Ben Franklin, Delta County
Early settlers, who came to this area from Giles County, Tenn., founded an academy at this site in 1859. Hired fellow-Tennessean Thomas Hart Benton Hockaday (1835 - 1918) as the first teacher, and named the new school in memory of their southern Tennessee homeland. Hockaday taught at Giles until his enlistment in the Confederate Army in 1862, and after the Civil War for several years before moving to Fannin County in 1870s. He presented a curriculum emphasizing arithmetic, reading the classics, and uses of the English language. (His daughter, Ela Hockaday, 1876 - 1956) founded the well-known Hockaday School for Girls in Dallas in 1913.) School expenses, including teachers' salaries, were paid by parents of the students. A small community center, with a blacksmith shop, general merchandise store, and church, grew up around the large log schoolhouse. After the organization of common school districts in Texas in 1883, the Academy became Giles School, District No. 4. The old log house was replaced with a frame structure in 1886. A more modern building, erected on this site in 1924, was badly damaged by a tornado in 1936. The Giles School never reopened, and its students were distributed between the Ben Franklin and Pecan Gap schools. (1973)