HUNT’S HILL SCHOOL late l800’s-1918, also called MUD DAUB and MUD COLLEGE, was on the south side of Hall’s Hill Road about one mile east of the Presbyterian and Christian Churches shown on the 1878 Beers Map. The name of William Hunt, who owned property along the road, is also shown on the map.
The schoolhouse was first a log building about 30 feet square with a log cut out for a window. It had one room with a front door. The 1901 building was a frame structure. The walls were smooth and painted black for
blackboards.
Among the teachers were Henry Todd, Ida Dement, Annie Elrod Dill, Margaret Smith, Gladys H. Hamilton, Paul Barnes in about 1901, Pearl Alexander Elrod who taught lessons in guitar, Fannie Smith Ralston, Lola Tilford Benson, and Lela Duggin.
About 75 pupils were enrolled in the early 1900’s. Family names included Hunt, Sneed, Tassey, Parker, Travis, Tribble, McKnight, and Helton. Mrs. Kate Northcutt Batey remembered leaving an entertainment held in the school. She and her sister rode with a man in his buggy. The creek over the road was so frozen that every time the horse would take a step his foot
would go through the ice.
The enrollment decreased from that of a two-teacher school to a one-teacher school. When the school closed, the students were sent to HALL’S HILL SCHOOL or to other schools in the area.
The school building became a part of the Parker Sneed residence.
SOURCES: *Gene Sloan, “Mud College, Seed Tick School and Others.” Newspaper clipping. A paper by Vance Paschal, *Steve Cates, and Kyle Dill, son of *Annie Elrod Dill, in the files of the Rutherford County Historical
Society under “Schools.” *Christine Couch, who started to school here about three years before the school closed. Interview, July 1985, with Vance Paschal, b. 1906, who started school in about 1913, and at whose father’s house, Mr. Jim Paschal, *Paul Barnes boarded.