The Pickens sentinel. (Pickens, S.C.) 1911-2016, 1921-07-21
THE SCHOOLS OF PICKENs AND
THE SERVICES OF r. r. HAL
LUM, COUNTY SUPT.
By Prof. w. S. Morrison, Clemson
College.

The following article was written
by Prof. harrison for "South Caro-
lima Education" a magazine publish
ed by the extension department of
the University of South Carolina.
and is taken from the May Is issue
of that magazines:
You ask me for short article on
the schools of Pickens and the serv-
ices Of the outgoing County Super
intendent of Education, Richard T.
Hallum. TO comply gives me pecul-
lar pleasure for two reasons: was
one time Pickens county teacher,
and twenty years later Hallum was
for four years a student of mine at
Clemson. He is one of my seven
teen hundred jewels, that being the
number of Clemson graduates l have
taught at Clemson College.
About the middle of September,
1875, on of the trustees rode up to
my school house at McBee's Acade-
my, Spartanburg county, where | had
been teaching since few days after
graduating at Wofford late in June,
and authorized me to close school
Friday, as 'the money was out"
My contract was ! would teach the
school for $50 a month, the school
to continue as long as the money
lasted" closed as notified, and
hearing Easley had no school, l went
there following Sunday night, arriv-
! ing about midnight. Next morning
went around the town with my
"list" and got fifteen or twenty "sub-
scribed pupils" for "a school which
opened Tuesday, in the old Mt. Oil
vet Methodist church, frame build
ing, unceiled, without window sash
es. taught there until about the
goth of December, pupils increasing
to some thirty odd. The Air Line
Railroad had been in operation two
or three years. Easley was a new
town with two or three hundred in
habitants and several bar rooms. Its
public schools today have more
teachers than its only school in my
day there had pupils; and there are
more than ten times as many pupils
as there were people in the town
when your scribe was board, prnci-
pal and faculty of "The Easley High
School'-as we advertised in The
Pickens Sentinel, the only newspaper
in the county.
During that remarkably beautiful
tall | visited several sections of the
county, attending quarterly meet
lngs, camp meetings and baptizings.
Steadily the conviction grew on the
BOY schoomaster that the Almighty
had done his part for the county in
SOIL and climate, and that the lands
great need was schoolhouses and
churches, teachers and preachers.
The 1875 report of the state su-
perintendent of education shows
Pickens had that year SO school
houses previously erected" SO loo.
IA frame, none brick or stone
Eighteen were in good" condition.
10 fair 10 bad" Two frame
houses were put up during the wear
fickens then had forty white teach
ers, six colored, grand total fortv-
SIN thirteen third-grade, thirteen
second-grade, twenty frst-grade
me average monthly wages paid"
1eachers was SGT, male and female
getting the same. $2,5O3.64 was
the total amount of money paid to
teachers during the year.
The state superint endent's renort
1919, gives many items of great
interest about school conditions not
only in Pickens but in all South
Carolina. That year the Radical Leg
islature proposed the two-mill school
tax amendment to the Constitution
which was supported by both parties
IN the memorable election of 1876,
ana approved after hard STRUGGLE
and mainly through the influence Of
Governor Hampton, by the first De-
mocratic General Assembly.
Il. 1. Hallum entered Clemson Col
,lege in 1894-the year after the Col
lege opened. He was an earnest,
Woodworking student, impressing his
1ellow-students and the faculty as a
man who came to, and remained at
Clemson "for business" While a
cadet he borrowed my copy of Mills
Statistics of South Carolina, copied
the entire article on Pendleton Dis
trlct land had it republished in the
Pickens Sentinel in installments. In