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20 <br />NPS Form 10-~-a OMf3 No. 9024-0018 <br />(8-86} <br />United States DeparEment of the Interior <br />National Park Service <br />NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES <br />CONTINUATION SHEET <br />Section 8 Page 9 Murphey School <br />name of property <br />Orange County. NC <br />county and state <br />recommended a publicly financed system of education. However, it would take much longer far <br />North Carolina's elected officials to act upon his visionary praposals.2 <br />White North Carolina boasted a good school system during the antebellum era, after the Civil War <br />the state's schools either remained stagnant or declined until the State Constitution of 1868. <br />During the Reconstruction era and up until the turn of the twentieth century, few educational <br />opportune#ies existed for the majority of North Carolinians. In 1839, seven years after Murphey's <br />death, with the passing of a legislative act that created school districts throughout the state, those <br />districts were allowed to tax in order to fund the construction of schoolhouses. The new state <br />constitution created a public education system free for all children and allowed for the <br />establishment of the ofFce of Superintendent of Public Instruction.3 . <br />By the tum of the twentieth century public education made greater strides in North Carolina with <br />increased state and federal tax funds for schools. In 1913 the Compulsory Attendance Act passed <br />requiring children between the ages of eight and twelve to attend school four months out of the <br />year. Prior to this act, only about half of North Carolina's school=age children attended on a <br />regular basis a Another impetus behind the enhanced education system was Governor Charles B. <br />Aycock, who pledged to improve public education and encouraged the frenzy of new school <br />construction that provided larger, improved facilities. One-room frame schoolhouses were soon <br />replaced with larger permanent brick or stone buildings and children were grouped into classes by <br />age and grade level. According to historian Jim Sumner, around 3,400 public schools were <br />construe#ed between 1900 and 1915. This trend is known as the consolidation movement, and it <br />would soon spread and proliferate throughout North Carolina as it had nationwide.s <br />With consolidation, many leading educators believed that students could receive ahigher-quality <br />of education with large classes, better-trained teachers and upgraded facilities that could also act <br />as community centers. From 1918 to 1920, Dr. Edgar W. Knight, a noted scholar of education in <br />North Carolina, authored a series of informational le.a#lets on the benefits of consolidation, <br />especially for rural schools. Knight claimed that North Carolina had experienced great progress in <br />education after World War l and that the state's rural schools had nat kept pace with those in <br />2 Caswell County Historical Association, Archibald Debow Murphey: Biographical Sketch, 2007, <br />www roatsweti.ancestry.comf-nccha/biographies/archbatdmumhy.html, accessed September 2008. <br />Mai rtn J,n Jennifer and Sarah Woodard, Edwards-Pitman Environmental, Inc., "Survey of Wake County Public <br />Schools/f=final Report,° (Raleigh: State Historic Preservation Office, 2002), p. 1~. <br />4 Sumner, Jim. "A Brief History of North Carolina's Early'Twentieth Century Public School System,° North <br />Carolina Historic Preservation Office Newsletter (Sprfig 1990}, p. 2 ' <br />~ Ibid, p. 6-16. <br />