![](https://visitculpeperva.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Mollie-Coleman-Beck-1.jpg)
Photo contributed by Mollie’s family
Author: Zann Nelson
Mrs. Mollie Coleman Beck, resident of Culpeper, and a member of Free Union Baptist Church was a lifelong educator in the Culpeper and Orange County Schools.
Through conversations with her daughter, Dr. Hortense Hinton, Mrs. Beck, as both a student and educator at Eckington School, speaks of her beloved community.
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![](https://visitculpeperva.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Eckington-School.jpeg)
“In 1920 on December 20th, our family moved to the ‘Flats’ as it is known locally with our parents, Charlie Bruce, and Hattie Ann Thompson Coleman, accompanied by 6 children-Lucy, Matthew, Joseph, Mollie, Nettie Pearl, and Charlie Bruce, III. We lived in Grandpa Richard Thompson’s home. Were we happy to leave the farm –not to walk 4 or 5 miles to school! It was only 5 minutes to walk to school-the little one room across from Free Union Church. It was January 1921 when we first started Eckington Elementary, 3rd through 7th. The Senior League- made up of parents- would extend the term from 6 months to 7 and paid the teachers so we could stay a little longer.
Back in those days, the primary means of transportation was walking, horse and buggy, or riding horseback. The roads were terrible. Only one Black resident had a telephone, later two then three.
When I left Eckington, I went to Culpeper Graded then I left for Petersburg to complete high school and college at Virginia Normal, now Virginia State University.
Off to school I went nearly 7 years. I came home in the summers to work in town for $5 a week.
It was 1935 when I graduated college. I had been offered a job in Henry County, but my father insisted that I start here at home in this one-room school where I belonged. I taught at Eckington for 2 years. The parents were mighty good to the ‘Hometown’ girl.
One day I met one of the white boys I grew up with, and he said, ‘If I had my way, I would send my two children right down to the school by the church where you teach.’ I was glad he had such thoughts in mind at such an early time, it was 1935.”
Mrs. Mollie Coleman Beck had a great deal more to say on the subject of teaching at Eckington Elementary and perhaps, on a future occasion those gems can be shared.