contributed by Tom Kunesh (date unspecified)

The first school known to exist in Bradley County was organized in 1804 as Gideon Blackburn’s school for Cherokee children on the Hiwassee in present-day Charleston.

In 1804 a school was established, by the exertions of a zealous and distinguished missionary, the Reverend Gideon Blackburn, in which between four and five hundred young Cherokees receive the rudiments of common education, for which their capacity does not seem inferior to that of the whites…

Source: Warden, D.B. (1819).A statistical, political, and historical account of the United States of North America : from the period of their first colonization to the present day, vol. 3, pp. 548-549.
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