School bells silenced by the hot summer of 2016 stirred to life again this past week. Students outfitted in crisp uniforms or artfully-aged jeans and loaded with the latest in dry erase markers, hand sanitizer and scientific calculators, flooded school hallways. At about the same time, off a rural Clay County road, Billy Vest rang another school bell, a more old-fashioned kind. The iron bell on a sentry post near the door of Tibbee School pealed loud and clear, but there are no longer any children to file inside the spartan, wooden structure. This building on the National Register of Historic Places is one of the few remaining one-room schoolhouses still standing in the state, a testament to a bygone era and to the determination of Billy’s mother.
Billy inherited something akin to a caretaker’s role after Lucille Vest passed away in 1998. Saving the school that appears to have been in active use from approximately 1890 until the early 20th century had been a passion of hers, one that took root around 1975.
“She was always doing something, and she just got a bee in her bonnet that something needed to be done about the school,” said Billy’s wife, Annette. After ringing the old bell, Billy stepped through the door of the quaint school building on Vest land in the Tibbee community. No air moved inside, where time paused. A black, potbelly stove stood front and center, a couple of donated vintage desks nearby. On one wall hung aged copies of student rosters from long ago, names and ages preserved in the teacher’s handwriting. The late Lucille unearthed these records in her research, much of it done at the Clay County Courthouse.
A table in the center of the room bore a photograph labeled as the last class of Tibbee School, dated 1933. A large map Lucille drew of what Tibbee probably looked like in the late 1800s lay next to it. The railroad tracks and depot that made it a rather thriving small community — the halfway point for travelers between Columbus and West Point — are there. The stables, school, stores and grist mill, too. The project illustrates how important Lucille felt remembering was.
Mission of preservation
“Before my mother decided we needed to save the old school building, we were raising turkeys in it,” Billy said with a grin. It had also been used for hay storage. But once Lucille made up her mind, it was all hands on deck. Family members and neighbors were rallied to right the leaning structure. Missing boards inside and out were replaced. Exterior walls were repaired, using as many of the original square nails as could be salvaged. Gallons of water sealant were applied.
All the effort attracted attention as word got around. The wood-burning stove and school bell, both similar to what were originally at the schoolhouse, were donated by former student C.W. Wright and his wife. In the 1980s, a festival to benefit the Tibbee Volunteer Fire Department was held at the site, complete with arts and crafts, a band, food and games. At Christmastime, Lucille and others organized wreath and craft sales at the school.
Children from Jane Upton’s classes at Oak Hill Academy visited, sometimes dressed in period clothes for Colonial School Days. They got a glimpse of schooling they could scarcely imagine — when students aged 5 to 20 were all taught in the same room, as class records attest. When children helped haul in wood for the stove and swept floors for the common good. Where the fortunate arrived on horses, ponies or mules, and all others had to walk; yes, often for miles.
Older students helped younger ones, and when they were needed in the fields for planting or harvesting, school had to come second. The Bible was often one of the first books studied, along with McGuffey Readers. Students were expected to show respect for their teacher, to speak the truth and be punctual. Punishments might take the form of a sharp rap with the rod, standing with one’s nose inside a drawn circle on the board or wall or, for the boys, being made to sit on the girls’ side of the room. Some, no doubt, would have preferred the rod.
Schools in the South may often have suffered from poor economic conditions, but outside of school hours these one-room hubs also provided a pulse point for many rural communities, a place where potluck suppers, spelling bees, hoedowns, political rallies and even worship services might be held.
Better roads and the emergence of school buses heralded the phaseout of America’s one-room schools around the 1930s. A new era in education was taking shape. Except for Lucille Vest’s bee in the bonnet, Tibbee’s reminder of that dwindling past would probably have disappeared by now. Her son Billy and other Vest family members hope to keep that vestige of history intact.
“It was so important to her, I couldn’t see it go, so I keep the grass cut, keep it shored up,” said Billy, thumbing through his mother’s photo album of past schoolhouse workdays and community celebrations. “There are not many of these old things around anymore.”
Editor’s note: For more information about Tibbee School, contact Billy Vest at 662-295-0250.
Jan Swoope is the Lifestyles Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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