STANDRIDGE SCHOOL early 1800’s-c 1900 was about .5 mile southwest of the present Cripple Creek Presbyterian Church on the Bradyville Road. The sites of the schoolhouse and the church are still so shown on the 1878 Beers Map. The last school was built two or three hundred feet south of the present church.
The school received its name from Richard Standridge, who gave the land. The name has also been written as STANDERGES, possibly an early spelling, and as STANDARD, probably from a mispronunciation or misunderstanding.
A partial history of the Cripple Creek Presbyterian Church as outlined by Cynthia Youree may give some insight also into the history of the school. The church was “first organized in 1820 or 1821 and early worship services were held about one-half mile from the present building, probably in a log schoolhouse. A church building was erected sometime before 1830 at a location across Cripple Creek and directly in front of the present building. Along about this time, the name of the church was changed to Standridge.
About 1869, a one-room wooden church was built on the present site. The
church’s name was changed to Cripple Creek around the beginning of this century . . . . The wooden church was torn down and the present brick building was completed in 1952.”
This deed, also, may be a part of the school’s history: On November 7, 1842, Nathan Lyon signed a gift deed of one acre of land to School House Trustees James Youree, Medford Cat fey, and Dabney Lancaster. The 1878 Beers Map shows W. Patrick to be the landowner immediately across the road from the Presbyterian Church. He was bounded on the south by N. Lyon.
STANDRIDGE SCHOOL was, then, first a log and then a frame building. There were two or three different sites.
Some of the teachers who may have taught at the school when it was still called STANDRIDGE are Jim Becton, Maude Youree Brainard, Willie Smith, Frank Lowe, son of Nick Lowe, and Sike or Silas Youree.
The frame schoolhouse became CRIPPLE CREEK SCHOOL, possibly about the turn of the century when the church became the Cripple Creek Presbyterian Church.
SOURCES: Deed Book 2, p. 562. Cynthia Youree, “Cripple Creek Presbyterian Church in Rutherford County,” Tennessee Cooperator, Feb. 1986, P. 21. *Mattie Lowe Hall McFarlin, a paper in the files of the Rutherford County Historical Society. *Katherine Burks Youree.