SELMA – The Johnston County Public School Board has agreed to name a new elementary school under construction on Lynch Road off Highway 42 East as Thanksgiving Elementary School. The board also agreed to name the school’s media center after the late Raymond Earp.
The Thanksgiving Community gets its name from a church that met on Thanksgiving Day 1899 and formed Thanksgiving Baptist Church. The church was finished in 1901. In 1940, Raymond Earp donated 17 acres of land for additional church grounds and a cemetery where the current church is located. In 1961, the Earps also donated the land for the Thanksgiving Volunteer Fire Department.
The property for the new elementary school was purchased from the Earp family with the caveat of naming the media center after the late Raymond Earp.
Thanksgiving Elementary will open in the fall of 2021 and will have a capacity of 886 students. It will be the 24th elementary school in Johnston County. It will relieve overcrowding at River Dell, Corinth Holders and Riverwood Elementary Schools.
Construction of Thanksgiving Elementary School was funded in the 2018 bond referendum.
