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

A tour of Lake Summit

Image
With September comes meteorological fall and cooler weather, and the area experienced just that for a few days around last Sunday. My original plan last Sunday was to spend time with my ailing 14 yr old cat, Princess, but she didn't even make it past Monday. I changed my Sunday plan to a day trip and, after consulting my ever growing to-visit list, I settled on a paddling tour of Lake Summit in Tuxedo, North Carolina. I arrived there early, at least by my standards. The place wasn't very busy when I arrived. Permits are required to access Lake Summit for powered boats and personal watercraft like jet skis, but no permit is required for kayaks. Works out fine for me! However, to get a permit you must live in the Green River Fire District. The website of the homeowner's association has those details. The gate for the boat ramp was closed at the time, forcing me to walk through the pedestrian access with my inflatable kayak. I launched and headed for my first plann
Read more

First visit to Andersonville Island

Image
One of my major motivations for buying a kayak was to visit interesting places only reachable by water. Andersonville Island in Lake Hartwell is definitely one of those interesting places for me. Since my friend and fellow explorer Tom Taylor has been here before , and since he was clearly interested in heading back, I asked Tom to come along. After checking his availability, he agreed and offered to bring along a friend of his I hadn't met yet, Bennie Waddell. I took some vacation time off this week giving me plenty of days to choose from. I selected Wednesday, the 7th, for this trip to avoid the early week rain, and the later part of the week when the weather turns sharply colder. My other vacation days are being used to work on various projects inside the house. Before I get to the adventure, first a short-ish history of the area. Andersonville Island is named after the ghost town of Andersonville, once located on the northern and eastern side of the confluence of the T
Read more

Forgotten Taylors railroad history: the P&N railroad

Image
The Piedmont & Northern railway  or P&N, now CSX, was an interurban railway operating two disconnected lines in South Carolina and North Carolina and was chartered by James Duke of the Duke Power Company. The South Carolina railway line ran from Greenwood to Greenville, Taylors, Greer, and on to Spartanburg. The railway was electrified with 1500 volts DC, until 1954 when the conversion to diesel locomotives was completed and the electrification abandoned. The Enoree viaduct, built in 1913 , has been remarkably accident free except for that one derailment on February 9, 1919. A northbound train passing over the viaduct derailed at its highest point killing 4 passengers and injuring 1 employee and 23 passengers. An investigation into the accident  [ direct link ] concluded poor track conditions and a tie-bar set too low caused the derailment. An electrical substation used to be located downhill from the top of the Enoree viaduct supplying power for the Chick Springs segment
Read more