Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 17: PMSS PUBLICATIONS – Publicity and Fundraising
“Dear Friend” Letter – 1912 October
Hindman, Knott County, Kentucky
Ethel de Long, Author

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TAGS: Ethel de Long, Hindman Settlement School, Pine Mountain, appeal letter, Anglo-Saxon heritage, educational opportunities, geography, PMSS School planning, Turner brothers, Big Laurel, community cooperation, William Creech meeting, Creech life story, Turner family, employment opportunities

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DEAR FRIEND LETTERS 1912 October Hindman KY

TRANSCRIPTION

[NOTE: The text is slightly edited for clarity.]

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Hindman, Knott County, Kentucky.
[Handwritten notation] October, 1912

My Dear Friend:

Let me tell you how a remote country people of the Kentucky Mountains, whose stock is the purest Anglo-Saxon in America and whose old-fashioned speech and customs, harking back two hundred years, give them a singularly romantic interest, are longing and longing for a school. I believe you will think that we can do our country a unique service if we help these ‘contemporary ancestors’ to what they are beseeching us for. Please read this letter so that you can give us your sober opinion as to the establishment of a school among them, and as to your wish to share in the work.

At the foot of Pine Mountain, the long dividing ridge between Kentucky and Virginia, near where Letcher, Perry, Leslie, and Harlan Counties unite, is a wild and beautiful country, far beyond the reach of any good school. Log houses with puncheon floors and home made benches, taught by ignorant young fellows who have had no chance, are the only means the people have of bettering themselves. The mountain separates them from communication by railroad with the outside world; they have no churches, nor any true social life. In consequence of their impoverished interests they are hard drinkers, and violent deeds done under the influence of whiskey are common among them.

Yet they are begging us to come and establish a school. ”Come over an’ civilize us,” was the request of a woman, who, in company with her husband and nine children, is often drunk. ”When will you women come an’ larn us things?” These are the beseechings of the whole countryside. The eight Turner brothers, who live at the mouth of Big Laurel and have made the place famous by their hard drinking, will give us twenty acres of land and all the lumber we need if only we will build a school. The people of the three great creeks of that region, Cutshin, Laurel, and Greasy, have pledged lumber, money, and labor to try to get us there. As we have visited that country and accepted its kindly hospitality, hearing by the firesides its traditional tales of the pioneer past hardly a generation gone, and its hopes for a better chance for the children, — as we have admired the keen, homely intelligence of its men, and the composure and distinction of its old women, — we have felt that help must surely come to these people. Rough though they are when they are drunk, they have the primitive virtues of the Anglo-Saxon; kindness, bravery, hospitality, and loyalty. Immense resources of strength are latent in them. We believe there is no better material in the United States to train for the uses of good citizenship.

A month ago when we met old Uncle William Creech, the appeal of that region became too irresistible to be put by any longer. This great old man has never come in contact with the currents of modern thought, except through the pages of a second-rate farm magazine, yet he has longed to see a school established that should teach people how to live. Believing in farming, for the souls as well as the bodies of men, he has for years been distressed over the abuse of the land and the waste of timber, and over the abandonment of true farming by the younger generation. He has tried to…

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…get his neighbors to read his magazine, and has brought in rye seed and sold it to them at cost in the effort to arouse interest in rotation of crops. He has been distressed because the women have stopped spinning and weaving, for he saw that such work was a way to the development of character. Thirty years ago an educated man, a refugee, went to that country and he told Mr. Creech that some day there would be a ”fine college” in that beautiful spot. All the while since Mr. Creech has been wondering what he could do to bring it about and thinking that something beside ”booklarning” should be taught there.

If I tell you a little of his life, the wonder of his conception of a school will grow upon you. He was born on the Cumberland River, and at sixteen ran off to the Union Army. At the end of the War he married, and because the country was so thickly settled, he crossed ‘The Pine” to the ”Kaintuck ridges,” bringing his family on foot and his household goods on three nags. Forty years ago, when he came across the Mountain, the land was a wilderness, overgrown with laurel and rhododendron. He bought six hundred acres of land for one hundred and forty dollars and had to work years to pay for it, running a little blacksmith shop at night after a hard day’s work outdoors, parting with every calf before it had reached its full value, selling every bit of food stuff he could spare. They lived in the primitive way, cooking on the fireplace, raising their own flax, tanning hide for home-made shoes, catching foxes, wild turkeys, and bears, having their own sugar camp, dependent on the outside world in no way. In those days the whole family used to go ”sanging'” (to dig ginseng) on the mountain, sometimes staying out a week at a time. While the ”sang” brought only twenty-five cents a pound at that time, they all loved these outdoor trips for the pure joy of outdoors. To-day, the home is still a thoroughly old-fashioned one, where the coal oil lamps have never [superseded] the pine faggots, and where the hackle, loom, and reel are kept and loved, while the old mother, who smokes a pipe and wears a red [bandanna] over her head after the old custom, is eagerly looking forward to flax-planting time in March. They have nine children, all married, save Christopher Columbus, and all ”set up’ with the land the father worked so hard for. There is a fine atmosphere of courtesy and high-mindedness in the home, and the old couple are famed for their high character far and wide.

While Mr. Creech has been longing for a school, Miss Katherine Pettit has been planning to start in the country a school, fitted to the needs of the mountains. Her ideals have shaped themselves slowly through seventeen years of life in the mountains, ten of them spent in charge of the Settlement School at Hindman. She has come to believe that an industrial school in the country has fewer disadvantages to cope with than one in the town, where the old type of family life is passing and where unfortunate influences from the outside world come in too fast. Besides, the needs of the country are vast and neglected. There are ten thousand miles of thickly populated mountain country in the State and a school is needed up almost any branch and at the head of every hollow. We know of one creek, only five miles long where one hundred children have absolutely no chance. I have visited the mountains and known them intimately for eight years, ever since as a teacher in Springfield, Massachusetts, I first heard of the Hindman School. Three years ago I accepted a position as principal of the school. In those three years I have become increasingly anxious to bring about the establishment of a school in the country that…

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…might have as large an influence as this one has for the town. So Miss Pettit and I together are going to start this school.

As the time draws near when it may be possible to start this new work, we have been investigating localities. Several country communities have begged us to settle with them, saying as one man quaintly wrote, that a “school is the most invited, wanted thing in Eastern Kentucky.” It was the character and force of that one old man, Mr. William Creech, that led us to hope for the Pine Mountain locality above all others, for it is a rare experience to find a mountain man, who could understand so fully our wishes for the school, and was ready to give largely of his own land that we might carry them out. As he said good-bye to us on the frosty November morning when we left for home, he told us again how much he wanted to help establish the school, so that he could feel that he had done something for his country before he died. He tried to tell us of his new hope, but tears came into his eyes, and he could only shake our hands and then turn silently away, unable to speak.

Surely we must help him to realize his hope. Here is the opportunity: A singularly beautiful site at the foot of Pine Mountain, along Isaac’s Run, near where four creeks, always the highways in the mountain, head up; splendid air, fine limestone waters running out of the heart of Pine Mountain, two hundred or more acres of land for an industrial school; great numbers of children living within easy reach, and a community eager to do anything possible for its success.

We would like to establish a school that should be the best in all the southern mountains, where boys and girls could work their way in the kitchen, the laundry, the workshop, and on the farm, learning how to do in the best manner possible the things they will have to do all their lives. We do not want to make them ready for college, but to fit them for the country life most of them choose to live. We hope also that a part of the work may be the giving of industrial and academic courses for the young fathers and mothers, who have never had a chance, some of them absolutely ignorant of how to read or write, yet longing to learn. Here in this remote hill country, loving the mountains, starving for a whiff of mountain air when they must stay in the city, living the life of hard work and strong family affections, these people have great resources of strength to contribute to our national life. But they are isolated and they need our best help.

We are sending this letter to you and other people who we hope may help us to establish the school. We have as yet no backing and need friends who will help us to organize the work and to undertake the responsibility of raising funds for its support. We shall be glad to hear what you think of this plan and what you would like to do to help.

Sincerely yours,
ETHEL de LONG,
Principal Hindman Settlement School.

Please do not let any of this get into print.

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GALLERY: DEAR FRIENDS LETTERS 1912 October Hindman KY

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See Also:
ETHEL DE LONG ZANDE Director – Biography

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DEAR FRIEND LETTERS – INDEX