large plot of land in the Newman's Ridge area. It included the land on which the Vardy school and church are now located. In subsequent decades, his descendants developed his namesake community along Blackwater Creek. In 1834, the Tennessee Constitutional Convention restricted the rights of free people of color, including Melungeons, depriving them of the right to vote, which they had had since the state was established in 1796. They were also forbidden attending public schools, of which there were few in rural areas. This disfranchisement was similar to restrictions passed in Virginia and other southern states following the 1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion. Such racial discrimination contributed to the Melungeons of Newman's Ridge maintaining a closed, endogamous community. Presbyterians were active in Vardy by the late 19th century, when itinerant Presbyterian ministers Christopher Humble and H. P. Cory were conducting sporadic services in the Blackwater Valley. In 1892, the Presbyterian Church's Holston Presbytery decided to establish a mission school at Vardy, and the Presbyterian Women's Board of Missions appointed Annie Miller and Maggie Axtell as missionaries to the community. Batey Collins (a grandson of Vardeman) and his wife Cynthia donated several acres of land for the mission school and church, and other locals donated lumber and helped with construction. The Vardy Mission School, which initially held classes in a crude log structure (no longer standing), was the first to offer the state-mandated 1st-grade through 8th-grade curriculum to children living in the valley. The Vardy Presbyterian Church was completed in 1899, and a new frame schoolhouse was completed in 1902. In 1910, Mary Rankin, a Scottish missionary and Columbia graduate, arrived in Vardy. For more than three decades, she served as a teacher and nurse. Rankin taught prenatal and postnatal childcare to local mothers and fought malnutrition in the valley. Between 1920 and 1952, the Vardy mission thrived under the leadership of Chester F. Leonard and his wife, Josephine. A new three-story schoolhouse, powered by a Delco generator, was completed in 1929. Upon completion of the new schoolhouse, the Vardy Mission School became known as the Vardy Community School. A series of interim ministers succeeded Leonard. Following the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional, the Presbyterian Church sold the Vardy school to Hancock County in 1955 and it became part of the public school system. Classes continued at