Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 09: Staff/Personnel
Series 03: Histories
Series 10: Built Environment
Series 13: Education and Educational Programs

RECORD PMSS 09 Country Cottage

Evelyn K. Wells Record of the activities of Country Cottage in the Industrial Education programs at Pine Mountain Settlement School from 1913-1928.

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TAGS: Evelyn K. Wells ; Pine Mountain SS ; 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 ;

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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.

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SEE ALSO: 

EVELYN K. WELLS

COUNTRY COTTAGE (PRACTICE  HOUSE)

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)

Foreword

2.        Introductory

3.          Year by Year [Construction, Workers, Gifts, Children, Events, etc.]

4.          Physical Growth

5.          Support and Budget

6.          Some Interesting Gifts

7.          Industrial and Vocational

8.          Farm – Dairy – Poultry

9.          The Country Cottage

10.        Academic

11.        Health

12.        Extension Work

13.        The Fireside Industries

14.        Folk Songs and Dance

15.        Athletics

16.        Dramatics

17.        Some Contributions to the Outside World

18.        Religious Life

19.        The Road

20.        Various Happenings

21.        Policies – General

22.        List of Workers

[22 sections of Pine Mountain Settlement School History gathered by Evelyn K. Wells from 1913 to 1928]

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