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the
Presbyterian Women's Board of Missions appointed Annie Miller and Maggie Axtell as missionaries to the community. Batey Collins (a grandson of Vardeman) and his wife Cynthia donated several acres of land for the mission school and church, and other locals donated lumber and helped with construction. The Vardy Mission School, which initially held classes in a crude log structure (no longer standing), was the first to offer the state-mandated 1st-grade through 8th-grade curriculum to children living in the valley. The Vardy Presbyterian Church was completed in 1899, and a new frame schoolhouse was completed in 1902.
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Vardy
Presbyterian Church, a one-story structure built in 1899 by Morgan Osborne and Miles Watson of nearby Blackwater, Virginia. The church has white frame walls, a pitched tin roof, and a two-story side-gabled roof bell tower. The entrance to the church is via double-leaf door at the base of the
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Presbyterians were active in Vardy by the late 19th century, when itinerant
Presbyterian ministers Christopher Humble and H. P. Cory were conducting sporadic services in the Blackwater Valley. In 1892, the Presbyterian Church's Holston Presbytery decided to establish a mission school at Vardy, and
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By 1984, when the Vardy school, church, and ancillary structures were added to the
National Register of Historic Places, Vardy had just eight residents. With a $ 10,000 grant from the Tennessee Humanities Council, the Vardy Community Historical Society began restoring the Vardy Community School's
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roof and corrugated metal siding. The building's 96 windows allowed ample sunlight to enter during cooler months and allowed cross-breezes to cool classrooms during the warmer months. The building collapsed in
October 2003, and only the first-story south wall and part of the first-story floor
408:(1954), ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional, the Presbyterian Church sold the Vardy school to Hancock County in 1955 and it became part of the public school system. Classes continued at the school until 1973, and services continued at the Vardy Presbyterian Church until 1980.
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In the early 19th century, the early
Melungeon settler Vardeman "Vardy" Collins (1764–?) received a grant for a large plot of land in the Newman's Ridge area. It included the land on which the Vardy school and church are now located. In subsequent decades, his descendants developed his
294:. In 1892 the Presbyterian Church decided to build such a school at Vardy, a community located near the heart of Melungeon country in the Blackwater Creek Valley. Over the next forty-five years, the mission school complex expanded to include a three-story frame schoolhouse, a church, a
298:, a library, and several residences for teachers and children. Although the schoolhouse has collapsed, the school's alumni and other historical groups have preserved its ruins and related structures as a historic site. In 2000, the 19th-century log cabin belonging to Melungeon
279:(1954) ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional, it became part of the Hancock County public school system. In 1984, the school and the structures associated with the mission community that developed around it were designated as a historic district and listed on the
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The Clinic, a one-story structure consisting of two rooms with an exterior door for each room on the west side, built over a rock cellar circa 1923. Located behind the manse, it has corrugated metal siding with four windows spanning the front wall and two windows on the back
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siding, a pitched gable roof, and a covered porch. The building replaced a crude log structure that had served as the mission's "first" schoolhouse for nearly a decade. After the completion of the Vardy
Community School in 1929, this structure was converted into a
327:, which crosses Newman's Ridge through a series of steep switchbacks before intersecting Vardy Blackwater Road near Mulberry Gap. The Vardy School Community is located along Vardy Blackwater Road about 5 miles (8.0 km) east of the road's junction with TN-63.
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A one-story house built in 1934. The house is a frame structure with a gable roof and covered porch. The house has two contributing ancillary structures— a two-door limestone-wall garage and a small frame storage
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The Vardy community, sometimes called "Vardy Valley," is situated in a narrow valley carved by
Blackwater Creek between Newman's Ridge on the south and Powell Mountain on the north. The valley, part of the
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generator, was completed in 1929. Upon completion of the new schoolhouse, the Vardy
Mission School became known as the Vardy Community School. A series of interim ministers succeeded Leonard.
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Community School, a three-story structure built in 1929 and designed by William H. Leonard (father of Chester F. Leonard). The building originally consisted of a frame structure with a
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in the valley. Between 1920 and 1952, the Vardy mission thrived under the leadership of Chester F. Leonard and his wife, Josephine. A new three-story schoolhouse, powered by a
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Part of a segregated system, it was restricted to children considered black or multiracial. Presbyterian missionaries operated the school until 1955; following the
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surviving structures. In 2000, the group restored the Mahala Mullins Cabin and moved it from atop Newman's Ridge to Vardy Blackwater Road, opposite the church.
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Martha Gray Hagedorn, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for Vardy School Community Historic District, 18 June 1984.
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The Chester F. Leonard Manse, a one-story frame structure built in 1921. This building is a prefabricated structure ordered from an
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Information obtained from interpretive kiosk at the Mahala Mullins Cabin and Vardy Community School historic site, December 2009.
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watershed, stretches for roughly 10 miles (16 km) from Mulberry Gap southwest of Vardy to the Blackwater community in
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549:-story house built in 1920. The house is a frame structure with side-gabled roof and a covered front porch.
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graduate, arrived in Vardy. For more than three decades, she served as a teacher and nurse. Rankin taught
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in 1831. Such racial discrimination contributed to the Melungeons of Newman's Ridge maintaining a closed,
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The Mahala Mullins Cabin was the residence of Mahala Mullins (1824–1898), a legendary Melungeon
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storehouse, a limestone bath house, a limestone water storage tank, and a frame teacher's cottage.
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bell tower. The church has pointed arch windows on its sides and a tripartite pointed-arch
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Mahala Mullins was relocated to a site across the street from the Vardy School district.
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to the northeast. Vardy is still relatively isolated, its primary access being from
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University and college buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places
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was similar to restrictions passed in Virginia and other southern states following
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remain intact. The school has five ancillary structures: a frame garage, a
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communities, who lived in the remote mountainous areas along the Tennessee-
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School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee
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List of jails and prisons on the National Register of Historic Places
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window on its front facade. Heavy swinging double-doors divide the
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National Register of Historic Places in Hancock County, Tennessee
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The Vardy School Community Historic District consists of eight
721:(Johnson City, Tenn.: Overmountain Press, 2000), pp. 174-185.
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The general store, a one-story frame structure built in 1937.
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William H. Leonard, Morgan Osborne, Miles Watson, and others
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and several ancillary structures. The structures all have
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namesake community along Blackwater Creek. In 1834, the
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During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dozens of
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The cabin is a two-story "dogtrot" cabin constructed of
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Lest We Forget: The Melungeon Colony of Newman's Ridge
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designs, although the school and some residences have
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Buildings and structures in Hancock County, Tennessee
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Teacher's cottage, next to the Vardy Community School
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mission school established in the Vardy community of
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and postnatal childcare to local mothers and fought
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63:Ruins of the Vardy Community School
1192:National Historic Preservation Act
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128:Blackwater Rd. in Vardy, Tennessee
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115:Show map of the United States
1280:Defunct schools in Tennessee
18:United States historic place
405:Brown v. Board of Education
400:United States Supreme Court
276:Brown v. Board of Education
271:United States Supreme Court
183:appx. 7 acres (2.8 ha)
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164:36.58417°N 83.18861°W
137:Sneedville, Tennessee
90:Show map of Tennessee
1171:District of Columbia
566:Mahala Mullins Cabin
558:Mahala Mullins Cabin
342:free people of color
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143:Coordinates
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605:References
572:moonshiner
532:residence.
439:vernacular
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300:moonshiner
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155:83°11′19″W
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928:Louisiana
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196:Architect
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593:See also
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385:prenatal
381:Columbia
377:Scottish
306:Location
266:border.
264:Virginia
227:84000373
209:Bungalow
125:Location
1185:Related
1088:Wyoming
1063:Vermont
968:Montana
908:Indiana
888:Georgia
883:Florida
853:Arizona
843:Alabama
544:⁄
522:⁄
472:tracery
455:gambrel
331:History
1023:Oregon
978:Nevada
918:Kansas
893:Hawaii
848:Alaska
784:Topics
457:cross-
447:Gothic
246:was a
213:Gothic
1155:Palau
1053:Texas
933:Maine
898:Idaho
553:shed.
507:side.
459:gable
393:Delco
296:manse
188:Built
1109:Guam
1058:Utah
1013:Ohio
913:Iowa
583:hewn
497:Iowa
478:and
323:via
242:The
180:Area
222:No.
1256::
681:^
671:.
665:.
613:^
535:A
254:,
839::
769:e
762:t
755:v
546:2
542:1
539:+
537:1
524:2
520:1
517:+
515:1
482:.
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