Vardy Community School
The Vardy Community School was a Presbyterian mission school, which consisted in the village Vardy in Hancock County, Tennessee in the late 19th and early 20th century. At the time of its founding, the school was the only institution that offered a primary school education of the children of the Melungeons in the remote mountainous areas on the border between Tennessee and Virginia. Presbyterian missionaries operated the school until 1955, then became part of the public school system in Hancock County. 1984, the school and connected with the mission buildings in the area as a Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places were taken.
The late 19th and early 20th century, the Appalachians dozens of village schools and mission schools were established in rural areas. 1892, the Presbyterian Church decided to build such a school in Vardy, a settlement in the heart of Melungeon country in the valley of the Blackwater Creek. Over the next 45 years, the mission school grew to a small settlement with a three-story school house, a church, a Manse, a library and several houses. The school house has just collapsed, the alumni of the school and others interested in history to receive the ruins and associated buildings as a historic site. In 2000, resulting in the 19th century log cabin of Melungeon - Schwarzbrennerin Mahala Mullins was built on a place on the opposite side of the street the Vardy School again.
Location
The settlement Vardy, which is sometimes referred to as the Vardy Valley, is situated in a narrow valley of the Blackwater Creek has incised between Newman's Ridge in the south and Powell Mountain in the north. The valley, which belongs to the catchment area of the Clinch River, extends about 15 km from the Mulberry Gap southwest of Vardy to Blackwater in Lee County on the northeast. Vardy is still relatively isolated, the main access road leads from Sneedville on the Tennessee State Route 63, which switchbacks in a series of steep traverses the Newmans Ridge, before it crosses near the Mulberry Gap the Vardy Blackwater Road. The Vardy Community School is located on this road, about 8 kilometers east of its junction with TN- 63rd
History
Beginning of the 19th century it was one of the early Melungeon settlers, born 1764 Vardeman " Vardy " Collins, a large piece of land in the territory of Newman's Ridge allocated. On this land later school and church emerged. In the following decades his descendants built the settlement on the Blackwater Creek, which bears his name. When in 1834 the Constituent Assembly Tennessee Melungeons defined as " free people of color ", select them or visiting government-funded public schools were denied. This discrimination led to the Melungeons of Newman's Ridge developed into a closed, klanähnlichen community.
The Presbyterians were in Vardy active from the end of the 19th century, when the itinerant Presbyterian minister Christopher Humble and HP Cory sporadic service in the Blackwater Valley were holding. In 1892 the presbytery decided in Holston to set up a mission school in Vardy and certain Annie Miller and Maggie Axtell as missionaries who would be working here. Batey Collins, a grandson of Vardeman and his wife Cynthia presented several acres of land for the construction of the Mission School and a church available to other residents in the area presented timber available and helped build. The Vardy Mission School took the school operating in a no longer existing log cabin on from untreated logs. It was the first school that offered the children in the valley, the state- prescribed eight years of elementary education. The Vardy Presbyterian Church was completed in 1899 and a new school building in 1902.
In 1910, the Scottish missionary and graduate of Columbia University Mary Rankin arrived in Vardy, where she worked from there for more than three decades as a teacher and a nurse. Rankin instructed the local mothers in the prenatal care and birth care and fought against malnutrition in the valley. Between 1920 and 1952, the Vardy mission prospered under the leadership of Chester F. Leonard and his wife Josephine. A new three-story school house, an energy supply which got a generator of Delco, was taken in 1929 in operation. From the completion of the school to the Vardy Mission School became the Vardy Community School.
A series of interim pastors followed Leonard. Although the church school in 1955 sold it to the Hancock County, there was a school until 1973, in the Presbyterian Church still found up to 1980 worship instead. Were recorded as a school, church and outbuildings in 1984 in the National Register of Historic Places, Vardy had only eight inhabitants. With a grant of $ 10,000, which the Tennessee Humanities Council had given the Vardy Community Historical Society began with the restoration of the remaining buildings of the Vardy Community School. In 2000, the group was also the cabin of Mahala Mullins repaired and moved them from their former location at the height of Newman's Ridge to the Vardy Blackwater Road, opposite the church.
Historical Buildings
Vardy School Community Historic District
The Vardy School Community Historic District consists of eight contributing buildings with several outbuildings. These buildings all have a traditional look, but the school and some of the houses have features of the bungalow - style on, and the bell tower of the church has Gothic influences. The amount end buildings include:
- The Vardy Community School; it is a three-story building, which was built in 1929 and designed by William H. Leonard, father of Chester F. Leonard. The building was originally a wood stud construction with Gambreldach and clad with corrugated metal facade. The 96 windows of the building allowed the lush sunlight in the cooler months to penetrate into the building and made it possible in the warm months to produce drafts in the classrooms for cooling. The building collapsed in October 2003 and only the walls of the ground floor on the south side and part of the ground floor remained intact. The school has five outbuildings: a wooden frame garage, a storehouse of limestone, a bath house and a water storage tank in each of the same material and the house of the teacher, which was created as a majority of the other buildings in the historic district in timber frame construction.
- The Vardy Presbyterian Church; a one-story building, which was built in 1899 by Morgan Miles Osborne and Watson from the located near Blackwater. The church has white wood walls, a steeply -drawn sheet metal roof and a two-story bell tower with a pitched roof. The entrance to the church is done by a double-leaf door at the foot of the bell tower. The church has a pointed arch windows on the flanks and a three-part lancet windows with tracery on the front. Heavy double swinging doors separate the vestibule from the sanctuary of the church.
- The Chester F. Leonard Manse; This one-story 1921 built in timber frame construction building is a prefabricated house by a manufacturer from Iowa. It is covered with shingles and has a gable roof.
- The library next to it in a 1929 -built single-storey building with a facade cladding of corrugated iron and four windows in the front.
- A shop in a 1937 -built single-story wood frame house.
- The second Vardy Mission School; this is a one and a half storey built in 1902 Prefabricated building with shingles, a steep gable roof and covered porch. The building replaced a log cabin in front of almost a decade housed the first mission school. After the completion of the new Vardy Community School in 1929, the building was converted into a residence.
- A one and a half storey house, which was built in 1920; there is a built in timber frame construction house with a gable roof and a covered porch on the front.
- 1934 built one-storey house with a gable roof and a covered porch, belong to the two contributing outbuildings - a garage with double doors made of limestone and a small storage shed.
Mahala Mullins Cabin
The Mahala Mullins Cabin was once the home of the famous Melungeon - Schwarzbrennerin Mahala Mullins ( 1824-1898 ). Mullins was suffering from elephantiasis, which it increased enormously in weight. This disease also leads to exaggerations in size led. Taxman had knowledge of Mullins ' bootleggers activities and often destroyed their distillery, were, however, because of their size will not be able to arrest them.
The cottage is a modest two-story Dogtrot hut, which was assembled from felled poplar strains by dovetail joint. Massive chimneys from local stones are found at both ends of the cabin. The covered passage was closed in the 1920s to zuschaffen more space, but was restored to the original state accordingly. The cabin was originally located on the slope of Newman's Ridge on the plot of Dan and Chris Williams. The Williams' gave the hut of the Vardy Community Historical Society and in 2000 the cottage was moved and restored.