Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 02: GOVERNANCE
Director’s External Correspondence
Ethel de Long BOT Report
October 31, 1913
Old Log with children on porch. Angela Melville Album II, Part I. [melv_II_album_036.jpg]
TAGS: PMSS administration, Board of Trustees report from Ethel de Long, finances, donations, petitioning for a good road, Old Log construction, sawmill, community cooperation, Harlan County support, first school calendar, building fund, Mr. McSwain
GOVERNANCE 1913 de Long BOT Report October 31
TRANSCRIPTION
[Note: The following letter, apparently sent to PMSS Board Members, is similar to a de Long report dated October 6, 1913. The text below has been slightly edited for clarity.]
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October 31st, 1913
My Dear
On the last day of October, we were making ready for the first Halloween party ever given by the school. I want to write you as briefly as possible our usual report. You will be interested to know chiefly of our financial status at present. So far, in response to our appeal for $10,000, we have received $500.23 in cash dollars, [?] $70 in pledges. Several hundred dollars have come in beside this but we do not include these for the building fund, since they are not in answer to our letter. We have now $520 coming in annual subscriptions. Yearly, about 120th of what we hope to have soon. In the building fund also, you see that our returns are only about a twentieth of our needs at present.
The first large community undertaking which the school has initiated was directed toward accruing a good road across Pine Mountain. A party of ten citizens from this locality went with me to petition the physical court at its October session. We were. most favorably received and, beside the interest of the court, we are assured of the support of people all over the county. Many offers for help, both in money and labor, have come to us, and it will be only a question of time. We have every reason to believe, before we have a well graded road connecting us with the outside world, it is necessary that we present our petition before the county court also and Miss [Helen] Stoughton. We’ll go over with the citizens on Monday to make a plea for the neighborhood and the school. She will take with her not only the petition, but also sign[ed] statements of the labor and money promised for the road.
We expect to put a roof on our log house this month. an expert contractor comes to us from Berea, KY, on November the 6th and, since the bill of lumber for the house is now sawed, he will frame up the second story and put on the roof. We shall not try to put in doors and windows or two [?] and floor the house until spring when the lumber will be properly seasoned.
I wish you could know what important work for the future has been done here through the last weeks. The coal bank has been made ready for the winter’s digging, according to the directions of Professor [?]. And we are now making a road to it. We have had footlogs laid in many places over the creek and have built a bridge that ought to last for two generations, so that we may haul stone to the sight of the schoolhouse. Miss [Katherine] Pettit has had charge of most important work in ditching and bottom lands. You will be interested to know why she had to give her time for this, instead of Mr. [Horace] McSwain. He has had to be at the sawmill all the time, largely because he has not known what minute one of his hands would have to escape to the woods. You see, this is not a conventional community. Many of our best workers have indictments against them The sheriff may be after them…
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…for shooting, fighting, or even being mixed up in a murder case. Since this is the month when court convenes the men with indictments, again, are all afraid the sheriffs may be after them. The other day, Miss Pettit went up into the sawmill to see if Mr. McSwain could possibly spare her an extra hand. He said, “Why, I don’t see how I possibly can, for I have to be ready to take most anybody’s place at a moment’s notice. That man from Leslie County, who has seven indictments against him, asked me this morning to change his job to a lumber pile so he could dodge around in the lumber if he saw the sheriff coming. And that man from Letcher, who’s expecting his sheriff after him any minute. And even the boy in the sawdust pit has got him a path out through the laurel thicket so he can run if he sees the sheriff after him.” You see what close attention to the sawmill Mr. McSwain must give under these circumstances! A great deal of the time Miss Pettit has had four mules, two yokes of oxen, and a dozen men working on the grounds. It has been costly, but it will all count tremendously next year.
Our first working was a great success. When I told them what such an evidence of their cooperation meant to outside friends, they offered to give one day every month to work for the school without cost. There could not have been a more responsive, hardy group of people than the 40 or more men and boys who pledged themselves to all this free time for the school.
We expect that the school calendars will be ready for sale about the middle of November. The first page has a 3-color print made after a poster that Mr. Jonas Lie of New York got up for my summer speech, making a very charming thing. The other pages have excellent prints and some descriptive matter. The University Press, which is doing the work for us, considers that the results will be very handsome. We shall sell them for 40 or 50 cents. Will you let us know how many of them you would like to sell?
Miss Pettit and I want to urge you far enough in advance so that you can surely arrange to come to see us next October. The mountains have been surpassing beautiful all through the month and we feel that you ought to share with us some of the loveliness of this country in the fall. Would it be at all possible to have a board meeting here next October? We should like to have a bored house-warming at any rate.
Very sincerely yours.
Ethel de Long
See Also:
ADMIN GENERAL 1913 Correspondence External October 10 – Fundraising letter to Mrs. George Hazen from Ethel de Long
GOVERNANCE 1913 de Long BOT Report October 6 – Similar to the October 31st report.
GOVERNANCE – An Introduction
GOVERNANCE Guide
GOVERNANCE Directors Annual Reports to BOT Guide
Return To:
ETHEL DE LONG ZANDE Writing and Publications Guide
GOVERNANCE 1913 Directors Annual Reports to BOT
