Ashland High School (Louisiana)

The former Ashland High School gymnasium was converted into the Ashland Community Center, but the structure was destroyed by fire in the summer of 2009.

Abandoned Alvah Dupree store in Ashland is located across from the former Ashland High School campus.

Ashland High School was a rural public kindergarten-grade 12 primary and secondary educational institution located in the village of Ashland in northern Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana from 1907 until its closing in 1981.

Background

Ashland High School was originally a one-room structure. The late Judge H. Welborn Ayres, an Ashland native and AHS alumnus, refers to it as "one of the foremost rural high schools in the state," having offered instruction even in the less-studied subjects of physics and medieval history.^[1] Andrew R. Johnson, who had once taught school in Arkansas, donated the land for the original 1907 Ashland public school.^[1] Later a banker and the mayor of Homer^[1] in Claiborne Parish, Johnson also served in the Louisiana State Senate from 1916–1924, having represented Bienville and Claiborne parishes.^[2]

School records date from 1913. The school building burned in the spring of 1918, and no school was held for one year. The 1918 commencement exercise was held in the long since disbanded Ashland Methodist Church, with former U.S. Representative Phanor Breazeale, an attorney from Natchitoches, as the speaker. In his address, Breazeale focused on contributions of the American Red Cross during World War I and the example of service to which he encouraged the graduates to aspire.^[1]

Ashland educators

W. R. Hatcher served as Ashland High School principal before taking the same position in the nearby Martin community in Red River Parish.^[1]

S. G. "Greg" Lucky left teaching at Ashland High School to procure a law degree at the Louisiana State University Law Center in Baton Rouge. However, he returned to education as the principal of Bastrop High School in Bastrop and as the superintendent of Morehouse Parish, located north of Monroe.^[1]

S. M. Robertson of Ashland became principal of Raceland High School in Raceland in Lafourche Parish in south Louisiana and was an adult education supervisor for the Louisiana Department of Education in Baton Rouge.^[1]

Dovie Lillias Lay Dupree (1955 photograph) taught a generation of first-graders at the former Ashland High School. She died on her 69th birthday, May 11, 1969.

Orie Madison Lay (1898–1990),^[3][4] a 1917 AHS graduate, served as the principal of Robeline High School in Robeline and then as an assistant superintendent in Natchitoches Parish. He is interred at Memory Lawn Cemetery in Natchitoches.^[1]

Dovie Lillias Lay Dupree (1900–1969),^[5] a sister of Orie Lay, taught a generation of first-graders at Ashland High School. Her husband, Alvah Hume Dupree (1901–1974),^[6] operated a store across the street from the school. The abandoned building still stands. The three Dupree daughters followed in their mother's footsteps as educators. The middle daughter, Gloria Dupree Anderson (1936–2009),^[6] taught at Ashland High School from 1964 until its closing. Anderson continued her career in education until retiring after forty-three years in the profession.

Similarly, Marie Weaver Powell (1907–2001)^[7] taught elementary grades at Ashland High School during several decades before the school closed.

Later years

There were seven AHS graduates in 1939. The twelfth grade was added in 1948. In 1951, there were no graduates. The second Ashland High School building, which opened in 1919 and closed in 1981 because of parish school consolidation,^[8] has since been razed. The school mascot was the "Bearcat". A private Ashland Community School operated for another two years from 1981 to 1983 at the Ashland Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist congregation which much later renovated its facilities in 2009.^[9]

Children in Ashland now attend public schools in Goldonna and Campti, with kindergarten through eighth grades attending Goldonna Elementary and Junior High School and ninth through twelfth grades assigned to Lakeview High School on Louisiana Highway 9 north of Campti.^[8]

The former Ashland school site is now occupied by a fire station manned by volunteers. The gymnasium was converted into the Ashland Community Center, where Ashland High School alumni held class reunions. The community center burned to the ground in the summer of 2009. The debris has been since cleared.

A former Natchitoches Parish branch library, operated from the residence of Eleanor Sylvia Walker Bamburg (1915-2010), a librarian for forty years,^[10] was located across from the high school and the Dupree store. After its closure, a bookmobile began coming weekly to the village hall. Near the former school was also a once popular horseback riding club arena.

Notable alumni

• H. Welborn Ayres

References