Vardy Community School


The Vardy Community School was a Presbyterian mission school established in the Vardy community of Hancock County, Tennessee, United States, in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. At the time of its founding, the school was the only institution providing primary education to children of the multi-racial Melungeon communities, who lived in the remote mountainous areas along the Tennessee-Virginia border.
Part of a segregated system, it was restricted to children considered black or multiracial. Presbyterian missionaries operated the school until 1955; following the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional, it became part of the Hancock County public school system. In 1984, the school and the structures associated with the mission community that developed around it were designated as a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Vardy Community School Historic District.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dozens of settlement schools and mission schools were established across rural Appalachia. In 1892 the Presbyterian Church decided to build such a school at Vardy, a community located near the heart of Melungeon country in the Blackwater Creek Valley. Over the next forty-five years, the mission school complex expanded to include a three-story frame schoolhouse, a church, a manse, a library, and several residences for teachers and children. Although the schoolhouse has collapsed, the school's alumni and other historical groups have preserved its ruins and related structures as a historic site. In 2000, the 19th-century log cabin belonging to Melungeon moonshiner Mahala Mullins was relocated to a site across the street from the Vardy School district.

Location

The Vardy community, sometimes called "Vardy Valley," is situated in a narrow valley carved by Blackwater Creek between Newman's Ridge on the south and Powell Mountain on the north. The valley, part of the Clinch River watershed, stretches for roughly from Mulberry Gap southwest of Vardy to the Blackwater community in Lee County, Virginia to the northeast. Vardy is still relatively isolated, its primary access being from Sneedville via State Highway 63, which crosses Newman's Ridge through a series of steep switchbacks before intersecting Vardy Blackwater Road near Mulberry Gap. The Vardy School Community is located along Vardy Blackwater Road about east of the road's junction with TN-63.

History

In the early 19th century, the early Melungeon settler Vardeman "Vardy" Collins received a grant for a large plot of land in the Newman's Ridge area. It included the land on which the Vardy school and church are now located. In subsequent decades, his descendants developed his namesake community along Blackwater Creek. In 1834, the Tennessee Constitutional Convention restricted the rights of free people of color, including Melungeons, depriving them of the right to vote, which they had had since the state was established in 1796. They were also forbidden attending public schools, of which there were few in rural areas. This disfranchisement was similar to restrictions passed in Virginia and other southern states following the 1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion. Such racial discrimination contributed to the Melungeons of Newman's Ridge maintaining a closed, endogamous community.
Presbyterians were active in Vardy by the late 19th century, when itinerant Presbyterian ministers Christopher Humble and H. P. Cory were conducting sporadic services in the Blackwater Valley. In 1892, the Presbyterian Church's Holston Presbytery decided to establish a mission school at Vardy, and the Presbyterian Women's Board of Missions appointed Annie Miller and Maggie Axtell as missionaries to the community. Batey Collins and his wife Cynthia donated several acres of land for the mission school and church, and other locals donated lumber and helped with construction. The Vardy Mission School, which initially held classes in a crude log structure, was the first to offer the state-mandated 1st-grade through 8th-grade curriculum to children living in the valley. The Vardy Presbyterian Church was completed in 1899, and a new frame schoolhouse was completed in 1902.
In 1910, Mary Rankin, a Scottish missionary and Columbia graduate, arrived in Vardy. For more than three decades, she served as a teacher and nurse. Rankin taught prenatal and postnatal childcare to local mothers and fought malnutrition in the valley. Between 1920 and 1952, the Vardy mission thrived under the leadership of Chester F. Leonard and his wife, Josephine. A new three-story schoolhouse, powered by a Delco generator, was completed in 1929. Upon completion of the new schoolhouse, the Vardy Mission School became known as the Vardy Community School. A series of interim ministers succeeded Leonard.
Following the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional, the Presbyterian Church sold the Vardy school to Hancock County in 1955 and it became part of the public school system. Classes continued at the school until 1973, and services continued at the Vardy Presbyterian Church until 1980.
By 1984, when the Vardy school, church, and ancillary structures were added to the National Register of Historic Places, Vardy had just eight residents. With a $10,000 grant from the Tennessee Humanities Council, the Vardy Community Historical Society began restoring the Vardy Community School's surviving structures. In 2000, the group restored the Mahala Mullins Cabin and moved it from atop Newman's Ridge to Vardy Blackwater Road, opposite the church.

Historic structures

Vardy School Community Historic District

The Vardy School Community Historic District consists of eight contributing structures and several ancillary structures. The structures all have vernacular designs, although the school and some residences have bungalow influences, and the church's bell tower has Gothic influences. Contributing structures include:
The Mahala Mullins Cabin was the residence of Mahala Mullins, a legendary Melungeon moonshiner. Afflicted with elephantiasis, Mullins was extremely heavy, which led to local exaggerations about her size. Revenue agents were aware of Mullins' moonshining activities, and often destroyed her stills, but due to her size, they were unable to arrest her.
The cabin is a two-story "dogtrot" cabin constructed of hewn poplar logs with dovetail notching. Massive chimneys of native stone were built at both ends of the cabin. The dogtrot was filled in to make extra room in the 1920s, but has been restored to its original state. The cabin was originally located on the slopes of Newman's Ridge on the property of Dan and Chris Williams. The Williamses donated the cabin to the Vardy Community Historical Society, and the cabin was relocated and restored in 2000.