Truckin' on the Western Branch

Lessons for Life Just 13 years after the American Revolution, in 1796, the Virginia General Assembly established public schools. Three years later Norfolk County opened several schools, including one near Sycamore Hill. That one-room school, one of the earliest free schools in Virginia, was named Craney Island School because most of the area west of Portsmouth was then known as Craney Island Parish. Most of the current local public schools can trace their roots to the Craney Island School. Thanks to the research of dedicated volunteers preparing for the 200th anniversary celebration of the Churchland Schools in 1999 and to Colonel William H. Stewart, who wrote The History of Norfolk County, Virginia, and Representative Citizens in 1903, we have a fairly accurate overview of the development of public education in the community that Stewart referred to as “wealthy and cultivated.”

Craney Island School, open to free males and females, likely started its school year when the crops were in and children

Original Craney Island School

might be spared from the farms to attend classes as they could. The school thrived and expanded to two rooms in 1840 with a new name—Sycamore Hill. Members of the nearby Sycamore Hill Baptist Church largely supported the school. In 1854 Sycamore Hill School grew to three rooms and took the name Churchland School to conform to the new post office established in 1853. Local landowner John S. Wise, along with John Bidgood and John S. Wright, lobbied to bring a post office to town and chose the name “Churchland.” Another landowner, James Carney, donated $1,500 to the school as a continuing endowment.

The school closed during the Civil War, but Pastor Reuben Jones conducted classes at the nearby Baptist parsonage. In 1870s or 1880s several local farmers built a new, private school, The Academy, which included a high school as well as the elementary grades, a dormitory, and stables for the students’ horses and buggies. The school closed in the early 1900s.

In 1909 a four-room school replaced the 1854 Churchland School that had apparently burned

Pastor Reuben Jones

Churchland Grange Hall

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