ABOUT THE ARCHIVE
These pages provide an in-depth digital look at the Pine Mountain Settlement School Archive, located in Harlan County, Kentucky. Founded in 1913 the School history now comprises 110 years of institutional and Appalachian settlement school history. Over 2,200 digital pages of local, regional, national, and biographical materials have been placed online. The digital collections include photographs, documents, biographies, books, objects, and videos. The materials detail the rural Settlement School movement through the lens of the national movement. A multitude of primary documents explores the administration, staffing, community relations, cultural differences, and regional environmental and social conflicts. The archive captures the social and cultural life of a rural settlement school institution in a remote Central Appalachian community in Eastern Kentucky from its beginnings in 1913 to the present day.
Most documents are available in FULL TEXT. The online media library of over 2,200 pages contains approximately 40,000 images of text and photographs. Work is ongoing. Any commercial use of archival material requires permission from Pine Mountain Settlement School.
To access the Archive go to INDEX TO SERIES AND GUIDES or FULL INDEX TO COLLECTIONS
Or, use the Search Box (located upper right) TO SEARCH FOR SPECIFIC TOPICS.
SNOW

[Playing in the snow at PMSS c.1920s] mccullough_II_059d
TROUBLES IN THE VALLEY OF THE TROUBLESOME
Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections extends our profound sympathies to the individuals, families, institutions, and businesses in the areas in Eastern Kentucky that have recently flooded. Institutional and historical collections have suffered badly. The archival holdings at APPALSHOP and those at HINDMAN SETTLEMENT have been severely damaged. PLEASE BE GENEROUS IN YOUR SUPPORT
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PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL ARCHIVE
OUR VISION
The Vision of the Pine Mountain Settlement School Archive is to provide a voice that will encourage transformations in individual relationships with the cultures of the Appalachian region. By providing access to a unique and extensive body of archival material about the region, the Pine Mountain Settlement School offers an opportunity to explore in depth one of the earliest rural settlement schools within the Appalachian region. The Rural Settlement School Movement and its impact on the people of Eastern Kentucky and the Southern Appalachians is a story that has sometimes been misrepresented, romanticized, or only partially understood and described. We envision an accessible, deep, vibrant, and vital resource that will encourage exploration and collaborative dialogue about the hidden and sometimes contested history of rural settlement schools within the Appalachian milieu. We envision broader dissemination of research materials across all public, private, and federal sectors interested in Appalachian cultures and lives. more …
OUR ARCHIVAL MISSION
The Pine Mountain Settlement School archival mission supports and draws from the institutional mission of Pine Mountain Settlement School and its strategic planning goals. The Pine Mountain Settlement School mission continues its long 113-year history focused on educational and social enrichment programs centered on the local community but serving the broader Appalachian region and beyond. Once a boarding school with a progressive educational curriculum, Pine Mountain Settlement School’s recent educational programming has moved away from residential education to multi-faceted offerings of short-term environmental, cultural, medical, social, agricultural, and arts and crafts workshops and programs for all ages. Yet, the archive has not moved away from, nor will it move away from, a commitment to Pine Mountain as place and people. more …
THINKING OF VISITING PINE MOUNTAIN?
To learn more about the School’s current workshops, community interaction, annual events, and other activities, go to PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL MAIN PAGE. There, you will find information about visiting the campus, lodging, programs, and donating to the School.
COVID GUIDELINES
Pine Mountain Settlement follows National and State COVID guidelines.
For current information regarding Kentucky COVID regulations and guidelines, see:
https://govstatus.egov.com/kycovid19 https://governor.ky.gov/covid19
ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS
WHAT’S NEW! Archive of Promoted Pages and Posts – Current and former previews of pages and posts.
WHAT’S NEW Latest Digital Additions – Lists of pages that have been recently updated or newly published on the PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL COLLECTIONS website.
ARCHIVE Latest Digital Additions 2020-2021
ARCHIVE Latest Digital Additions 2022
ARCHIVE Latest Digital Additions 2023
COMMENTS and CONTACT
Comments and feedback directly on the website are not enabled. Users may contact the editors through Pine Mountain Settlement School. For questions and for comments related to the site please contact office@pinemountainsettlementschool.com or (606) 558-3571. We welcome your identification of people and activities on our site and, particularly, corrections to the record. If you hold material related to Pine Mountain Settlement School and wish to DONATE materials to the School, please contact office@pinemountainsettlementschool.com or (606) 558-3571 to discuss the DONOR AGREEMENT.
Please see OUR PRIVACY POLICY and contact our office if you believe we have violated your rights to privacy in our online archival resources.
ARCHIVE Mission Statement (extended)
ORAL HISTORY RELEASE AGREEMENT
ORAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION – PRINCIPLES AND BEST PRACTICES
ABOUT OCR TEXT
Many of the texts included in this site have been automatically generated using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. In some cases, these texts have not been manually reviewed or corrected.
OCR enables the searching of large quantities of full-text data, but it is not 100% accurate. The level of accuracy depends on the print quality of the original publication and its condition at the time of creation. Publications with poor quality paper, small print, mixed fonts, multiple-column layouts, or damaged pages may have poor OCR accuracy.
PUBLIC USE OF MATERIAL FROM THIS ARCHIVE Non-Commercial
COMMERCIAL USE OF MATERIAL FROM THIS ARCHIVE
CITATION OF MATERIALS:
Any PUBLIC use of material must properly cite Pine Mountain Settlement School in the following manner: “[Identification of Item],” [Collection Name] [Series Number, if applicable]. [date], Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY. [date accessed]
STATEMENT REGARDING PRIVACY
The manuscript collections and archival records in the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections may contain sensitive and/or confidential information derived from historical archives that may be protected under federal and state right-to-privacy laws and regulations. Researchers who wish to publish and users who may share material from the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections are advised by this notice that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in some collections within the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g. may be a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy if facts concerning an individual’s private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person for which Pine Mountain Settlement School assumes no responsibility.
If you believe that your privacy rights have been invaded please notify the following: office@
AGAIN, see: INDEX TO COLLECTIONS for an overview of collections and series.