The Lenoir City schoolmarms pictured here are, from left to right, the following: Sophie Simpson, Tennie Griffitts, Ruby Harris, Bertha Perry, F. E. Russell, Pauline Atkins, and Meta Cardwell. The photograph was taken in 1910 at the twin buildings, which served as an elementary school.
On March 6, 1908, the Lenoir Brick Company and G. W. Stansberry were contracted to erect a high school building in Lenoir City at a cost of $13,092.10. The Lenoir City High School, shown here in 1912, was finished in 1909. Eventually the building became part of a campus complex that consisted of a grammar school built in 1913 and a gymnasium building erected in 1922 by community volunteers. The buildings, located on Fourth Avenue, were razed in 1981.
In 1912, the first Lenoir City High School class consisted of one boy and six girls. They are, from left to right, the following: Frances Bewley, Lou Anderson, Jane Morton, Clyde Hackney, Effie Harrison Jones, Ethel Thompson, and Lola Alexander. Clyde, in his black suit, made a nice contrast to the ladies all dressed in white.
Members of the 1917 Lenoir City High School sewing club were, from left to right, Lillie Hodge, Eva Morrison, Lissie Brown, Flora Soward, Beulah Wesson, Eileen Long, Gladys Jones, Estelle Pair, and Una Winchester. These students, like others in high school sewing clubs across the country at the time, may have contributed to efforts in World War I by providing hospital nightshirts and khaki handkerchiefs, among other items.
These lovely ladies were members of the 1917 Lenoir City High School cooking club. The members pictured here are, from left to right, the following: Daisy Duff, Lillie Hodge, Beulah Wesson, Eileen Long, and Ezerine McAllister. The girls would have learned the latest in cookery and kitchen sciences. Note the pristine white aprons that constituted the club’s uniforms.
Sporting chic bobbed hair, loose fitting dresses, and fancy shoes, these unidentified early 1920s Lenoir City High School students were certainly dressed for success. The Roaring Twenties was a time of prosperity and new opportunities for young women. In 1928, women would earn 39 percent of the college degrees given in the United States, up from 19 percent at the beginning of the 20th century.