BROWN’S CHAPEL SCHOOL 1876-1910 was on the west side and near the south end of Baker Road, formerly called Brown’s Chapel Road. It was in the Little Hope area. The land was donated by Alfred Watson Blackman for as long as there was a school or a church.
Mr. Blackman furnished the lumber from his farm and sawmill. The high, one-room frame building had a door at the front, three windows with wooden shutters on each side, and a small window cut out at the back. The desks were double seats and a Chart was used to teach reading and spelling.
George Baskette, who taught at his home on Burleson Lane before and after the war, was later a teacher here.
Blanche Bass and Richie Wade Ferguson were also teachers.
Students remembered by Richie Wade were Lillian, James, and Janie Mai Batey, and Frank Vaughn. Other family names were Rowlette, Garvin, Hudson, Bass, and Beasley.
According to Miss Wade, subjects taught in the eighth grade were those now taught in the tenth.
The building was also the Brown’s Chapel Methodist Church named after Allison Brown, the first pastor.
Brother Jerry Cullum, M. E. circuit rider, preached here many times. From 1900-1923 the church became all denominational.
When a new Methodist Church was built on the Manson Road, the building was abandoned. It was used as a barn and then as a store from 1966-1974. The building is still standing in 1986.
SOURCES: Larry Jobe, “Blackman Community,” in the Rutherford Historical Society fi1e. Robert W. Baskin, History of Blackman-Salem-Windrow Communities 1973. Typewritten. Interviews, July 30, 1984, with William Wood, a resident in the area; Oct. 11, 1985, with *Bessie Lee Batey Haynes and Fannie Batey Talley, granddaughters of Alfred Watson Blackman. *Richie Wade Ferguson, b. Oct. 27, 1891, who at the age of eighteen taught her first school here and boarded with Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Blackman.