Tidbit of Shelby County History
Wedgeworth School

This week’s article was compiled by Sandra Bush Brownslow from personal interviews by Herbert Eakin, Rev. Leonard Milford, Emma Lee Milford, Annie Ruth Tate, Tony Tate, Cohron Bush, and TAGHS files. The article was taken from the “Timpson, Texas Area History, 1800-2002.”

Wedgewood was the name of the school in the Corinth Community. Corinth was established about 1852 and is situated along the norther boundary of Shelby County adjacent to the Panola County line. When the Wedgeworth, Milford, Eakin and related families left Marshall County, Alabama with a caravan of wagons enroute to Texas. The reason the families left for Texas was cheap land, crops good, and they had other family members already in Texas.

Wedgewood school classes were first held in the church’s log cabin when it was built. But, within a very few years a separate log building was built specifically for a school. The log school was located a few miles southwest of the church in the FM 1970 area and located on Clem and Dee Eakin’s land. The first school building was replaced with a whitewashed building make of planks in 1912. This school building was located a short distance away from where the log school had been and was next door to and on Lem and Susie Eakin’s original home place in Corinth.

Because most settlers had large families, the school continued to grow with more and more school age children. The school always had what was referred to as a “big boom” and a “little room”. The little room classes were usually grades one through four and the big room classes were for the higher grands. Individual desks did not exist. Long picnic style homemade tables were set up for each grade with benches attached to the sides.

In September 1927 Shelby County Court records, an election was ordered for the issuance of bonds for the purpose of constructing an addition of wooden material to the (existing) free public school. This was a four-room school by 1933 when their first white-washed plank school burned to the ground just a few days before school started. The board and parents met and decided to start school on time anyway by housing each grade in a different home. All the students returned to school except for few who had transferred to schools outside the district. Construction began immediately on a new plank school that was painted white. The new four-room school was the final building for WedgeworthCounty School District No. 2.

Over the years, there were many teachers at Wedgewood School. Some of the teachers’ names remembered are:  Myrtie Stanfield, Oran Brumble, Dove Billingsley, Mr. Ramsey, Bruce Harper, Emery Wedgworth, Matt McGee, Fannie Mae McGee, Emmett Stanfield and Anna (Tims) Stanfield, Fannie Humphries, Beryl Rider, Grace Allison, Alice Johnson, David Wright, Bertie Bittick, Rushing Manning, Herbert Eakin, Wade Bates, Solly E. McLeroy and Estelle McLeroy.  Prior to 1920, rural schoolteachers in Teas were not required to have a college degree or have even attended college. They were only required to pass a test given at the courthouse of their respective county seat to qualify for a teaching certificate.

Before 1936, when Cohron Bush first began teaching, some college was required. He said that he had two years of college before he taught at the Wilda School. In 1944, he became a teacher and principal at Wedgewood School and implemented an occasional lunch program. Some of the cooks remembered are Oneita (Hunt) Stilley, Rachel (Bush) Tinkle, and Minnie Lee (Courtney) Hudson. One year Hugh Milford had a bumper cabbage crop which was a big help in the lunch program. Today we have school cafeterias, but in the daysrural schools around Timpson, it could hardly be called a cafeteria and lunch was not available every day.

Conveniences such as plumbing, running water, air conditioning, electricity, and other necessities were not available during these rural school days. To remedy the water situation, the school trustees dug a shallow well. The water was good, so they set up a barrel with a faucet on the side of the school porch, and then drew enough well water to fill the barrel. At times, the children brought their own glass to school since this was also before papercups. In addition, in later years, Jeaneva Ann Wedgeworth said that they were required to bring a pint of milk to drink each day. Since she did not like milk, she churned her milk on the way to school and gave it to Onita Stilley to use in the cornbread for lunch that day. Coal oil lamps were in classrooms for light.

The school remained active until around 1955 when it was consolidated with Timpson Independent School District. It is interesting to note that the school was in operation for approximately one hundred years before closing.