ELIZABETH HENCH Joy Stock Company Limited Letters 1931

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 02: GOVERNANCE – Board of Trustees
Series 11: FARM
Joy Stock Company Limited Letters 1931
Elizabeth C. Hench, Trustee, 1914-1931(?)

Feeding the Ayrshire herd (in Barn). [nace_1_053a.jpg]

TAGS: Elizabeth Hench, Joy Stock Company fundraising letters, The Depression, contributions, Mr. Thomas Holbrook, PMSS Barn, woodworking teacher, Danish farmer, cooling machine, dairy farms

ELIZABETH HENCH Joy Stock Company Limited Letters 1931

January 1931 [hench_0010.jpg]

Original Cow Company ; The Depression ; stockholders ; contributions ; Joyce ; names ; Cranford ; Mr. Thomas Holbrook ; Milk Room ; Barn ; woodworking teacher ; Danish farmer ; cooling machine ; Elizabeth Hench ; Laurel, MS ;

September 1931 [hench_0011.jpg]

Madam Sookie ; grass ; cows ; bulls ; farmers ; The Depression ; New England dairy farm ; Elizabeth Hench ; Laurel, MS ;

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For a description of the arrival of the Ayrshire cow, Joyce, at Pine Mountain Settlement School, go to Hench’s 1927 letter at ELIZABETH HENCH Joy Stock Company Limited Letter 1927.

TRANSCRIPTION

January 1931 [hench_0010.jpg]

Financial Center
January, 1931

Dear Heirs and Assigns of the Original Cow Company:

44 stockholders during 1930 A.D. (Acute Depression) contributed $275.00 to the support of Joyce at the Pine Mountain Settlement School. That brings the grand total since 1920 up to $3027.! ! I thank you all, the whole company of 124 strong.

I asked for suggestions a year ago for names for Joyce’s calves. Only 1 was made. but when I was informed by the school that the third calf was a male, I was “regusted”, as Andy would say, and told the authorities to call the cattle anything they pleased, knowing well they could never rival the names of the Pullman coaches. Then I reread Cranford and I wondered that, being an educational institution, we had not years ago imitated the example of Mr. Thomas Holbrook, yeoman, Miss Matty’s early lover. He had six and twenty cows, named after the different letters of the alphabet.

Some of you have received notice that your contributions would be applied to a new Milk Room at the Barn. I have $189.05 for that fund. When winter comes and the boys cannot work out of doors, then, under the direction of the Woodworking teacher (a former Pine Mountain boy) and the new Danish farmer, we shall enlarge one room of the Barn, install a stove, a hot water tank, and a sink in which to scald the buckets and pans. We shall have also a cooling machine to make our milk bacteria free by dropping it to 34 degrees within an hour after milking it.

A happy New Year to all of you and the wish that 1931 may mean the return of the good old times!

Very sincerely yours,
[signed] Elizabeth Hench

Permanent address:
Miss E.C. Hench
Box 67
Laurel, Mississippi

1940 Calendar. John Spelman III. Herder and Ayrshire.

September 1931 [hench_0011.jpg]

September, 1931

Dear Milk-Giver:

Did you ever use a cow instead of a lawnmower to make your lawn tidy? That is what they do at Pine Mountain. Last spring I observed Madam Sookie’s way of doing it.

When the grass was too tall for good looks, Sookie was tethered by a long rope and enjoined to eat the grass but to spare the flowers. Further, she was told to bawl when the grass was cropped. So she’d go to work. She’d stick out her tongue, gather a bunch of grass and jerk it off. Then she’d gum it up and chew it down (no Fletcherizer is Mistress Cow when she is busy.) She has only one set — the lower tooth, somewhat loosely embedded. Then she would swallow the morsel and proceed as before. When she felt the need of relaxation, down she’d lie, bring back the supply of grass in small quantities, and give each small mass forty or fifty strokes of her jaws.

Once my fascination over this process was interrupted by the farmer who told me of the school’s need of a new Papa Cow. He did not want a new Milk Room but a young Bull. When I saw by our balance we could afford him, I said: “Buy one on us.”

And now he has written that the autumn term has brought in a lot of undernourished youth and that the school needs a new breeder cow. I have written: “Buy one on us.”

The canny Scotch in me will oblige me in this Depression to use the surplus postcards on hand to inform you of the days in which your check will support Joyce. But that need not deprive you of the following story which I had chosen for my next series:

The seven year old son of a well-known college professor recently spent the week-end on a New England dairy farm, where he acquired considerable knowledge which he was anxious to air. Upon his return home he immediately looked up one of his boy friends and proceeded to relate his experiences and observations.

“If you ever go to a farm, Jimmie,” he cautioned earnestly, “and you see a big cow off to herself, in a stall with bars so she can’t get out, and she has a ring in her nose and doesn’t have any faucets, she’s a bull and you’d better keep away from her.”

Your cow friend,
[signed] Elizabeth Hench

Permanent address:
Miss E.C. Hench
Box 67
Laurel, Mississippi