The Proctor School

     Located in the Proctor home at 309 East Third Street next to the present day First Presbyterian Church, there were twenty students in the first year. Its founder, Mr. John Marshal Proctor, finding it necessary to enlarge the school, employed Mr. J. J. Darlington as an additional teacher in 1872 at the urging of Mr. Walker Iverson Brookes, whose children attended the school. Mr. Brookes had hired Mr. Darlington to teach his children and the children of several other plantation owners in Orange Grove, South Carolina. After moving his family to Rome, Mr. Brookes convinced Mr. Darlington to come to Rome and teach at the Proctor School. He taught there for two and a half years before moving to Washington, D. C., to attend Columbia Law School and eventually become Dean of the Washington Bar. In the first years of the school bearing his name, Mr. Darlington established the Proctor Debate Medal in honor of Mr. Proctor, who in his words was "a most kindly gentleman." It was discontinued during WWII and begun again in the 1960s by Mr. James P. Jones, and it continues today through his widow, Mrs. Hilda Jones. Mr. Jones's sister, Annie Jones, married Mr. John Proctorıs son Edward. It is with gratitude that we thank Mrs. Hilda Jones for the photograph of the Proctor home and school and for continuing the tradition of the Proctor Debate Medal with the J.P. Jones Medal today.