Negro School Old Building, Jefferson County, Alabama, 1935

The Frank M. Hodgson Collection contains approximately 300 items, consisting of documents related to public education and local history in Montgomery County, Tennessee. It includes nineteenth-century diaries, lists, photographs, reports, genealogical data, pamphlets, histories, and newspaper clippings. Much of the collection contains material on various school histories from the late 19th-mid-20th centuries in Montgomery County. An assortment of documents also trace the life and work of Samuel Leonard (S.L.) Smith, a renowned leader in school plant design and planning with ties to the former Southwestern Presbyterian University campus in Clarksville. Smith's work supervising rural schools and designing community school plans with the Julius Rosenwald Fund eventually led to his appointment as the director of the Julius Rosenwald Fund Southern Office in Nashville. Various books, periodicals, and pamphlets cover historic moments in local history, including the Black Patch War and the Bicentennial Celebration. Newspaper clippings from the "Cumberland Lore" section of "The Leaf Chronicle" span from 1984 to 1993 and include articles on local history topics.