House History

Abandoned Teacherage in Virginia.

December 12, 2018

I passed this house many times traveling to my mom’s house on the campus of Hampden Sydney in Virginia. I was always very curious about it! So one day we decided to take a trip to that town and hunt around for who owned it. Wylliesburg, Virginia is a very small town. It’s basically a post office/library, a convenience store and a large logging company. And the library was the size of my master bathroom. 🙂

Our first stop was the library! Surely the librarian would know who owns the house! She sure did! She sent us to the logging company. The first person we approached was the owner! He seemed thrilled to talk to us about the history!

It was originally someone’s private residence. Then it became the school teacherage. That is a home, usually in a rural school setting, where teachers would live during the year while teaching.

The man who currently owns it is in his upper 60’s. He recalled going to the teacherage after school when he was in 4th grade to be tutored by one of the teachers. His sister then showed up and started recalling stories of her time at the nearby school. Sadly, the school was also boarded up.

We asked if we could go inside the teacherage to look around. He said sure and then went to an old fashioned cash register and took out a handful of skeleton keys. He said, “one of those will get you inside.”

The eeriest thing about the house were the clothes left in one of the rooms. Looked like clothing from the 1950’s. Some of it was kinda cute! You can see the clothing in the video at very top of post. Or watch it here.

I did ask him what his plans were with the house. He said to keep it standing. He said he frequently had people patching the roof. Beyond that he had no plans for it. Glad to have had the opportunity to explore it and document it with pictures!