This was originally published on Martha Sparks’ My West Virginia Mountain website and is reprinted here with her permission and our special thanks.
Logan High School
East Stratton Street
The first high school in Logan was organized August 28, 1911, in a building that was later to be known as Central Grade School. Mr. F.O. Woerner, was appointed principal. It was not until 1914, that the school became a first class high school. On June 2, 1915, a class of seven pupils graduated.
On September 1, 1921, the Board of Education of Logan District, purchased from John F. Ferrell, et ux, and W.B. Johnson, et ax, all of Lots 30-31-32-33-34 and 35, Bronson Addition to the City of Logan, for a new high school.
The primary high school of Logan County was built in 1922-23, being furnished in time for fall classes of 1923-24.
The school continued as Logan High School, educating area students of Logan, Holden, Omar, and surrounding communities from 1924 through the Class of 1957. At that time, a new larger, more modern high school and adjoining field house were completed on Midelburg Island, which is currently the present site of Logan High School.
My mother, Pauline Elizabeth Byrd, taught at Logan High School around 1939-41. She graduated from Murray, in Kentucky, got offered a job to teach physical education, got on a train in western Kentucky (near Dawson Springs, KY and moved to Logan, WV. In 1989, my current husband Charles White and I (living in Lebanon, TN) met and started dating in 1988. In 1989 we took her back to visit where she taught school. She lived in a boarding home across the street from the high school.
Doyle (Kincaid) Gibson was a teacher at Logan High School in the 1950s. She also operated a restaurant near the school. Her husband was Virgil Gibson who was on the Logan Police Force. She grew up in Blair, Logan Co. WV.
Brad, I knew your great grandfather, Thomas C. (“Uncle Tom”) Whited when I was a small girl. I did little bit of research on him, just out of curiosity a few years ago. He was no relation to me. According to his death record, he died in 1946.
and a quick correction–WB Johnson was married to Effie Lawrence Whited (aka Hitt). Harriet Priscilla was TC’s wife. How embarrassing to confuse my grandmother with my greatgrandmother.
The WB Johnson who previously owned some of the land that became this school was my grandfather, William Breckinridge Johnson. He was an insurance agent in town and lived across Bridge St from the Nazarene Church. He subsequently became mayor in about 1939. During that term he apparently ordered the police to raid the Smokehouse, which resulted in impeachment proceedings being brought against him by the City Council. Unfortunately for his opponents, CC Chambers, longtime judge in Logan, was his golfing buddy, and the impeachment charges were thrown out, or so I have been told. WB was married to Harriet Priscilla Totten, daughter of T. C Whited, a rather prominent figure in town until his death in the late thirties. WB’s oldest son, Thomas, lived for many years across Stratton from the then-high school, at about the lowest point in the city. He was forced to become a student of the weather, because whenever the water rose significantly his house was flooded. My father (Bob Johnson, Tom’s youngest brother and Logan photographer) and me and my brothers often were called out in the middle of a January or March night to help move Tom’s furniture upstairs. He always paid us a silver dollar each, typically the 1881. I assume Tom’s house was built on more of his father’s land in the area. I really must dig into the county land records the next time I am in town.
Brad Johnson – would like to contact u about the Whiteds.