Amherst Indian School Chapel and Teachers' Cottage

Amherst Indian School Chapel and Teachers' Cottage

Virginia Indians, Monacan

A church, a school (right), and a teachers' cottage (center) stand near Bear Mountain in Amherst County, home to the Monacan Indian Nation. 

A log cabin, serving as a church, had existed on the site since about 1868. In 1908, the Episcopal minister Arthur P. Gray Jr. established St. Paul's Mission and, by adding classrooms to the cabin, the Bear Mountain Indian Mission School. The school enrolled students through the seventh grade until public school desegregation in 1964.

Jackson Davis (1882–1947) was a Cumberland County native who took this photograph in 1914 as part of a series documenting the education of minority groups in Virginia.

Jackson Davis

Jackson Davis, Papers, 1906-1947, Accession #3072, #3072-a, Negative Number 0021, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library

1914

Courtesy of University of Virginia Special Collections

twentieth century

central Virginia

Amherst

Photograph

4" x 6"