The Middle Place one-room schoolhouse in the Middle Place Community near Govan in southwestern Bamberg County is now only an historic remembrance, but the memories live on. The schoolhouse, built in 1887, sat on what once was a vast plantation now owned by the Nimmons family.

This Saturday, the Middle Place community held a homecoming Saturday to raise funds for construction of a replica of the old school.

The celebration included Ministeer Outing as Master of Ceremonies, with “family remembrances” from about a dozen speakers for the event, including the Rosa Odom Brabham family, the Richburg family, the Lemuel and Lyzie Bennett family, the Solomon and Daisy Nimmons family, and others.

Willie Cam Nimmons, executive director for the nonprofit Middle Place Learning and Information Station Inc., said the school was a major part of the community's rich heritage.

"The blacks of the community in the late 1800s and early 1900s realized they wanted an education ... they could get further and do more with an education. so the men of the community got together after the Civil War and built the one room schoolhouse," she said.

Not only was the building used to educate black children in grades one through six; it also served as a Sunday School and as a night school for railroad workers, Nimmons said. Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, founder of Voorhees College in Denmark, taught for a while at Middle Place, she explained.

"The school districts decided they would either sell or donate the rural schools to the community, and my father bought the Middle Place School," William Nimmons said.

At first it was hoped to renovate the old wooden one-room school, but eventually, the school had to be torn down because of extensive termite damage. The Middle Place Learning and Information Station Inc. decided to build a replica of the schoolhouse where it once stood.

Earlier this year, the foundation and foundation walls of the new building were built, but work has ceased as the group strives to obtain grants and funds to continue the project.

The purpose of the Middle Place Learning and Information Station, Inc., is to offer information and training to community citizens who are located in this isolated rural southwest corner of Bamberg County. These activities will be beneficial to individuals and the community. Priority will be given to the low-income senior citizens, children and the less informed.

The organization has been serving the community using church facilities, homes and the grounds of the old Middle Place Schoolhouse. The urgent priority now is to replicate the old one room school house that was built in 1892 to provide a place from which programs can be administered.

Some funds have been raised (approximately $50,000), but at least $45,000 more are needed to complete the project. A brick memorial wall will be added, which will include the names of former students and former and present residents of the Middle Place community. Names can be placed on the memorial wall at a cost of $100 per brick.