|
|
Facts and Events
Template:Southwest Virginia Kilgore Tapestry
Notes
From:Source:Reedy:1994:191-192
Concerning E.R. Beverley:
In 1913, having secured a second grade certificate, he taught a five
months term at Twin Branch at a salary of $40.00 per month. The next
year he taught as principal of the Skeetrock school with Clarence
Branham as assistant at a salary of fifty dollars per month.
Having pursued a high school course at odd periods, he was admitted
to Emory and Henry College in the winter of 1915. Here he remained
until June 1917. While retuming home that year he was crippled by
a wreck on the Currier Lumber Company’s narrow gauge line at Pound,
Va.
In the session of 1917-18 he taught languages in Clintwood High
School. The teachers were under a strain that year to hold an enroll-
ment of thirty-two, the required number for an accredited school. The
other high school teachers were J .H. Greene and Miss Bess St. John.
In 1918 he was accepted for military service, serving at Columbus,
Ohio; Union Hill, New Jersey; New York City; and East Norfolk,
Massachusetts.
After this he taught in Wise County for six years and then retumed
to Dickenson, to open a high school at Haysi. In passing he remarks
that the progress his native county has made in education amazed him
on getting a near and intimate view of that progress.
Thc first school referred to as the Kilgore school was domiciled in
a log house of the most primitive type. The ceiling was about ten feet
high, the windows were two in number, a large fireplace occupied one
end and the seats were split log benches. The fireplace was not in use
in Beverly's time, however, as Willie French had secured a stove by
subscription in 1902. After the first few weeks had thinned the pupils,
the remaining ones brought chairs to school. This building, located near
W.B. Trivitt`s place, was replaced in 1905 by a frame building, which
was used until the school was dispensed with in 1919.
The reference to the surname "Kilgore" and to W.B. Trivett, would seem to place this school in the Georges Fork area. Isaac Willis =Nancy Bond settled hereabout 1856. Their daughter, Rebecca E. Kilgore would latter marry James Willis son of Amos Willis of Backbone Ridge. James and Rebecca made their home in this same Georges Fork area, where they raised numerous children. Isaac's property would eventually come into the hands of Wiley B. Trivett who is presumably the W.B. Trivett mentioned here. Wiley was an old man, but still quite alive, in the early 1970's when I visited him with my father, T.L. Willis, son of Barlow son of James Willis of Georges Fork. The children of James and Rebecca might well have attended this school, though they would have been adults when E.R. Beverley graduated from it with a "second grade certificate".
|
|
