In 2005, the Clay County School District’s Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores were ranked the “third highest in the state.” Today’s Superintendent of Schools, Scott Penland, quoted for a recent newspaper article that the SAT scores for Hayesville High School’s seniors “are consistently above the national average…and the scores really “reflect the education received in previous grades.” The collective Verbal score was 530 (includes essay writing), 545 for Math, and the Total was 1075−all scores were the highest among six surrounding counties. This same year, the U.S. average was 1.028 and the State of North Carolina was 1.010. This accomplishment reflects the history of the school system in Clay County and the formation of the Hayesville school system, which has interesting origins.
Researcher, author, and authority on the Cherokee Nation, Brett Riggs, PhD., stated in his November 29, 2006 E-mail to this Author that historical records show the first school located in the Clay County area was started by Leonard Butterfield circa 1834 as a subscription school (students were required to pay tuition). It was located in a house on a farm (owned by the Cherokee David England) on the Cherokee Unicoi Turnpike near Hyatt’s Creek. (For specific location of this turnpike, see Chapter on Road Development. And for more on David England, see “village inventory” section in Chapter on Fort Hembree.) Throughout the next few decades, other tuition-based schools began to emerge.In handwritten notes in 1993, Mr. J. Walter Moore, at age 91, dictated his early school memoirs to his wife, Velma Bean Moore. In them he indicated that, according to his best recollection, the first school was started circa 1850 by Mr. John O. Hicks as a one-room log cabin school constructed on a farm owned by Jim Moss near the juncture of Tusquittee Road and Downings Creek Road (both on the east side of today’s town square). This was not the only school that Mr. Hicks built.
It is evident that he had a profound impact on the educational development of Clay County by building other one-room schools, such as in the Bristol Cove Community on Fires Creek Road (now part of the Nantahala National Forest) and in the Shiloh Community in the lower Tusquittee Creek section of the County. All of his schools were subscription schools, which also required students to purchase textbooks.
“All of these schools used Webster’s Old Blue-Back Speller, Smith’s Grammar, and Davis and Fowler’s Arithmetic. Students also studied penmanship, using goose-quill pens and pokeberry ink” (Padgett, History of Clay County).
Around 1860, Mr. Hicks came to the southern part of the County at Fort Hembree and started another school, where he himself taught for several years. Next, he built a satellite one-room school in the Lick Log Creek Community (now called Shooting Creek Community), south of U.S. Highway 64 East. (J. W. Moore’s Memoirs, 1993). Continuing on his quest to bring education to all the area, between l868 and 1870, Mr. Hicks purchased two tracts of land (approximately 10 acres) near Fort Hembree (east side of today’s NC Highway 64 South) and established Hicksville Academy, a multiroom school, which much later evolved into Hayesville High School (Padgett, Ibid.) Real estate records indicate that the Hicksville Academy was privately owned and not a public tax-paid school. The Academy changed ownership several times in its history, starting when Mr. Hicks sold the school in 1878 to R.B. Chambers, who sold it a year later to N. A. Fessenden, who was also the Headmaster. Mr. Fessenden then deeded the school to a stock company, after which it was deeded in 1887 to the Methodist-Episcopal (M. E.) Church South (Padgett, Ibid.). (See Chapter on Churches for an explanation of the split that resulted in the creation of the M. E. North and M. E. South churches in Clay County.)
Finally, in 1891, the M. E. Church South turned management of the facility over to Trinity College, and the school’s name was changed to “Hayesville Male and Female College”, a normal school, which meant it trained teachers and offered courses in grades one through college. It also required tuition, with students paying a $1.00 a month for the first year of classes; then $1.50 a month for the second and third years; and $2.00 a month for college courses. They paid an extra $1.00 a month for courses in Bookkeeping (Padgett, Ibid.).
Upon completing a prescribed series of courses offered by the Hayesville Male and Female College, a student was awarded a Baccalaurei Artium (B. A.) Degree. Probably the most famous graduate of this program was a Reverend Dr. George W. Truett, who became a world-wide evangelist and who established the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Also, Truett Baptist Church in Hayesville is named in his honor. His birthplace is located approximately a mile from the town limit on U.S. Highway 64 West, where today his renovated home-place and a campground occupy the site. (See Chapter on Outstanding Citizens for more details.)
The College’s first annual catalogue, published in l891, showed an enrollment of 225 students coming from different counties in North Carolina, and from five other states: Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Texas, and Washington.
It is interesting to note that 33 years later, Trinity College (who managed Hayesville Male and Female College) evolved to become Duke University in 1924 (Mark Leek, History of Clay County Schools from 1850 until Present [doctoral thesis cites W. King’s article from Duke’s Archives website, October 26, 2000: “Duke University’s Relation to the Methodist Church”]).
Schools Begin Consolidation
Soon after the North Carolina General Assembly (Legislature) passed a ruling requiring all counties to have non-subscription (i.e., free, public) graded school systems, Hayesville Male and Female College deeded the property in 1898 to the new tuition-free “Hayesville Graded School.” Eleven years later (1909), the name was changed to “Hayesville High School” (Padgett, Ibid.; Leek, Ibid.).
Various publications and interviews reveal that Clay County has had an interesting history in its school development and consolidation of public schools.
To illustrate the consolidation, this Author has included a flow chart of the changes, which is a complete list of “free schools” The following sources were used: Guy Padgett’s History of Clay County; old County Commissioners’ Minutes; C. Aycock’s Biennial Report of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Carolina for 1909 to 1910; Margaret Freel’s Our Heritage: The People of Cherokee County, North Carolina 1540 to 1955; Leek’s doctoral thesis (including C. Melbane’s Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Carolina for the Scholastic Years 1898─99 and 1899─1900); and recent interviews with present-day residents: Louise Haigler (age 102), Neal Jarrett (age 90-plus), Mrs. Marcella Kitchens.
Shown in the State Superintendent’s Biennial Report for the 1898─99 school year, Clay County operated 18 public schoolhouses serving 736 white students and 15 African American students (Aycock and Melbane). The Aycock Report says that, at first, the African American students from Clay County attended a school in nearby Cherokee County and lived part-time with their relatives in Murphy. But, by 1912, the local students attended a segregated public school on Hinton Rural Life Center Road, southeast of Hayesville Center.
The schools were consolidated into the present Clay County’s Hayesville School Complex on School Drive, south of the town square and within the town limits of Hayesville. This includes the High School, Middle School, Elementary School, and Kindergarten─all on one property.
Hayesville schools began racially integrating in1965 in compliance with the Brown verses Board of Education Supreme Court Ruling of l954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forced the North Carolina Public Schools and all states to integrate. Jay Tee Nicely, Jr., the first African-American student, enrolled as a sophomore in Hayesville High (Leek, History of Clay County Schools).
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