History of Ewing School

The new Ewing School was built behind the old one in 1925. The land where the schools sit on Euclid Avenue was purchased from A.H. Gifford. Note the chicken coop that sits in front of the schools. Photos Courtesy of Brenda Plummer, from her copy of “Ewing Elementary” published in 2013.

Since the story broke that Wally and Tammy Thomas decided to convert the old Ewing School into apartments for senior citizens, a renewed interest in the schools glory days has surfaced.

Before we bring you updated information on the renovation process we will cover a little of the back story of how the Ewing School came to be.

Like most rural areas, each community had their own little school and they were most likely located on a farmer’s property.

In a term paper written by Mrs. Olive Holbrook in 1961 titled The Growth, Development and Decline of Ewing, Kentucky, she tells us that “early schools in the Ewing area included the Pepper School and the Blair School, these schools were located on the farms owned by the Pepper and Blair families. The main subjects taught were readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic. A map made in 1841 shows Fleming County divided into fifty school districts. Ewing is shown as having three or more teachers at the Blair School. No further records could be found concerning the establishment or an organized school until 1906, when A.H. Gifford sold a lot to the Ewing Graded School. Erecting the building was done as a community project and was begun as an elementary school, with an enrollment in 1906 of 110 pupils. A high school was added to the curriculum in 1910”.

An essay written by Tommy Worthington, entitled “Ewing As I Saw It in the Early 1900s,” reveals that the school started out with just four rooms. Later, one of the upstairs rooms was made into two rooms and two more were built onto the back.”

In May of 1925, the Hardymon Construction Company of Maysville began construction of a newer school located behind the older one on Euclid Avenue and was completed in February of 1926.

Worthington also included in his recollections when the students moved into the brick building, “ of course there was no electricity at that time, so we had to use gasoline lamps to see to play basketball.”

According to the information contained in a booklet compiled and published by the Ewing Alumni in 2013, “after the new building was completed, the standard of the school was gradually built up until it was recognized by the State Board of Education as a Class A School.

By the 1930s, the trends toward greater centralization were gaining prominence in educational circles.

In 1941 the high school was moved to Fleming County High School in Flemingsburg.

The Cowan School was included in Ewing Consolidated School District in 1943.

In 1974, the 7th and 8th grade classes were moved to Simons Middle in Flemingsburg.”

Wally Thomas attended the old Ewing School from the first through sixth grade and was in the first group to attend Fleming County Middle School.

The following is from his interview from the Ewing Alumni booklet.

“When I went to school at Ewing my principals were Ronnie Fern andJoe Allen Simons, Nancy Donovan was the secretary. I remember all of my teachers, but Alice Pugh and Mrs. Parvin stand out in my mind. Mrs. Pugh and Mrs. Parvin taught me to write as well as they could and years later Mrs. Ruby Overbey asked me if they had taught me to write or not. I still remember making the slashes and doing the writing. Ms. Davis had a way of teaching a group of boys to mind their manners.”

Wally said, “I remember the wooden floors and dropping over the balcony into the gym. I can remember walking to school in the morning. During the winter when the boiler was going you could see black smoke just rolling, but it was always pretty warm when we got there. I can remember the slides and the swings and the old monkey bars at the bottom of the hill; falling from the top of it all the way down through it and ending up on my knees at the bottom. I remember the coaches office had an upstairs where there were locker rooms and showers, but the showers didn’t work. I remember the basketball games. We always thought we had a hometown advantage when it rained and one of the corners of the gym would be wet during a home game.The thing I remember as much as anything is the auditorium when it was a little more formal with the wooden seats and floors and a nice stage. From the first grade on we had some kind of play each year. I had a lot of fun doing those plays. I remember the fall festivals and how the country store would take up two sets of bleachers. Custodians Charlie Myers and and Mr. Bob Ford come to mind and the cooks, Ms. Goldie Pepper, Marie Pepper, Katherine Lukens, it seems they were cooks from the day I started until the day I left. They put out some pretty good meals in the old kitchen that was down on the first floor. We had glass, returnable milk bottles, which we always put back in the wire crates. If you think about it now it sounds pretty gross but everybody scraped their plates into the trash cans and took the trash cans outside at the end of the day and Tommy Worthington would come up at night and take them down to his house and feed the scraps to his hogs.”

For every student that walked the halls of the old Ewing School, their history will linger still.

Ewing Second Grade-1973-74 class picture, top row, from left, are: Dwayne Price, Larry Gallagher, Frank Miller, Randy Jolly, Tracey Humphries, Allen Ray Argo, Jackie Overbey; middle row, Miss Sylvia Bailey, Travis Darnell, Toni Glass, Vickie Tumey, Sandy Tucker, Kristi Story, Jennifer Gray, Leonard Bowling, Phillip Gulley, Principal Simons; front row, Jackie Tyree, Nancy Jolly, Melinda Hunt, Sherry Fields, Sherry Hunt, Amy McGlothlin and Paula Landsaw; seated on Floor Scotty Earlywine and Matt Grimes.