By Margaret Virginia Tapp

The following is a brief history taken from the thesis that Miss Tapp submitted for completion of the Specialist in Education Degree, Department of History, George Peabody College for Teachers, Nashville, Tennessee. (August of 1962)

There were no accredited high schools, especially in rural areas, in Georgia prior to 1904. Dr. Joseph S. Stewart and Chancellor Walter B. Hill of the Georgia University System were instrumental in establishing a means of accrediting high schools in Georgia in 1904. That year, only seven four year public high schools and four private four year schools were accredited. In 1905, 39 three year schools were accredited making a total of 50 accredited schools with 150 teachers by year end.

Rural areas with no accredited high schools suffered from lack of teachers, incentive among pupils to enroll and lack of funds to pay for board and enrollment away from home. Also, travel conditions to a school were very poor.

In 1906 Georgia Governor Joseph M. Terrell (1902-1907) recognized the need to provide better educational conditions for students. His bill passed in 1906 to establish a boarding facility in each of the Congressional Districts of the state. Schools were to become self-supporting with one half of the receipts of the farm and shop products to go into the school’s general fund. There were 12 districts total. Powder Springs was the site chosen for the Seventh District.

Most of the sites in these other districts later became sites of junior colleges of the University System of Georgia. One example is that of the site in the Fourth District being at Carrollton, Georgia.

Powder Springs edge on the site for the Seventh District was sparked by the donation of 240 acres by Mr. John Newton McEachern, Sr., founder of the Industrial Life and Health Insurance of Georgia (established in 1891), later known as Life of Georgia Insurance Company. Although living in Atlanta, he owned extensive property in Cobb County. He also offered cash toward buildings, along with other Cobb County citizens. $15,000 was raised. The property was located in Macland (named for the McEachern’s extensive land holdings).

On June 13, 1907 the deed for the Seventh District Agricultural and Mechanical Arts School (A & M) was recorded in Cobb County June 25,1907. It transferred five lots, each containing 40 acres and two lots containing 20 acres each, all in the 19th District and 2nd Section of Cobb County.

Professor Henry Robert Hunt, then superintendent of schools in Winder, GA, was chosen to head the A & M School. The family moved into the home of Mrs. Hattie McEachern Babb of the Macland community until the administration building was ready for occupancy. The bricks for the school were made of clay which Mr. Hunt found on the property.

The school opened February 8, 1908. All teachers and boarding students initially lived in the one administration building. Two rooms were used as classrooms and the remaining for living quarters, cloak room, hospital room and offices. The Auditorium was upstairs.

Seventy Seven (77) students were enrolled the first year (1908) and there five teachers. A dinning hall and boys’ dorm was built that first year. The girls’ dorm was completed in 1912. A modern Louden equipped dairy barn opened in 1917. A shop building was in 1920.

Enrollment grew annually. In 1913-1914 there were 215 students. In 1920- 1921 there were 292 students. The McEachern donation grew into a
beautifully landscaped campus with impressive buildings, trees, gardens, and farm.

The teachers lived in the dormitories with the students. They provided social instruction and proper behavior.

Agricultural and home economic methods were shared with farmers and homemakers in the area, as well as allowing their use of the school shop for repair of farm equipment and tools.

In April 1924, Mr. Hunt passed away after sixteen years of devotion and effort in making the school a success. He was succeeded by Cobb County native Donald Dewey Scarborough who was a member of the 1915 graduating class of the school. He served for four years through 1928.

H. E. Nelson served as principal for one year 1928-1929. The final principal was Dr. Claude Gray who served from1929 until the school was abolished in 1933.

The demise of the Seventh District A & M School actually began with the passage of the Federal Smith-Hughes Act in 1917. Improved roads and increase of local high schools made the district schools less important. In 1925, the Georgia State survey Committee recommended that the schools be closed as early as 1926 and the plants returned to the local school systems. The schools continued to operate.

In 1931 the Board of Regents was established to oversee all post- secondary schools. The plan was to turn most of the schools into junior collages or abolish them. Control for high schools was to be the function of the local governments, not the state of Georgia.

Efforts to turn the Seventh District School into a junior collage were unsuccessful. It was considered to be too close to the site of the Fourth District School at Carrollton, 40 miles away, where the A & M School had already been turned into a junior college – West Georgia Junior College.

The Seventh District A & M School had filled a gap for hundreds of rural students who lacked high school facilities in their home communities. The A & M school “dignified farm life, disseminated culture and stimulated community effort to education”.

The Georgia Board of Regents reported in 1933 that the property had been leased to Cobb County to establish a consolidated county school in the future. The property was actually transferred to Cobb County June 19, 1935, becoming the site of the Macland Consolidated School and a few years later the John McEachern School and eventually being the John McEachern High School.

A full copy of Miss Tapps Thesis is on file and may be read at the Seven Springs Museum, the Seventh District A & M School Museum, both in Powder Springs, GA. Also, at the Georgia Room of the Cobb County Library in Marietta, GA. “The History of the 7 th District Agricultural and And Mechanical (A & M) School of Cobb County” Edited by Mimi Jo Butler.

Cobb County Georgia Genealogical Society, Inc., December 1999

Thank you, Miss Tapp and the Cobb County Georgia Genealogical Society.

Miss Tapp (1911-1992) was the daughter of William R. and Mamie I. Vaughn Tapp. The Tapp family were among some of the early settlers of the area. She attended G.S.C.W. after graduation. She began teaching social studies and history in Douglas County in 1931. Over the next 30 years she taught in GA, TN, NC, at McEachern from 1956-1958 and last at Sprayberry High from 1960-1962.

Miss Tapp was known as one of the local Historians of Powder Springs and documented a lot of our history. She was also, the Historian of the First Baptist Church of Powder Springs, publishing two volumes on the church’s history. These histories are also housed at the Seven Springs Museum.