HOOVERS GAP ACADEMY 1872-fl. 1897 was at the intersection of Hoovers Gap Road and the Manchester Highway. It was on the east side of the Manchester Highway on a hill across from the Methodist Church. It was not far from a Civil War trench and a spring of water. The site is on the 1878 Beers Map.
James M. Hoover, on June 28, 1872, signed a parcel deed to Trustees B. L. Chadwick, William M. Hoover, J. M. Rawlings, J. W. Hoover, and B. S. Hoover for Hoover Gap Academy and Preaching Place for various religious denominations.
The school was a one-room building. Drinking water came from the strong spring nearby.
John Arnold, father of Horace Arnold who was born in 1895, taught there before Horace was born. Miss Lou Parker was also a teacher.
Matthew Arnold, son of John Arnold, was a student. He was sixteen years old when his father died in 1901. Other students were Quinton Hoover, Sam Stovall, and some with family names of Gibson, Mason, and Fox. Cora and Flora Fox and James Mathias Mason, b. 1878, attended this school.
Lightie Jacobs Cline has this to say: “It was on a hill above the Gap. Miss Lou Parker was the teacher. I wasn’t old enough to go to school but I knew my ABC’s. Cora and Flora Fox, my dear friends who lived in the Fox Hollow, would come by walking and I would join them. If for any reason they missed a day, I did, too. Miss Lou’s father was a well known professor in the Beech Grove College. I was very fond of Miss Lou and I have very happy memories of my first school days.”
SOURCES: Deed Book 18, p. 526. Letter to *Mary N. Robinson, September 26, 1982, from *Lightie Jacobs Cline, b. 1892, d. April 20, 1985. Interviews, August 20, 1983, with Mary Dell Mason Lowe; March 1983, with W. P. Gibson, d. March 21, 1985; August 20, 1983, with Horace Arnold, b. 1895, son of *John Arnold; August 27, 1983, with Commodore Arnold, son of Matthew Arnold.