Photo 4: Bachelors’ Academy and Students, 1910

(Shields-Ethridge Heritage Farm Foundation)

Bachelors’ Academy was the school for white children who lived at the Shields-Ethridge farm and at neighboring farms. Built in 1909, the schoolhouse is a wood frame building sided with clapboard (overlapping horizontal boards) and covered with a tin roof. You can see mortared stacked piers supporting the schoolhouse (mortar is a bonding material commonly used in construction to hold bricks or stones together). The school contains two classrooms separated by a folding wall.

Questions for Photo 4

1. Some of the pictured children are children of farm owners; some are children of sharecroppers. Count the children and guess what their ages might be. Do you think they would all have been in the same grade? With only two classrooms, how do you think teachers taught the different levels?

2. What are the children wearing? Can you tell what are they holding in their hands? While you can’t see their feet well, most are barefooted. Why do you think that is?

3. Refer back to Reading 1 and the chores that children did. Do you think school would prepare them for these chores? What other benefits might school have had for the children?