Free Hill, Tennessee

Last updated
Free Hill, Tennessee
USA Tennessee location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Free Hill
Coordinates: 36°33′44″N85°29′32″W / 36.56222°N 85.49222°W / 36.56222; -85.49222 Coordinates: 36°33′44″N85°29′32″W / 36.56222°N 85.49222°W / 36.56222; -85.49222
Country United States
State Tennessee
County Clay
Elevation
[1]
620 ft (189 m)
Time zone UTC-6 (Central Time Zone)
  Summer (DST) UTC-5 (Central Time Zone)
Area code 931
GNIS feature ID1284872 [1]
Free Hills Rosenwald School
Free-hills-rosenwald-tn1.jpg
The old Free Hills Rosenwald School at Free Hills Community Park
LocationFree Hills Rd., E of TN 52, Free Hill, Tennessee
Coordinates 36°33′45.5″N85°29′12.7″W / 36.562639°N 85.486861°W / 36.562639; -85.486861 (Free Hills Rosenwald School)
Area1 acre (0.40 ha)
Built1929
Built bySamuel L. Smith
Architectural styleRosenwald School Plan
NRHP reference No. 96001360 [2]
Added to NRHPNovember 15, 1996

Free Hill (also called Free Hills) is an unincorporated community in Clay County, Tennessee, United States. [1] It is an African American community established in 1816, before the Civil War.

Contents

The original inhabitants were the freed slaves of Virginia Hill, the daughter of a wealthy North Carolina planter. [3] After purchasing 2,000 acres (8 km2) of isolated hilly land, Hill freed her slaves and turned the property over to them. Folklore suggests that the original residents included Virginia Hill's own mulatto children. [4]

At its peak, the community had about 300 residents and included two grocery stores, three clubs, two eating establishments, two churches, and a school. [4] Today, Free Hill's population is approximately 70. [3]

Free Hills Rosenwald School

The settlement's Rosenwald school was one of 354 schools for African Americans built in the early 20th century with financial support from the Julius Rosenwald Fund. The Free Hills Rosenwald School was used from approximately 1925 to 1949. The structure, which is believed to be one of only about 30 Rosenwald schools still standing, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. [2]

Recent years

A small number of residents remain in Free Hill, whose population has declined since the 1960s. In September 1993 the state of Tennessee placed a historical marker on Tennessee State Route 53 to identify the community and commemorate its history. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">College Park, Maryland</span> City in Maryland, United States

College Park is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, and is approximately four miles (6.4 km) from the northeast border of Washington, D.C. The population was 34,740 at the 2020 United States Census. It is best known as the home of the University of Maryland, College Park. Since 1994, the city has also been home to the National Archives at College Park, a facility of the U.S. National Archives, as well as to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Center for Weather and Climate Prediction (NCWCP) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franklin, Tennessee</span> City in Tennessee, United States

Franklin is a city in and county seat of Williamson County, Tennessee, United States. About 21 miles (34 km) south of Nashville, it is one of the principal cities of the Nashville metropolitan area and Middle Tennessee. As of 2020, its population was 83,454. It is the seventh-largest city in Tennessee. Franklin is known to be the home of many celebrities, mostly country music stars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Appomattox, Virginia</span> Town in Virginia

Appomattox is a town in Appomattox County, Virginia, United States. The population was 1,733 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Appomattox County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Round Hill, Loudoun County, Virginia</span> Town in Virginia

Round Hill is a town in Loudoun County, Virginia, United States. Its population was 539 at the 2010 census and an estimated 656 in 2019. The town is located at the crossroads of Virginia Routes 7 and 719, approximately 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Washington, D.C. The town's name refers a hill two miles northeast of a 910-foot (280 m) hill used during the American Civil War as a signal post by both Confederate and Union troops.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luray, Virginia</span> Town in Virginia, United States

Luray is the county seat of Page County, Virginia, United States, in the Shenandoah Valley in the northern part of the Commonwealth. The population was 4,895 at the 2010 census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boston African American National Historic Site</span> National Historic Site of the United States

The Boston African American National Historic Site, in the heart of Boston, Massachusetts's Beacon Hill neighborhood, interprets 15 pre-Civil War structures relating to the history of Boston's 19th-century African-American community, connected by the Black Heritage Trail. These include the 1806 African Meeting House, the oldest standing black church in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosenwald School</span> Schools in the United States

The Rosenwald School project built more than 5,000 schools, shops, and teacher homes in the United States primarily for the education of African-American children in the South during the early 20th century. The project was the product of the partnership of Julius Rosenwald, a Jewish-American clothier who became part-owner and president of Sears, Roebuck and Company and the African-American leader, educator, and philanthropist Booker T. Washington, who was president of the Tuskegee Institute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weeksville, Brooklyn</span>

Weeksville is a historic neighborhood founded by free African Americans in what is now Brooklyn, New York, United States. Today it is part of the present-day neighborhood of Crown Heights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morristown College</span> United States historic place

Morristown College was an African American higher education institution located in Morristown, the seat of Hamblen County, Tennessee. It was founded in 1881 by the national Freedman's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The school was renamed Knoxville College-Morristown Campus in 1989 and closed in 1994. Prior to the civil rights movement, the college held the distinction of being one of only two institutions in East Tennessee for African Americans, the other being Knoxville College, founded in 1875.

Lyles or Lyles Station is an unincorporated community in Patoka Township, Gibson County, Indiana. The community dates from 1849, although its early settlers first arrived in the 1830s, and it was formally named Lyles Station in 1886 to honor Joshua Lyles, a free African American who migrated with his family from Tennessee to Indiana around 1837. Lyles Station is one of Indiana's early black rural settlements and the only one remaining. The rural settlement reached its peak in the years between 1880 and 1912, when major structures in the community included the railroad depot, a post office, a lumber mill, two general stores, two churches, and a school. By the turn of the twentieth century, Lyles Station had fifty-five homes, with a population of more than 800 people. The farming community never fully recovered from the Great Flood of 1913, which destroyed much of the town. Most of its residents left for economic reasons, seeking opportunities for higher paying jobs and additional education in larger cities. By 1997 approximately fifteen families remained at Lyles Station, nearly all of them descended from the original settlers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lyles Consolidated School</span> United States historic place

Lyles Consolidated School is a historic school in Lyles Station, Indiana. The third school to be located in Lyles Station, it was opened in 1919 and used until 1958. Abandoned for nearly forty years, it had deteriorated almost to the point of total collapse by 1997. The Lyles Station Historic Preservation Corporation was founded in June 1997, to preserve and promote the history of the Lyles Station community. Its major project was restoration of the schoolhouse, intending to use it as a living history museum to educate others both about Lyles Station's history and the daily school routine in the early twentieth century. The school was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Restoration of the site was completed in 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cairo Rosenwald School</span> Historic building in Cairo, Tennessee

Cairo Rosenwald School is a former school for African-American children located in the unincorporated community of Cairo, Sumner County, Tennessee. It was one of seven Rosenwald schools built in the county.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Durham's Chapel School</span> United States historic place

Durham's Chapel School, also known as Durham's Chapel Rosenwald School, is a former school for African-American children located in Gallatin, Tennessee, that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hope Rosenwald School</span> United States historic place

The Hope Rosenwald School, also known as Hope School, is a former school at 1971 Hope Station Road near Pomaria, South Carolina. As a Rosenwald School, it served rural African-American children in the early 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First Baptist Church (Petersburg, Virginia)</span> Church in Virginia, United States

First Baptist Church was the first Baptist church in Petersburg, Virginia; one of the first African-American Baptist congregations in the United States, and one of the oldest black churches in the nation. It established one of the first local schools for black children in the nation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pikeville Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church</span> Historic church in Tennessee, United States

Pikeville Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is a historic African-American church on E. Valley Drive in Pikeville, Tennessee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornland School</span> United States historic place

Cornland School is a one-room schoolhouse located in Chesapeake, Virginia. "It is believed to be the oldest pre-Rosenwald School still standing in Tidewater Virginia." It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.

Promise, Promise Land or Promised Land was an unincorporated community founded in rural Dickson County, Tennessee, United States, north of Charlotte soon after the American Civil War by formerly enslaved people. At one time the settlement included stores, two church buildings, a schoolhouse and around thirty houses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hog Hammock, Georgia</span> United States historic place

Hog Hammock is an African-American community on Sapelo Island, a barrier island of the U.S. state of Georgia.

Okahumpka Rosenwald School is a historic Rosenwald School building in rural Okahumpka, Florida, United States. It was built in 1929 and was used as a school for African American children in the community. It is one of the two remaining Rosenwald Schools in Lake County Florida.

References

  1. 1 2 3 U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Free Hill, Tennessee
  2. 1 2 "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  3. 1 2 Garrison, Joey (July 9, 2016). "Tennessee community founded by freed slaves fights extinction". The Tennessean. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 The Free Hills Community, an African-American heritage area