Shady Grove

Shady Grove (Shadygrove) is a farming community on Farm Road 1002 twelve miles west of Gilmer in western Upshur County. The area was settled before 1850, and in 1889 a high school opened with Professor C. B. Reader, a graduate of Add-Ran College, serving as its first teacher. A town was officially established in 1890, when the Shady Grove post office was granted. In 1894 postal officials changed the post office name spelling to Shadygrove, and that spelling continued to be used until at least 1905, when the post office closed. At its height just after 1900, Shady Grove had a school, a cotton gin and gristmill, a general store, a drugstore, a barbershop, a shoe shop, two blacksmith shops, and several doctors. During the 1920s the town began to decline, and by the mid-1930s it consisted of a church, a school, two stores, and an estimated population of twenty-five. After World War II its school was consolidated with that of Big Sandy, and by the mid-1960s only a church, a cemetery, and a few scattered houses remained. In 1990 Shady Grove was a dispersed rural community. The population was forty in 2000.