THE SCHOOLS
& CHURCHES SHAPED RAINSVILLE'S HISTORY
One hundred years ago, Sand Mountain life
revolved around row crops, church and school. In 1906, there
was no school at Rainsville, or Parker Town as the crossroads
area was known at the time.
The first church in the town was a methodist
church that preceded Parker Town by about 12 or 13 years. From
the early 1870s to the late 1890s it was housed in a log building.
When Rainsville began to emerge the church resting between Rainsville
and Chavies, where the Chavies Missionary Baptist Church was
organized in 1903. Today's Robertson Chapel United Methodist
Church has its roots in that first methodist church, and is located
adjacent to where the log cabin stood.
Many times in that era, churches and schools
shared the same building. Other rural schools of the era were
started when the parents of a large family decided to provide
an education for their children. Some built one-room private
schools on their own property. Others teamed up with neighbors
or relatives to build a school, often on donated land. There
was a Shiloh School, DeShields School, Hall's School, Pope School,
and Chavies School all within two or three miles of the crossroads
of Parker Town. There are 98 schools included on a 1908 list
found in the book History of DeKalb County Schools.
Chavies had a well established public school
prior to most communities in and around modern Rainsville - by
one account about 10 years earlier than the Parker School. Chavies
preceding Rainsville as a center of commerce with merchants and
mills. It was not inside Rainsville's corporate limits until
the late 20th century.
Lola Hall Tucker, a daughter of Sand Mountain
icon Dr. J.D. "Old Doc" Hall, wrote A History of Chavies
that was included in a number of publications. She stated that
she remembered starting to school in 1897. She described the
school as a one-room building that had been there for many years.
"It was furnished with homemade desks wide enough to seat
two students," she wrote. "My first teacher was Mrs.
Ida Davis Yewell, a native of Lookout Mountain. I do not remember
my first day of school, but I do remember the first words I learned
were The Fort Payne Journal."
Teachers were paid by the parents and earned
very little. The school year lasted about three months in most
cases - two months in the summer and a month in the winter. The
children weren't as busy on the farm during those three months,
so they went to school.
The first school in downtown Rainsville, Parker School, opened
in 1907. It shared a tiny building that was also Rainsville's
first known commercial establishment - Will Rains' store. Lillie
Durham was the first teacher. The oneroom building was at the
southwest corner of the crossroads. Tol Parker is credited with
starting that first school. His and his brother's children accounted
for most of the first students. Later that same year, a new Parker
School building was erected. Its location was on the grounds
of the present day First Baptist Church. The school building
served as a multi-purpose facility. On Sunday it was the village's
church. It was around this time residents started referring to
the settlement and its school as Rainsville.
In 1912, a new three room, three teacher
Rainsville School was built with Susie McCurdy as its schoolmaster.
With a new school building, the first school building could be
used exclusively as the baptist church. During the railroad speculation
years of 1913 to 1915, it was known as the the Santileon City
Church. Today's First Baptist Church grew out of that original
baptist church at the old Parker School.
From 1900 to 1912, schools had just started
to be supported by the government, and money was scarce. "The
professional few who had no work for their children at home would
subscribe to a fund to supplement what public funds that were
available, to have a much longer term, sometimes as long as nine
months in a year," according to Tucker. "Children who
had to work in the fields could go to school when farm work was
done."
Over at Chavies, the school and the community
became known for an outstanding music program and for producing
many teachers including Mrs. Tucker herself. In her essay Tucker
tells about early days when the 45 children of five Durham brothers,
and the 11 children in her immediate family supported a full-time
teacher. "Eighteen of these 56 children became school teachers,"
she declared.
The Chavies Missionary Baptist Church "was organized in
the loft or attic of the old water mill building. Church was
held in the mill until a two-story house was built on the old
school ground to replace the one-room building. The upper story
was used by Masons and Odd Fellows. The ground floor was used
for school and church," says Tucker.
"The school was the center of community
activities, such as spelling bees, box suppers, tacky parties,
and debates," Tucker continues. The school grew "to
the extent that the large room was divided and another teacher
employed. Later a third teacher was employed and the upper grades
were moved upstairs into the lodge hall," according to Tuckers
essay.
Dozens of families moved in to Rainsville
during the later 1910s. They kept coming in the 1920s and the
automobile began to be as common as the mule and horse. Schools
evolved as government control resulted in improvements. Education
had started to become a standard rather than an option for parents.
In the 1930s, buses came and school consolidation
became the big story for years to come. Plainview Junior High
School, as it was when it opened in the 1930s, represented the
merger of Chavies and Rainsville schools, it also accommodated
the junior high students of several feeder schools in the surrounding
area. Plainview, which opened in 1936, had over a dozen feeder
schools, although not necessarily all at one time. Through the
1940s, 50s and 60s, feeder schools were eventually eliminated
altogether as the modern, government provided education further
evolved.
How did Plainview School get its name?
There are at least four published variations of the story. Two
of them provide more detail than the others while telling almost
identical tales, but crediting two men with naming it. The one
thing for certain is the decision to consolidate Chavies School
and Rainsville School had been made, and the new building would
be ready by 1936. Naturally, some local residents wanted to call
it Chavies and some wanted to call it Rainsville. There were
probably others who thought a fresh, new name would be most appropriate.
On a cool October morning, the DeKalb County School trustees
and superintendent George Hulme met at the site of the school
which was probably under construction to discuss
the situation. Hulme and John Hopper, one of the two men that
donated land for the school, were conversing when one of them
made a statement similar to this one: "It doesn't matter
to me what we call it, but it is in plain view of each community."
The other gentleman immediately remarked that since it was truly
in plain view they should adopt that as the name. After a vote
by the trustees, the name became official.
Plainview was a junior high school from
1936 until 1957. Its first class of seniors graduating in 1959.
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