EAGLEVILLE HIGH SCHOOL 1890-1915 was located next to the Baptist Church and in the same building which Dr. Savage had erected. It was on Church Street in the community of Eagleville.
According to Miss Pearl Tucker, who entered school about 1898 or 1899, the SAVAGE SCHOOL burned before she was born in 1892 and was replaced by another frame building on the same site. The new building had at first only three classrooms. Later were added a big room, a music room, and a small elocution room.
The Board, consisting of W. H. McCord, J. H. Hay, L. K. Lowe, J. S. Edmonds, J. F. Christopher, and J. C. Williams, met on June 14, 1890, elected J. W. Mitchell a new Board member, and pledged $600 for the next school year. They appointed a committee to solicit funds from patrons of the school.
In 1890, EAGLEVILLE HIGH SCHOOL opened with an enrollment of 186 students and an entirely new faculty. Teachers were W. T. Davis, principal, Miss Janie Nichol, N. B. Williams, Miss Sadie Agnew, W. W. Mosley, Miss Mattie Wilhoite, and Miss Susie B. Talley.
Other principals who served this school were Willie Lyle, M. Wingo, J. Robert Bass, John W. Williams, F. M. Bowling, “Bowser” Wilson, W. L. Foster, J. E. Brandon, K. W. Warren, and J. L. Bynum.
Other teachers were Mr. Bass’ sister, Margaret Holt, Mrs. J. D. Smith, Lura Williamson, Mrs. John W. Williams, music, Annie Bain, Mae Cliff Donnell Wooten, Selma Womack, and Cora Bain.
From 1890 to 1915 EAGLEVILLE HIGH SCHOOL gradually became a public school. In 1890, the subjects taught were the same as those taught in the previous school headed by George M. Savage. In 1890, also, County Superintendent James P. Nelson reported, We have some of the best schools in the state in our county: Eagleville High School . . . .”
While W. L. Foster was principal in 1912, the school became a junior high school through the tenth grade. In 1914, it became a consolidated school. SIMMONS, GREENWOOD, MT. VERNON, and LITTLE ROCK, all one-teacher schools, were closed. The children from the closed schools were transported by wagon and then by bus to Eagleville. The first drivers of
these buses were R. W. Canton, Hessie Bennett, and Will Cole. Mr. Bennett drove a bus for thirty-nine years.
The enrollment so increased that in 1915 the students moved
to a new school in a new location.
On May 28, 1917, the Trustees of the old EAGLEVILLE MALE
AND FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL sold to J. E. Jackson and H. E. Jackson
the one acre of school property.
SOURCES: Deed Book 59, p. 350. * Minnie Fairfield Dyer, History of Eagleville (Dyer, 1972). “‘Big Eagle’ Was Source of Name,’ The Daily News Journal, Nov. 13, 1963, p. 9. Tennessee Department of Public Instruction. Annual Report 1890 Nashville: Marshall and Bruce, 1891 , p. 160. *N. D. Overall, Manual and Course of Study for the Public Schools 1896 , p. 23, contributed by *Bealer Smotherman. Interviews, Feb. 27, 1984, with *Marjetta Pinkerton Alford, b. 1888, who attended this school in 1906; April 25, 1985, with Pearl Tucker, b. March 17, 1892, a student who remembers studying the big Chart when she was in first grade.