Farmer Grove AME Church and School (Jefferson County, Ga.)

The following Farmer Grove history was provided by Dr. Marvin Bynes, a retired educator who has deep ancestral roots in Jefferson County. "Farmer Grove School and Farmer Grove African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church give us an image and story of the role of the church and community in the evolvement of the common-public schools in rural Georgia 145 years ago. Farmer Grove School is a two-classroom schoolhouse and church which remains standing in rural Jefferson County Georgia. The first church trustees were former enslaved men, Nathan Grant, Rhuben Robinson, and Gabe Fort. The church was organized in 1880. Robert L. Farmer, a former Confederate soldier during the American Civil War, a member of the Georgia legislature, and a member of Jefferson County Board of Commissioners of Roads and Revenue, sold four acres to the Farmer Grove AME Church Board of Trustees. Robert Levin Farmer had two main stipulations for the land sold. The property had to be used for worship and education purposes. The church and school were not to be used as a place for political activity. Descendants of Nathan Grant Sr. have shared the story of Nathan Grant Sr., John Wesley-Dukes, and other Freedmen physically constructing the original Farmer Grove AME Church and School on the four-acre site. Nathan Grant Sr.'s youngest daughter, Jennie Grant Morris (1871-1952) was a teacher at Farmer Grove School. She was one of the earlier African American woman teachers born and raised in Jefferson County. When she died, Jennie's children honored her request to be interred on the grounds of Farmer Grove AME Church and School. The place she attended school as a girl and taught as a young woman. Jefferson County freedmen and freedwomen, such as Nathan Grant Sr., John Wesley Grant-Dukes, Adaline Clarke, Seaborn Fye, Sally Jackson, Peter Merrywether, Colin Leaptrott, Tom Walden, and Lucy Sterarb, knew a financially secured community was important as well as an educated community. The 1868 Georgia State Constitution was historic. It established free education for all Georgia children, regardless of status or race. When the former enslaved parents enrolled their sons and daughters in a public school in 1870, they had legal autonomy of their children's destiny and future for the first time. Farmer Grove Church-school is a surviving concrete link to that historic moment. The original Farmer Grove School burned in the early 1930s. Nolen Morris (1897 - 1953), the son of Jennie Grant Morris, was a member of the Farmer Grove AME Church Board of Trustees at the time of the burning. Nolen and other church trustees wanted to have the school rebuilt. The ninety-year-old building stands today. It is a frame building with wood plank siding, a gable roofline, craftsman style roof brackets, a battery of five double hung windows with eighteen glass panes, and interior brick chimneys with flues for wood burning heaters. When the school closed, the Farmer Grove AME Church members moved from the original church building to the Farmer Grove School building. The building stands empty today. The school and church served several generations of students and families in Jefferson County. The school is one of a few remaining two-classroom school buildings in Georgia and the United States."