LEE JACOBS SCHOOL 1915-1940 was on the east side of the Manchester Highway just south of the intersection of Fox Hollow Road. On August 20, 1915, Lee Jacobs and wife Lightie Hoover deeded 2.5 acres of land to the Rutherford County Board of Education. Presently the site is behind the
old chicken house. At one time the road went by the school.
The building, weatherboarded and painted white, had two rooms, side by side. There was a small room for coats and lunch boxes and a space for a library. There was also a grand piano.
The school was a two-teacher school. Among the teachers were Lightie Jacobs Cline, Bill Jack Edwards, Paschal Shelton, Carmelia Fults Sanders, Winnie Shelton, Alf Lowe, Sue McKee, Helen Nesbitt, John T. Jacobs, Florence Jacobs, Grace Jacobs, Etta Mankin, Alta Orren Brown, Ronald White, Leander Smith, Sarah Abernathy, Olga Hoover Estes, Mary N. Robinson, Blanche Jacobs, Elizabeth White Davenport, Nell Bingham McKee, and Mozelle Messick Marlin, 1938-1940.
Pupils ranged from ages seven to sixteen in grades one through eight.
Lightie Jacobs Cline wrote in a letter: My father, a school man, and seeing the need of a school in the community, gave the land for the school known as the LEE JACOBS SCHOOL. I had the honor of teaching the first school with Mr. W. J. Edwards. We had a little library in which I was greatly
interested. Mr. E. was more interested in being a disciplinarian. We also had a piano, quite a luxury in those days.
My brother John’s wife, who is remembered as a fine musician, taught music. My younger brother would help build the fires the winter. One time, Mr. B. said, “Lee, recruit the fire.”
Lee, quite distressed, looked at me and said, ‘Sister, what does he want me to do?’ Oh, school days, dear old golden rule days.”
Leander Smith is remembered as having a night school for everybody in the community. A spelling bee was most popular. Clarence Frizzell, b. 1890, could “spell down” all the others.
After the school merged with BUCHANAN, the Wiley Fulks family lived in the school. The building is no longer standing.
SOURCES: Deed Book 102, p. 164. Letter to Mary N. Robinson, dated September 26, 1982, from *Lightie Jacobs Cline, b. 1892, d. April 20, 1985. Interviews, March 8, 1983, with W. P. Gibson, student about 1920-l929. He died March 1985; August 27, 1982, with Commodore Arnold, student; July 1983, with Horace Arnold, b. 1895, student of Lee Jacobs at CHADWICK;
August 20, 1983, with Mary Dell Mason Lowe; August 1984, with Mrs. Carl Marlin. *Mary N. Robinson. *Nell Bingham McKee. *Maud Robinson Jacobs Chrisman.