A new elementary

school is being built beside the Lisbon Baptist Church on Ga. Highway

85 south.

The school

and the church are in the Rest community, an area that perhaps received

its name when wagon trains would stop and rest there, before starting

up the arduous Jones Hill.

The building

that housed the original Rest School sits across the road and a few feet

south of the school under construction.

It housed grades

primer (now called kindergarten) through seventh grade and then the students

traveled to Fayetteville.

Former student

Russell Edmondson attended the school in the 1940s. He said that the first

floor was divided down the middle, and the steps leading up to the second

floor were just inside the entrance. The second floor was one big room.

Grades primer

through third grade were on the first floor. Depending on the number of

students, the fourth grade might also be on the first floor.

Everyone walked

home for lunch and Russell lived in the home just south of the old school,

now the home of Tom and Gloria Kerlin.

One of the

those who taught there the longest was Gertrude Dunn Farrer, who was also

reared in that area. Others include Mildred Matthews Sams, Jessie Murl

Keith, Ginny Rivers, Cleo Mitchell Edmondson, Ware Callaway, who rode

a mule from Inman to teach there, Lora Perry, Winna Jones and Elizabeth

Mask Smith.

The school

is believed to have begun in 1905 and operated until 1945. It was on land

donated by E. B. Weldon for the purpose of a school and was deeded to

the trustees of the Lisbon School, which sat at Bernhard Road and Goza

Road. The trustees must have closed that one to build the new one.