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Nearly 100 years since ACHS built

August 4, 2010

I saw all the articles in the Advertiser concerning Sidney Lanier High School's celebration of its centennial celebration. It brought back some memories of my youth in Montgomery.

I spent seven years living in the Cottage Hill area of Montgomery, where I attended Cottage Hill Elementary School for four years and Baldwin Junior High School for three years.

I would have finished high school at Sidney Lanier. I never got to walk those hallowed hallways of that beautiful school located on the then-outskirts of Montgomery.

My dad was a military guy, and he finally got a state assignment after the big war. Mom packed up our belongings and her three boys, and off we went to Pascagoula, Miss., where I finished high school.

The folks at Lanier apparently did a good job with the celebration. I noticed a picture of Bart Starr and Richard Fulmer in the Advertiser. Both were my classmates at Baldwin Junior High School, and both were good junior high players on Baldwin's first team.

I wasn't worth a flip, but I remember our coach, Jesse Matthews. But that's not what I wanted to write about.

Did you know that Sept. 26 will be the 100th anniversary of the first free-standing (grades 7-12) high school building in Autauga County?

On that date, the doors of Autauga County High School opened on the corner of First and Northington Street. The building was two stories and faced west.

Prior to the opening of the new high school building, the kids went to the Prattville Male and Female Academy, which housed all grades. It was located where today Prattville Primary School stands. There is a historical marker at the primary school showing an image of the old Male and Female Academy building.

The city of Prattville's registered voters voted to allow the city to float a $10,000 bond to finance the building of the school in 1909, after Julia Adelaide Smith Pratt, the widow of Daniel Pratt's nephew, Merrill Pratt, gave the city five acres to build the school near Pratt Park.

The building was not completed until 1910. The first class to use the building graduated in the spring of 1911 and had six seniors. There were six girls, Dovie and Mary Timmerman, Claudia Smith, Annie Bishop, and Edna Chapman. There were two boys in the class, Seaborn Driver and Elmer Chambliss.

The school did not have a football team until 1915.

The 1910 building was used until 1938, when a new high school building was constructed. Portions of this building are still in use at the kindergarten. The front office and the auditorium were part of the 1938 building, as well as portions running east and west.

For many years, the old 1910 building was used as a manual arts building, as well as a dressing room and storage area for the high school football team.

The building was destroyed by a fire in the 1950s.

JIMMY WHITE covers sports for the Progress weeklies. He can be reached at JWhite0704@aol.com or at 334-365-8907.