Collection Title: Jackson Purchase Oral History Project – Schools and Education
Series Number: OH235
Interviewee: Brown, James
Interviewer: Trawick, Nancy D.
Date interviewed: October 12, 1995
Processed by: O'Daniel, Hannah
Date processed: January 24, 2013
Description: 1 sound disc (24 minutes)
Abstract: James Brown describes in detail his education at the one-room Waters School at New Concord, Calloway County, Kentucky in the 1920s and early 1930s. He recalled the school’s facilities, assignments, class plays, spelling bees, punishments received by mischievous students and significant activities and events during the academic year. The school served about twenty-five to forty-five students from the first through eighth grades.
Biographical / Historical note: James Brown was born on December 30, 1915 in Calloway County, Kentucky to Will Brown and Bertha Webb Brown. He first attended the Waters School in 1926 and continued through the eighth grade. After completing two years at Concord High School, Brown enlisted in the United States Army for four years as a private first class during World War II. He served with the Murray City Police force for twenty-one years and retired as the Police Chief. After his first wife Elaine Ahart Brown died in December 1986, he remarried to Odell Brown. He died on March 16, 2002 at Westview Nursing Home in Murray, Kentucky. Waters Schoolhouse is the only remaining one-room schoolhouse in Calloway County. It was named for the first teacher who taught at the schoolhouse when it opened in the late 1800s, Joseph Spillman Waters. The schoolhouse was donated to and moved to Murray-Calloway County Central Park in the 1970s. Renovations occurred from 1985 to 2002 and the building received an official Kentucky Historical Society marker in 2006.
General information: No user access to original recordings. Use audio user copies, digital derivatives, transcripts, and/or tape indexes. This collection may be protected from unauthorized copying by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code). Permission for reproduction must be requested from Murray State University.
Subject Headings / Descriptors:
Brown, James, 1915-2006.
New Concord (Ky.) – History.
Murray (Ky.) – History.
Education – Kentucky -- Calloway County – History.
Rural schools – Kentucky – New Concord.
Waters School (New Concord, Ky.)
