This is a picture of the Kittrell school in 1931. its located on Little Peytons Creek Road, about one mile from
Pleasant Shade. The old building is still standing, or was last fall (2000) when I was down home for a visit.

My dad is one of the kids in the picture as well as his brother Jack and his sister Mabell. Bet theirs lots of folks
who may visit the web site and find parents or perhaps Grandparents on this photo.

Tom Dickerson sent it to me back couple years ago. The teacher is one of his ancestors if I remember correctly.

Comments From Tom Dickerson
Kittrell School was begun about 1870 and is named in honor of John Bell (Jack) Kittrell who donated the land
for the school. (See Calvin Gregory’s website for numerous references to Kittrell School.) Jack was married to
Julia Ballou, daughter of Lorenzo Dow Ballou, son of Leonard Ballou, who first acquired the 640 acres of land
surrounding the school in 1808. Leonard Ballou was my ggg grandfather. The school was closed in the fall of
1949 and the students then went to school at Pleasant Shade.

Carl, Dalton and Milton (Monk) are my uncles and the other Dickerson’s are more distant kin. Dalton and Monk
are still living.

My first three years of schooling were at Kittrell School. It was a one room, one teacher arrangement, with all
eight grades taught. There was no electricity and we got our drinking water from either the nearby Ballou/Kittrell
spring or directly across from the school and Little Peytons Creek (present home site of Mike Dickerson) at the
home of my grandparents, John and Laura Smith Dickerson. The school was heated by a big pot-bellied, coal
burning stove. Parts of it would get red hot at times. Once the stovepipe fell and it created quiet a commotion. There
was a kitchen on the back of the school where hot lunches were prepared. Up front of the classroom near the
chalkboard was a long bench. The teacher would call for the particular subject and grade to addressed and the students
would leave their desks and sit on the bench while the teacher would conduct the class.

The remaining students would be working on assignments or getting prepared for the calling of their particular class
and subject. The pupil-teacher ratio was good at 25 to 1, (as a third grader, there were only two of us in the class) but
as a first grader, I learned some things from the eighth grade boys that probably didn’t do me any good.

Some of the teachers at Kittrell School beginning in 1907 were: George W. Goad, Edna McDonald Russell,
Beulah Kirby, Calvin Gregory, Clarence Barton, Fred Russell, Levie Thomas, Gene Oldham, Earl Oldham,
Agnes Beasley Kemp, Albert Gore, Lowe Smith, Gertrude Kittrell, Carl Dickerson, Woodrow Piper,
Webb Ross, Thellie Nixon Brown, Elizabeth Beasley, Lillie Mai Beasley and Lauretta Dickerson Toney.