Pacolet Mills Schools
The story of the schools at Pacolet Mills in told in Volume 1 of the History of Pacolet. The first part of this story is from a report that was written on May 29, 1914. At that time, the Mill Company was about 30 years old. The 1896 building described in this part is the school that can be seen in the background on the top of hotel hill in many of the flood pictures and is shown in the photo below.
(Courtesy of Lindie Wells)
The second part of the story concerns itself with the more recent school building that is still remembered by many of us.
See photograph of school after the fire.
Another view of the recent elementary school
(Courtesy of Lindie Wells)
Recently, we found some photographs of the first and second grade classes in 1939 at the school. Click on 1939 Class Photos to see these pictures.
The ampitheater was the site of many public entertainments put on by the school, the community and the Mill Company. There were thousands of people in attendence for some of these presentations. Read a Spartanburg Herald newspaper article from May 12, 1928 about one of these.
The ampitheater as it appears today.
Another view of ampitheater.
Students climb the steps to the school on opening day, Sept. 2, 1940.
(Courtesy of Dorothy Paige)
Another view of the school entrance steps.
Students line up to go into the annex where the first grade classroom was loctated.
(Courtesy of Dorothy Paige)
The playground for the school. The building in the background is the gym which was in the annex building. On the opposite side of the annex were the first grade classrooms. On the hill, to the left of the sliding board, was the home of the Lawrence Tates which is not shown in the photo. (Thanks to Don Camby for this information.)
Jane Foster of Whitestone has furnished photos of some Pacolet Mills Elementary School teachers from the 1940's and 50's. See these at PMES School Teachers.
Even though I never attended the school as a regular student, I did have several occasions to be deeply involved with the school. You can read about these at My Personal Memories about the Pacolet Mills Elementary School.
This web site has been started as a public service to share the story of Pacolet.
See more information about my Pacolet connection at Gerald Teaster.