Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 09: BIOGRAPHY – Staff
Series 03: HISTORIES
Series 10: BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Series 13: EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
WELLS RECORD 09 PMSS Country Cottage
Country Cottage (Practice House, Model Home). Porch with 4 women. [II_7_practice_house_314.jpg]
WELLS RECORD 09 PMSS Country Cottage
TAGS: Evelyn K. Wells, Country Cottage, Practice House, settlement schools, histories, 1913-1928, industrial education, Ethel de Long Zande, Katherine Pettit, industrial training, canning, domestic science, New York Auxiliary of the Southern Industrial Educational Association, Mrs. Algernon S. Sullivan, Cornelia Walker, Cornell University, Mrs. Mable Sidelinger, Mary Work, Annette Van Bezey, Marguerite Emerson, home construction, architectural plans, Model Home Fund, terraced gardening, Country Life Movement
“WELLS RECORD 09 PMSS Country Cottage” is section 09 of Evelyn K. Wells’ Record, describing the activities of Country Cottage in the Industrial Education programs at Pine Mountain Settlement School.
The Country Cottage
This house was built with funds given the School in 1921, by the New York Auxiliary of the Southern Industrial Educational Association as a testimonial to their president, Mrs. Algernon S. Sullivan. For some years previous, however, there had been a “Model Home Fund,” made up of small gifts from interested people, for Pine Mountain, like many other mountain schools, had felt the need of driving home to the girls, who married so young, the lessons most necessary in starting to keep house in the mountains. Our Country Cottage aimed to show them what was good about their own methods, and to introduce to them others that they badly needed to learn. Some ideas with which we started had to be abandoned, such as well with water running by gravity to the kitchen sink, because we could not strike water; and the sink itself, which originally was made of wood painted with several coats of paint was replaced by an enamel sink.
Cornelia Walker [1922-23], a Cornell graduate, and our domestic Science teacher in 1922-1923, was the first hostess. There followed Mrs [Mable] Seidlinger [1920-1922], Mary Work [1924-27], Annette Van Bezey, and in 1926 Marguerite Emerson [1926-28]. During Miss Emerson’s regime the name was changed from The Model Home to The Country Cottage.
No attempt is here made to estimate what this building has meant to the groups of girls who three at a time have spent six weeks in the Country Cottage cooking, living on a carefully worked out budget, caring for the cow and selling its milk, and entertaining, under the guidance of the housemother. The garden was also important, and a summer worker has usually (and with varying degrees of success) canned its produce for the family’s winter consumption.
Two lots of lumber measured according to the Country Cottage plan have been sold in the neighborhood and many people have copied its ways such as terrace gardening. We regret that as a neighborhood house it has not become the center that was one of its ideals at the first.
Students? at Country Cottage?? Katherine Pettit Album I. [pettit_38_003]
SEE ALSO:
COUNTRY COTTAGE (Practice House, Model Home)
EVELYN K. WELLS Staff – Biography
EVELYN K. WELLS GUIDE to Administrative Correspondence
EVELYN K. WELLS, GUIDE to EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS HOME 1915-1923
EVELYN K. WELLS 1915 EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS HOME
EVELYN K. WELLS 1915 EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS HOME – Horseback to Hindman
EVELYN K. WELLS 1916 EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS HOME
EVELYN K. WELLS 1917 EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS HOME
EVELYN K. WELLS 1918 EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS HOME
EVELYN K. WELLS 1919 EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS HOME
RECORD OF PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL 1913-1928 [INDEX]
(Early in-depth history of Pine Mountain Settlement School, consisting of 22 sections gathered by Evelyn K. Wells from 1913 to 1928]
2. Introductory
3. Year by Year [Construction, Workers, Gifts, Children, Events, etc.]
10. Academic
11. Health
12. Extension Work
15. Athletics
16. Dramatics
17. Some Contributions to the Outside World
18. Religious Life
19. The Road
22. List of Workers
EVELYN K. WELLS PUBLICATIONS
Wells, Evelyn K. The Ballad Tree: A Study of British and American Ballads, Their Folklore, Verse and Music, Together with Sixty Traditional Ballads and Their Tunes. New York: Ronald Press, 1950. Print.
EVELYN K. WELLS “A Little True Blue American,” Over Sea and Land: Our Southern Mountains, November 1920, p. 140.
EVELYN K. WELLS TALKS
EVELYN K. WELLS PMSS Harvard University Talk, on Folk Music. July 21, 1955