Indian School Chapel, School, and Teachers' Cottage

A church, a school (right), and a teachers cottage (center) stand near Bear Mountain in Amherst County, home to the Monacan Indian Nation. A log cabin, serving as a church, had existed on the site since about 1868. In 1908, the Episcopal minister Arthur P. Gray Jr. established St. Pauls Mission and, by adding classrooms to the cabin, the Bear Mountain Indian Mission School. The school enrolled students through the seventh grade untilpublic school desegregationin 1964. Jackson Davis(1882-1947) was a Cumberland County native who took this photograph in 1914 as part of a series documenting the education of minority groups in Virginia. Description courtesy of the Virginia Indian Archive.