Sam Houston Schoolhouse State Historic Site is a single-room

log cabin A log cabin is a small log house, especially a minimally finished or less architecturally sophisticated structure. Log cabins have an ancient history in Europe, and in America are often associated with first-generation home building by settl ...

-style

school A school is the educational institution (and, in the case of in-person learning, the Educational architecture, building) designed to provide learning environments for the teaching of students, usually under the direction of teachers. Most co ...

house in

Maryville, Tennessee Maryville is a city in and the county seat of Blount County, Tennessee. Its population was 31,907 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. History The Great Indian Warpath (which was used to build the route U.S. Route 411, US-411) was long ...

, built in 1794.

Sam Houston Samuel Houston (, ; March 2, 1793 – July 26, 1863) was an American general and statesman who played a prominent role in the Texas Revolution. He served as the first and third president of the Republic of Texas and was one of the first two indi ...

taught at the school as a young man, before the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 was fought by the United States and its allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom and its allies in North America. It began when the United States United States declaration of war on the Uni ...

.Tennessee Historical Commission: State Owned Historic Site: Sam Houston Schoolhouse
/ref> Open to the public, the schoolhouse is a

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

state historic site operated under an agreement with the

Tennessee Historical Commission The Tennessee Historical Commission (THC) is the State Historic Preservation Office for the U.S. state of Tennessee. Headquartered in Nashville, it is an independent state agency, administratively attached to the Department of Environment and C ...

. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1972. The school house was originally built by a Revolutionary War veteran, Andrew Kennedy along with Henry McCulloch and other neighbors. The National Heritage Area Program and Blount County Tennessee: A Feasibility Study says “Sometime after his arrival in Tennessee, probably in 1794, Kennedy and Henry McCulloch joined with some neighbors to construct a small log schoolhouse in a clearing less than a mile from the Kennedy home. No definitive explanation can now be given for the decision to locate the schoolhouse at the somewhat unusual site more than a half-mile from Little River. Presumably its proximity to the refreshing spring which flows nearby and perhaps its central position in relation to the original builders' homes were factors in the selection of the site.”

References

External links

Sam Houston Historic Schoolhouse
School buildings completed in 1794 School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee Buildings and structures in Blount County, Tennessee Museums in Blount County, Tennessee Education museums in the United States Defunct schools in Tennessee Tennessee State Historic Sites History museums in Tennessee Sam Houston National Register of Historic Places in Blount County, Tennessee 1794 establishments in the Southwest Territory {{BlountCountyTN-NRHP-stub