The Georgia Historical Society is set to ensure that the first school in Cedartown’s long history is remembered forever, and are unveiling a marker this weekend for that purpose.
The GHS and the Polk County Historical Society are hosting a ceremony on Saturday, June 8 at 2 p.m. where Cedar Valley Academy once stood near the Prior Cemetery.
Cedar Valley Academy was funded by the state to educate the deaf children of Cedartown found Asa Prior when he settled in the area in 1834, after the Cherokee removal from the area. The school was opened a decade before the Georgia School for the Deaf located in Cave Spring.
The Polk County Historical Society shared some of the history behind the school, noting that Sarah Heard Whatley is credited as an early educator at CVA along with Benjamin Mosley, who later had a boys’ school on Cave Spring Road in Cedartown.
Polk County is just one of five locales in the state where a historical marker is being placed in the 2024 cycle. The GHS has several other markers in Polk – one for the county itself, one for Sterling Holloway, one for Ivy Ledbetter Lee – founder of modern public relations; a marker for Big Spring Park; one for Old Van Wert; and two Civil War markers in the Aragon area commemorating the march of the Army of Tennessee through the area in late May 1864 during the Atlanta campaign.
Saturday’s ceremony on Brooks Street is open to the public, and a reception after at the Polk County Historical Society Museum on West Avenue in Cedartown will follow after.
