Where was Ansel School?

Like Reid School Road, Ansel School Road also takes its name from a school that no longer exists. But unlike Reid School, the deed recording the buying of property for the school is available.

A deed recorded October 13, 1896 in deed book EEE, page 324 transfers one acre of land from S. D. Mosteller to Ansel School District "only for school purposes for educating white children" and also grants the school use of a well in the northeast end of the property. On September 26, 1919, the school district added more land to the school property by buying another acre from S. D. Mosteller.

According to the deed in book 230, page 492, the property was sold off to the highest bidder at auction on January 27, 1951 to an M. A. Mason. The property would later be divided into two lots, and the names of the roads passing by and near the school property would be altered. Tracing the subsequent owners of the land forward in time shows that the location of the school was near the intersection of Ansel School Road, what is now Old Ansel School Road, and what is now Holiday Road:
If you'd like to know where some other Greenville County schools that no longer exist were located, please leave a comment. The research isn't that hard thanks to the indexes provided by the Greenville County Register of Deeds site (just look under the indexes for "school"), but it is tedious.
Update: With historical South Carolina Department of Transportation maps now online, locating schools with time consuming property research isn't really necessary anymore.
Location: 2521 Old Ansel School Rd, Greer, SC 29651, USA

Comments

  1. TomSeptember 22, 2011 at 9:22 PM

    Most of these school names are available in the USGS Geonames Database, also known as GNIS. These are available from http://geonames.usgs.gov . However, I've created a subset of this list specific to South Carolina at http://www.randomconnections.com/scplacenames . You can search for any place name.

    In the case of Ansel School, GNIS has (Historical) next to the name because it no longer exists. According to the lat/long coordinators in GNIS, here is a map of the location:

    http://maps.google.com/?q=34.9656715,%20-82.252613

    ReplyDelete
  2. MarkSeptember 24, 2011 at 9:54 PM

    Hmmm...looks like the GNIS places the school one street west of where I place it. Time permitting, I'll add the GNIS location a link to a plat survey showing the location.

    Thanks for the links! I had already came across about a week ago the KMLs you produced in a blog post of yours about old rural schools. I was using them to try to find the location of an abandoned school building I found on flickr. None of the buildings matched the photo so no joy.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thanksgiving Hike near Burrells Ford

Image
The Thanksgiving holiday is a chance for most families to get together and eat a Thanksgiving meal. I didn't have that opportunity this year so I decided to go somewhere and visit some waterfalls I've not yet visited before. I've seen many photos of King Creek Falls posted online over the years and I thought that would make a fine place to visit for Thanksgiving. After analyzing a map of the area, I chose to begin my hike at the parking area for the Burrells Ford Campground , a quarter mile away from the campground off Burrells Ford Road (FS 708). When I arrived mid-morning several cars and trucks were already there. I had expected the place to be deserted, but it would seem a few other people had the same idea as mine! The trail begins at the end of the parking area down the Foothills Trail. A sign a short distance down the trail gives the distance to King Creek Falls as a half mile. King Creek Falls Trail begins off of FS 708B and joins with Foothills Trail jus...
Read more

January 2020 Hikes

Image
My goodness, another month has come and is almost gone! Time for a report on my hikes during January 2020. I went on five hikes this month. I had more planned, but rain forced some hikes to be canceled or rescheduled. Dupont State Forest - High Falls and Triple Falls The first Saturday of January I went with a great group up to Dupont State Forest. During the visit we visited High Falls and Triple Falls. High Falls was really throwing off some spray this day. High Falls was throwing off so much spray, I had trouble keeping my lens dry! The sun was at a perfect angle to backlight the waterfall. A few clouds would have been nice. Fortunately, I'd find better conditions at Triple Falls. The water here was also up, but the clouds moved in helping to even out the light. I'm not much on black and white photography, but I also liked how the black and white version turned out! We made it as far as High Falls Bridge... ...before turning around to hike back to t...
Read more

December 2019 Hikes

Image
I've been on a number of waterfall hikes since Thanksgiving, mostly with Meetup groups. Since I don't take many photos when hiking with the Meetup groups, these hikes weren't really worth a post on their own. I did post a few photos to my Instagram account, but if you don't happen to Instagram then these hikes will be news to you. I'll summarize the visits below. Wildcat Wayside On December 11th, I led a small group to Wildcat Wayside , a roadside wayside park located by US 276/SC 11 near Cleveland, South Carolina. First we hiked a trail to visit Lower, Middle, and Upper Wildcat Falls on Wildcat Creek. Then we went down to a trail by Slickum Creek to visit Last Falls on Slickum and Sweet Thing on Slickum. As a bonus, I then led them past a parking area where US 276/SC 11 split to a bushwack up to Spider Tunnel Falls , the top of which is visible from US 276 during the winter. My photos from this trip are in the album Wildcat Wayside and More - Dec 20...
Read more