Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 17: PUBLICATIONS PMSS
NOTES 1951
November

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TAGS: Publications produced by PMSS, Notes 1951, Notes from the Pine Mountain Settlement School

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NOTES – 1951

“Notes from the Pine Mountain Settlement School”
November

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GALLERY

Miss Rood [the school nurse] has embarked on a project, that of getting birth certificates for every person in our school district…no small task with conflicting records, or none at all.

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TAGS: Notes – 1951 November, Rachel Gampert, libraries, Grace M. Rood, cataloging, books, Dr. J.W. Craft, Harlan dental clinic, American Friends Service, Rev. Leon Sanborne, Union Church, summer workshop, Work Shed II, stonework, copperheads, weaving room, Boy’s House, Mrs. Holsinger, Berea student teachers, Little Store, Gift Shop, hearth brooms, Council for Education, PMSS Fourth of July celebrations, ballad singing, spinning, weaving, 1952 Pine Mountain Calendar, Mary Rogers, Thanksgiving at PMSS, poems, William Hayes, Burton Rogers, Chapel

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TRANSCRIPTION: NOTES – 1951 November

P. 1

NOTES FROM THE
PINE MOUNTAIN
SETTLEMENT SCHOOL

PINE MOUNTAIN * HARLAN COUNTY * KENTUCKY

Volume XXVI     NOVEMBER 1951    Number 1

[Small image of a print depicting acorns and leaves.]

The second year of our new program was certainly easier and more rewarding than the first. After a year of laying the foundations, there was something to build on. Students were nearer their proper grade level. Equipment had accumulated. Procedures were worked out. Parents had a greater appreciation of what the school could do. This fall in our third year, we have an enrollment of 192 — nearly twice what we could care for as a boarding school. For the first time we have had every school child in our district enrolled. With a staff of five teachers, classes average thirty-eight.

One mark of progress has been an increase in the 7th and 8th grades. When the children came two years ago, very few were staying on in the upper grades. We opened school then with only thirteen seventh and eighth graders. Several of them were over-age and did not want to go on to high school. As the younger children have come up through two years here they have stayed on and now we have thirty-five in the same two grades. In addition eighteen have been sent from a two-room school eleven miles away which was over-crowded. This gives us a good nucleus for a possible ninth grade next year. Perhaps as this group go on we may be able to add the high school years to the foundation of a full, well-rounded elementary education.

One of the most dramatic achievements of the second year was the conversion of the library to a children’s reading room. Rachel Gampert of Geneva, Switzerland, spent four months working at it. With the help of the children she moved adult books to storage cupboards. High shelves were removed from the library, a low shelf built to partition off the reference corner,…

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…and finally, the room was painted a pale gray-green. All during the time she was doing the enormous task of cataloging the juvenile books, she also had story hour for the [children]. She and many other foreign visitors have given geography lessons much greater reality. In the planning and work which she did, Miss Gampert was assisted by a staff committee. That committee is now carrying on the library work since the budget does not provide for a librarian.

* * * * *

The school and public health programs begun last fall developed in many directions. Miss [Grace M.] Rood has embarked on a project, that of getting birth certificates for every person in our school district … no small task with conflicting records, or none at all.

Last winter she arranged for Dr. J. W. Craft, a dentist in Harlan, to hold dental clinic here. In four half-day sessions he examined all the children. and made his recommendations for further care. Badly decayed teeth were extracted. Dr. Craft found that the children who weren’t given money for candy bars and soft drinks had the soundest teeth. For most of the children it was the first experience with a dentist and they approached with a variety of emotions … stoicism, terror, bravado. Two little twin girls in the first grade went through the ordeal of a local anaesthetic and several extractions without a whimper.

The dental clinic had the wholehearted approval of the parents. Miss Rood visited each home to explain the plan. A small charge was made for each extraction. Equipment for the clinic was primitive but served its purpose. The ancient black leather chair had suffered at the hands of pranking school boys and while it would pump up, couldn’t be lowered, so that, for extractions from the upper jaw, Dr. Craft often had to stand on a chair to get the proper leverage. The seat slanted at such an angle that short-legged little children had trouble keeping their seats.

* * * * *

During July and August we were again host to a high school age work camp. About three-quarters of the group, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, came from New York City. Rev. Leon Sanborne, pastor of the Union Church at Berea, Kentucky, was director. The principal project was erecting an implement shed for farm equipment. Boys and girls together dug ditches and poured concrete for the foundations. They learned to cut and dress stone and began the stone walls which are being finished this winter by staff men. City dwellers all, they had speedy introduction to the thrills and hazards of country living. The first week they helped the school farmer by following the mowing machine on foot, gathering and shocking rye. In the heart of the field the cutting blade encountered a copperhead which was bisected before it could do more than cause considerable furor.

* * * * *

The past two years have seen changes as we converted a boarding school into a day school. Dormitories have become a staff residence, a hospital, and a guest house. Just this fall the weaving room was needed for classroom space so the looms were moved to the playroom at Boys House, which houses some staff members, student teachers from Berea College, and guests, is presided over by Mrs. [Mary Bradshaw] Holsinger. She is an expert…

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…weaver and there instructs the older school girls, a few of the boys, and some staff members. Guests in the house find intensely interesting the strange activities of the room.

The little store, formerly operated by the high school students, is now a gift shop in which guests find weavings done by Mrs. Holsinger, the current Pine Mountain Calendar, our floral note paper and post cards, and the lovely hearth brooms which Pine Mountain School has marketed for many years. The brooms are made by a local family which raises the broom corn and carves the lovely black walnut handles.

Last spring interested parents organized a local Council for Education. This group meets to discuss school needs. It has been interested in a summer recreation program, 4-H training in the school, the possibility of adding a high school to our elementary grades, and the need for playground equipment. The Council took charge of the annual Fourth of July celebration and with the proceeds from food sales has been buying materials for see-saws and swings. Several fathers met with staff men to construct these things. The children indicate by constant use a wholehearted approval of the project.

* * * * *

At latest count there were about six hundred people in our school district, almost half of whom are under sixteen years of age. There are one hundred and twenty families. Forty of them depend on lumbering for their cash income. About twenty depend on mining. Because there is too little land for much farming, only eleven families have farming as their chief livelihood. Almost every family does some gardening and keeps livestock. Well over half the group own their own places and want to stay on where they are. They like life in these quiet valleys near their relatives and life-long friends.

* * * * *

This summer we were shocked by the accidental shooting of one of our fifth grade boys. Bud had gone to spend the night at a friend’s. While he was standing in the yard an older brother stepped out of the door to go hunting. The shotgun he held went off, killing Bud instantly.

He was buried in a little burying ground on the side of Pine Mountain. a cluster of kinfolk, neighbors, and staff members attending the simple service. The parents were dazed by the sudden tragic loss of their only son in their family of four. Bud, a boy of 14, had helped support his family by working around a sawmill during the summer.

* * * * *

Thirty years ago the children coming to Pine Mountain were full of the music of their Anglo-American heritage. Staff members, realizing the richness of this tradition encouraged the children to sing together and to teach each other the songs they had heard at their own hearthsides. Many of these songs were written down by the staff or by musicians who came through the mountains. Most of the songs were found to have their ancestry in the rich folk tradition of the English countryside, being new versions of age-old ballads, love songs, and singing games. With the coming of the easier entertainment of radio much of this music has been forgotten at its source. It is almost unknown by the children who come to us today … just as few of them know anything of the…

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…spinning, weaving, and dyeing processes by which their grandparents were clothed.

This fall the children from the second to eighth grades are enjoying weekly sessions, singing lively children’s songs like the Swapping Song and the Frog and the Mouse. They listen with mounting amusement to humorous ballads and are caught by the spell of inescapable tragedy in the ancient Edward story. Twelve representative mountain hymns, love songs, humorous, and children’s songs appear in the 1952 Pine Mountain Calendar. These songs are beautifully illustrated by Mrs. Burton Rogers, wife of our director. We have chosen this way of sharing our music with you.

* * * * *

On Wednesday, November 21st, just before the school closed for Thanksgiving holiday, the classes gathered in the chapel for their annual service of thanks. Each class took part  — the younger ones with Thanksgiving poems, and the older with the history of Thanksgiving celebrations through the centuries. One class led in a litany of thanks for our many blessings.

The whole school joined lustily in the three songs memorized for the service — Come Ye Thankful People, Come; America, the Beautiful; and the Netherlands Hymn.

The altar was decorated as it is each year, by the school’s farmer, William Hayes. It was piled high with fruits, vegetables, and grain, symbols of a bountiful harvest.

The chapel is used each Wednesday for a service attended by the children just before the buses leave in the afternoon.

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Pine Mountain Settlement School is a private institution affiliated with Berea College. It operates a community hospital; an experimental farm program; and, in cooperation with Harlan County, a consolidated elementary school. Pine Mountain is Christian but non-sectarian. Its support during the 37 years of its history has been derived from individual gifts.

Burton B. Rogers —————————- Director

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EDUCATION Community Cooperative School

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