Mystery Photo 5.26.11

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adurhamcountyschool_1906.jpeg

"A Durham County School Building" - 1906
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection. Scanned by Digital Durham)

Comments

That's a beautiful building, and it looks like the community was proud of it. It's sad that it's been obliterated so thoroughly that we don't even know what or where it was.

These appear to be all men and boys in the foreground; most of the Durham school pictures have at least some female teachers if not most. Could that point to what sort of institution this was?

I was thinking the same thing, it does look like an older school, but without females, I'm wondering what it was. What a beautiful facility.

For what it's worth, I just thumbed through my copy of Unfinished Heaven by Betsy Holloway, which is a history of early 20th century Durham City schools, and found nothing that remotely resembled this. Not surprising considering this says Durham County, but thought it was worth a look.

Based on nothing but wild gut-based speculation, you don't happen to know what stood on the site of Mangum Elementary School prior to the current building, do you? It sounds like form what I read online that the site was previously 1-12 school. Given that it was one of the earliest well-settled parts of what's now Durham County, it wouldn't surprise me if there were a school there previously, and if it were non-coeducational at some point in its history. Call me nuts, but the picture just *looks* like Bahama, particularly the Mangum Elementary site.

Am I nuts?

Okay, I went a-googling, and there was something called the Mangum Male Academy that Albert or Alvin H. Stokes was the principal of. If this were a reunion, that would make sense. There's apparently something about it in Jean Bradley Anderson's book, according to Google Books, but it's hidden in the non-online bit.

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