GOVERNANCE Directors Annual Reports to BOT 1913

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 05: GOVERNANCE – BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Directors’ Annual Reports to BOT 1913 
Katherine Pettit, PMSS Co-Director, 1913-1928
Ethel de Long, PMSS Co-Director, 1913-1930  
SIA: BOX 17 A-B

GOVERNANCE 1913 Reports and Letters to BOT

Katherine Pettit at Big Log. [kingman_046b.jpg]

GOVERNANCE Directors’ Annual Reports to BOT 1913
Katherine Pettit, PMSS Co-Director
Ethel de Long, PMSS Co-Director


TAGS: Governance, directors’ annual reports to BOT 1913, PMSS Board of Trustees, Katherine Pettit, Ethel de Long, Mary Rockwell Hook, planning, construction, William Creech, sawmill, reservoir, farming, forestry, railroad, roads, temperance, grounds, Harlan County Court petition, government agents, Berea College, students, institutional governance,  progress reports, fundraising


INTRODUCTION

The year 1913 was the opening chapter of Pine Mountain Settlement School. In the Directors Annual Reports to BOT 1913, many references to the planning and the vision of the Directors Katherine Pettit and Ethel de Long and the physical construction of the settlement may be found.

[NOTE: Trustees’ letters that are not an official part of the Annual Report may be found on pages for the individual trustees’ correspondence.]


CONTENTS: Directors’ Annual Reports to BOT 1913

May 24, 1913 (3 pages, de Long)
July 9, 1913. (2 pages, (de Long and Pettit)
August 4, 1913 (3 pages, Pettit)
September 4, 1913 (2 pages, Pettit via Norma F. Staughton, Secretary)
October 6, 1913 de Long to BOT- full text below
October 31, 1913 (2 pages, de Long)

 

SUBJECTS

[MAY 24] Mary Rockwell Hook, architect ; architecture ; land survey ; coal for school ; poplar logs ; Big Log ; Mr. Burgess ; Mr. Arnold, Federal Department of Agriculture ; Mr. Bryant, Agricultural Department of State University [UK] ; Philip Norcross ; reservoir ; septic tanks ; Miss Norma F. Stoughton, Secretary ; Miss [Clara] Davis, nurse ; Fitzhugh Draughon ; Bertha Creech Lewis, kitchen ; food preparation ; William Creech ; Mr. McSwain, farmer, forester ; farming ; forestry ; Berea College Department of Agriculture ; public schools ; Frick Company saw-mill ; Sunday School ; salaries ; housekeeper ; Domestic Science Department, Berea ; Elizabeth Hench ; Executive Committee ;

[JULY – NO IMAGES AVAILABLE] gift of mules from Mr. Durrett ; Mr. McSwayne, Berea farmer ; Southern Industrial Educational Association ; mining, donor of sawmill ; gifts of farming implements from B.F. Avery and Company ; Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company offer of fencing ; fundraising, ; kindergarten ; Solomon Dash Norcross Company ; acquiring board members ;”haint” story ;

[AUGUST] Miss Wilson ; drainage ditch ; land cultivation ; Fourth of July ; summer school ; William Creech ; flax ; flax-pulling ; Professor Easton, State University [UK] ; Mr. Norcross, sanitary engineer ; limestone ; burning lime ; water ; timber purchase ; Incline railroad ; hauling lumber ; Incline road ; sawmill boiler ; roads ; oxen ; Ross Point ; elections ; drunkenness ; whiskey ; temperance ;

[SEPTEMBER] belt for sawmill ; construction obstacles ; water supply ; Miss Wilson, well construction ; farm ; shoats ; Miss Birdina Bishop, teacher ; health ; sanitation ; physiology classes ; geography ; homemaking ; Alafar, student ; box lunches ; organ ; Mr. Huhlein, Louisville ; Mr. Darrow, government pomological lecture ; fruit trees ; Uncle Remus ; organ fund ; Professor Easton, surveyor ; reservoir survey ; New York Chautauqua Association ; Mr. Percy Boynton, Chautauqua Association ; fundraising ; mail ; mail 6 days a week ;

[OCTOBER] Halloween party ; annual subscriptions ; road across Pine Mountain ; roads ; Harlan County Court petition ; roof on Big Log ; Berea College contractor frame-up second story, Big Log ; coal bank ; digging coal ; stones ; ditching ; worker indictments ; Sherrif ; Charlie, student ; John, student ; speeches ; Board meeting in Lexington, KY ; grubbing up orchard ; music ; holly along creek bank ;

CORRESPONDENCE October 6th, 1913 de Long to Pine Mountain Governing Board. [Slightly edited for readability.]

[OCTOBER 6]

I wonder if it will be possible to tell you of the month of September without gaining the inconvenient reputation of being the rightist woman. So many important things have occurred to this new 6 month old school that its sponsors surely must be informed of its September history.

First as to financial matters, in July it seemed to us an almost impossible burden to raise the $2000 needed for timber when we had to work for current expenses and the building fund. In fact, when it was necessary to decide the matter definitely, we had raised less than $500 for timber and could secure it only by an agreement to pay the remaining 1500 before February first, 1914. Even on these terms we could not have bought it except for the owner’s keen interest in the school for he had sold us the boundary at half the price, offered him by the new lumber company, and has inconvenienced himself considerably by waiting for the money. The best part of the story is that Miss Sullivan, our Massachusetts board member, has just written us that she herself will be responsible for the remaining 1500 if she cannot raise it. We now have, without incurring any debt, a permanent timber supply which ought in future to bring us some revenue.

Also, we are sending out this week an appeal for $10,000 to use in building the schoolhouse, I suppose our only way of getting it, and will be in a multitude of small sums but we believe if we all work together that we can raise the amount during the winter so as to be ready for the building early in the spring . Please help us in every way that you can. Do you know any people  to whom we may send this appeal or whom a personal letter from us or from you might interest? If you want extra copies of the appeal or of the leaflet giving Uncle William’s reasons, send to Miss Elizabeth Hinch, 2145 Talbot Ave., Indianapolis.

The largest sum that has ever been given to the school came to it unsolicited just a week ago through one of our Lexington board members, Missus Morton, an anonymous gift of $6000 to be used for some special purpose. It will go for the building of a family house containing kitchen, dining room, laundry, and sleeping room for some of our girls. You will understand the delight that we feel in being able to build this house in the same time with the central settlement building and in the fact that this largest gift came from Kentuckians.

It was your chute again story that brought it to you, wrote Missus Morton to Miss Pettit, and perhaps you will like to hear this lucky tale several of us went over to a funeralizing on Cutsin one Sunday last month, some walking, some on nags, about the time the third preacher said  “My remarks may be somewhat scattered but I promise ye I’ll confine myself

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within Genesis and Revelation.” The walkers had to leave in order to get home by dark. They came over the moonshiners trail from the waters of Cutshin to the waters of Greasy and, as they walked up the creek past the little school house where a quiet Sunday evening meeting was going on, passed the homes where a few left behinds were doing the night work or were ready to come out to the fence for a talk or a hospitable offer of a particularly fine muskmelon, Miss Pettit remarked on the lovely calm of the day which required the word Sabbath she said to  fully to express it. Half an hour later I came up the creek with the horseback party of several girls and boys and Louis Turner, notorious for his meanness and at present ‘ward up’ against his 7 brothers and most of his neighbors. The girls saw a man skulking in the bushes on the hill with his gun pointed directly at Lewis. They began to call to each other and to ride up away from Louis, but before we had time to leave him more than a dozen feet behind, the man fired. Lewis had no gun but he was equal to the occasion. He laughed and cried, “shoot again.” Dave shot again and after every shot, Louis called, “Shoot again,” all the while spurring his horse to get to his own gun. Looking back we saw him leap off his horse at his own door in no time he was out with his box Winchester that everybody knows all will shoot a steel ball straight through the great log answering the challenge with shot after shot and from down and from the woods. Up Greasy where one of Lewis’s brothers lives came more shots and another brother up little Laurel Creek fired his gun half a dozen times. Then it began all over again, the challenge and the defiance and instead of Sabbath there was primitive feudal strife splendidly summed up in that mocking fearless shoot again!

While two of our board members have been of such large financial help, Miss Hench, [Elizabeth Hench] the secretary of the board, has taken the responsibility of managing the printing and distribution of our literature since we have decided to send each quarter some report or circular about the work to everyone on our mailing list. Miss Hench’s service to the School represents much time and thought.

We are glad to report that Dr. Willis H. Butler of the old South Church in Boston has consented to serve as a trustee. We hope to find trustees as suitable in New York, Chicago, Louisville, and Philadelphia so that at our next board meeting we may have the full quota of members. The date for this meeting will be January 3rd, the place Lexington, KY, and we hope that many of you will be present.

We plan to get out a Pine Mountain School calendar to be ready for the holiday mail. The University Press of Cambridge is helping us to use our pictures and other material effectively. We shall send you each a sample copy as soon as they are printed hoping that you will be able to sell some for us.

In the effort to get $10,000 in annual subscriptions for our running expenses I must spend most of this winter traveling. We have at present only $470.50 coming in. Through these subscriptions of this amount something over $150 was secured in my 3 weeks of speaking this August, besides $741.69 in cash. While these are not large sums in comparison with the needs of the school we feel that, considering we must build up our friendship among total strangers, it was an extremely worthwhile trip and will lead to large helpfulness in the future. I am

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sending you a schedule of my probable dates and shall be glad for help in using all the time effectively. I am trying to get appointments to speak before D.A.R.’s literary and philanthropic societies, social clubs, church and missionary organizations.

Although our volunteer teacher went back to her regular work in August, school is still going on with Miss Ellen Merrill of Plainfield, NJ, giving her services. She teaches the little children in the morning and, beginning today, the older ones in the afternoon. As she must leave early in January and there are a number of pupils in the district schools who are begging us to teach a winter school since theirs closed January 1st, we hope to find another volunteer for 3 or four months of winter teaching.

This last month we have been working on the grounds, ditching the low places and underbrush from the creek bank so that it will not overflow the bottoms. In changing the course of the stream so as to have valuable pieces of land, we have had at least 200,000 feet of fine lumber cut from our own forest. We wish you could see Columbus with his two yoke of oxen bringing down the magnificent chestnut logs to the sawmill we feel that this month will count very largely next spring.

We achieved our first social success on Saturday last when we christened our new basketball set given by Mrs. Hazen of New York. We invited everyone to a sweet potato roast and every one came bringing taters, chicken, squirrels, even fresh honey, and a fine live turkey. While some roasted the squirrel and chicken in Hunter’s style over great fires, others played ball. Louis Turner of shoot-again fame played in the same game with the man he is ward up against. The greatest enthusiasm appeared in the fathers of families men who have 10 or 12 children and so joyfully did they play that the young folks said “hope those old men don’t come next week so as to give us a chance.” After supper some of the boys and girls ran sets, cage the bird, the wild goose chase, et cetera. There could not have been a more charming scene, the new moon just rising over the beautiful playground while the banjo strummer picked and dancing boys half chanted half sung the orders for the figures.

“Balance ei–eight keep ’em stra–ight
Killcranky is my song,
I sing and dance it all along
From my elbow to my toe
How much further can I go?” 

We have had also in the last week a meeting of our Local Advisory Board. We then determined to make a great effort to get a good graded road over Pine Mountain from the Railroad so as to reduce our enormous hauling expenses, which owes amount to seventy cents per hundred pounds. A dozen citizens plan to appear before the fiscal court in Harlan Town next Tuesday to petition for funds of this purpose and they have asked me to make a speech, presenting the case for the School. We decided also to try to secure everyone’s co-operation in getting our land in order as

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cheaply as possible and believe we can count on each citizen’s free labor at least two days in every year. This will save the School several hundred dollars annually and will also be evidence of the community’s interest to our outside friends.

We shall report to you each month as to the ten thousand dollar building fund. Do you not think Uncle William’s reasons ,which he gave to us of his own accord, are the most effective appeal a school could possibly have?

Yours sincerely,
Ethel de Long


GALLERY: Directors’ Annual Reports to BOT 1913


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GOVERNANCE Directors Annual Reports to BOT GUIDE

See Also:
DIRECTORS Guide
GOVERNANCE

GOVERNANCE BOT Alphabetical GUIDE 1913 to Present
GOVERNANCE BOT Chronological GUIDE 1913 to Present