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Morgan School, Cumberland County, KY remembered Morgan School was located in the rolling hills between Columbia and Burkesville and is now restored as a museum. The little one-room school is remembered here by the Chowning brothers who had many family connections. Morgan School represents the backbone of public education, a bygone era way of learning that was repeated throughout Kentucky and across the nation in small, rural communities. Click on headline for story with photo(s) By Dr. John E. Chowning From talking with our late father and others in the local community years ago, I think Morgan School was constructed in the period right before the beginning of World War I. It was constructed on a piece of property that was then part of the "Morgan Farm." The Morgan’s were the family from whom our father purchased our farm when he moved to Kentucky from the Dale Hollow Lake area of north-central Tennessee. He and his mother and sister had been displaced by the impoundment of Dale Hollow in the early 1940s. My older brother, Joseph Chattin (Joe Chat as we know him) Chowning attended Morgan School during his first three years of grade school. At that time, like many rural one-room schools, grades one through eight were taught by a single teacher in a single classroom. My brother got an excellent academic start at Morgan School. When we started attending Cumberland County Elementary School in Burkesville, he was at the top, and remained at the top, of his class and was an outstanding student throughout his years in the Cumberland County Public Schools. No doubt, there were many very fine teachers, at the Morgan School through the years, who challenged their students to excel and learn. Joe Chat shared this memory from his attendance, "Mrs. Coomer who was a retired teacher from the Louisville area had just moved back to the family farm in Bakerton and she was my teacher all three years. One reason I learned so much at Morgan School was that Mr. Coomer who was also a retired math teacher came to school with Mrs. Coomer most days. He and I often sat in a corner and he taught me on a one to one basis. He was responsible for my love of science and math. Mother taught there when I was 4 or 5 years of age and I went with her most days." He said, "Another memory was of a hand cranked Victrola which played very scratchy sounding records. I think they were 78 rpm. Even though the quality was very poor I considered it to be magical!" The younger children learned from the older students. The school was closed at the end of the 1956-1957 school year - spring of 1957. I began first grade in the fall of 1957 - so I missed being a student there by one school year and was a student in the Cumberland County public schools. Our mother, Elizabeth "Libby" Brockman Chowning who passed away in 1994 and her brother and sister grew up on a farm a couple of miles "down" Crocus Creek and attended the Elliott School, another one room school south of Amandaville which closed in the early 1960s. She taught at Morgan School for a couple of the school's final years, prior to closure, on an emergency certificate basis. I have some limited memory of walking to the school from our house - probably around a half to three quarters mile depending on which route we took. I was there with my mother a few times during her time as the teacher. When I married and started a family of my own, I kidded our four children as they were growing up that I got my kindergarten training at Morgan School by "roaming the hillside behind the school." I have some vague memories of gatherings there at night for "pie supper" type events. We have a few photographs of the school building and the students during the mid-1950s. We had other family members who attended and/or taught at Morgan School. Mother's older sister Marie Brockman Sullivan was a lifelong teacher who taught in the Cumberland, Adair, and Jefferson County schools. And she taught at Morgan School for a few of her early years. Uncle Russell Brockman actually graduated from Morgan. He attended seventh and eighth grades there since "Aunt Sister" was the teacher at that time. He attended the Elliot school his first six years. As a side note, we called our mother's sister, Aunt Sister, since Mother and Uncle Russell both called her "Sister" - thus we knew her as Aunt Sister. Our great uncle, the late George Weatherford Brockman II, who passed away about 20 years ago and lived in Hopkinsville, had attended Lindsey Wilson Normal School in the early 1920s where he received a teaching certificate and then taught at Morgan School for a few years, according to his son, our cousin Jerry Brockman. After the school closed, as contained in the deed, the property reverted to the owner of the surrounding farm - thus our father, Chattin Chowning, took title to the small piece of property including the school building. Through the years, he kept the building in good shape, and it served as a home for a family that worked on the farm for a few years and then became a storage building for several years. In the late 1990s, the Cumberland County Retired Teacher's Association contacted him to ask if our family would donate the school building to their group as a museum of sorts to rural education in the county and as a meeting place. We were thankful to see the building preserved and were pleased to donate the building in memory of our mother. Our father worked with the retired teachers, city and county officials, and others to get the school building moved the approximate 14 miles from our farm on Crocus Creek to the Burkesville Dr. Joseph Schickel Veterans Memorial Park where the building now stands in the years before his death in 2003. Mr. Jessie Grider, who lives in the Amandaville community and who attended Morgan School, did the roofing and other repairs on the building after it was moved. It remains pretty much intact, as it was when it served as a one-room school. There are many other stories to be told about the impact of Morgan School, and other rural community schools like it, from the many other students and families who were a part of this period. It stands as a testimony to the history of rural one-room school education in Cumberland County and represents a bygone era that was repeated throughout our state and nation as small rural communities came together to make public education available to as many people as possible. While we all support a strong and vibrant public education system today with modern facilities and amenities and the marvels of 21st century technology, we also need to acknowledge and recognize the heritage of our many rural one-room schools across the land. The Morgan School is one among many examples of that important part of our history. This story was posted on 2017-04-27 11:30:27
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