The Story of the Old School in Nolensville

Nolensville Old School

Did you know about the historic school in Nolensville? The Nolensville Historic Society is hosting a fundraiser in it this weekend,  to help pay for its renovation and restoration. This post will give you some history and the story behind why the school is important to the community and worth remembering.

If you aren’t from Nolensville, most likely you haven’t heard of it, or, if you have, you have not been there. That is, of course, except a dedicated community made up of alumni and long-time residents who understand how valuable the school was, and is.

Opened in 1937, it took an entire community and three years to raise the money for the land and get the school built. But it has been much more important than a school, even after it closed in 1972. It is now, since 2009, a museum and the headquarters of the Nolensville Historic Society. This is a group that understands that the school has been a symbol- for the community and a center of it for more than 75 years- that holds in its own history the story of Nolensville. No wonder the NHS wants to continue restoring and renovating it.

The school, and the community it sits in, is living history.

At first, it was an empty plot of land. In those post-depression days, schools were much different. Every few miles would be a one, two, four, six room school house that students could walk to, but only- as Peggy Wilson, NHS director and student from 1940-48, says- only if you could not talk your parents into giving you a ride.

The old joke of grandpa, sitting around the dinner table on a December Sunday listening to his grandkids complain about having to go back to school in the morning, unfolding his well-worn story of, “When I was your age, we had to walk to and from school, rain, snow or sun, and it was uphill both ways.” That comes from the early days of schools- when school really was close enough to walk, and it held fewer students, but it held their families closer together.

The Nolensville school was doing that before it was even built. In the late 1920s and early ’30s, parents in the community knew Nolensville needed a new school. The old one was not big enough and was getting old and deteriorating anyway.

So the community, led by the local PTA, led by a group of six or eight mothers, lobbied the Williamson County School District for help. But its purse was not nearly as full as it is today, so they offered what help they could: the district would build a school if the community could purchase the land.

Beginning in 1933, the Nolensville community began raising money any way it could. They organized horse shows, charging 10 or 15 cents for admission. They held bake sales and donation drives. Three years later, they hit their goal: $1,000.

That sum bought 5 acres of land and brought a school – and a community center to three, going on four, generations of Nolensville residents.

When it first opened, in fall of 1937, there were four teachers, four rooms and kids in grades one through ten. As the years went by, sometimes there were as few as two teachers. As the community grew the school had to cut back to first through eighth grade.

(The rooms are currently named by the museum:  “Historic Classroom,” the “1937 Kitchen,” “Grady Bob’s Work Shop,” the “4-H History Room,” and the “Nolensville Sports Hall of Fame.” )

By the time Wilson started attending, the school was truly hitting its stride. The adjacent baseball diamond was a center of any weekend for teens and fathers, who organized leagues and played pick up games as their wives and daughters cheered them on and laughed at their men as they took such a silly game so seriously.

In 1947 the school got a library, literally tearing down a surplus World War II draft classification center brick by brick and hauling it all in their own trucks back east to town and turned them into a gymnasium. It was a point of pride, because at that time the only schools in the county with gyms were high schools.

It became a place to hold school plays and music shows, well attended by the town, boy and girl scouts events and the centerpiece venue for longest-running fair in Tennessee history, the Nolensville Junior 4H Fair,  where boys and girls could bring there animals and girls could make dresses and bring fruits and vegetables. The fair ran for 52 years, finally folding in 1980.

The school itself closed in 1972, and for a few years it was rented out as a recreation center. Between then and 2009 it was variously used as a meeting-place for boy and girls scouts, and rented by one church or another.

By the end of the aughts it was beginning to become seriously run down. So the NHS, like the group of parents who came together to create the school two generations ago, got together to take over the lease. In the past 7 years the NHS, led by a tight and tenacious group of women who not only remember the schools golden age but experienced it.

Wilson, who spent 27 years working at First Tennessee Bank in Nolensville, understands all too well the financial challenge of restoring the school to its  condition. But, with vivid memories of graduating on the stage in the gym in 1948 and of the fair and the ball games and more than anything else the sense of community the school gave a place to grow, Wilson also understands the pricelessness of preserving the past.

The museum, open on the first Saturday of every month May through October from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Tours by appointment can be arranged by calling Peggy Wilson at 615-776-2417 or by emailing [email protected]

[scroller style=”sc1″ title=”Other History of Williamson Stories” title_size=”17″ display=”cats” cats=”52″ number_of_posts=”4″ speed=”300″]

1 COMMENT

  1. You forgot to mention that it was used in filming the Burt Reynolds movie “WW and the Dixie Dance Kings” in the early 70’s.

    I know someone that allowed their antique car to be used for the filming, which was set in the 1950’s. I can arrange for you to speak with that person if you are interested.,

Comments are closed.