THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 20, 1995 TAG: 9501180168
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 196 lines
THE YEAR 1870 must have dawned hard for the more than 5,000 school-age children in old Norfolk County.
It was five years after the end of the Civil War and just under a century before the county merged with South Norfolk to form the comfortable suburb we now know as Chesapeake. Union troops had left the area devastated economically, physically and emotionally.
Only a privileged few children could afford to attend the handful of private schools in operation. The rest went to work to help support their families, pushing plows across hardened farmland or tending to household chores.
Hope came that year, though, in the form of a one-armed Civil War veteran named John T. ``Tom'' West. The state superintendent of schools appointed West the first post-war superintendent of Norfolk County schools.
West began his work in January 1870, reconstructing the fledgling public school system that had existed before the war.
West chronicled his more than 30 years as superintendent in a 321-page leather-bound ledger. It begins:
A record of Work and Official Acts of John T. West Co. Supt. of Schools for Norfolk Co. Va.
The ledger was found a few months ago in a box in a closet of the school administration building at the municipal center on Cedar Road. Superintendent C. Fred Bateman, a history buff who has marveled in the discovery and studied the volume extensively, said he is not sure why West kept the journal.
``It may have been for accountability purposes,'' he said.
After a few pages of prose, the journal is mainly ledger entries, listing teachers, salaries and student enrollment. West would have been responsible for reporting such information to the state.
The Norfolk County Historical Society of Chesapeake has some records, but Bateman believes the journal is the most complete record available of the early county school system.
``We have little fragments here and there,'' he said. ``But that's it.''
``Norfolk County has a lot of loose papers,'' said Elizabeth Hanbury, immediate past president of the historical society. Hanbury recently found documents from pre-Civil War schools.
West's journal would be a valuable addition to the society's records, President Stuart B. Smith said. And it comes at a time when the city has developed a heightened interest in its past.
``We've published several books over the years, nothing directly on the School Board, but we try to accumulate anything on the history of Norfolk County,'' Smith said.
``It's fascinating when you get a primary source like this,'' Bateman said. ``I've spent some time with it.''
West's journal was discovered shortly before Bateman surprised the district with his announcement in October that he planned to retire this summer after 15 years at the helm.
Bateman has determined that he is only the seventh superintendent to serve since West. Other area school districts have changed leaders, and leadership styles, much more frequently.
City residents have urged the School Board to choose someone who would treasure the city's legacy as much as Bateman and past superintendents.
``They enjoy a sense of continuity,'' Bateman said. ``This is not a community that likes radical change.''
The community was slow to mobilize in West's time, too, according to his journal.
When he took the reins in 1870, there was no School Board, and most of the old one-room schoolhouses had been burned by Union soldiers. West worked out of his home, with no staff.
He was not the first superintendent of Norfolk County Schools, Bate-man said. Records show there was a superintendent as early as 1845.
But during the war, it appears no public education was provided at all for a period. Children learned to read and write from their families or neighbors.
Before the war, West had served as master of a one-room schoolhouse.
No record says why the state superintendent chose West for the job of rebuilding Norfolk County's schools.
``He appears to me to be a very resourceful person,'' from the journal accounts, Bateman said.
``I have always heard that he was a very generous person,'' said West's great-niece, Marian West, who lives in Portsmouth.
``I know of a family connection that he sent away to college and educated, and she later became a teacher and taught in Norfolk for 50 years.''
West was born on a farm in what's called the Cornland section, now around the place where Cornland and West roads intersect. His grave marker says he was born in 1836. He was one of three sons of John T. West Sr. and Sarah Hodges West. All three boys served in the Civil War.
West became captain of a Confederate company called ``The Jackson Grays,'' and lost his arm to a bayonet wound during the Battle of the Crater in Petersburg, according to Historical Society records.
He married Alice Pell from Sunbury, N.C. They never had children, Marian West said, but they reared some distant relatives' children, two girls and a boy.
He was a Methodist minister and his family helped charter Good Hope United Methodist Church. The church is still standing on Benefit Road, and West is buried there.
After the war, West returned to the farm and worked until his appointment as superintendent. He would have been about 34 years old at the time.
West recommended some men he thought fit to serve as ``trustees,'' the equivalent of School Board members, in each of the county's six districts. The board met for the first time Jan. 20, 1870, in Portsmouth. They had some money from the state and the county.
. . . It was gathered that very little interest was manifested by the people in the subject of education. . . . That a very large majority of the children of both the white and black races were. . . . without educational advantages . . . .
In fact, West wrote, there was a strong public sentiment against public schools.
The 1870s were tough for Southern families, Bateman said. The war had left an economic depression.
``Everybody in the families went to work, including the children,'' Bateman said. ``It was more important that children work than go to school.''
A census taken by the trustees at West's direction showed that, of the 5,200 children in Norfolk County between the ages of 5 and 20, only 150 were attending one of the six private schools.
By 1871, West and the trustees had opened 30 public schools, most in barns or people's homes. There were 1,244 students enrolled.
The schools were overseen by 30 teachers, whom West had tested for competency and then licensed. Local superintendents were entrusted with certifying teachers at that time.
Nineteen of the teachers were white, 11 were black, according to West's ledger. The average monthly salary for a teacher was $33.12.
Notwithstanding the difficulties of starting, the sch. year passed away pleasantly and the success of the schools brought many friends to the cause.
The road continued to be rough, however. Money was a problem. In his journal, West refers to a time when county commissioners levied a 50-cent tax on dogs to pay the school system's bills.
. . . and although the law was very generally evaded, we succeeded in raising $812.55 . . .
If the law had been strictly enforced, he wrote, they could have raised as much as $2,500.
West was not alone in his efforts to bring the county, kicking and screaming, into an age of book learning.
Others, like John Ellis Brabble, were equally committed to the cause.
Brabble, who was born a slave in North Carolina and signed on with West as a principal and teacher in 1887, spawned generations of descendants who continue to work for the school system today.
His youngest son, Charles S. Brabble Sr., 70, is a retired Chesapeake principal.
Charles Brabble remembers the dedication his father brought to his work, and to teaching his own children the value of education. Every night, the Brabble children gathered around the kitchen table to study as their parents watched over them.
John Ellis awoke every morning extra early to trudge the 2 1/2 miles to his school, sometimes arriving with icicles on his moustache, to light the fires in the classroom stoves so the building would be warm by the time the children arrived. Principal-teachers at the time were responsible for all tasks, including cleaning the outside privies.
It was well before integration, in the days when facilities for ``colored'' children - as they were called in West's journal - were much different from those provided for white youngsters.
``He was totally committed to education, everywhere he went,'' Brabble said of his father. ``He wanted to have a better way of life than the way he started out. He instilled in his eight children the absolute necessity of an education.''
For many, it was the only chance to escape poverty.
Bateman said Brabble cried when he saw the reference to his father in West's journal. West listed all his teachers every year, along with their salaries and their attendance.
``I've never known one individual with a meager income who accomplished as much as he did,'' Brabble said.
The question now is how to preserve such memories.
The historical society's Smith said he is not sure of the best way to preserve West's journal. The leather and gold-leaf trim on the outside now are worn. The pages are yellowed and growing brittle. This year marks the 125th since West began his chronicle.
``I'd have to see it,'' Smith said. ``I'd have to know what kind of condition it's in.
``But it needs to be preserved. At least some copies should be made, in case something happens to the original.''
The original also could be rebound by experts who work on old books, Smith said.
Bateman, who now keeps the journal on a bookshelf in his office and guards it closely, said he plans to hand it over to the historical society before he retires.
``I really think this journal should be housed in the historical society's room in the library,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by STEVE EARLEY
School Superintendent C. Fred Bateman has studied the old county
schools ledger extensively.
The journal was found recently in a closet of the school
administration building.
One page in the ledger records attendance for classes in what is now
Western Branch and Deep Creek.
John T. West served as superintendent for 30 years.
by CNB