Vardy Community School
The Vardy Community School was a Presbyterian mission school that existed in the town of Vardy, Hancock County , Tennessee, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the time of its inception, the school was the only institution offering primary education to the children of the Melungeons in the remote mountainous areas of the Tennessee- Virginia border . Presbyterian missionaries ran the school until 1955, when it became part of the Hancock County's public school system. In 1984, the school and mission-related buildings in the area were added to the National Register of Historic Places as a Historic District .
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dozens of village schools and mission schools were established in the rural Appalachian Mountains . In 1892 the Presbyterian Church decided to build such a school in Vardy, a settlement in the heart of Melungeon Land in the Blackwater Creek Valley. Over the next 45 years, the mission school grew into a small settlement with a three-story schoolhouse, a church, a manse , a library and several residential buildings. The schoolhouse has collapsed, alumni of the school and other historically interested people are preserving the ruins and associated buildings as a historical site. In 2000, resulting in the 19th century log cabin of Melungeon- was Schwarzbrennerin Mahala Mullins rebuilt on a space on the opposite side of the street Vardy School.
location
The settlement of Vardy, sometimes referred to as the Vardy Valley , is located in a narrow valley cut by Blackwater Creek between Newman's Ridge to the south and Powell Mountain to the north. The valley, which belongs to the catchment area of the Clinch River , extends for about 15 km from the Mulberry Gap southwest of Vardy to the to Blackwater in Lee County further in the northeast. Vardy is still relatively isolated today, the main access road leads from Sneedville via Tennessee State Route 63 , which crosses Newmans Ridge in a series of steep switchbacks before it crosses Vardy Blackwater Road near Mulberry Gap. The Vardy School Community is on this road, approximately 5 miles east of its intersection with TN-63.
history
At the beginning of the 19th century, one of the early Melungeon settlers, Vardeman "Vardy" Collins, born in 1764, was given a large piece of land in the Newmans Ridge area. School and church were later built on this land. In the decades that followed, his descendants built the settlement on Blackwater Creek that bears his name. When the Tennessee Constituent Assembly defined Melungeons as " free people of color " in 1834 , they were banned from voting or attending state-funded public schools. This disadvantage led the Newmans Ridge melungeons to develop into a closed, clan-like community.
Presbyterians were active in Vardy from the late 19th century when wandering Presbyterian ministers Christopher Humble and HP Cory held sporadic services in the Blackwater Valley. In 1892 the Holston Presbytery decided to set up a mission school in Vardy and appointed Annie Miller and Maggie Axtell as missionaries to serve here. Vardeman's grandson, Batey Collins, and his wife, Cynthia, donated several acres of land to build the mission school and church, and other residents in the area provided lumber and helped build it. The Vardy Mission School started school operations in a no longer existing log house made of untreated logs. It was the first school to offer the children in the valley the eight-year schooling required by the state. The Vardy Presbyterian Church was completed in 1899 and a new schoolhouse in 1902.
In 1910, Scottish missionary and Columbia University graduate Mary Rankin arrived in Vardy, where she worked as a teacher and nurse for more than three decades. Rankin also instructed the local mothers in maternity care and childbirth care and fought against malnutrition in the valley. Between 1920 and 1952, the Vardy Mission thrived under the leadership of Chester F. Leonard and his wife Josephine. A new three-story school building, powered by a Delco generator , was put into operation in 1929. From the time the school was completed, the Vardy Mission School became the Vardy Community School.
A number of interim pastors followed Leonard. Although the Church sold the school to Hancock County in 1955, the school continued through 1973 and the Presbyterian Church continued to worship until 1980. When the school, church, and outbuildings were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, Vardy had only eight residents. With a grant of 10,000 US dollars , which had given the Tennessee Humanities Council, the Vardy Community Historical Society began with the restoration of the Vardy Community School still existing building. In 2000, the group also repaired Mahala Mullins' log cabin and relocated it from its former location on Newmans Ridge to Vardy Blackwater Road, opposite the church.
Historical buildings
Vardy School Community Historic District
The Vardy School Community Historic District consists of eight contributing structures with several outbuildings. These structures are all traditional in appearance, but the school and some of the houses have bungalow- style features and the church's bell tower has Gothic influences. The constructions involved include:
- the Vardy Community School; it is a three story structure built in 1929 and designed by William H. Leonard, the father of Chester F. Leonard. The building was originally a wooden post construction with a gambrel roof and a facade clad with corrugated metal. The building's 96 windows allowed the abundant sunlight to penetrate the building in the cooler months and enabled drafts in the classrooms for cooling in the warmer months. The building collapsed in October 2003 and only the walls of the first floor on the south side and part of the first floor remained intact. The school has five outbuildings: a wooden frame garage, a warehouse made of limestone , a bathhouse and a water tank, each made of the same material, as well as the teacher's house, which, like most of the other buildings in the historic district, was built using timber frame construction.
- the Vardy Presbyterian Church; a one-story structure built in 1899 by Morgan Osborne and Miles Watson from nearby Blackwater . The church has white wooden walls, a steep sheet metal roof and a two-story bell tower with a gable roof. The entrance to the church is through a double-winged door at the foot of the bell tower. The church has lancet windows on the flanks and a three-part lancet window with tracery on the front. Heavy double swing doors separate the vestibule from the sanctuary of the church.
- the Chester F. Leonard Manse; This one-story timber frame structure, built in 1921, is a prefabricated home from an Iowa manufacturer . It is clad with shingles and has a gable roof.
- the library next to it in a one-story building built in 1929 with façade cladding made of corrugated iron and four windows at the front.
- a shop in a one-story timber frame house built in 1937.
- the second Vardy Mission School; This is a one-and-a-half-storey building built in 1902 using timber frame construction with shingles, a steep pitched roof and a covered veranda. The structure replaced a log cabin that had previously housed the first mission school for almost a decade. After the completion of the new Vardy Community School in 1929, the building was converted into a residential building.
- a one and a half story house built in 1920; This is a house built in timber frame construction with a gable roof and a covered veranda at the front.
- a one-story house with a pitched roof and covered porch, built in 1934, which includes two contributing outbuildings - a garage with hinged limestone doors and a small storage shed.
Mahala Mullins Cabin
The Mahala Mullins Cabin was once the home of the famous Melungeon dodger Mahala Mullins (1824–1898). Mullins suffered from elephantiasis , which caused her to gain enormous weight. This disease has also led to exaggerations regarding their size. Tax officials were aware of Mullins' moonshine activities and often destroyed their stills, but were unable to arrest them because of their size.
The hut is a modest two-story dogtrot hut that was joined together from felled poplar trunks using a dovetail joint . Massive chimneys made from locally found stones stand at either end of the hut. The covered passage was closed in the 1920s to create more space, but has been restored to its original condition. The cabin was originally on a slope of Newmans Ridge on Dan and Chris Williams' property. The Williams' donated the cabin to the Vardy Community Historical Society, and in 2000 the cabin was relocated and restored.
supporting documents
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Martha Gray Hagedorn, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for Vardy School Community Historic District, June 18, 1984.
- ↑ a b c d e f Information on a notice board at the site of the Mahala Mullins Cabin and Vardy Community School, December 2009.
- ↑ Jim Callahan: Read We Forget: The Melungeon Colony of Newman's Ridge . Overmountain Press, Johnson City, Tenn. 2000, pp. 174-185.
Web links
- Vardy Community Historical Society
- Digital Library of Appalachia - Photography and other materials on the Vardy Community School
Coordinates: 36 ° 35 ′ 3 ″ N , 83 ° 11 ′ 19 ″ W.