Abbott Schools

L. C. McKamie shaped Abbott's schools for two decades. The Handbook of Texas says he served as superintendent for twenty nonconsecutive years between 1926 and 1948. It dates the system's start to 1885 or 1886, with over 140 pupils, and says the school was accredited through the eleventh grade in 1927-28, earlier than the marker's date of about 1934 for full accreditation. Enrollment was 240 in 1930, and as smaller schools consolidated into Abbott it passed 500 in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

What the plaque says

Abbott Schools The public school system in Abbott began in 1885 when a one-story frame schoolhouse was constructed on the east side of town. It housed 140 pupils and three teachers. A two-story brick structure, built at this site in 1911, served the Abbott school system for 55 years. The schools were given full accreditation about 1934, and a vocational agriculture program was begun in 1939. Consolidation with surrounding area districts has increased enrollment over the years. The Abbott schools have played an important role in the town's development. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hill County Courthouse — 9.4 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 20 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 22 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 23 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.

More markers nearby

• Abbott — 0.3 mi
• First Baptist Church of West — 5.4 mi
• The Crash at Crush — 5.5 mi
• West — 5.7 mi