Impact on Rowan County
The first session of Moonlight Schools was a great success. One school trustee noted: "I have lived in this district for fifty-five years and never seen any such interest as we have here now. The school used to drag along and nobody seemed interested. We never had a gathering at the school and nobody thought of visiting it. We had night school but three weeks until we began improvements, we papered the houses, put in new windows, purchased new stovepipe, made new steps, contributed money and bought winter's fuel." (Moonlight Schools, page 45)
In Moonlight Schools for the Emancipation of Adult Illiterates, Stewart writes, "The second session surpassed the first in every particular. We enrolled 1,600 students, and taught 350 to read and write. A man aged eighty-seven entered and put to shame the record of the proud school-girl of eighty-six the of the year before."
In Moonlight Schools for the Emancipation of Adult Illiterates, Stewart writes, "The second session surpassed the first in every particular. We enrolled 1,600 students, and taught 350 to read and write. A man aged eighty-seven entered and put to shame the record of the proud school-girl of eighty-six the of the year before."
Click the images below to enlarge copies of letters written to Cora Wilson Stewart by two Moonlight School pupils.
Click image to enlarge and view The Hartford Republican article entitled "Schools by Moonlight"