news-record.com

ELON — Elon University says it will restore a two-room schoolhouse on the northern edge of its campus that dates  to before the Civil War.

The university said an Alamance County family has donated to Elon a quarter of an acre near Rhodes Stadium. The wooden building stands on this heavily wooded lot.

Records show the schoolhouse was built in the early 1850s, about a decade after the state legislature authorized communities to levy a tax for supporting public education. It was originally known as the Travis Creek School, and it closed during the Civil War. In the 1870s, it reopened as the Cable School, named after the owners of the property.

The school had two rooms. The teacher could live in the smaller of the two. The larger room had a divider that could be used to split it into two classrooms. One wall had been painted black to serve as a blackboard.

One of those teachers was the great-great grandfather of Elon's president emeritus, J. Earl Danieley.

It's unclear when the school fell out of regular use. Local residents used it as a polling site during World War I. After that, the Cable family stored grain in the building. Other parts of the building had been cannibalized for wood or brick.

Elon says the Cable School is the only so-called common school in Alamance County still at its original location.

The university is in the initial steps of restoring the property and will soon hire a historic preservationist. It has not set a timeline on when work might begin.