Wednesday, November 14, 2001
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Wednesday, November 14, 2001 |
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New school site has historic roots By CAROLYN
CARY
A new elementary school is being built beside the Lisbon Baptist Church on Ga. Highway 85 south. The school and the church are in the Rest community, an area that perhaps received its name when wagon trains would stop and rest there, before starting up the arduous Jones Hill. The building that housed the original Rest School sits across the road and a few feet south of the school under construction. It housed grades primer (now called kindergarten) through seventh grade and then the students traveled to Fayetteville. Former student Russell Edmondson attended the school in the 1940s. He said that the first floor was divided down the middle, and the steps leading up to the second floor were just inside the entrance. The second floor was one big room. Grades primer through third grade were on the first floor. Depending on the number of students, the fourth grade might also be on the first floor. Everyone walked home for lunch and Russell lived in the home just south of the old school, now the home of Tom and Gloria Kerlin. One of the those who taught there the longest was Gertrude Dunn Farrer, who was also reared in that area. Others include Mildred Matthews Sams, Jessie Murl Keith, Ginny Rivers, Cleo Mitchell Edmondson, Ware Callaway, who rode a mule from Inman to teach there, Lora Perry, Winna Jones and Elizabeth Mask Smith. The school is believed to have begun in 1905 and operated until 1945. It was on land donated by E. B. Weldon for the purpose of a school and was deeded to the trustees of the Lisbon School, which sat at Bernhard Road and Goza Road. The trustees must have closed that one to build the new one.
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