SUMNER COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — If you want to know about the small Sumner County community of Scattersville, Lashonda Padgett has plenty of stories.

“Everybody around here is family,” she said.

This little locality near Portland began back in the mid 1800s.

“Scattersville come off of Buntin Plantation,” Padgett explained. “He basically deeded the land to the slaves when slavery ended.”

According to Padgett, when one of the settlers came to the area, he noticed something.

“He was like, the houses were so scattered, scattered so far apart, he was like, ‘Let’s call it Scattersville,'” she said.

In the center of this community, off Baptist Hill Road, is a little white building that originally began as a school for Black students back in 1928.

“All the kids around here, they went to this school,” said Padgett. “My grandmothers went to this school.”

The school eventually closed and became a community center, which Padgett grew up visiting.

“My grandmothers use to have fish fry’s,” she said. “My Auntie Gladys, she helped [with] fish fry’s, softball games, anything.”

To further preserve this building and its history, Padgett began working to get the school listed with the National Register of Historic Places.

“It was a lot of late nights and early mornings, but I just took off and I kept going and I didn’t give up,” she said.

Tennessee’s state review board recently approved Padgett’s nomination, which will now move on to the National Park Service for final review.

As the process continues to move forward, Padgett’s main goal with all of this is to make sure Scattersville Public School and its story aren’t forgotten.

“It’s very important that we keep these places up and running…so the future generations can know about the significance of their history,” she said.

According to Padgett, she’s working on some other projects, including the preservation of a few cemeteries near the Scattersville community.