Foxfire Project – History of Rico
Rico's Story, Told Across Generations
By: Rico Elementary School Students, 1964–65 (Digital reproduction and commentary by J. Kenyon Langley, 2026)
In 1964–65, the sixth- and seventh-grade students in Mrs. Pat Hall’s class at Rico Elementary School set out to record the history of their community. They interviewed older residents and wrote, in their own hand, about the people, places and stories that made up the Rico they knew — its schools and churches, stores and cotton gins, ferries and roads, cemeteries, old buildings and local legends.
Their finished project was preserved by Mrs. Hall for more than forty years before she entrusted it to former student Judy Bridges Henderson, founder of Community Brickworks. Eventually it found its way back to the very building where it began — the former Rico Elementary School, now Chattahoochee Hills City Hall and home of the Community Brickworks library. In 2026, lifelong Rico resident and former Rico Elementary student J. Kenyon “Ken” Langley undertook the painstaking job of digitizing the collection. He preserved the students’ original handwritten pages, added typed transcriptions, and — perhaps most importantly — added his own recollections, explanations and occasional differing versions of the stories. The result is something rather special: Rico history told across generations, with the voices of its children, its elders, and one of its lifelong residents all preserved together. |
Read/Download the Complete Project: Foxfire Project-History of Rico [PDF, 10 MB] Read/Download Smaller Sections:
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About the Project - By Ken Langley
This history of Rico was compiled primarily through interviews with the elders of Rico by students of Mrs. Pat Hall’s 1964-65, 6th and 7th grade class at Rico Elementary School.
Their project, consisting of the student’s hand written pages, was organized into a binder by Mrs. Hall. The finished product was kept by Mrs. Hall for over forty years until she happened to meet with Judy Bridges Henderson. Judy was among the many former students (including myself) of Mrs. Hall’s 6th and 7th grade classes at Rico. Judy had retired from her own career as a teacher in the Fulton County school system and was running Community Brickworks, an organization she founded to provide community services to the people of Rico and the newly formed city of Chattahoochee Hills.
Mrs. Hall gave Judy the binder and it was maintained in the library run by Brickworks in the Chattahoochee Hills City Hall, which was also the former Rico Elementary School building. Over the years other people also gave Judy historical items they wanted safely preserved.
Judy passed away in 2020 but the civic organization she founded, Community Brickworks, continues: maintaining the library, running a food pantry and organizing and participating in community events. The historic items given to Judy for safekeeping are still in the library. I am currently digitizing some of these items: pictures and written histories.
My first intent was to just digitize Mrs. Pat Hall’s Foxfire Project- scan all of the pages and combine into one PDF file. My methodology was to scan each page into a PDF, import in to Photoshop and auto-adjust the white-balance levels so each page is readily readable (if you can read a child’s cursive writing) after sixty years of aging.
While doing this, my intent has changed. Not only am I going to preserve the original Foxfire Project as originally compiled (with minor rearrangements for organizational efficiency), I also now intend to use it as a basis for recording my own historical comments: to clarify the students descriptions of places and things and to add alternative narratives. Often historical lore is contradictory or ambiguous. I shall try to record these contradictions and let the reader develop their own conclusions.
I shall organize this digital construction thusly:
Methodology
I know that at times my comments become very rambling. At times I have used these reports as a nail to hang diverse and disjointed remembrances I have floating around in my head.
J. Kenyon Langley
Semper Fi
This history of Rico was compiled primarily through interviews with the elders of Rico by students of Mrs. Pat Hall’s 1964-65, 6th and 7th grade class at Rico Elementary School.
Their project, consisting of the student’s hand written pages, was organized into a binder by Mrs. Hall. The finished product was kept by Mrs. Hall for over forty years until she happened to meet with Judy Bridges Henderson. Judy was among the many former students (including myself) of Mrs. Hall’s 6th and 7th grade classes at Rico. Judy had retired from her own career as a teacher in the Fulton County school system and was running Community Brickworks, an organization she founded to provide community services to the people of Rico and the newly formed city of Chattahoochee Hills.
Mrs. Hall gave Judy the binder and it was maintained in the library run by Brickworks in the Chattahoochee Hills City Hall, which was also the former Rico Elementary School building. Over the years other people also gave Judy historical items they wanted safely preserved.
Judy passed away in 2020 but the civic organization she founded, Community Brickworks, continues: maintaining the library, running a food pantry and organizing and participating in community events. The historic items given to Judy for safekeeping are still in the library. I am currently digitizing some of these items: pictures and written histories.
My first intent was to just digitize Mrs. Pat Hall’s Foxfire Project- scan all of the pages and combine into one PDF file. My methodology was to scan each page into a PDF, import in to Photoshop and auto-adjust the white-balance levels so each page is readily readable (if you can read a child’s cursive writing) after sixty years of aging.
While doing this, my intent has changed. Not only am I going to preserve the original Foxfire Project as originally compiled (with minor rearrangements for organizational efficiency), I also now intend to use it as a basis for recording my own historical comments: to clarify the students descriptions of places and things and to add alternative narratives. Often historical lore is contradictory or ambiguous. I shall try to record these contradictions and let the reader develop their own conclusions.
I shall organize this digital construction thusly:
- Create a new title page, this preface and a new class picture with student’s names.
- The original Foxfire Project binder content pages of students’ hand written reports and Mrs. Hall’s written outline of topics and potential sources.
- Generate a typed version of each page or pages where I will also add my comments, clarifications to make the students descriptions understandable to a modern reader and alternative historical lore.
- Create an index referencing topics with student report page numbers.
- Add an addendum section where I will collect addition Rico history stories, pictures and remembrances. I would like for this addendum section to be openended-material can be added as it becomes available. This way the integrity of the original Foxfire project will be maintained: the original project will be closed to changes unless someone discovers errors I generated. The addendum section will be constructed so that it can be printed along with the Foxfire Project or printed as a stand-alone document.
Methodology
- Each page of the Project was scanned into a .pdf file format.
- Each page was adjusted for the best combination of level and contrast to produce the best readable document possible within my expertise.
- The resultant files were collected into a file folder. File names were generated to ensure sequential continuity. A typed copy of each page was generated. I would like to sincerely thank Stacey Brown for volunteering to do this monumental task. Without Stacey’s assistance this project would probably have never progressed. Typed pages were then edited to catch any errors. I should also note that “errors” were considered any deviation from the students’ actual written words. Misspellings and grammatical errors were not corrected. These reports were written by 6th and 7th grade kids. Misspellings are part and parcel of the learning experience. Typed pages then had the file names changed as needed to ensure sequential organization within the folder. Also, file names were assigned to ensure that when they were merged into a folder with the scanned pages all files would correctly organize into the proper order so Adobe Acrobat would hopefully produce a properly organized complete document. I also added my comments to each edited typed page in italics. Note: all Student Report typed text in italics is my addition.
I know that at times my comments become very rambling. At times I have used these reports as a nail to hang diverse and disjointed remembrances I have floating around in my head.
J. Kenyon Langley
Semper Fi