For the better part of the 20th Century, from the 1900's to the 1960's, there were school houses all over Madison County. Before there was sufficient transportation and the modernized public school system, you could find schools throughout Greenville, Madison, Lee, Cherry Lake, Sirmans, the Hamburg-Lovett area and Hanson. Let's take a look at the history of Madison County's schools-- some of which remain only a memory. Perhaps you might see a parent, grandparent, great grandparent or old friend-- young, carefree and, as most, ready for the bell to ring.
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1.Photo Courtesy Of State Archives Of Florida. - Greenville High School Home Economics class portrait c. 1943. In the back row, pictured from left to right, are: Augusta Taylor (Barclay), Evelena Radar, Pat Mugge (Reams), Myrtice Mathers, Estelle Cone (by post), Margaret Mathers, Pearly Scott, Bertha Mae Thigpen, Geraldine Hutto, Virginia Patrick, Juanita Day, Ida Vee Spradley (behind post), Gloria Bailey, Maxine Hutto, Lettie Lou Leggett and Mildred Pitts standing on the right. In the second row (from the back, seated between the posts), pictured from left to right, are: Mary Evelyn Thompson, Dorothy Hoffmaster, unknown, unknown, unknown and unknown. In the front row, pictured from left to right, are: Christell Pitts, Bonnie Ray Studstill, unknown, unknown, unknown, unknown, unknown, Pearly Scott, unknown, Betty Floyd, Peggy Scarboro, Evelyn Jackson, Edwina Warren (Laney), Mateel Prince, unknown and unknown.
2. Photo Courtesy Of State Archives Of Florida. - Elementary school students and teachers in the Sirmans region c. 1910-1929.
3. Photo Courtesy Of State Archives Of Florida. - Children in front of a school house in Cherry Lake c. 1941. Marion Rude is the teacher on the far right. The Cherry Lake school was a part of the Cherry Lake Farms project. Cherry Lake Farm (also known as Cherry Rural Rehabilitation Project) was a New Deal rural relief program initiated by the FERA and the Resettlement Administration (RA) and implemented by the WPA. The project involved moving 500 needy families from Tampa, Miami and Jacksonville onto a 15,000-acre communal tract. The workers formed the cooperatively-owned Cherry Lake Farms (headquartered in the 1839 former plantation home, the Hinton House) and constructed a school, an auditorium, a coop store, barracks, a lumber yard and a mill. Families lived in 170 cottages with phones, electricity and running water; all furnished by jointly-owned utilities.
4. Photo Courtesy Of State Archives Of Florida. - The Madison High School women's basketball team c. 1940. In the front row, pictured from left to right, are: Inez Sanders Browning, Eddie Ragans Bevis and Nonie Milford Webb. In the back row, pictured from left to right, are: Dot Black Ellis, Rosalie Priest Russell, Coach Johnson and Margaret Hawkins Duggar.