Salem School

Salem School. . , From the late nineteenth century until 1927 a one-room public school operated on the site of the Memory Chapel. The children of many of the area's leading families attended the school, including those with surnames Bearden, Burgin, Harrison, McGaughy, and McHenry. T. A. Bearden deeded the property for the school to the community. McGaughy Farms supplied the school with drinking water from a nearby spring. Gertrude Kirklay was the school's last teacher, with 28 students from grades one through seven in its final year. In the 1940s, Herman McGaughy dismantled the schoolhouse and added the remnants to his home, since demolished., Reverse Side , Salem Cemetery was established in conjunction with a nearby Methodist church constituted by some of Shelby County's earliest pioneer families, whose surnames included Bowdon, Cunningham, Harrison, Lovelady, McGaughy, McHenry, and McMath. The earliest marked grave, dated 1831, is the unnamed infant son of Joseph and Elizabeth Cunningham. Earlier unmarked graves dating to the time of white settlement in 1815 are probable. The Salem Memory Chapel, completed in 1957, houses the memorial and homecoming day, an annual event held since 1902. A private subscription school stood nearby from the 1830s until after the Civil War.