History of Oak Hill High / Collins High
Did you know there was a school building in Oak Hill as early as 1850? Parents paid for their children to attend.
Did you know Publications from Oak Hill High were all named for parts of the oak tree. The yearbook is The Acorn; the monthly newspaper that was published for many decades was The Log; a popular weekly “gossip sheet” (before social media became the tell-all) was The Knothole; a literary magazine was Sawdust; and the daily news announcements were known as The Daily Chip! So there you have it!
History of the Original School Building
Credit: Fayette Journal, November 2, 1911.
The general opinion was that the first school building in Oak Hill was located near the residence of Mr. T.H. Hooper as early as 1850. It was a subscription school. A subscription school was a type of private school operated in the 19th Century in rural areas. Families paid a teacher to teach their children in these schools.
Later a church was converted to a school building. Some early teachers in this building were Mr. Will Beckley, Mr. Kenney Cassidy, Miss Mary Miles, Mr. John Hendrickson and Mr. John Shreves.
Another school building of early date was built by area citizens working at times when they were not otherwise employed. The first class taught in 1865 with John Hendrickson as the teacher. This was before free schools so the county paid one-third the expense and the parents paid the other two-thirds. Subjects and books included the elementary spelling book, first and second readers, and arithmetic which usually taught as far as long division. According to the Journal, when long division was reached the teacher would explain that the problems were getting beyond the student’s comprehension .
Grammar was studied from the backs of the pages of the old spelling book. After geography was introduced, the classes would sing the capitals, mountains, rivers and other geographical features to some old church tunes.
In 1879 the first frame school building was constructed by C.B. Mahood of white pine lumber hauled from Raleigh Court House. This building was afterwards moved and a two-room frame structure was built on the lot where the first high school building was burned. A Mr. Brown and Mr. Groves opened school in 1889. In 1890 there was a grammar Normal school taught by Ms. White and S.E. Duncan. Mr. A.G. Sevy was in charge of the school and it became a graded school in 1901.
In the early 1900’s Oak Hill was moving from an agrarian community to a more industrial area thanks in part to the explosion (no pun intended) of coal mining.
When families lived primarily on the farm education was not utmost in their minds. Survival was. The family unit was large – sometimes six, eight, ten or twelve children. Care of this group was all consuming. The older children helped with the younger ones. The girls were taught to cook, clean, sew, grow a garden and preserve food. Boys worked along side their father to take care of the farm animals that were used both for labor and food, to clear land for farming and plant it and to maintain the buildings on the property.
Reading and writing were not particularly useful skills. Some of these children would attend school in the winter if not needed at home but their attendance was spotty at best during spring planting and fall harvesting. If they could sign their name and read a little from the Bible that was considered enough.
With the advent of coal mining, families did not have to depend on their own land to feed and clothe themselves. Jobs were plentiful (although not too well paying for a while) and if every able-bodied person pitched in there was money to buy the necessities of life formerly had to be grown and sewn. Industry also brought the need for other support businesses: clothing and food stores, pharmacies, banks, insurance agencies, doctors and lawyers.
“Storeowners needed to be educated in mathematics as well as being able to read and write. Professional jobs like doctors, lawyers and even teachers required a more learned person. An influx of immigrants from the “old country” saw the need to educate their children in order for them to have a better life.
“With the need presented the high school came into existence in 1904 by a vote of the people of Fayetteville magisterial district taken November 4, 1902, the vote standing 1,012 for and 337 against. The high school opened in February 1904 with O.O. Crawford as principal.
“The high school was classified by the State Department of High Schools as a first class high school so that the graduates could be admitted without examination to the freshman class in any standard university in the country.
On Wednesday night, October 18, 1905, between ten and eleven o’clock, the high school building burned. It had cost $7,000 to build but was only insured for $3,500. School continued to meet in various places until a new building was completed in mid winter of 1907-08. The graded school and high school would occupy this new structure. Mr. Crawford was principal for three years, followed by R.R. Stuart in 1907-08 and then S.M. Archer beginning in 1908.
By 1911 three teachers, all graduates of standard universities, were employed to teach in the high school exclusively. The principal devoted half time to teaching at the high school and the other half with the general management of both the graded and high schools.
A new building to house the high school only was to be ready for occupancy in the middle of November 1911. When completed, there would be four recitation rooms, a study room seating one hundred pupils, a chemistry room, a physician room and an office.
History of the 1928 Building
Collins High School
In a deed dated November 15, 1948 by and between, George R. Collins, Helen C. Beury, Phyllis C. Waters, Amy C. Venable and Richard Venable her husband, and George R. Collins, surviving Trustee under the last will and testament of Justus Collins, parties of the first part, the New River Company (lessee), party of the second part, and the Board of Education of the County of Fayette, WV, party of the third part, property was transferred for the purpose of building a high school
According to the deed the Collins land was given subject to the conditions set forth:
First: that said party of the third part and its successor shall use the said tract of land solely for educational purposes, and shall erect a high school thereon, and other building in which high school activities are conducted, and shall not construct or use thereon any grade or elementary schools or buildings, as grade and elementary schools are now defined.
Second: that the said party of the third part shall name the said high school “Collins High School” and so long as the high school is maintained on the tract of land, the name shall not be changed.
Third: the party of the third part agrees that is will place on the cornerstone of the high school building, or in a suitable location in the high school building, a suitable bronze plaque stating thereon as follows: “This High School named in honor of Justus Collins (1857-1934), a pioneer coal operator of Fayette County, whose estate has donated the site on which this High School is located.” Collins High School resided on Jones Avenue until the mid 1970’s when a new school was built on property at the Oyler Avenue exit of Rt 19 and was once again renamed Oak Hill High School.
In the mid-seventies, a bond issue to build a new junior high and completely modernize the current CHS building failed, but a couple of years later, one to build a new high school at the end of Oyler Avenue passed. Students entered that building in March, 1977, two months before graduation.
Within 15 years, an addition consisting of several classrooms and an atrium was completed. In 2011, Mount Hope High School was permanently closed, and students blended into grades 9-12 at Oak Hill High. Although Mt. Hope students were not happy with the situation, they quickly became a part of the Red Devil Community. Currently, there is no school in Mount Hope and students living in that area begin their formal education New River Primary.
The new high school building, when completed, would be one of the best and most attractive to be found in this section of the state. The plan was strictly modern in every feature. The architects, Frampton and Bowers of Huntington were specialists in school architecture. Many of the best high school and junior high school buildings in this state had been designed by this firm. The fact that it was constructed by the Mankin Lumber Company, of our city, is positive assurance that was first class construction.
It was to be strictly fire proof. The frame is steel the exterior walls were brick, the interior walls tile, plastered, the roof was a concrete base with built-up asphalt covering. Floors were concrete with wood surface, except in the corridors, which would have a composition surface. The corridors were wainscoted with salt-glazed brick. All joists were steel as were the window sashes.
There were twenty-eight rooms of major importance, including classrooms, laboratories, library, auditorium, gymnasium, offices and ladies rest room. In addition to these there were showers, lockers, toilets, storage and furnace rooms.
The heating system was the latest warm air type. Six heaters in the basement would supply an abundance of warm fresh air, which was driven by fans, through ample ducts and flues, to every part of the building. There would be a complete change of air every fifteen minutes without the windows being open.
The following items give some idea of the materials required for its construction: seventy-five car loads of brick and tile (more than a million brick), one and one-half acres of concrete floors, fifteen cars of steel, ten cars of cement, twenty cars of limestone gravel and twenty cars of sand for a total of more than 140 carloads of material.
The outside dimensions were one hundred fifty-five feet in length by ninety-one feet in depth. The exterior finish was of light red brick of mingled shades, with Indiana limestone trim. The building was constructed so that wings could be added when needed.
This building on School Street would house Oak Hill High School until 1950 when a new building on Jones Avenue opened.
Collins Middle Physical Failure
Today the Jones Avenue property sits abandoned, as the Collins facility was deemed unsafe last year. Once consisting of five buildings, concerns grew as the Band Building collapsed under a huge snowfall, next the gym was condemned, and finally the main building was considered unsafe due to water damage from poor drainage off the roof over the years. The “back building” remained habitable, and housed the 5th dan 6th graders while seventh and eighth graders were sent to Fayetteville and Oak Hill High Schools. The summer of 2016 saw portables moved in place on the Oyler Avenue campus next to Oak Hill High, where the entire school is back in place on one campus. Plans are being laid for permanent solution to the Collins dilemma.