Newberry Schools and Churches Ramble – Part Two

Glynda and I were on a ramble through Newberry County. I had several points of interest loaded into my GPS, including some schools and historic churches. So far we had visited three historic schools one one church, but we were just getting started. There was much more to see.

We had to run into Prosperity for a bit, and while there we caught a few of the old railroad buildings. Many of these had been turned into art studios.

I had one place in Prosperity I wanted to stop. Just south of town is the old city cemetery. I had visited here only once before, back in 2007 with my parents. I’ve got photos posted to Flickr from that trip, but for whatever reason none of those made it into the blog post. My blogging workflow was a bit different back then – more spontaneous, and with much less research.

Regardless, we found it with no trouble and pulled in. The cemetery is rather large, and contains many very old headstones, dating back to the early 1800s. Find-a-Grave lists 1380 burials at this site. There were several old-styled stones with hipped tympanum.

There were several old headstones that appeared to be roughly carved.

There were several signature stones. I found one by “Walker” and added a new name to my collection – Brown, of Columbia.

The most eye-catching features, of course, are the statuary. The grave of Minnie Moseley Zimmerman featured a striking sculpture that was listed as “Mother and Babe.” Find-a-grave also lists an infant Zimmerman at this location.

The grave of young Cedric Young was topped with a life-sized cherub (assuming anyone knows how large cherubs actually get.)

There was also a family plot with a sundial, which was off by an hour because of daylight savings.

There were many more interesting graves that we photographed, but I didn’t include here. I still had lots of POIs in my GPS, though, and it was time to move on.

In the last post I wrote about Stoney Hill School and how its high school got relocated to O’Neal High School. Well, O’Neal was next up on my list. We headed down 391 and found “School Street”, which looked promising.

Sadly, the school was no longer there. In its place was a Dickies Clothing manufacturer.

So far I’ve not been able to find any photos of the old school or other information.

The next school on my list was Mount Moriah School. I had seen that this was in the same location as Mount Moriah AME Church, so I wondered if it was another Rosenwald school. The Fisk Rosenwald database doesn’t have a listing for this school, though.

I had first spotted the location in Google Earth, and it looked like there was still a school there. However, when we arrived, we weren’t entirely sure. The building we found might have been an old school, but it might have just been an auxiliary building for the church. It wasn’t a standard Rosenwald plan or other school plan I recognized, so it was hard to tell.

From Mount Moriah we dipped down across the Saluda River and into Saluda County. Our first point of distraction wasn’t one I had in my POI list, but that’s the nature of our rambles – if we see something cool we’re going to explore it.

Corinth Lutheran Church is located in the northeast corner of Saluda County. It’s a larger white frame building built in 1927. The church itself was founded in 1842. The first three photos were taken by Glynda, and the last one by me.

With an older church you expect to find an old cemetery, and that was the case…sort of. While there were several old stones, most of them looked newer. A couple of them had the word “Replacement” carved on the back.

One more modern stone caught our attention. The stone read as follows:

This memorial erected to the memory of those, whose names are inscribed here-on, and whose bodies now rest beneath the waters of Lake Murray.

Interesting. I thought that every attempt was made to transfer remains from known cemeteries in areas to be inundated for lakes. Looking back at the Find-a-Grave listing for the Prosperity Cemetery I saw that they had a similar stone that I had somehow missed. This photo from the site was taken by C. Kendrick in 2007.

Set apart from the main cemetery was another monument. This one marked the location of the former Corinth School. According to the SCIWAY listing, the school actually predates the church, and was known as the Fort Toland School. The name of the school was changed to match the church.

In searching for information on the school I was able to find the following information on the RootsWeb site:

CORINTH SCHOOL

There is no accurate knowledge as to when the school was at this place first taught, but we know that years before Corinth Church was organized (1842) there was a log school house on the grounds in which a man by the name of Eichleberger taught, and also preached. The name of this school house was Fort Toland.

After Corinth Lutheran Church was organized, and the land donated by Mr. Pope for church and school purposes, the school was then also known as Corinth School. About this time Mr. Rawl (a teacher of much fame) taught the school for many years.

Some pupils from off boarded in the community in order that they may be under the tutorage of this great teacher. After the Civil War this school was taught by Rev. S. T. Hallman.

We find the building now is a frame structure, somewhat rude, but an improvement over the log building. We can’t say exactly when this improvement was made, but can safely say that it was built before Mr. Rawl taught.

We are not able to give the exact date when Corinth School District was laid off, but think it was about 1890. Then a better building was erected, which in a few years mysteriously burned, and another building was erected, and it was torn down when the new school, Hollywood, was built.

The following list of teachers taught Corinth School:

1. Mr. Rawl
2. Rev. S. T. Hallman
3. Mrs. Rebecca Wyse
4. Thomas Boozer
5. Lawson Wyse
6. Willie Lake
7. B. F. Samples
8. Theodore Merchant
9. Miss Della Coleman
10. Fred Lond
11. Miss Bessie Rauch
12. Prof. Sid Derrick
13. James Hernter
14. A. W. Shealy
15. H. C. Unger
16. J. C. Riley
17. Mrs. F. G. Harman
18. Miss Nannie Shealy
19. Miss Helen Lake
20. Miss Rose Nichols
21. J. A. Rauch
22. Miss Vixie Rauch
23. Eddie Black
24. Miss Miellette Minick

Ed: This was transcribed from three yellowed pages of 4″ x 6″ three-ring punched paper. The name of the writer is unknown at this time.

There were multiple mentions of the Corinth School on the Chronicling America site. Most of these were simple announcements about when the next session would begin and who would be teaching. However, I was able to find a news reference in a 1907 edition of The Watchman and Southron from Sumter County that mentions the fire at Corinth. It seems to indicate that the fire was intentionally set.

The Newberry Herald and News also described the fire as possible arson.

(On a side note, there was another school near Seneca named Corinth which also burned, this one in 1905.)

I was unable to find a photo of the building that replaced the one that burned. If the school was torn down in 1927, then it was too early to be included in the SC School Insurance Photos. That collection does include the Hollywood School, which replaced Corinth.

We still had more to see and do, so we left Corinth Church. Much of our dip down into Saluda County covered ground I’d photographed before, so I didn’t take many photos of that part of the trek. I’ll describe what we saw, though…in Part 3. Stay tuned.