Farragut Schools: Early Years

In 1902, eight community men met to consider establishing a high school in the 10th district of Knox County, with C.H. Stoltzfus elected president, and mass meetings soon drew local residents and education leaders including University of Tennessee President Charles W. Dabney, Professor P.P. Claxton, J.D. Eggleson of the Southern Education Board, and Executive Secretary Wallace Buttrick of the General Education Board. The community raised $5,000 in cash, pledges, and timber, matched by the General Education Board, and W.A. Doughty donated 12 acres for the school site. Charles E. Koon supervised construction and served as administrator until Amanda Stoltzfus became principal in 1904, when the school opened in a building with six classrooms and an assembly hall. The University of Tennessee Department of Education took particular interest in the school as a model for southern rural communities and an object lesson for students of the Summer School of the South. After two satisfactory years and the addition of several hundred library books shared by school and community, the building and its contents were destroyed by fire on the night of March 15, 1906. The next morning, school patrons and other district residents met on the grounds and unanimously agreed to rebuild, then finished the school year in temporary quarters in an abandoned neighborhood church. The new two-story brick school added a barn and chicken house on eight additional acres and included a basement, water system, and study hall that could seat 300 people as an assembly hall. At the junction of Kingston Pike and Concord Road, a concrete water box for horses and a public drinking fountain were erected with money subscribed by pupils, teachers, and patrons. In 1915, Farragut High School received a silver medal and two certificates at the Panama Pacific International Expo in San Francisco for the second best educational exhibit by the rural schools of the United States. After University of Tennessee educator Philander P. Claxton became United States Commissioner for education in 1913, his admiration for Farragut led to publication of Bulletin No. 49, "The Farragut School, A Tennessee Country-Life School," which may have helped initiate the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 providing funds for vocational high schools with agricultural programs, and Farragut was named the first Smith-Hughes School in the nation.

Farragut, Tennessee · United States