History
Church gets National Register status for one-room schoolhouse
People have always considered the one-room schoolhouse on the campus of Holy Cross Faith Memorial Episcopal Church to be historic.
Now that Holy Cross Faith Memorial School is on the National Register of Historic Places, it’s official.
The church unveiled a marker on Saturday in front of a few dozen people, including Roddy Brown, who was a student at the school 70 years ago.
“One hundred years from today I just hope that we can reflect on this place,” Brown said, adding that the national registry is for places that made a difference in communities.
“This is one place that I can say, it certainly made a difference,” he said.
Faith Memorial School was built in 1932 and served only Black students because South Carolina schools were segregated.
The Rev. William Forsythe arrived that same year to be the school’s principal and teacher, while also serving as priest-in-charge of the church.
Forsythe’s wife, Ruby, arrived in 1937 and spent the next 64 teaching at the school.
Her motto was “Don’t say I can’t. Say I’ll try.”
The Forsythes lived on the second floor of the school building.
By 1938, 80 percent of Black students in Georgetown County attended school at Faith Memorial.
The county school district financially supported Faith Memorial School for years until 1950 when it announced plans to close it as part of a consolidation plan.
The Forsythes decided to keep the school open, relying on donations to pay the bills and teachers’ salaries.
Ruby Forsythe retired from teaching in 1991 and died in 1992. The school closed in 2000.
Forsythe’s granddaughters said Saturday that “Miss Ruby,” as she was affectionately known, would not have liked all the fuss being made about her.
“It makes us overwhelmingly proud,” said Vaudrien Ray. “It’s amazing to me how one person could have elicited change and this admiration from the community.”
Burnee Forsythe called her grandmother a “humble spirit.”
“She was very humble and she just wanted to do what she did,” Burnee Forsythe said. “But I’m glad to see the impact that she had and that people are still recognizing her for what she did so many years ago.”
Since 2005 the building has been used as offices for the church staff.
“We work in a very special place and we know that every day,” said the Rev. Wil Keith, the church’s rector. “It’s like coming to work in a museum, or just in someone else’s home. So we try to work as if we are in someone else’s home every day.”
Keith believes the national register designation will put the school on the radar of people who have never been to Pawleys Island and make them want to visit.
