Peninsula In Passage

John Yeates John Yeates II, a plantation owner at Pig Point, followed Richard Bennett’s example as a steward of education. His father came from England on the ship “America” to Jamestown in 1635 and settled in Nansemond County where Yeates was born in 1641. Yeates, described as a philanthropist and civic-minded individual, built two schools in what was called the Lower Parish for the use of his children and neighboring families. When he died in 1731, he left an endowment to continue operations of a school, funded through the “rents of his lands and the heirs of his Negroes to maintain them”. The endowment funded a school building, teachers’ salaries, a library, and free textbooks for the poor. In 1841, the original one-room building was replaced by a two-story structure with a private school on the second floor and a public education facility on the first level. After the Civil War, when the slaves were emancipated, the income from the land ceased. The property was sold by the Virginia legislature in 1866 but the schools continued under Nansemond County supervision. In 1992 workers uncovered what archaeologists believed to be the bones belonging to a 20-year old female slave who died around 1800. She may have been a slave on the estate of John Yeates. The body was reburied at Oakland Cemetery in Chuckatuck next to Little Bethel Baptist Church. Based on history books and newspaper stories, Yeates’ other school appears to have been near U.S. 17 in an area later known as Belleville. It was also rebuilt in 1841, as a long, rectangular structure with two classrooms. Nansemond County continued to use the Driver Yeates School until 1920 when a new school complex was built. The Second Congressional District Agricultural High School, known as Dejarnette High School, was a state of the art structure built on the earlier Yeates school property. The new school was a regional consolidated high school with dormitories for students who came from outlying areas. Later, Driver Elementary and Driver Middle School were built on the same site.

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