Pine Mou tain Settlement School
Series 09: DIRECTORS
KATHERINE REBECCA PETTIT (February 23, 1868 – September 3, 1936)
Memorial Scrapbook of Death Notices 1936

001 “In grateful appreciation of her rich life …” From the Pine Mountain Settlement School Board of Trustees following the death of Pettit, September 4, 1936

TAGS:  Katherine Pettit, Recognition Scrapbook, Board appreciations, DArwin D; Martin, Celia C. Holton, Evelyn K. Wells Charles Manning, R.E. Samuels, Mary Rockwell Hook, Elizabeth Hench, S. Higgins Lewis,

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KATHERINE PETTIT Memorial Scrapbook 

Created by Pine Mountain Board of Trustees in honor of the service of Katherine Pettit, a Founder of Pine Mountain Settlement School in Harlan County, Kentucky. The Memorial Scrapbook contains a Board of Trustees Declaration of Appreciation and newspaper clippings announcing the death and the accomplishments of Miss Katherine Rebecca Pettit, a Founder with Ethel de Long Zande of the Pine Mountain Settlement School and earlier, of Hindman Settlement School in nearby Knox County, Kentucky,

CONTENTS

1. Board Signed Declaration of Appreciation.
   Darwin D. Martin
   Celia C, Holton
   Charles M. Manning
   R.E. Sammuels
   Evelyn K. Wells
   Mary Rockwell Hook
   Elizabeth C. Hench
2. On the Roll of Honor.
3. Death of Worker Mourned in Hills. Miss Katherine Pettit Established Schools and Won Award for Service.
4. Program Held for Miss Petitt – Memorial Service For The Late Katherine Pettit, Originator of Mountain Settlements.
5. Miss Katherine Pettit. [Source unknown.]
6. “The Work of Fotched On Women”: Originator of Mountain Settlements. Got Land From Patriarchs.
7. Neighborhood House News. 428 South First Street, Louisville, KY. September 30, 1936. “Neighborhood House is a Community Chest Agency. A partial notice reads: “It is with the deepest regret that the …. must accept the resignation of Mr. Edwards …..etc. [Not related to the death of Pettit ? or notice missing ?]
8. Founder of Hindman and Pine Mountain Settlement Schools Dies at Lexington. Miss Katherine Pettit Give Sullivan Award for Service to State, (By Gerald Griffin, Courier-Journal, Lexington Bureau, Sept, 3, 1936)
9. Katherine Pettit Dies; Services To Be Friday. [Source unknown.]
10. Katherine Pettit Forest Would Be A Suitable Public Monument. [As suggested by Lucy Furman regarding land “… in the Leatherwood Creek section of Perry County.”
11. Miss Pettit Dies: Put Schools in Kentucky HIlls. Founder of 2 Settlement Projecs in Native State. Won Nation-Wide Fame, Received the Sullivan Award. Was Descendant of Pioneer Western Newspaper Man.
12. Katherine Pettit, Noted Mountain Teacher, Passes. [Lexington, KY, Sept. 4]  [11b]
13. Miss Katherine Pettit. Lexington, Ky. Sept 4, (A.P.) [11c]
14. Miss Katherine Pettit. Devoted 40 Years to Educational Work in Kentucky Mountains. Lexington, Ky, Sept, 4, (AP) [11d]
15. Katherine Pettit. Lexington, Ky. Sept. 4 (AP).  [11d]
16. Katherine Pettit. Lexington Ky., Sept. 4 (AP)  [11e]
17. Katherine Pettit ….In the late afternoon of a perfect summer day, as the declining sun shot golden rays of light through the trees of Lexington’s beautiful cemetery,  a group of sorrowing relatives and friends gathered around an open grave to pay tributes of admiration, respect, and love to Katherine Pettit whose ashes were being deposited in the soil which had nurtured her and which she had loved so well ………
    Act nobly, and the nobleness that in others lies,
    Sleeping, but never dead,
    Shall rise in majesty to meet thy own,” etc.
    [12, 12a] Charles Manning
18. School Activities United With Social Settlement by Katherine Pettit’s Service. By Linda Neville. [13a]
19. An Honored Pioneer.  [13b]
20. Memorial Speakers To Laud Miss Pettit. The Times Special Service, Berea,Ky., Oct. 13  …. “On the program to pay tribute to her are Glyn Morris, principal of Pine Mountain School; Kelly J. Day, Pikeville, and William J. Hutchins, President of the college.  Mr. Hutchins is to read a paper by Miss May Stone, long an associate of Miss Pettit.”]
    

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    GALLERY – KATHERINE PETTIT Memorial Scrapbook.

1, See above

2. “On the Roll of Honor”

Miss Katherine Pettit, funder of the Hindman Settlement School and the Pine Mountain Settlement School, who died in Lexington yesterday will be always on Kentucky’s roll of honor for valued and valiant services.

Miss Pettit’s work, begun in association with the State W.C.T.U. and the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs, continued until she felt it suitable to retire and sped her remaining days among members of her clan in Fayette County.

The last scene of her efforts on behalf of underprivileged hill people was at the Pine Mountain Settlement School in Harlan County.

A comrade of Miss Pettit, at the Hindman Settlement School, Miss Lucy Furman, author of The Quare Women, says “no living person worked so long in the southern mountains” as Miss Pettit did, and “no Kentucky woman has ever done so much service for her State.”

Miss Furman should know, as one man knows what the other does when the two work shoulder-to-shoulder.

Miss Pettit was charmingly representative of the best there is in Kentucky womanhood; a representative resident of the Bluegrass.

It is true, as Miss Furman says, that Miss Pettit’s modesty prevented the public from knowing her and her work as it should have known both.

Miss Pettit had no flair for, no love of, self-advertisement, or the uses of promotive publicity.

She did her work without ballyhoo in places difficult of access because of the absence of railroads or improved highways. In the regions which knew her, the woman and her work will live long in the legends of the coves and defiles which, in some instances remain remote retaining some of the customs and the not inconsiderable graces of the Eighteenth Century.

03. DEATH OF WORKER MOURNED IN HILLS
Miss Katherine Pettit Established Schools and Won Award for Service

Lexington, Ky. Sept, 4 — The death of Miss Katherie Pettit winner of the Algernon Sidney Sullivan award for outstanding service to the people of Kentucky, was mourned today throughout the mountains by friends and former pupils of the nationally-known educator.

Founder of the Hindman ad Pine Mountain Settlement Schools. Miss Pettit began her work in 1895, going each summer for the next four years to the mountains with traveling libraries of the State Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the State Federation of Women’s Clubs. Four years later she was joined by Miss May Stone, Louisville, the two going to Troublesome Creek at Hindman,  Knott County, Residents urged them to establish a school which after some delay, was done.

The Hindman Settlement School combined academic, social and hospital work with industries enabling pupils to work their way through school. In 1913 Miss Pettit left Miss wavye in charge and started a similar school at Pine Mountain in Harlan County.

Miss Petitt, an ardent temperance advocate, was honored with the Sullivan medal at the University of Kentucky commencement in 1932. She was a descendant of John Bradford, who established at Lexington, the first newspaper published west of the Allegheny Mountains.

Surviving also another sister, Mrs. Waller O. Bullock, Lexington.

4.  PROGRAM HELD FOR MISS PETTIT. memorial Service For The Late Katherine Pettit, Originator of Mountain Settlements. 

At 11:10 a.m. Wednesday, Berea College students, faculty, workers, and other friends of the late Miss Katherine Pettit gathered at the Phelps Stokes Chapel to pay tribute to that great Kentucky woman who spent her life serving the Appalachian region. She died in Lexington on September 3, 1936.

Miss May Stone of Hindman Settlement School who volunteered her assistance to Miss Pettit,, and who worked by Miss Pettit’s side for several years, prepared a paper which was read by President W. J. Hitchis. Mr. Glyn MOrris, principal of the Pine Mountain Settlement School, and Mr. Kelly J. Day of Pikeville, spoke briefly paying tribute to this great friend and benefactor.

In 1930 Miss Pettit gave up the headship of the Pine Mountain work to enter upon another pioneer labor which she called free-lance work in the mountains. Freed from the terrific burden of raising money for and running large institutions, she then gave herself more completely to the people she loved.

She had worked longer than any other person in the Appalachians, for a lifetime, joyfully giving her strength of mind and body, her vision, her genius, to the land and the people she loved. Just a short while before going to her great reward, she wrote to an old friend and fellow worker, “This has been a glorious world to live and work in — I am eager to see what the next will be.”

5, MISS KATHERINE PETTIT

 The death of Miss Katherine Pettit who founded the Hindman and the Pine Mountain Settlement schools which have grown so rapidly and accomplished such a great good, has brought sorrow to a wide circle of friends and former associates. Her loss is a great one. She had gained a national reputation through her intelligent, wise, consecrated work in behalf of education and religion in the eastern section of Kentucky, for which she received in 1932 the Algernon Sydney Sullivan reward for meritorious service to the people of her  native state.

Miss Pettit was a of fine mind, of strong personality of great courage and force of character public-spirited i an eibet degree and fired with the missionary spirit. A descendant of John Bradford who brought the first printing press to Kentucky, she had the rugged, individualistic and pioneering attitude toward life and spent herself over many years for those who were under-privileged.

In 1899, after four years of work in the highlands of the state, at different places she began the first rural settlement work in the world, and built firm and lasting foundations, setting an inspiring example, and leading to great developments.

The Hindman Settlement School, combining academic, social, and hospital work with industrial activities through which pupils have been able to pay their way constitutes a model for other such under-takings and its influence has been widespread.

She had worked longer than any other woman in the mountains, had acquired a very intimate knowledge of the life of the people, and was a most valuable counselor after her retirement from active service.

Miss Pettit was a devout Christian, an ardent advocate of temperance, and interested in and concerned about every movement and institution that affected the moral, spiritual, social, and economic life of the people of the great region in which she labored so conscientiously and successfully through most of her life Her works will follow her. Her monument will endure. Her character will influence many for years to come.

6. THE WORK OF FOTCHED ON WOMEN

006b

7. NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE , Louisville, KY [Included in the Memorial material and paying tribute to Pettit for her work with the Settlement Movement and association with the Louisville Settlement House and the Association of Kentucky Women’s Clubs.]

[Possibly not directly related to Pettit’s death or memorial remarks are missing?] Established in 1896, Neighborhood House was the first settlement house in Kentucky.

8. Founder of Hindman and Pine Mountain Settlement Schools Dies at Lexington. Miss Katherine Pettit Give Sullivan Award for Service to State,

(By Gerald Griffin, Courier-Journal, Lexington Bureau, Sept, 3, 1936)

Miss Katherine Pettit Given Sullivan Award for Service to State.
By Gerald Griffin

Katherine Pettit, founder of Hindman and Pine Mountain Settlement Schools in the Kentcky mountains, nationally -known educator, and Algernon Sidney Sullivan medallion winner, died today at the home of her sister Mrs. S. Higgens Lewis on the Tates Creek Pike. She received the Sullivan award in 1932 for outstanding service to the people of Kentucky. The presentation was made at a University of Kentucky commencement.

A member of a pioneer Central Kentucky family, Miss Pettit was a descendant of John Bradford, who brought the first printing press into Kentucky and established in Lexington the first newspaper published west of the Allegheny Mountains.

Miss Pettit began her work in the mountains of Kentucky in the summer of 1895, when she went to Hazard for several weeks, acquainting herself with the needs and conditions of the mountain fork. She returned to the mountains for the next four summers, taking with her traveling libraries of the State Women’s Christian  Temperance Union and the State Federation of Women’s Clubs.

Sent by [State] Federation [of Women’s Clubs]

In June 1899, Miss Pettit was sent to the mountains by the Federation to carry on the first rural settlement work in the world. Associated with her was Miss May Stone, Louisville.

The following year Miss Pettit and Miss Stone were sent back to Eastern Kentcky by the Federation to do social work on Troublesome Creek at the town of Hindman in Knott County. Residents there, recognizing the value of their work, urged them to stay and …

…establish a school, which, after some delay, was accomplished. This was the begii of the social settlement and industrial institution known as the Hindman Settlement School. This school combined academic, social and hospital work with industries, enabling pupils to work their way through school .

Remaining at Hindman until 1913, Miss Pettit left Miss Stone in charge there and started a new and similar school at Pine Mountain, in Harlan County.

Hailed By Miss Furman

Miss Lucy Furman, author of “The Quare Women” and other mountain stories, wrote of Miss Pettit: “No living person has worked so long in the southern mountains and nobody so well understands the problems of the mountains. Furthermore, no Kentucky woman has ever done such service to her State, though excessive modesty has prevented the public from fully realizing it.”

In addition to her educational work, Miss Pettit was an ardent advocate of temperance.

Miss Pettit was selected for the Sullivan Award “for high thought and noble endeavor.”

Besides her sister, Miss Pettit is survived by another sister, Mrs Waller O. Bullock, Lexington. Funeral services will be at 4 p.m. tomorrow at the grave in the Lexington Cemetery.

9. KATHERINE PETTIT DIES; SERVICES TO BE FRIDAY

Katherine Pettit, nationally[sic]-known educator, died early today at the home of her sister, Mrs. S. Higgins Lewis, on the Tates Creek pike. She had devoted her life to educational work in the Kentucky mountains, having established schools at Hindman and Pine Mountain. She was an ardent advocate of temperance.

I 1932, Miss Pettit was awarded the Algernon Sidney Sullivan Medalion for outstanding service to the people of Kentucky.

She was a daughter of the late Benjamin and Clara Barbee Pettit, and is survived by two sisters, Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Waller O. Bullock, and a niece, Miss Martha Van Meter.

 

10. Katherine Pettit Forest Would Be A Suitable Public Monument

In an article in the magazine section of The Courier-Journal last Sunday, Miss LUCY FURMAN, who was a co-worker of Miss KATHERINE PETTIT at the Hindman Settlement School referred to Miss PETTIT’S efforts, when she was in failing health, to arouse interest in the proposed preservation of a small area of primeval forest in the Leatherwood Creek section of Perry County.

If that forest should be procured and preserved and named in honor of Miss PETTIT a suitable tribute would be paid to a leading citizen of Kentucky who devoted most of her life to efforts to promote the welfare of mountain people.

Unfortunately, those who best know the value of Miss PETTIT’S work are its immediate beneficiaries, and they are, in most cases, not able to contribute largely to what might be made a living and perpetual monument which would commemorate her life work far better than any marble monument would.

If for no other reason than that, when she knew that she would not live long and when the blessings of health and strength which she used so liberally for the benefit of others had been lost to her, Miss PETTIT strove to get the Leatherwood forest preserved, it should be acquired and officially made Katharine [sic] Pettit Forest.

11. Miss Pettit Dies; Put Schools in Kentucky Hills
Founder of 2 Settlement Projects in Native State Won Nation-Wide Fame

Received Sullivan Award

Was Descendant of Pioneer Western Newspaper Man

Special to the Herald Tribune – Louisville Sept. 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13b.   An Honored Pioneer

13c. School Activities United With Social Settlement by Katherine Pettit’s Service

 

 

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KATHERINE PETTIT Director