ABOUT PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL ARCHIVE
This growing digital record provides an in-depth look at the history of Pine Mountain Settlement School and its surrounding Appalachian communities. Located in Harlan County, in the southeastern corner of Kentucky, the remote School was founded in 1913 by Katherine Pettit, Ethel de Long [Zande], William Creech, and other community families to serve the educational and medical needs of the remote populations.
The on-site physical archive comprises over one hundred ten years of institutional records, publications, photographs, in-depth biographical records, furniture, crafts, and National Historic Register architecture. The digital archive comprised of over 2000 pages describing the collections, often provides full text and image access to documents, biographies, crafts, genealogies, and student records (1913-1949). The extensive PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTIONS provide a rich visual journey through the School’s history (1913-2024).
“‘Fiddler’ John” with his donated violin. [kingman_017c]
The Pine Mountain Settlement School’s physical archive is one of the largest on-site archives documenting the rural settlement school movement in Appalachia. It also represents the largest digital access collection of rural settlement school history, providing an in-depth history of the people and the communities served. ….(more… ABOUT Our Archival Mission. )
The on-site and digital collections at Pine Mountain are complemented by the Settlement Institutions of Appalachia (SIA) collections held by Berea College, Berea, KY. which holds a selective microform collection of the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections covering the years of 1913-1983. SEE:
REQUESTING PERMISSION FOR USE OF MATERIALS IN THE COLLECTION
Work is ongoing. Any for profit use of archival material requires permission from the Pine Mountain Settlement School and appropriate citation. Please see USE AGREEMENTS below for details on requesting permission for publication.
To access the Archive go to INDEX TO SERIES AND GUIDES or to the FULL INDEX TO COLLECTIONS
Alternatively, you can utilize the GOOGLE search box located below to look up specific topics through their search engine.
OUR VISION FOR THE PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL ARCHIVE
The Vision of the Pine Mountain Settlement School Archive is to create and to provide a voice that will encourage transformations in individual relationships with the cultures of the Appalachian region. By providing easy access to a unique and extensive body of archival material about the region, the Pine Mountain Settlement School offers an opportunity for an in-depth exploration of one of the earliest rural settlement schools within the region. As expressed and acknowledged in the Kentucky Educational Television program, The Rural Settlement School Movement the essence of the movement is unique. The transformation of the people of Eastern Kentucky and the Southern Appalachians is a continuously unfolding and dynamic story. It is a story that has sometimes been misrepresented, romanticized, or only partially understood and described. By providing this digital archival access we envision a deep, vibrant, and vital resource that will encourage exploration and collaborative dialogue about the hidden and sometimes contested history of rural settlement schools as well as within the Appalachian milieu. We envision broader dissemination of educational 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 Pine Mountain Settlement School Mission Statement. It operates under the watchful eye of representative Trustees, many from Berea College. The Board of Trustees with the School’s Director, guide the institution’s strategic planning goals. The President of Berea College has been a member of the Board of Trustees since 1949.
Today the Pine Mountain Settlement School mission remains true to its long 113-year history and is 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 educational programs for all ages. For the duration of its existence, 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 OR STAYING AT PINE MOUNTAIN?
To learn more about the School’s current workshops, community interaction, annual events, and over-night stays, go to PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL MAIN PAGE – where you will find information about visiting the campus, lodgings, programs, and donating to the School.
RECENT ARCHIVAL ADDITIONS
Valentine, c. 1920. Source: Chordboard [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Discover the true joy of expressing admiration, affection, and love on Valentine’s Day, — and every day, by reading WWII-era letters between OLIVE COOLIDGE and her fiance, Robert Butman, while she served as a worker and nurse assistant at PMSS,
The letters, from a large family collection, were recently donated in digital form by Marcia Butman, the grandniece of Olive Coolidge. Work on organizing and archiving the Coolidge collection and adding it to the PMSS Collections website is currently underway.
Then read the stories of the life of nurse “Amazing Grace” GRACE M. ROOD as she describes her adventures serving the rural community and the School.
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.
WHAT’S NEW! – Archive of former previews of promoted pages and posts, 2015-2021.
ARCHIVE Past Digital Additions 2020-2021
ARCHIVE Past Digital Additions 2022
ARCHIVE Past Digital Additions 2023
COLLECTION USE AND GUIDELINES
PUBLIC USE OF MATERIAL FROM THIS ARCHIVE Non-Commercial
COMMERCIAL USE OF MATERIAL FROM THIS ARCHIVE
ORAL HISTORY RELEASE AGREEMENT
ORAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION – PRINCIPLES AND BEST PRACTICES
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]
COMMENTS and CONTACT
Comments and feedback directly on the website are not enabled. Users may contact the editors through the Pine Mountain Settlement School Office.
office@pinemountainsettlementschool.com or (606) 558-3571.
We welcome your identification of people and activities on our site and, particularly, corrections to the record.
COLLECTION DONATIONS
If you hold material related to Pine Mountain Settlement School and wish to DONATE them to the School, please contact office@pinemountainsettlementschool.com or (606) 558-3571 to discuss your donation and the DONOR AGREEMENT.
We are, of course, always delighted to accept monetary donations to the institution.
PRIVACY POLICY
Please read OUR PRIVACY POLICY and contact our office if you believe we have violated your rights to privacy in our online archival resources.
ABOUT OCR TEXT
Some 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.
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 compromised please notify the following: office@
