Mighty McDonald School

Before the invention of the automobile in the late 1800's, there were over 20 schools in Greene County. Each of these schools were ran and staffed by local people that lived within each community. Teachers received no pay and the school houses were built by community members. Many of these relics still stand in old pasture fields and some gauntly reach out to us as we go flying by on our highways. One school building that has stood since 1919 (the year women earned the right to vote in the US), is still going strong and leads us down Flea Ridge Road to McDonald School.

In October of 1919, McDonald School was established though it really had no name until December of that year when the school held its very first Christmas play. It was at this play that the school was formally named McDonald School and it first served as a two year high school. The school was named in honor of Mr. Earnest McDonald, a man of Irish decent, and had lead the "Cain" community to establish a school for higher education.

The land that the school was built on was donated by a Mr. Alex Ailshie, who is an ancestor to the current State Deputy Commissioner of Education for Tennessee , Dr. Lyle Ailshie. The two year high school quickly became a four year high school within five years, and was supplied with students from five "normal" schools. These areas have interesting names and I felt inclined to share them with you; they were: Lower Glades, Cain's, Murrays, Huan, and Scoot (my favorite).

It is interesting to note that the state of Tennessee did not collect taxes for education until a man from Greeneville became Governor of Tennessee in 1853, Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson doubled the amount of tax dollars spent on education because he was terrified of the number of illiterate people in our great state (he himself grew up not being able to read or write), which was close to forty percent. Wouldn’t you know it that within two years of tax funding and the building of tax funded schools, that the illiterate percent dropped to fifteen percent. McDonald School was and still is a leading public school in our area that is funded by the state, but more importantly it has the full support of all the wonderful people in Lowland.