University of Virginia Library

THE CAROLINE COUNTY TRAINING SCHOOL

The Caroline Sunday School Union definitely decided as early
as 1902 to build a high school for the colored youth of the county.
A tract of land was purchased two miles south of Bowling Green,
on the highway, and on October 1, 1903, an eight-months school,
under the name Champlain and Bowling Green Industrial Academy

was opened. After one year the word Champlain was dropped and
the Bowling Green Industrial Academy operated as a private
institution for the next eleven years, under the direction of a
board of trustees. Rev. L. L. Davis was for eleven years the
principal of this school and also instructor in vocational agriculture.
During this period many of the leading colored people of
the county attended this school and from it went out many young
men and women who presided over the smaller schools of
the county. It is conservative to say that Rev. L. L. Davis has
contributed more to the intellectual, cultural and spiritual life

Caroline County Training School

of the colored people of Caroline than any other man. Under
the leadership of Rev. L. L. Davis and Rev. R. W. Young the
school bought 35 acres of land during the eleven years, erected
two buildings and increased the faculty to four teachers. The
people of the county contributed over seven thousand dollars
to the school during the eleven years it operated as a private
institution. A few white people in the county lent some aid.
Rev. L. L. Davis interested Miss Frances E. Wright, a white
lady, who had assisted him during his student days at Hampton
Institute and upon her death she left the school five thousand
dollars.

In 1914, when sentiment was rising in favor of establishing
rural high schools in Virginia for colored youth, John Washington
(white), then Division Superintendent of Schools in Caroline,
made application for the Bowling Green Academy to be accepted

into the public school system and to receive aid from the Slater
Fund. Thus the school came to be the Caroline County Training
School, operating under the local school authorities. Prof. G.
Hays Buchanan was appointed principal and remained at the
head of the school two years, retiring in 1916.

Prof. A. M. Walker, of the Colored State Normal, Petersburg,
Virginia Union University, and Howard University, was elected
principal in 1916 and has presided with ability since that time.
The school has added an agricultural building, a dormitory for
boys and an administration building of six rooms with auditorium,
within the past six years, at a cost of about seventeen thousand
dollars. Of this amount the local school board was not asked to
contribute a cent.

The growth of the school in material value, great as it has been,
has not kept pace with the growth of the school in importance to
the cultural and spiritual life of a rapidly developing people. The
school fosters the ideal of service, and fully one-half of the eighty-seven
graduates of the school have served as teachers within Caroline
county. Many have pursued their studies in higher institutions
of learning and are now holding responsible positions. One of
the graduates, Rev. E. L. R. Guss, is pastor of two churches in
the county. For earnestness of purpose and a desire to help
humanity a more serious set of workers would be hard to find.
That the school is touching the entire life of the colored population
of the county is shown by the fact that pupils from twenty-eight
public schools in Caroline attend here and in 1922 there was
a pupil or a teacher from every community in the county.

The Caroline Training School offers, in addition to ten grades
of work as set down by the State Department of Education,
courses in agriculture and home economics. In 1922 the high
school department stood second in reading and first and second
in writing among the eleven colored high schools of the State of
Virginia. Graduates are entered without examination in Hampton
Institute, Hampton, Va., Virginia Normal and Industrial
Institute, Howard University and other like institutions.