Sugaw Creek Schoolhouse
(ca. 1837)
The Sugaw Creek Schoolhouse is the oldest surviving instructional facility in Mecklenburg County.
101 W. Sugar Creek Road, Charlotte, NC 28213
Established in 1755 by Scotch-Irish settlers on land assigned by the King of England to colonial land agent John Selwyn (1688-1751), Sugaw Creek Presbyterian Church was Mecklenburg County’s first church. In 1806, the church fathers established a classical school at Sugaw Creek. As the only school available for the settlers’ children, it soon became necessary to build a separate log building on church grounds for the schoolhouse. After a scant few years, the growing enrollment and increasing affluence of local planters gave rise to plans for a new brick Sugaw Creek Schoolhouse.
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During the pastorate of Reverend John Madison McKnitt Caldwell (1812-1892), the church hired a skilled French builder named Gillet to design the new school. With the help of several students and young men of the congregation, Gillet built the extant structure. Resting on its current site for more than 180 years, the Sugaw Creek Schoolhouse is now the oldest surviving instructional facility in Mecklenburg County.
The faculty of the Sugaw Creek Schoolhouse provided many young men with the academic preparation necessary for entry into Davidson College, the newly established Presbyterian college in north Mecklenburg County. A large class in 1820 would have been fifteen students, so the structure is small by today’s standards, measuring only about 20 feet by 30 feet on the ground. The school’s first full-time teacher was Robert I. McDowell, an honor graduate of Hampton-Sydney College. The school continued to operate until the early years of the twentieth century, when the public school system began to assume the responsibilities associated with educating the youth of the Sugaw Creek community. Starting in 1960, the congregation converted the building into the Sugaw Creek Historical Museum.