Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 17: PMSS Publications (Published by the School)

Dear Friend Letters 1923

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 CONTENTS: Dear Friend Letters 1923, February

Dear Friend Letters 1923 consists of one 3-page letter that includes the following subjects: Quoted 3 letters from Pine Mountain mail bag ; students may be absent because of weather and terrain ; Pine Mountain is like a home to students with 6 cottages and housemothers instead of large dormitories ; friends’ donations help continue the work of the doctor, nurses, and teachers ; need 500 new annual subscribers ; $150 covers an academic scholarship ; $3,000 endows a scholarship ; signed by Ethel de Long Zande ;

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GALLERY: Dear Friend Letters 1923

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TRANSCRIPTION: Dear Friend Letters 1923

Page 1 [dear_friends_1923-02_001.jpg]

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Miss Katherine Pettit
Mrs. Ethel de Long Zande

TREASURER
C. N. Manning
Security Trust Co.

PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL, INC.
PINE MOUNTAIN, HARLAN COUNTY
KENTUCKY

February, 1923.

My dear Friend,
We are printing here three letters from our Pine Mountain mail bag to refresh your memory of our shut-in mountain country, and of the School’s ideals.

“Miss Pettit
I wrote and said I would be there the 15th. It has rained and I can’t cross the river to get there. I will come as soon as I can cross over and get there. Keep me a place please. I am coming sure.
Austin Tolliver”

Don’t think of Austin’s difficulty as a rare case. In Kentucky’s 13,000 square mile of mountains we watch every rain, knowing that we may be cut off from our neighbors, the country school, the mail, within an incredibly few hours. A mother sees the branch, in dry weather a mere trickle and tinkle, rising before her eyes, and knows that unless the teacher turns school loose early, her little brood will not get home by scrambling from rock to bank and from bank to rock on the branch’s edge, but will have to make a long, hard detour up the side of the hill. Can you wonder that she keeps them at home when it’s aiming to rain, and that no district school teacher can hope for regular attendance after the November storms begin? Remember that hundreds of miles of footpath must run close to the creeks, that one pair of shoes, — and never rubbers or rubber boots, — is all that most younguns can hope for in a winter, and you will understand why an intelligent people have so little conventional education.

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Perhaps the early English freedom of form and spelling in the following letter is due at bottom to the troublesome waters of some little creek that “riz on” J. H. Collins over and over again in his little boyhood and swallowed the path to school.

mrs. ethel Zande
Pine Mt. Ky
My daer mrs. Zande
your leter at hand of July 10 asking if i wanted champ Clarks plaice in chool still o yes Mrs Zande indead i doo as it is a reail home for him and such a fine plaise and he is geting along so nicely and does delite in his chool so well i am greaitly interested in his comeing Back two chool i will have the means two pay his uay at chool i think
very truly yours
J. H. Collins

Several things delighted us in that letter. When children have to leave their homes to get any real chance for an education, we want them to find Pine Mountain a home, and to that end have avoided large dormitories and grouped our scholars in six cottages, each with its own housemother. This arrangement gives us opportunities for education in personal habits and in manners that could not be secured in any other way, and it is one reason why children delight in their school.

And one other letter you will enjoy. Some of us read of the lost tooth brush with reminiscent laughter over a little boy who came to the school some years ago, wearing a tooth brush as one wears a fountain pen, having found it on the road and appropriated it with satisfaction.

Page 3 [dear_friends_1923-02_003.jpg]

Miss Katherine Pettite
Dear Friend
I could not find the comb and tooth brush that Cyrus lost it may Be that Mrs. Creech found them as she crossed the mountain that evening I forgot to tell you how Well the Peaple down Home like Martha’s sewing and Sarah’s cooking and was asked many questions Why they were learned to do so many things and was Raised so nice and manerly so the way of your school goes far abroad.
Yours respectfully
Justus Turner

The school is planted in a country of rich human resources and immense handicaps. Only through the interest of many friends can the doctor and nurses continue their invaluable work, can teachers go on training boys and girls into happy, serviceable men and women. For several years the struggle to keep going, — not to expand, but on the other hand not to curtail, — has been too exhausting. To make the work more secure, we want this year, the tenth of our existence,

500 new annual subscribers for any sum from $5.00 up.

$150 covers an academic scholarship; $3,000 endows a scholarship.

Every dollar you send, helps to carry “the school’s ways far abroad.” How many can you spare us each year?

Faithfully yours,
[signed] Ethel de Long Zande

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