Built in 1909, the Odessadale School sits next to the Mount Hebron Missionary Baptist Church. The school is the oldest school dedicated to educating Black schoolchildren standing in Meriwether County. It was open until 1955 when Georgia schools began to consolidate.
Also known as the Odessadale Elementary School, there is a focus to restore the school. More information can be found on the preservation committee’s Facebook page.
Located in Meriwether County, the Cane Creek Missionary Baptist Church is not far from Woodbury, Georgia. I have not located much on the church. Based on the death dates in the cemetery, the congregation has been around since the 1920s.
This Meriwether County Rosenwald school sits just off the downtown area in Manchester. It was built as a five-teacher type school in 1928 for $13,600. The Fisk University Rosenwald database has a photo of it on their site.
Built in 1936, the Eleanor Roosevelt School was the last Rosenwald school built. This was four years after the funding had officially stopped, but President Roosevelt had convinced the Rosenwald fund to follow through on a promise to build a school in Warm Springs. It was built as a five-teacher school and served the local community as a school until 1972 when integration officially closed it.
In 2020, the school was purchased by the Williams siblings, Voncher and Debron, through the Georgia’s Trust for Historic Preservation Revolving Fund. You can follow along on the restoration and donate by visiting their site.
I am not sure why this roofline is so common among rural stores, but it does help in identifying what the building once was.
