HENDERSON SCHOOL late l800’s-1934 was located on the Manchester Pike, south of its intersection with the Dilton-Mankin Lane but on the west side of the road. It was thought to have been built in the late 1800’s when Franklin Henderson owned the plantation and before Henry Pfeil bought the place in 1897. There is no deed on record for the sale or donation of the land for a school. The site of the Henderson farm is shown on the Beers Map of 1878.
The T-shaped, weatherboarded schoolhouse contained one large room with two small rooms on each side. The roof, which was covered with wood shingles, had a belfry and bell on the front. There was a pump for water in the front yard and a rope swing under a big tree.
Among the teachers were Professor Parker, who was teaching in 1906 and may have been the first teacher, Laura Pfeil, Carroll Brown, Shellie Tolbert, Mattie Overall Harrell, Mary Snell Watts, Bessie Puckett, Willie Mary Watson Horton, Irene Downing Price, Mary Price Snell, Fannie Robison Sade, Irene Yearwood Williamson, Maggie Smith Gamewell, Elizabeth White Davenport, Margaret Sade, and Mary Frank Auberry, the last teacher.
In 1914 and 1915, when Alline Youree was teaching, the salary was $30-a-month and the sessions had lengthen to eight months.
The Blue Ribbon Program was very important. Students kept charts as to brushing their teeth and taking baths once a week. Dr. Black and his nurse, Martha Dye Walls, visited the schools to give shots for typhoid and diphtheria. All tried for a 100% health rating.
SOURCES: *Rebecca L. Smith, ‘The History of Dilton, the RCHS, Summer, 1977, p. 75. Interviews, March 22, 1984, with Pauline Wilson Blankenship, student starting in the second grade; May 25, 1984, with Woodrow Medlock, student in 1926, 1927, 1928, and 1929; March 23, 1985, with John D. Sanford, student in the picture, *Mary Price Snell, b. 1897, who finished the term for Irene Downing Price in 1917. *Marie Couch Naples Smith, a student in the picture.