This list of teachers at the old Salt Rock Elementary School is from a more detailed history of Salt Rock written by Thelma Morrison Matthews in 1935. If anyone reading this post has a photograph of this old building I would be pleased to include it. I attended first grade at this school in 1939 until Christmas vacation when the entire school population moved to the new school on Madison Creek Road.
Thelma Morrison Matthews wrote: “There are 104 pupils now enrolled in this building. Grades are taught from the Primer to the Eighth Grade Inclusive. Teachers who have taught in this community of Salt Rock are; William Bramlet, George Keiser, William Algeo, H. J. Rousey, Alexander (?) (possibly Donahoe), William Gill, Elsie Gill, Suda Hech, Bertha Phipps, Faye Gill, (?) (possibly Dressler), Iva Thornton, May Gill, Mr. Jaruel Gill, Charlie Bowling, Myrtle Swann, Opal Hinchman, Ruby Ashworth, Lovie Gill, (?) (possibly Halda) Midkiff, Garnie Sanson, Mayne Hutchinson, George Hutchinson, Will Carroll, J. A. Coffman, Edgar Swann, W. E. Carter, Vivian Gothard, Wallace Broter, Ida Gill, Nettie Bias, Evelyn Coffman, Ethyl Adkins, Lavonia Hilbert, Shirley Hinchman, Velma Matthews, [and] Thelma Morrison Matthews.” (I believe this history was taken from the http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ website)
My half-year at this old school holds several memories for me. Here is an excerpt from my book: “I’d been in first grade in 1939 in the old school until Christmas vacation, when the entire school population moved to Madison Creek Road. Miss Velma Matthews was my teacher and T. E. Walker was the principal. Sometime after 1945 the building was torn down and the remnant basement walls were soon vine-covered. A house sits on the site now.”
I can add this: I learned to read in Miss Velma Matthews’ room. We used the Macmillan Company “Peter and Peggy” series. A big chart in the front of the classroom supplemented lessons. We ate our bag lunches in our room at our desks before going outside to play. A random memory is that I once traded sandwiches with Sonny Carter. Many children brought egg sandwiches, and that is a scent I remember from our classroom lunches. I think, after cold weather set in, we ate hot lunches in the basement dining area in the same space where Mother was preparing lunches in 1945. Miss Matthews’ high mesh-wire-covered windows provided a view of the baseball field across from Dejarnette’s store at the intersection of Route 10 and Tyler Creek Road (Apple Maps now list it as “McComas Road.”) Sometime in the fall of that year Mr. T. E. Walker, principal and eighth grade teacher, took the whole school out to the baseball field. A traveling troupe show that featured dogs had stopped at Dejarnette’s store for refreshments on their way to some other scheduled destination. Mr. Walker happened to be in the store and asked them to put on a show for our school that afternoon. Dogs of all sizes did amazing gravity-defying feats. I remember a small dog climbing a high pole. That was more than two years before we entered the war.