baptist Church and was a career educator, teaching for more than 50 years in both Oneida and Scott County, as well as in Ohio. Her daughter, JoAnn Robbins, married Eddie Culver, who was later school superintendent in the 1980s.
In the late 1990s, the Tennessee General Assembly passed legislation returning the superintendent of schools position to an appointed position, which for the first time was named by the board of education. The last superintendent to be elected was Jerry Willard Thompson in 1995. There have been three directors of schools appointed since that time. J. Mike Davis was the first, followed by Sharon Wilson (who became just the second woman to serve in that role in Scott County’s history), and Bill Hall.
The longest-tenured school superintendent in Scott County’s history is John Lee West, an Oneida attorney and politician who served as superintendent from 1933 to 1948. He also served as mayor of Oneida, state senator, and district attorney general. Hall is currently closing in on West’s record as the longest-serving school superintendent.
A complete list of school superintendents and the years they served can be found here.
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◼️ Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
◼️ Tuesday: Echoes in Time (stories of our history)
◼️ Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
◼️ Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
◼️ Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
◼️ Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)