Samuel Rockwell built the school in 1886 at the behest of Seaboard Air Line Railroad. Rockwell’s wife, Ada, was the first “schoolmarm,” and Durward Marks, son of Salter and Alice Adams Marks, was the first student. Parents paid tuition if they could afford it, but the school was free to others.
The building was abandoned its first year because of overcrowding. It later housed a grocery store, a home to Sunday school classes, a post office, an undertaker’s shop, a printshop and a feed store.
Southern Pines founder John T. Patrick donated land for a new schoolhouse on the corner of Bennett Street and Maine Avenue. There, Rockwell built a larger one-room schoolhouse. That building, of 320 square feet, lasted for 10 years, until it, too, was overcrowded.
The next year, the N.C. General Assembly voted to provide some funds for public schools, and the private “academy” was abandoned. First-, second- and third-graders still attended school in the Bennett Street building, however, under the direction of Miss Helen E. Calhoun, who previously had owned a private school of her own.
A school committee appointed by the mayor leased the second floor of the King’s Daughters Hall on Connecticut Avenue, between Bennett and Railroad streets. The committee built a partition. On one side, Mrs. Rockwell taught “intermediate” pupils. On the other side, E.H. Yeomans taught the higher grades and served as principal. By 1901, the school had 75 students; by 1908, it had 120. High school classes included English grammar and literature, rhetoric, algebra, U.S. history, geography and chemistry. There were no electives.
In 1908, the entire student body was housed in a new building on May Street. Ada Rockwell had retired the year before. Miss Calhoun was still teaching. Joining the faculty was Professor William F. Allen, a graduate of Bowdoin, who was superintendent of Southern Pines schools for more than 25 years.
In 1909, Southern Pines had the only four-year high school in Moore County, and it was designated as the high school for the entire county.
Material for this article was taken, in large part, from the 1980 book “Young Southern Pines,” by Helen G. Huttenhauer.
