Site of Bartley-Woods School

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about a piece of Fannin County history that almost nobody remembers anymore. Almost. Back in the 1890s, Fannin County had rural schools scattered across the land the way you'd scatter seed, each one serving its little corner of the county.

Bartley School was out there. Woods School was out there. Providence School too.

Three separate little institutions, each one doing its level best for the children in its reach. But by 1932, the County School Board had made a decision. They consolidated Bartley, Woods, and Providence into one, and the Bartley-Woods School was born.

Three teachers were responsible for making that consolidation happen, and then turned right around and got to work teaching a wide range of subjects to the kids who showed up at the door. That right there tells you something about the kind of people they were. Then 1940 rolls around, and something remarkable goes up on this very piece of land.

A new brick building, designed by architect Hoke Smith, erected here on land the Bartley-Woods School District had acquired. And it was not a modest little schoolhouse, either. The Works Progress Administration lent its assistance to the construction, and what came out of that effort was seven classrooms, a library, a cafeteria, and an auditorium with seating for three hundred people.

Out here in rural Fannin County. Three hundred seats. By 1941, seven teachers were instructing about two hundred pupils, serving a large area of the county.

The campus was modern. It was the kind of place a community could be proud of, and they were. In the early 1950s, a gymnasium was added.

The school wasn't just educating children, either. It was running community programs that reached out to farmers and to veterans coming home after World War II, and for several years the building itself served as a community center for the whole area. So you had this place that was a school, a gathering hall, a resource for working people and men who'd been to war.

It was doing a lot of heavy lifting for Fannin County. And then, 1958, the County School Board closed the Bartley-Woods School. The building stood on after that, as buildings sometimes do when nobody quite knows what to do with them.

It stood for decades. And then in 1991, it was razed. Gone.

A brick building designed by an architect, built with federal assistance, that held three hundred people in its auditorium, that taught farmers and veterans and two hundred children at a time, reduced to nothing but a marker on the side of a road. That marker was placed in 1996, which means somebody thought it was worth remembering. And they were right.

What the marker says

Several rural schools existed in Fannin County in the 1890s, including Bartley School and Woods School. In 1932 the County School Board consolidated the schools, along with Providence School and formed the Bartley-Woods School. Three teachers were responsible for not only the consolidation, but for teaching a wide range of subjects. A new brick building, designed by architect Hoke Smith, was erected here in 1940 on land acquired by the Bartley-Woods School District. Constructed with assistance from the Works Progress Administration, the new school building included seven classrooms, a library, cafeteria, and an auditorium with seating for 300 people. The modern campus served a large area. By 1941 seven teachers instructed about 200 pupils. A gymnasium was added to the school in the early 1950s. The school not only provided quality education for youth, but also community programs that benefited farmers and returning veterans after World War II. The building also served as a community center for the area for several years. The County School Board closed the Bartley-Woods School in 1958. The building was razed in 1991. (1996)