Virginia Schools In The Early 1900s May Shock You. They're So Different.

Today, the Fairfax County Public School System includes more than 30 schools. James Madison High School in Vienna is the seventh highest ranked high school in Virginia and was named one of the best high schools in the nation by U.S. News.

In 1868, the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University) opened, providing a place to train college-aged African American students in practical trades and industrial skills that would allow them to pay their way through school by working jobs on the growing campus. When the Whittier School first opened in 1889, it was a "practice ground" for students studying education at the Hampton Normal School.

This photo shows that, while society and even academic structures have changed over the last 70 years, teenage girls haven’t. These girls seem to be having way more fun than they should be while "studying" outside of the school.

This first grade classroom doesn’t look much different than one you might find at any modern elementary school in Virginia. The only difference is that, today, you’re more likely to find students working on an Internet-powered "Smart Board" than a chalkboard.

Given the growth that the last couple of decades have brought to Goochland County, it’s hard to imagine that a schoolhouse this small ever existed. An historically rural county, Goochland Public Schools began in 1870. Goochland was the first school division in the state to offer transportation to its students in the form of a horse-drawn wagon. Today, the county offers three elementary schools, one middle school and one high school, serving a collective student body of around 2,400 children.

Central High School was Charlotte Courthouse’s African American high school prior to integration. Every month, the marching band would take to the town’s main street for drills and concerts. All members of the band were responsible for purchasing their own instruments and uniforms and paying for lessons, although the lessons were provided during school hours.

Randolph Henry High School also provided a "home ec cottage" in which students learned to prepare and serve meals, often to a "guest" teacher or community member.

Known as "The Kinleygarten" by the mill policeman, the "school" at the Lynchburg Cotton Mill served mill settlement children from the ages of 6 to 8 while their parents worked. The photographer, Lewis Wickes Hine, asked the headmistress, Miss Carrington, where older children attended school, only to be told that few of them did. The only available school was a long way away and many of the children were merely biding their time until they turned 14 and could work in the mill themselves.

Built c. 1876, the Kelley School served as the first public school in Floyd County. Named after the original owners of the land on which it was built, the one-room schoolhouse had no running water or electricity, and as late as 1917, no outhouse. At first, the school did not have designated grades, rather, students would complete a textbook, then pass it along to a younger sibling or sell it to another family. Over time, the school evolved and it remained an operational school until the 1930s, when the state began closing one- and two-room schoolhouses. In 1939, the schoolhouse was sold to Virgie Nolen Pate, a former pupil, who later turned the schoolhouse into a country store.

According to Richmond City Public Schools, when John Marshall High School opened in 1909, it was heralded as the "grandest, most expensive schoolhouse ever erected in the South." Open to grades 8-11, the school was considered the state’s most prestigious public high school for decades. Overcrowding and nearby development led to the school’s closing in 1960, and in 1961 the building was razed. Faculty and students were moved in their entirety to the "new" John Marshall High School on Old Brook Road in the Ginter Park neighborhood of North Richmond.