What Happened to Kentucky's 7,205 One-Room Schools
The film of this episode premieres February 9, 2027 on YouTube. The documents, the transcript and the sources are below now.
In the 1917-18 school year the U.S. Office of Education counted 196,037 one-teacher schools in the United States — seven of every ten public schools in the country. Kentucky had 7,205 of them.
Transcript
The creek bed was the road
R001 One-room school in Breathitt County, Kentucky. Up South Fork of the Kentucky River
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055716 · colorized 2026. View the original.
The creek bed was the road to school, so school ran July to January. Kentucky had four thousand of these. It has none.
S04
Office of Education, The One-Teacher School — Its Midcentury Status, Circular No. 318 (Gaumnitz & Blose, 1950) · title page. View the original.
The federal government counted them every two years for thirty years. Kentucky's line runs from seven thousand two hundred and five, in nineteen eighteen, to one.
R002 One-room school in Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055294 · colorized 2026. View the original.
One thing first. These negatives are black and white. The color was put on by a computer this year — a good guess, not a record.
Breathitt County, 1940
R037 Horse hitched to rail fence outside of school. Up South Fork of the Kentucky River, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055803 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Brethit County, Kentucky, August of nineteen forty. Marion Post Wolcott. Her caption: a horse hitched to the rail fence outside the school.
R020 Steps made of hand hewn logs. School house in Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055787 · colorized 2026. View the original.
She was working for the Farm Security Administration. Steps made of hand-hewn logs — she photographed the steps by themselves.
R007 Mountaineer with his grandson whom he raised in his home with the help of the neighbors. He had been crippled with arthritis most of his life. On the steps of a schoolhouse at South Fork of Kentucky River. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055657 · colorized 2026. View the original.
On those steps: a mountaineer with the grandson he raised in his home with the help of the neighbors. He had been crippled with arthritis most of his life.
R015 Mountaineer with his two grandsons whom he raised in his home with the help of the neighbors. He had been crippled with arthritis most of his life. On the steps of a schoolhouse on South Fork of Kentucky River. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055706 · colorized 2026. View the original.
The same man with both grandsons. Wolcott came back to him three times.
R012 Mountaineer who reared his grandson in his home with the help of the neighbors. He had been crippled with arthritis most of his life. On the steps of a schoolhouse with his dog on South Fork of Kentucky River. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055686 · colorized 2026. View the original.
And once more, with his dog.
Cinderella
S01
Office of Education, Supervision of One-Teacher Schools, Bulletin 1923, No. 9 · p. 1. View the original.
The Office of Education had a name for this school seventeen years earlier. In nineteen twenty-three it called the one-teacher school "the Cinderella of our educational system" — the meanest building, the scantiest supplies, the shortest term, the least trained teachers.
R008 One-room schoolhouse showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055660 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Her caption for this one, and for a dozen more like it: one-room schoolhouse showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment.
R009 One-room schoolhouse showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055665 · colorized 2026. View the original.
The building, from outside. Logs, set up on posts.
R010 One-room schoolhouse showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055673 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Two pupils against the log wall, under the drawings the class had pinned up.
R011 One-room schoolhouse showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055684 · colorized 2026. View the original.
The whole school, lined up in the yard.
R013 One-room schoolhouse showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055691 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Inside. A boy at the blackboard. The desks are the old cast-iron kind, bolted in rows.
R016 One-room school showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055711 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Boys sharing a desk and a book.
R017 One-room schoolhouse showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055720 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Another desk, another book.
R021 One-room schoolhouse showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055806 · colorized 2026. View the original.
A pupil at her desk, barefoot. The school year here began in July and ended in January — the reason is coming.
R023 One-room schoolhouse showing overcrowded conditions and the need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055838 · colorized 2026. View the original.
The teacher reading to the room.
R024 One-room school showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055907 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Girls at the front, and a flag.
R028 One-room schoolhouse showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055707 · colorized 2026. View the original.
The class looking up at the teacher. Wolcott wrote the same caption again: overcrowded, need for repairs and equipment.
R029 One-room schoolhouse showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055812 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Another one-room schoolhouse, another line of children in the yard.
R030 Crowded conditions and lack of equipment in schoolhouse. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055901 · colorized 2026. View the original.
October. Crowded conditions and lack of equipment in schoolhouse. Brethit County.
The mountain counties
S02
Office of Education, Education in the Southern Mountains, Bulletin 1937, No. 26 (Gaumnitz & Cook) · title page. View the original.
Three years before she came, the Office of Education had surveyed the mountain counties of six Southern states. Education in the Southern Mountains, nineteen thirty-seven.
S03
Office of Education, Education in the Southern Mountains, Bulletin 1937, No. 26 (Gaumnitz & Cook) · p. 19. View the original.
Its finding for Kentucky: in the most mountainous counties there were about two-fifths as many pupils in the sixth grade as in the third. In the rest of the state, two-thirds.
R004 Overcrowded conditions and poor equipment in rural mountain school. In Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055674 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Overcrowded conditions and poor equipment in a rural mountain school. Brethit County.
R006 Overcrowded conditions and poor equipment in rural mountain school in Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055703 · colorized 2026. View the original.
The same caption, another room.
R014 One-room school house showing overcrowded conditions and need for repairs and equipment. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055701 · colorized 2026. View the original.
One-room school house. A frame building with a porch, and the children out on it.
R005 Children eating lunch during noon hour by one-room rural mountain school. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055689 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Children eating lunch during the noon hour by a one-room rural mountain school.
![[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Child eating lunch during the noon hour at school in Breathitt County, Kentucky. In his lunch pail were cold potatoes, corn bread and mush]](img/R039.jpg)
R039 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Child eating lunch during the noon hour at school in Breathitt County, Kentucky. In his lunch pail were cold potatoes, corn bread and mush]
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF33-031059 · colorized 2026. View the original.
A child eating lunch at school. Her caption lists what was in his pail: cold potatoes, corn bread and mush.
R003 Overcrowded conditions in a rural school near Morehead, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Rowan County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055302 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Rowan County, near Morehead. Overcrowded conditions in a rural school.
R032 School near Morehead, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Rowan County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055295 · colorized 2026. View the original.
School near Morehead.
R033 School near Morehead, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Rowan County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055303 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Another school near Morehead.
July to January
R042 Going home from school. In Breathitt County, Kentucky. The school year begins in July and ends in January as most of the children have no shoes and insufficient clothing to walk the long distances over bad roads and up creek beds
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF33-031082 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Going home from school. Brethit County. Her caption explains the calendar: the school year begins in July and ends in January, as most of the children have no shoes and insufficient clothing to walk the long distances over bad roads and up creek beds.
R043 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Going home from school. In Breathitt County, Kentucky. The school year begins in July and ends in January as most of the children have no shoes and insufficient clothing to walk the long distances over bad roads and up creek beds]
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF33-031083 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Up the creek bed, because the creek bed was the road.
R041 Going home from school. In Breathitt County, Kentucky. The school year begins in July and ends in January as most of the children have no shoes and insufficient clothing to walk the long distances over bad roads and up creek beds
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF33-031081 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Crossing.
R031 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Children going home from school up Frozen Creek carrying their lunch pails. School is held in the summer and stops in January because the creek beds, roads and inadequate clothing make it impossible for them to come in severe weather. Breathitt County, Kentucky]
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF33-031025 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Children going home from school up Frozen Creek, carrying their lunch pails.
R054 Going home from school in Breathitt County, Kentucky. The school year begins in July and ends in January, as most of the children have no shoes and insufficient clothing to walk the long distances over bad roads and up creek beds
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055825 · colorized 2026. View the original.
A road that was a road. Going home from school.
R055 Going home from school iIn Breathitt County, Kentucky. The school year begins in July and ends in January, as most of the children have no shoes and insufficient clothing to walk the long distance over bad roads and up creek beds
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055854 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Under the cut bank.
R044 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Going home from school. In Breathitt County, Kentucky. The school year begins in July and ends in January as most of the children have no shoes and insufficient clothing to walk the long distances over bad roads and up creek beds]
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF33-031084 · colorized 2026. View the original.
A man on horseback on the school road.
![[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mountain girl riding home from school on muleback. Up South fork of the Kentucky River. Breathitt County, Kentucky]](img/R040.jpg)
R040 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mountain girl riding home from school on muleback. Up South fork of the Kentucky River. Breathitt County, Kentucky]
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-DIG-fsa-8a43456 · colorized 2026. View the original.
A mountain girl riding home from school on muleback, up South Fork.
R045 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Going home from school. In Breathitt County, Kentucky. The school year begins in July and ends in January as most of the children have no shoes and insufficient clothing to walk the long distances over bad roads and up creek beds]
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF33-031084 · colorized 2026. View the original.
A boy and a mule.
R046 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Going home from school. In Breathitt County, Kentucky. The school year begins in July and ends in January as most of the children have no shoes and insufficient clothing to walk the long distances over bad roads and up creek beds]
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF33-031083 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Inside, the light comes from the windows on one side.
R047 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Going home from school. In Breathitt County, Kentucky. The school year begins in July and ends in January as most of the children have no shoes and insufficient clothing to walk the long distances over bad roads and up creek beds]
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF33-031083 · colorized 2026. View the original.
The teacher at the blackboard with her pupils.
R048 Mountain children on steps of school in Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF33-031134 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Mountain children on the steps of school.
R049 Mountain children on steps of school in Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF33-031134 · colorized 2026. View the original.
The same steps, closer.
R050 In the early fall many of the children remain away from school on "syrupping off" days. Sorghum syrup is boiled down from the cane sap by one of the men from the neighborhood who does this work for different members of the communities, taking a share of the syrup for his labor. On the highway between Campton and Jackson, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055551 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Why the room was half empty some days. Her caption: in the early fall many of the children remain away from school on "syrupping off" days, when the sorghum cane is boiled down.
R058 In the fall of the year during the time of "syrupping off" operations many children stay home from school to eat the sorghum when it is boiled down. At a mountaineer's home on the road between Jackson and Campton, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055608 · colorized 2026. View the original.
At a mountaineer's home on the road between Jackson and Campton. The children stayed home to eat the syrup.
The pie supper
R036 Pie supper for benefit of Quicksand School near Jackson. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055785 · colorized 2026. View the original.
A pie supper for the benefit of Quicksand School, near Jackson.
R051 Many parents and young people from the school and nearby communities attend the pie and box supper, given by the school to raise money for additional repairs and supplies. Each box or pie is auctioned off to the highest bidder, sometimes bringing a good deal, since the girl's "boyfriend" usually wins and has the privilege of eating it with her afterwards. Quicksand School, Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055742 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Her caption: parents and young people attend the pie and box supper, given by the school to raise money for additional repairs and supplies.
R052 Many parents and young people from the school and nearby communities attend the pie and box supper, given by the school to raise money for additional repairs and supplies. Each box or pie is auctioned off to the highest bidder, sometimes bringing a good deal, since the girl's "boyfriend" usually wins and has the privilege of eating it with her afterwards. Quicksand school, Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055783 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Each box or pie is auctioned to the highest bidder.
R053 Many parents and young people from the school and nearby communities attend the pie and box supper, given by the school to raise money for additional repairs and supplies. Each box or pie is auctioned off to the highest bidder, sometimes bringing a good deal, since the girl's "boyfriend" usually wins and has the privilege of eating it with her afterwards. Quicksand School, Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055786 · colorized 2026. View the original.
And, she wrote, the girl's boyfriend usually wins, and has the privilege of eating it with her afterwards. The school was repaired with pie money. That is the sentence under all of these pictures.
The count
S05
Office of Education, The One-Teacher School — Its Midcentury Status, Circular No. 318 (Gaumnitz & Blose, 1950) · p. 6. View the original.
Now the count. The Office of Education, nineteen fifty: in nineteen seventeen to eighteen there were in the United States one hundred ninety-six thousand and thirty-seven one-teacher schools — seventy percent of all the public schools in the country.
S06
Office of Education, The One-Teacher School — Its Midcentury Status, Circular No. 318 (Gaumnitz & Blose, 1950) · p. 6. View the original.
By nineteen forty-eight, seventy-four thousand nine hundred and forty-four. The decline, it says, averaged about four thousand and thirty-six per year — or twelve per day.
S08
Office of Education, The One-Teacher School — Its Midcentury Status, Circular No. 318 (Gaumnitz & Blose, 1950) · Table II, p. 19. View the original.
Table Two, by state. Every two years since nineteen eighteen.
S09
Office of Education, The One-Teacher School — Its Midcentury Status, Circular No. 318 (Gaumnitz & Blose, 1950) · Table II, p. 19 (Kentucky). View the original.
The Kentucky line: seven thousand two hundred and five in nineteen eighteen. Four thousand two hundred and eighty in nineteen forty, the year of these photographs. Three thousand four hundred and sixty-two in nineteen forty-eight.
S07
Office of Education, The One-Teacher School — Its Midcentury Status, Circular No. 318 (Gaumnitz & Blose, 1950) · foreword. View the original.
The foreword did not read it as a loss. Nearly seventy-five thousand were still open, it said, and they spelled "educational opportunity to about a million and a half American boys and girls."
S10
Office of Education, The One-Teacher School — Its Midcentury Status, Circular No. 318 (Gaumnitz & Blose, 1950) · summary, p. 14. View the original.
Its summary: "well over half of these schools have passed from the rural landscape." In many states, "approaching the vanishing point."
Mrs. Turner's stone schools
R018 Morris Fork School, built since Mrs. Marie R. Turner has been county superintendent. She is trying to consolidate all the schools and build them of stone since so many of the mountain schools have been burned down several times. She has been encouraging an activity program emphasizing creative arts and crafts using their native clay, wood and other materials. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055730 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Kentucky was building the replacement while she watched. This one, her caption says, was built since Mrs. Marie R. Turner has been county superintendent. Its name is Morris Fork.
R019 Morris Fork School, built since Mrs. Marie R. Turner has been county superintendent. She is trying to consolidate all the schools and build them of stone since so many of the mountain schools have been burned down several times. She has been encouraging an activity program emphasizing creative arts and crafts using their native clay, wood and other materials. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055752 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Turner was trying to consolidate all the schools and build them of stone, "since so many of the mountain schools have been burned down several times."
R022 Big Rock School, built since Mrs. Marie R. Turner has been county superintendent. She is trying to consolidate all the schools and build them of stone since so many of the mountain schools have been burned down several times. She has been encouraging an activity program emphasizing creative arts and crafts using their native clay, wood and other materials. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055830 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Big Rock School, with a playground. Built of stone, for the same reason.
R027 Big Rock school, built since Mrs. Marie R. Turner has been county superintendent. She is trying to consolidate all the schools and build them of stone since so many of the mountain schools have been burned down several times. She has been encouraging an activity program emphasizing creative arts and crafts using their native clay, wood and other materials. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055988 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Big Rock, with the whole school out front.
R025 Big Rock school, built since Mrs. Marie R. Turner has been county superintendent. She is trying to consolidate all the schools and build them of stone since so many of the mountain schools have been burned down several times. She has been encouraging an activity program emphasizing creative arts and crafts using their native clay, wood and other materials. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055986 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Inside Big Rock. Turner was encouraging, in Wolcott's words, an activity program in creative arts and crafts using their native clay, wood and other materials.
R026 Big Rock school, built since Mrs. Marie R. Turner has been county superintendent. She is trying to consolidate all the schools and build them of stone since so many of the mountain schools have been burned down several times. She has been encouraging an activity program emphasizing creative arts and crafts using their native clay, wood and other materials. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055987 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Children building with sticks and blocks. Not a desk bolted to the floor in sight.
R035 One of the better schoolrooms in the new consolidated school. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055708 · colorized 2026. View the original.
One of the better schoolrooms in the new consolidated school. Tables instead of rows.
R038 One of the better schoolrooms in the new consolidated school. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-056007 · colorized 2026. View the original.
The same room, by the windows.
R034 Buckhorn School. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055564 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Buckhorn School.
R056 Pine Mountain settlement school near Harlan, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Harlan County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055687 · colorized 2026. View the original.
And over the mountain in Harlan County, the Pine Mountain Settlement School — a private school, founded in nineteen thirteen, and not in the public count at all.
R057 Meeting and picnic lunch at Pine Mountain settlement school near Harlan, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Harlan County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055775 · colorized 2026. View the original.
A meeting and picnic lunch at Pine Mountain. Her caption, nothing more.
Four hundred and twenty-two
S11
Southern Education Reporting Service, One-Teacher Schools in the States of the Old Confederacy, Oct. 5, 1966 (ERIC ED022579) · p. 1. View the original.
Nineteen sixty-six. A Nashville reporting service surveyed the seventeen Southern and border states. In Kentucky, it found, all but nine of the four hundred and twenty-two one-teacher schools left were in Appalachia, "where consolidation is impeded by inadequate transportation."
S12
Southern Education Reporting Service, One-Teacher Schools in the States of the Old Confederacy, Oct. 5, 1966 (ERIC ED022579) · p. 4. View the original.
Its table. Kentucky, nineteen thirty: six thousand and eighty-nine. Nineteen sixty-five: four hundred and twenty-two. The highest number in the South.
S13
ERIC/CRESS, The One-Teacher School in the 1980s (Muse, Smith & Barker, 1987; OERI contract 400-86-0024) · preface, p. ix. View the original.
A report in nineteen eighty-seven, paid for by the Department of Education, looked back at the whole century. One hundred forty-nine thousand schools in nineteen thirty; about a thousand by nineteen eighty. "Many one-teacher schools were closed, and rightly so."
S14
ERIC/CRESS, The One-Teacher School in the 1980s (Muse, Smith & Barker, 1987; OERI contract 400-86-0024) · Table 1, p. xvii. View the original.
Its Table One, by state: nineteen fifty-nine, nineteen eighty, nineteen eighty-four.
S15
ERIC/CRESS, The One-Teacher School in the 1980s (Muse, Smith & Barker, 1987; OERI contract 400-86-0024) · Table 1, p. xvii (Kentucky). View the original.
Kentucky: one thousand three hundred and forty-three. Two. One.
Saul, Perry County
The one had a name. The Lexington Herald-Leader printed it in June of nineteen eighty-nine: Lower Leatherwood Elementary, in the bend of Leatherwood Creek, in an isolated corner of Perry County. "Kentucky's last one-room school."
Twenty-four pupils, grades two through eight, and one teacher, Glenna Hudson.
"When I came sixteen years ago, we had ninety-three students and three teachers," she told the paper. "I've been by myself for three years now." The building was concrete block, built about nineteen fifty-six to replace an older one-room wooden school that had burned.
D01 Big Rock school, built since Mrs. Marie R. Turner has been county superintendent. She is trying to consolidate all the schools and build them of stone since so many of the mountain schools have been burned down several times. She has been encouraging an activity program emphasizing creative arts and crafts using their native clay, wood and other materials. Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055988 · colorized 2026. View the original.
Burned. The same reason Marie Turner gave Wolcott in nineteen forty for building in stone.
D02 One-room school in Breathitt County, Kentucky. Up South Fork of the Kentucky River
Marion Post Wolcott · Breathitt County, Ky. · 1940 · Library of Congress LC-USF34-055716 · colorized 2026. View the original.
If you went to one of these, or your mother did, the comments are open.
Sources
- U.S. Office of Education, *The One-Teacher School — Its Midcentury Status*, Circular No. 318, by Walter H. Gaumnitz and David T. Blose (Federal Security Agency, 1950). https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED140992 - p. 6: "In 1917-18 there were in the United States 196,037 one-teacher elementary schools. This sum was 70.8 percent of all of the public schools that year." "During the school year 1947-48 there were in operation in the United States a total of 74,944 one-teacher schools" — the decline "averaging about 4,036 per year or 12 per day." - Foreword: "there are still almost 75,000 of them … they still constitute nearly half of all our schools and spell educational opportunity to about a million and a half American boys and girls." - Table II, p. 19 (read off the page image, not the OCR): Kentucky 7,205 (1917-18); 6,256 (1927-28); 4,387 (1937-38); 4,280 (1939-40); 4,158 (1941-42); 3,792 (1943-44); 3,573 (1945-46); 3,462 (1947-48). Continental United States 196,037 → 74,944. - Summary, p. 14: "Nationally speaking, well over half of these schools have passed from the rural landscape during the 30 years from 1917-18 to 1947-48. In many States these small schools are now approaching the vanishing point."
- U.S. Office of Education, *Supervision of One-Teacher Schools*, Bulletin 1923, No. 9. https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED540433 - p. 1: "The one-teacher school the Cinderella of our educational system.—The one-teacher school in the United States appears in comparison with the best graded schools like Cinderella sitting among the ashes. The building in which it is housed is usually the meanest type of school building; the supplies furnished rural children are the scantiest; the school term is usually the shortest; rural teachers represent the most inexperienced, the least adequately trained, and the least skilled group of teachers."
- U.S. Office of Education, *Education in the Southern Mountains*, Bulletin 1937, No. 26, by W. H. Gaumnitz and Katherine M. Cook (1938). https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41153358_0563 - p. 19: "The data indicate that there are about two-fifths as many pupils in the sixth grade of the schools of the most mountainous counties of Kentucky as in the third grade. In the nonmountain counties of the State fully two-thirds of the pupils are retained to the sixth grade."
- Southern Education Reporting Service (Nashville), *One-Teacher Schools in the States of the Old Confederacy*, press release, Oct. 5, 1966 (ERIC ED022579). https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED022579 - "In Kentucky, for instance, all but nine of 422 such schools are in Appalachia, the mountainous eastern section of the state where consolidation is impeded by inadequate transportation." Table: Kentucky 6,089 (1930), 422 (1965); 17-state total 49,583 → 1,393.
- Ivan Muse, Ralph B. Smith and Bruce O. Barker, *The One-Teacher School in the 1980s* (ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools, 1987; OERI contract 400-86-0024). https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED287646 - Preface, p. ix: "In 1930 there were 149,000 of these schools dotting the landscape in all 48 states. Due primarily to consolidation efforts, however, only about 1,000 one-teacher schools remained in operation by 1980." "Many one-teacher schools were closed, and rightly so, because of untrained teachers and lack of community support. However, countless other one-teacher schools were forced to discontinue without any evaluation." - Table 1, p. xvii (1958-59 / 1980 / 1984): Kentucky 1,343 / 2 / 1; Tennessee 568 / 1 / 0; West Virginia 1,032 / 2 / 2; totals 23,695 / 921 / 837. The 1958-59 column is from the NEA Research Division monograph *One-Teacher Schools Today* (1960), https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED039993.
- Beverly Fortune, "Lower Leatherwood Elementary is Kentucky's last one-room school," *Lexington Herald-Leader*, Sunday, June 4, 1989, p. K3 (photographs James D. VanHoose). Read on newspapers.com; used under fair use, cropped to the article. - Saul, Perry County: 24 pupils in grades two through eight, teacher Glenna Hudson; "When I came 16 years ago, we had 93 students and three teachers"; "I've been by myself for three years now"; a three-room concrete block building "built about 1956 to replace an older, one-room wooden building that had burned."
- Photographs: Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration, Breathitt, Rowan and Harlan counties, Kentucky, August–October 1940. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USF33 and LC-USF34. Federal works, public domain. Captions quoted from the Library of Congress catalog records. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/
- Colorization: the negatives are black and white. Color was added in 2026 with DDColor (open-source), then audited with the channel's spot-fix pass; it is a computer's guess and is not part of the record.