Olive Branch School

 Olive Branch school house was located about nine miles east of Marion in a wooded area.  Traveling west from Shady Grove it was a mile and a half from the the old Deanwood store.  It is marked with a circle and a X on the map below.  When the school was active there was a road from the smaller x on the right that went to the school, off of Nunn Switch Road.

The name "Olive Branch" came from  the little church and cemetery that was located near the school, and was located near the Olive Branch stream that ran close by.  

 

The school building was the usual 20 feet by 34 feet with three windows on each side and two doors in front, one for the boys and one for girls.  A strip of the back wall was painted black for a chalkboard, with a trough for chalk built underneath.  Sizeable prints of George Washington and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow occupied the wall space between the doors.

The furnishings were comparable to other schools in the county, homemade double desks, a rude table and chair for the teacher, two long homemade recitation benches, a chart for teaching reading to beginners, and hopefully a box of chalk.  

There was a coal stove, a coal bucket and shovel, a water bucket and dipper, and a broom.  The teachers were responsible for the use of the broom. 

Some of the teachers at Olive Branch: S. A. Moore taught in 1879, Addie Crawford taught in 1891, John Ewell Travis in 1900, Jean Fletcher in 1902, Edna Roberts in 1905, Madge Rankin in 1906, Nelle Boston in 1907, Olpha Spence in 1908, Alpha Kemp in 1911, Herbert McDowell in 1914, Ethel Hunt in 1916, Anna Stembridge in 1917, Minnie Dean in 1924, Daisy Hill Rankin in 1929, Rebecca Stewart Ingram in 1930, Azleet Wood and Hazel Stewart in 1931, Gene Simpson in 19232, Sara Dean Waddell in 1933 and Marian Dean Baker in 1939.

 

Olive Branch school was closed in the 1940's and the building dismantled and lumber sold and the land reverted back to the heirs of Frank Lamb who gave it.