CHARLES SHERMAN HAIGHT Sr. Board

PMSS Board Member, 1915

Charles Sherman Haight, Sr. (1870–1938) was one of the earliest Board members of the newly formed Pine Mountain Settlement School. A native of the state of New York, Haight was among friends on the new Pine Mountain Settlement School Board. As a member of the governing body, his presence was invaluable to the construction of the campus and its buildings. He was highly respected by his colleagues including some members who were his personal friends. Due to his large number of legal and financial contacts, he was an asset to all. His personal association with wealthy New York families and his legal knowledge of both land and sea transport were invaluable to the School in its very early years.

The growing interest in the natural resources of the Cumberland Plateau had not escaped the attention of wealthy investors at the turn of the century and Haight had wealth ready for investing. Yet, the benefits Board and Trustee were mutual. Of importance to the newly formed school at Pine Mountain was Haight’s legal expertise in rail and sea transport. The evolving School, deep in the eastern Kentucky mountains was remote and cut off from ready access to transport systems and if transport could be negotiated, the costs were very high. Pine Mountain was not the only remote mountain site suffering from stiff fees for Bills of Lading* and Haight was one of the country’s experts on the subject. Co-director Katherine Pettit had long pursued favorable rates that would support goods coming into the mountains, as well as for products transported out of the mountains. The need to reform the laws related to favorable Bills of Lading that would reduce costs for the export of resources in the mountains had the potential to be reciprocal. The assist with the remote locations, such as eastern Kentucky, was one of Katherine Pettit’s ongoing pursuits and Haight was about the best she could have wished for. She wanted a School and it needed multiple resources. Her family and others in the Kentucky Blue Grass would also benefit from good transport rates on timber and eventually coal from the area.

CHARLES SHERMAN HAIGHT Sr: Background

Charles Sherman Haight Sr., was a legal expert on Bills of Lading,* but he was also an expert businessman and negotiator of international relations in marine shipping, an area of growing concern in the burgeoning shipping economy. As an Admiralty expert, Haight demonstrated his social concerns by founding and supporting a boy’s school in New York associated with the Seaman’s Church Institute of New York and New Jersey. Founded as the Young Men’s Church Missionary Society in 1834, the Society was an Episcopal organization focused on the provision of pastoral and legal advice to merchant mariners. It eventually became a worldwide organization.

In 1915 Haight was a participant in the Pan-American Financial Conference held in Washington, D.C., May 24–29, 1915, under the auspices of the United States. (See: International High Commission; Charles Sherman Haight (1915). Pan-American financial conference, 1915: Uniformity of laws relating to bills of lading. Govt. print. off.) His legal expertise in both land and sea shipping brought his skills into high demand and his election to the BOT at Pine Mountain while remarkable was, understandably, short-lived.

Similar to other notable industrialists on the early Board at Pine Mountain, Haight combined his commercial and financial interests with a strong sense of social responsibility and apparently Pettit worked hard to get the Pine Mountain School’s bills of lading headaches adjusted through Haight. He had authored a book about the laws relating to bills of lading which would have been of considerable interest to PMSS and to Pettit who was desperate regarding the delivery of critical supplies associated with the construction of the School. The importance of the bill of lading may be seen in Pettit’s correspondence where her attention was focused on problems associated particularly with the L & N Railroad.

Charles Sherman Haight, Sr. graduated from Yale in 1892 and received his law degree from Harvard, Following graduation, he was a partner in the law firm Haight, Griffin, Deming Gardner. He also found time to marry Alice Hoyt and to invest in his father-in-law Mark Hoyt’s business, the United States Leather Company, [The United States Leather Company (1893-1952), “was one of the largest corporations in the United States circa 1900, and one of the original companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It was often referred to by contemporary sources as the “Leather combine” or “Leather trust”. See: “The Leather Trust” (PDF). New York Times. March 26, 1893. Retrieved 2024-04-24]. 

CHARLES SHERMAN HAIGHT Sr: Hemlock Interests

This investment tempts one to speculate on Haight’s interest in Pine Mountain as it held some of the oldest forests of hemlock in the Eastern United States. A deep look at the hemlock and leather interest may be an interesting study.