About 1843, Robert Rogers (1808-1882), a planter at "Blooming Grove" in the Back Swamp community of what was then Darlington District, built a plantation schoolhouse and hired Peter Stuart Ney (d. 1846) to teach his children. The original building, moved here in 1870, was later the library for Back Swamp School (1921-1950). In 1970 it was moved to the home of Evander McIver Ervin. The second school on the site, built in 1921 by Back Swamp residents, was an elementary school sometimes known as St. Winifred's, with as many as two teachers and sixty students in some years. When it closed in 1950, its students were transferred to Florence schools, and it later served as the Back Swamp Community Center.