{"nrhp_refnum":"96001302","name":"Baty School","other_names":["Cross Plains School"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"GA 198, approximately .25 mi. N of jct. with GA 59","address_restricted":false,"city":"Carnesville","county":"Franklin County","state":"GA","lat":34.36131137000007,"lon":-83.28137177299999,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1996-11-07","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Education"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A one-story, wood-framed rural schoolhouse built about 1884 near Carnesville in Franklin County, Georgia, on Georgia State Route 198. It was organized by local farmer John Wilson Baty and his neighbors.","why_significant":"The nomination argues it is a rare surviving late-19th-century rural schoolhouse that shows typical vernacular construction along the Old Federal Road. It also served local children within about a two-mile radius from the 1880s until the early 1930s, as one of the community-run \"Old Field Schools.\"","narrative":"Baty School is a small one-story wooden schoolhouse near Carnesville, Franklin County, Georgia, built around 1884. It sits on stone piers under a side-gabled standing-seam metal roof, with weatherboard siding. Inside is a single large room with wide tongue-and-groove walls and floors, simple moldings, exposed rafters, and two painted areas once used as blackboards. Farmer John Wilson Baty and his neighbors built it so their children could be educated, and Baty planned the building and supplied the materials. It was one of the community-run \"Old Field Schools,\" serving a radius of about two miles, usually with fewer than twelve pupils taught through grade eleven. In 1923 it joined the Franklin County public school system as Cross Plains School, and it stopped serving as a school in the early 1930s. It was listed for its plain vernacular construction, a rare survivor of its type along the Old Federal Road, and for its role in local education. It is now vacant and used for storage.","period_of_significance":"C. 1884-1930s","architect_builder":"John Wilson Baty (organized community effort to build school)","architectural_style":"No style","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Historic function was school; current function is listed as vacant/storage. The window sashes are missing, though several exterior doors remain intact.","vacant_flag":true,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:42.780285-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_GA/96001302.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/93206048","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":null},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/georgia/franklin-county/baty-school-96001302/"}