The Friends of Cherry Grove Schoolhouse

Information Obtained and can be found at the original site here.

The Friends of Cherry Grove Schoolhouse

Schoolhouse History

The Cherry Grove Schoolhouse is a rare surviving example of an early 20th century rural African American school building in Georgia. The building was constructed circa 1910 on the grounds of the Cherry Grove Baptist Church (founded 1875) as a part of the 175th school district for the rural farming children of Cohentown and Sandtown. It is a one-room wood-frame schoolhouse of approximately 465 square feet. It has a timber frame wooden structure covered in clapboard supported by stacked stone piers. The schoolhouse is located on the four acre campus of the Cherry Grove Baptist Church at 1878 Danburg Road (Route 44 North) surrounded by an unincorporated rural farming community, most notably, Cohentown (historical). It is one of 15 extant pre-Rosenwald African-American schoolhouses built on church grounds within the state of Georgia. The building was used to teach primary school through the seventh grade. The property is suffering from deterioration due to exposure and lack of maintenance funds.

What makes the schoolhouse special?

However, it still retains a high level of integrity through: its materials and design as a rural African-American church-based schoolhouse; its original location; its setting and feeling in a rural area; and its association with the education of African-Americans in Wilkes County. It is also still owned by the same congregation which acquired the land in 1875. The building continued to be used as a school with elementary grades taught by a single teacher, until the early 1950s, when many small rural church schools in the county were closed, and consolidated to a larger school for African-Americans.

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History Made

After what has been a three year process, the schoolhouse, sponsored by the Friends of Cherry Grove Schoolhouse, was nominated and then approved by the Georgia National Register Review Board on February 22, 2019. It is now listed in the Georgia Register of Historic Places. The next step is for the staff to prepare the final nomination to be sent to the National Register of Historic Places in Washington D.C. for final review and approval. The schoolhouse was nominated as significant under the National Register Criterion C in the area of architecture as a rare example of a vernacular one-room schoolhouse with no stylistic features. It was also significant under National Register Criterion A in the area of ethnic heritage/black and education as one of 15 identified extant pre-Rosenwald, one-room schoolhouses for African-Americans built on church grounds within the state of Georgia.