With the temps being in the single digits last week, I can think of no place better than being inside. It gave me the opportunity to work on a post which I’ve neglected for the last several months due to work occupying so much of my time and psyche.

This is another place I came across on one of my Saturday afternoon outings. The gentleman that owns the store in Nubia, from my last posting, told me about this old school a few miles south but couldn’t give a name for it. During the week Of course, the following Saturday I had to go see it and was saddened to discover that it was in terrible shape, one of the walls had collapsed and the metal roof had been partially removed. He couldn’t provide any information about it but after looking at it, my guess it’s early 20th century and I did discover some photos on the internet that shows students from sometime around 1907-08. These one and two room schoolhouses dotted the rural landscapes of Tennessee and Kentucky and were very important to those communities. Kids couldn’t board a school bus or be dropped off by the parents back then. They had to walk to school, just as my mother did when she was a girl in Happy Valley. Not every building should be saved but something like a school should be preserved in these rural areas since they help provide a tangible history of these rural communities. Though not ornate in detail, the school still had beauty in its utilitarian form. It is the only “public” structure remaining in what was once a sizeable community. There was once a general store, post office, mill, and drug store operating in Brackintown but none remain standing. The first Brackin, James Brackin, Sr., to move into the area from North Carolina was in 1794,

purchasing 694 acres from Samuel Marsh, two years after Kentucky became a state and two years prior to when Tennessee was admitted to the Union. Interesting to note, though, that there are two spellings of Brackin/Bracken, but I was unable to find a reason for this. Could it have been a falling-out between relatives…

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~tnsumner/sumncomm.htm