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Name: Glendower School
Date: 1907
Image Number: Frank A. Massie's map of Albemarle County, 1907; UVA Library
Comments: Glendower School was open from 1869-1951 and was the earliest African-American school in the Esmont community.
Glendower School was built in 1869 just four years after the emancipation of slavery in America. This school was initially located at
Gordon Merrick's Glendower Estate at 7369 Dyers Mill Lane in Scottsville, Virginia. The original Glendower school was a one-and-a-half
story building built during Reconstruction by the Freedman's Bureau on property donated by Mrs. Merrick. The above 1907 map of Albemarle County, Virginia, by Frank A. Massie,
shows a 'Colored College' (see star above) adjacent to Gordon Merrick's property in Glendower.
In a 2004 interview for the Scottsville Museum, Anna Agnes Nelson and her sister, Virginia Agee Gray, who were born in Keene, recall
attending the Glendower School on the Glendower estate, owned at that time by Edgar Bradley. They said that the school had one big room,
a library, a big bell, two small rooms of which one was used as a kitchen, and a cellar. The sisters walked three miles to Glendower School
from their home in Keene each school day. In the early 1930's, Albemarle County decided to move the school from Glendower estate, and
Glendower students temporarily attended classes at Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church until a new one-room school was built about 5 miles away in
Keene. Seven classes occupied this new one-room school, which retained the Glendower name, and one teacher taught all the classes.
Teacher rosters from the papers of former Albemarle County Superintendent David Pinckney Powers and from the papers of Samuel Woods list Eva W. Randolph
as teaching at Glendower in 1927-1931, and Mary D. Barnett teaching at Glendower in 1931-1934. Eva Randolph and Mary Barnett also taught at
the new Glendower School and taught reading, arithmetic, physiology, and history. Glendower School only went up to 7th grade while the Agees attended it
in the 1930's. The exact location of this second Glendower school in Keene has not been identified.
  Sisters Anna Agee Nelson and Virginia Agee Gray attended Glendower School in the 1930's.
Scottsville Museum wishes to thank Maxwell Johnson for his research and photographs on this Esmont
community school! We also wish to thank Lorenzo Dickerson for his research on Eugene Allen's teachers at Glendower School and Albemarle's
Black Classrooms (www.maupintown.com).
References:
1) David Pinckney Powers Papers, 1888-1938, Accession #9377-a, 9377-b, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.
2) Hallock, Jennifer; Gardiner Hallock & Kristie Baynard National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Southern Albemarle
Rural Historic District. February 2007.
3) Samuel Baker Woods Papers, 1894-1937, Accession #4648-a, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.
4) Lay, K. Edward Lay; The Architecture of Jefferson Country, Charlottesville, and Albemarle County, Virginia, (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 2000).
5) Kane, Emily, Interview of Anna Agee Nelson and Virginia Agee Gray, Scottsville Museum, 14 July 2004.
Copyright © 2018 by Scottsville Museum
Top Image Located On: Frank A. Massie's Map of Albemarle County (Richmond: Virginia School Co., 1907; UVA Library.
Bottom Two Images Located On: Oral History of Anna Agee Nelson and Virginia Agee Gray by Emily Kate, Scottsville Museum, 14 July 2004.
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