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On
a hot day in August several weeks before school was to begin in the fall of
1903, the birth of the New Hope School was planned. Because of bad roads
and little means of transportation, a community situated in the hills three
to four miles east of Wynne, Cross County, Arkansas, needed just one room to
serve as a school for its many youngsters. Three directors of School
District 25 in Cross County purchased for the school district one acre of
land for “Five Dollars cash in hand,” from J. A. and Eliza Wigley. The
three school directors were Frank Head, James Woods and J. D. Milton. Their
children would soon be able to graduate from the eighth grade.
The recorded deed showed
the land to have been originally purchased by School District 25 on August
24, 1903. However, the deed was not recorded until
April 18, 1904.*
The one-room New Hope
School was erected facing west on a dirt road in the style of almost all
one-room schools of the time, with two doors in the front, three
double-hung, four-over-four windows on each side and a window at the back.
Board siding surrounded the structure topped by stylish, one-by-twelve
fascia which remains in good condition today. The brick chimney directed
coal or wood smoke upward through the high-pitched shake roof. Brick for
the chimney was purchased from Dickinson Brick Company. One brick remains of
the original chimney, stamped with the name, Dickinson, Little
Rock. The chimney needed
no concrete base at the bottom, as dry Crowley’s Ridge clay is much like
concrete. The brick was merely laid directly onto the dirt and mortared.
The builders were sure that the foundation would not wash away because it
would be protected by the building. They were correct, for the
lower part of the brick chimney remains intact.
The part of the chimney
above the flooring has been removed. The original, pine, weatherboard
siding remains intact. Some of the doors and windows are in pieces but are
still inside the building, and the later-added
light fixtures survive.
In the original room, the
sub-floor was constructed of four-inch pine boards laid across heavy floor
joists which ran north and south. In the
opposite direction, another pine floor was laid atop this sub-floor. This
foundation was supported by concrete piers set on
24-inch square concrete bases buried
into the ground. Years of heavy rains have washed away the playground from
around the building, exposing the bases under the concrete piers. However,
an 18 inch layer of hard clay still lies under the building, untouched by
time.
There was no electric
service in rural areas during the early 1900s, thus the students used oil
lamps during dark winter days.
The school flourished for
many years until the building became too small for its students and a north
room was added. There is no exact date as to which year the north room was
constructed, but according to Sandra Kellogg Johnson, her mother, Rubye
Estes Kellogg taught all eight grades during 1927-28, which would attest to
the building’s being a one-room school at least until 1928;
but at present, we have no way of knowing for certain.
A
report by New Hope student and later teacher, Willene Lindley Hampton,
declares that she started first grade at New Hope in 1924 and the school
consisted of two rooms at that time. She attended the school for eight
years and taught there for two terms, 1936/37 and 1937/38.
Sandra Kellogg Johnson
related that when teaching at New Hope, her mother boarded with the Fosters
and rode a horse to school. Miss Estes came in each cold morning and built
a fire in the wood heater.
When construction was begun
on the north room addition, it was decided that only two windows were needed
on the north side of the smaller new room. The two windows are still in
place. One window was put into the east wall and one outside door was
placed on the north end of the east wall. Two windows were placed on the
west elevation of this room. The windows, floors and walls were matched as
well as possible to the original building, but there was no way to perfectly
duplicate the older materials. The floor in the new addition was run in the
opposite direction from the floor in the original room, but the same plan
was again used – pine four-inch flooring over pine four-inch sub-floor.
A chimney to accommodate
the heating stove was needed for the new room. Brick was either difficult
to get or to purchase, and to save brick, the chimney in the north room was
perched upon a five-foot-high, 18-inch wide wood shelf braced from the floor
angling outward and upward. As shown by the markings on the broken brick
found in the rubble of both chimneys, the brick used in the addition was
different from the older Dickinson brick used in the chimney of the
one-room, original school. The addition of the north room forced the
builders to board up the now inside windows so the two teachers could teach
without noise from the adjoining room. An attempt was made to match the
original boards; however, the seams still show through a good coat of paint.
One of the original three north windows was remade to provide a door
connecting the two rooms. After the school closed, the majority of this
wall was removed in order to make a large peach-grading facility, leaving on
the floor the scars where the original windows were based.
During the last 20 or so
years of its use as a school, electricity was added to the two rooms. Two
ceiling lights were placed in the north room and three lights were hung from
chains in the original south room.
Sometime during the
existence of the century-old structure, the shake roof was covered with
galvanized, corrugated tin sheets. Galvanized guttering was placed on the
lower sides of the roof to channel water into the newly-built concrete
cistern on the east side of the structure. Concrete steps were also added
to the back door. The students then had water to drink and didn’t have to
bring it in a “fruit jar.” Former student Robert Crawford states that they
all drank out of the same dipper.
In August of 1940, the
upper bricks of the cistern were removed. During this remodeling, a well
was lowered into the eastern edge of the cistern and a hand pump was placed
on the pipe. A brick, half-circle surround was built over the cistern. The
builder signed his work, “Blt by F. T. Hall, 8 – 7 – 40.” This was Forrest
Rufus Hall who had been a student of New Hope and whose children were
current students of the school. (Hall’s granddaughter, Leigh Hall Smiley,
is an enthusiastic member of the 2007 New Hope Restoration Committee.)
Another small room was
later added beside the back porch of the now two-room structure in hopes of
having a “soup kitchen.” One student, Eloise Davis, remembers being served
juice from that area. Former teacher, Mrs. Nell Sanders, states that the
students kept their coats and lunches in there, but that it never served as
a kitchen.
There are actually two
dates relative to the consolidation of the New Hope School with Wynne School
District 9. On April 1, 1947, the Wynne School Board voted to assume the
responsibility of providing school facilities for the children living in
what was known as New Hope School District No. 25, provided that the County
Board of Education consolidate the district. In a May 6, 1947 Wynne School
Board meeting, the consolidation was declared complete. Primary and
intermediate students were housed in the New Hope building while junior high
students were bused to Wynne. On June 5, 1951, Wynne School Superintendent
Donald Blackmon and the Board members voted to discontinue the operation of
the New Hope School and to transfer the entire student body to Wynne.
Former student Doris Jean Midkiff taught at New
Hope the final term of 1950-51. From that date, the New Hope School
had its doors closed to education.**
New Hope School was
admitted to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places on July 22, 2002.
On Monday, July 16, 2007,
the school building, along with one acre of land, was deeded as a gift by
Leo and Charlene Smith of Wynne to the Cross County Historical Society, and
a New Hope School Restoration Committee was formed. Brian Driscoll,
Technical Assistance Coordinator with the Arkansas Historic Preservation
Program, is consultant for the committee. Volunteers for restoration, along
with many others, are Danny Ball, builder; Carol McCrary, vice-chair; Cathy
Hagler, secretary, Barbara Burkhart, secretary/treasurer; Tommy McCrary;
Florence Halstead; Leigh Ann Chambers; Leigh Smiley; and Bridget Hart,
chairperson of the New Hope School Restoration Committee.
The first day of
restoration was begun on a sunny and dry, cool July 21, 2007. The first
thing to go was a south lean-to which had been added by Mr. Smith to shelter
his cows. Before that, the building had been used as a peach shed. Large,
old metal signs and pieces of corrugated tin which had been protecting the
windows were stripped off the outside, and loads of trash removed from the
interior of the building. The restoration endures with hopes of listing the
building on the National Register of Historic Places.
Proud descendants of
School District 25 Directors Frank Head, James Woods, and J. A. Milton
reside today in the same area where the building is located. They continue
to support the restoration of the New Hope School.
- Bridget Hart |