The thirteenth in a series of posts highlighting the schools that educated African-American children outside the town of Wilson in the first half of the twentieth century. The posts will be updated; additional information, including photographs, is welcome.

Kirby’s School

Also known as Kirby’s Crossing School. This school is listed as a Rosenwald school in “Survey File Materials Received from Volunteer Surveyors of Rosenwald Schools Since September 2002.”

Location: A 1925 soil map of Wilson County appears to show a school next to Saint Delight Free Will Baptist Church on a tiny lane that runs parallel to the railroad.

However, 1936 state road map of Wilson County shows a school on what appears to be present-day Newsome Mill Road, near the community of Boyette, which was a name by which the Kirby’s Crossing community was once known.

Description: Per The Public Schools of Wilson County, North Carolina: Ten Years 1913-14 to 1923-24, Kirbys School was a three-room school seated on one acre. This photo appears in the report, but may depict an earlier school in the vicinity, also called Kirby’s, that served white children.

In 1936, African-American children at Rocky Branch, Williamson, Kirby’s, New Vester and Calvin Level schools — all in the rural southwest quadrant of Wilson County — responded to a survey about education and farm life.

Known faculty: None.