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Gamble presents local schools history to Historical Society

The Coffee County Historical Society met for its regular meeting earlier this month at the historic Coffee County Courthouse. Bonnie Gamble, volunteer curator of the Joanna Lewis Museum of Coffee County History, served as the featured speaker.

Gamble gave a presentation related to the history of education and how she is working to share that history with fourth and fifth grade students in Coffee County Schools.

“One of the things when I was asked to take over the museum as a volunteer is the realization that there is only two rooms and storage so you are very limited on how many people can come through and looking at the displays,” Gamble said. “We have worked really hard to put together displays, exhibits that tell a story.”

Gamble said she was able to apply for a grant opportunity through the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee for the creation of a mobile museum exhibit to educate elementary school students in Coffee County.

“I think outreach is one of the most important that the museum can do but that the Historical Society needs to do,” Gamble said. “People need to know we exist and the important work that we do and also it is an education tool for children and for adults.”

When it came to deciding exactly what Coffee County history the mobile exhibit, Gamble said she thought it best to highlight something every student would be familiar with –going to school.

Titled “When I was Your Age,” the exhibit highlights different aspects of education in Coffee County between 1905 and 1944, including segregation, the one-room schoolhouse and transportation.

At the beginning of her presentation, Gamble asks students to name off some of the events that occurred in the United States during that 39-year span.

“They usually get World War II, and we say there is World War I and the Great Depression,” Gamble said. “Then I remind them there was the Spanish Flu that killed many people, not just in Tennessee but other places, which was sort of like our COVID-19.”

To date, Gamble has presented the exhibit at three county schools with fellow Historical Society volunteer Sandra McMullin Bennett.

Gamble was able to utilize historic meeting minutes of the Coffee County School Board, much of which has been saved for posterity and available on microfilm at the Coffee County Manchester Public Library.

“It is a rich resource, the people that taught school, that did transportation, the classes that were taught and really the things that the school boards would have to wrestle with or think about,” Gamble said.