DORA HILL READ GOODALE

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 09: Staff/Personnel

DORA HILL READ GOODALE, Teacher, 1913


TAGS: Dora Hill Read Goodale ; writers ; teachers ; poetry ; poets ; Henry S. Goodale ; Deborah (Dora) Read Goodale ; Elaine Goodale [Eastman] ; Smith College ; Mountain Dooryards ; Upland Sanatorium at Pleasant Hill Academy ;


Dora Hill Read Goodale (1866-1953) came to Pine Mountain in 1913, its founding year. When she came to the School to teach, she was forty-seven years old, a mature and knowledgeable teacher and someone who had already found a national audience as a writer. Further, she was well positioned to reflect on the life in the Southern Appalachians, as she had spent some time there in other educational environments and the neighboring community. Her poetry, often written in the mountain dialect, opens a window into the lives of the people rural Appalachia, in a manner that is both sensitive and penetrating. Her small book of poems, Mountain Dooryards [1946] has seen many reprints and is often included in anthologies of literature of the Southern Appalachians.

DORA HILL READ GOODALE: Her Family and Education

She was born in 1866 in Mount Washington in the Berkshires of New Hampshire on a farm called “Sky Farm” by the family. She came from a precocious and progressive Vermont family of writers, poets and naturalists and brought those talents to her teaching at the School. Her father, Henry S. Goodale (1836-1906) and her mother Deborah (Dora) Read Goodale were both published writers and poets. Before Dora had reached adolescence she and her sister, Elaine Goodale [Eastman] (1863-1953), had published in national magazines and journals.

Early marital issues of her strong-minded parents led to Dora’s departure for one year in a boarding school in New York City in 1881. Her parents separated in 1882 and she returned home to continue her home-schooling with her mother, who was a trained teacher. Her father went to New York City where he ran the Windemere Hotel, a residence for “financially independent working women.”

Shortly, Dora, who was then seventeen, moved with her mother and her three siblings to Redding, Connecticut, where Dora continued to write and publish. In 1887 the family moved again, this time to Northampton, Massachusetts, where Dora entered Smith College. Her early contacts at Smith most likely contributed to her interest in Pine Mountain which had deep Smith College roots.

At Smith, Dora chose art as her concentration, graduated with her degree in 1890. She had a three-year engagement with Thomas Sanford, but never married apparently due to family obligations. In 1891 the family moved again, this time to a house in Amherst, Massachusetts, where her father had built a retirement home, though he continued to live in New York.

The stay at the Amherst cottage was also brought to an abrupt end by a fire that destroyed the home and most of the personal papers of Dora and her mother. The fire forced a return to Redding and the comfort of relatives. In Redding, Dora found work as a teacher at the Sanford School and worked as a tutor while caring for her ailing mother, Deborah. Her mother died in 1910. (Smith College, Eastman-Goodale-Dayton Family Papers: 1861-2010).

DORA HILL READ GOODALE: PMSS and Later Life

In 1913, at the age of 47, Dora was recruited to Pine Mountain Settlement School by Katherine Pettit where she taught for a year. She retained her residence in Redding and continued to call it home until she accepted a full-time job as a secretary and hospital worker at Pleasant Hill Academy’s Upland Sanatorium in 1929. At first, she worked closely with the director, Dr. May Cravath Wharton, and assisted in the promotional literature for the Sanatorium and later became the director of Upland. The stated mission of the program was “to not simply heal disease but to establish habits of health and of thought, and send its patients out fortified for living a more victorious life.” Again, this mission resonated with the work she engaged in at Pine Mountain.

Her last published work at age 75 was Mountain Dooryards, compiled while she was working at Upland Sanatorium at Pleasant Hill Academy, a Tennessee school not unlike Pine Mountain Settlement School. It was during her time in Tennessee and Kentucky that she wrote most of her Appalachian material, including Mountain Dooryards.

In the late 1940s, her health began to fail and she went to live with her younger brother Robert in Virginia and was then transferred to a nursing home where she died in 1953 at the age of 87. Her death on December 12, 1953, preceded her sister Elaine’s death on the 22nd of December by only ten days.

 The Flight of the Heart
By Dora Read Goodale

The heart soars up like a bird
From a nest of care;
Up, up to a larger sky,
To a softer air.
No eye can measure its flight
And no hand can tame;
It mounts in beauty and light,
In music and flame.
Of all the changes of Time
There is none like this;
The heart soars up like a bird
At the stroke of bliss.
The heart soars up like a bird,
But its wings soon tire;
Enough of rapture and song,
The cloud and the fire!
Its look, the look of a king—
Of a slave, its birth,
The poor, tired, impotent thing
Sinks back to the earth.
And the mother spreads her lap,
And she lulls its pain:
“Oh, thou who sighed for the sun,
Art thou mine again?”*

*Source: Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833—1908). An American Anthology, 1787—1900.


Title

DORA READ GOODALE

Alt. Title

Dora Hill Read Goodale

Identifier

Permalink: https://pinemountainsettlement.net/?page_id=6556

Creator

Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY

Alt. Creator

Ann Angel Eberhardt ; Helen Hayes Wykle ;

Subject Keyword

Dora Hill Read Goodale ; Pine Mountain Settlement School ; teachers ; writers ; poets ; poetry ; dialect ; language ; vernacular ; Mountain Dooryards ; Berkshires ; Sky Farm ; Henry S. Goodale ; Deborah (Dora) Read Goodale ; Elaine Goodale (Eastman) ; home-schooling ; Windemere Hotel ; Smith College ; Thomas Sanford ; Sanford School ; secretaries hospital workers ; Pleasant Hill Academy ; Upland Sanatorium ; Dr. May Cravath Wharton ; Robert Goodale ; Mount Washington, NH ; New York City, NY ; Redding, CT ; Northampton, MA ; Amherst, MA ;

Subject LCSH

Goodale, Dora Hill Read, — 1866-1953
Eastman, Elaine Goodale, — 1863-1953
Pine Mountain Settlement School (Pine Mountain, Ky.) — History.
Harlan County (Ky.) — History.
Education — Kentucky — Harlan County.
Rural schools — Kentucky — History.
Schools — Appalachian Region, Southern.
American Poetry.

Date digital

2014-02-06

Publisher

Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY

Contributor

n/a

Type

Collections ; text ; image ;

Format

Original and copies of documents and correspondence in file folders in filing cabinet

Source

Series 09: Staff/Personnel

Language

English

Relation

Is related to: Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections, Series 09: Staff/Personnel

Coverage Temporal

1866 – 1953

Coverage Spatial

Pine Mountain, KY ; Harlan County, KY ; Mount Washington, NH ; New York City, NY ; Redding, CT ; Northampton, MA ; Amherst, MA

Rights

Any display, publication, or public use must credit the Pine Mountain Settlement School. Copyright retained by the creators of certain items in the collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Donor

n/a

Description

Core documents, correspondence, writings, and administrative papers of Dora Hill Read Goodale ; clippings, photographs, books by or about Miss Dora Hill Read Goodale;

Acquisition

n/d

Citation

“[Identification of Item],” [Collection Name] [Series Number, if applicable]. Pine Mountain Settlement School Institutional Papers. Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY.</p>

Processed By

Helen Hayes Wykle ; Ann Angel Eberhardt ;

Last Updated

2014-02-06 hw ; 2014-04-15 aae ; 2017-03-14 aae ;

Bibliography

Sources

Abernethy Collection Manuscript Miscellany, 1800. Archival material.

Eastman, Elaine G, Deborah H. R. Goodale, Dora R. Goodale, and Henry S. Goodale. Eastman-Goodale-Dayton Family Papers. 1861. Archival material.

Stedman, Edmund C. An American Anthology, 1787-1900: Selections Illustrating the Editor’s Critical Review of American Poetry in the Nineteenth Century. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1900. Print.

Bibliography

Allen, Nathan H, and Dora R. Goodale. A Song for Easter. New York: G. Schirmer, 1890. Musical score.

Allen, Nathan H, and Dora R. Goodale. Song of a Swing. Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co, 1884. Musical score.

Benbow-Pfalzgraf, Taryn. American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide, from Colonial Times to the Present. Detroit: St. James Press, 2000. Internet resource.

Bennett, Paula. Nineteenth-Century American Women Poets: An Anthology. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers, 1998. Print.

Berceo, Gonzalo , William Wordsworth, John Clare, John Keats, Alfred T. Tennyson, Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth B. Browning, Robert Browning, Henry D. Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Ralph W. Emerson, William C. Bryant, Emily Dickinson, Elaine G. Eastman, Dora R. Goodale, Johann W. Goethe, Leoš Janáček, Frédéric Chopin, Gabriel Fauré, Ludwig . Beethoven, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Claude Debussy, Peter I. Tchaikovsky, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Edvard Grieg, Jonathan Epstein, and Malcolm Ingram. Poets of Nature: Vol. 1. Monterey, Mass.: Berkshire Media Artists, 2009. Sound recording.

Dellert, L. A. Berkshire Athenaeum’s Holdings Relative to the Goodale Sisters: Dora Goodale 1866-1953 and Elaine Goodale Eastman 1863-1953. Pittsfield, MA: Berkshire Athenaeum, 1998. Print.

Eastman, Elaine G, and D. H. R. Goodale. Apple-blossoms: Poems of Two Children. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1878. Print.

Eastman, Elaine G, and Dora R. Goodale. Apple-blossoms: Verses of Two Children. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1879. Print.

Eastman, Elaine G, D. H. R. Goodale, and W. H. Gibson. All Round the Year: Verses from Sky Farm. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1881. Print.

Eastman-Goodale-Dayton, family, James L. Dayton, Redington Dayton, Rose S. G. Dayton, Theodore Dayton, Charles A. Eastman, Elaine G. Eastman, Deborah H. R. Goodale, Dora R. Goodale, and Henry S. Goodale. Eastman-goodale-dayton Family Papers. 1861. Archival material.

Eastman, Elaine G, D. H. R. Goodale, and W. H. Gibson. In Berkshire with the Wild Flowers. New York: Putnam, 1879. Print.

Gayle, Veronica F. Eastman, Elaine Goodale (1863 – 1953), Social Reformers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.

Goodale, Dora R. All-Hallow Eve. University of Michigan: Humanities Text Initiative, n.d. Internet resource.

Goodale, Elaine, and Dora Read Goodale. All Round the Year: Verses from Sky Farm. with Which Are Included the Thirty Poems Issued in Illustrated Form in the Volume Entitled “In Berkshire with the Wild Flowers”. S.l: s.n., 1881. Internet resource.

Goodale, D H. R. An American Painter of Sentiment. New York, 1895. Print.

Goodale, Dora R. Four Leaf Clover. Buffalo, N.Y: Hayes Lithographing Company, 1910. Print.

Goodale, Dora R, and Fidelia Bridges. Heralds of Easter: A New Poem of Eastertide. New York: White, Stokes, & Allen, 1887. Internet resource.

Goodale, D H. R. The Merrymaking: Holograph Poem with Letter to the Editor of Youth’s Companion, Dec. 5, 1893, Amherst, Mass. ; Letter to Mrs. Boynton, Jan. 23, 1893. 1893. Archival material.

Goodale, Dora R. Mothers As Educators. Boston: s.n, 1883. Print.

Goodale, Dora R, Chad Drake, and Katharine Ayer. Mountain Dooryards. Berea, KY: Council of Southern Mountains, 1958. Print.

Goodale, D. H. R. Mountain Dooryards: [Verses]. Cedar Rapids, Ia: Torch Press, 1946. Print.

Goodale, Dora R, and David A. Jonah. Pleasant Hill, Tenn., to David A. Jonah, Providence, R. I. , 1946. Archival material.

Goodale, Dora R, and Albert Insley. “Sympathy with Nature in Modern Art.” The Monthly Illustrator. 5.16 (1895): 155-160. Print.

Goodale, Dora R. The Test of the Sky. Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1926. Print.

Goodale, Dora R. To Van Wyck Brooks, Correspondence 1943-1946. Van Wyck Brooks Papers. Folder 1085. Archival material.

Greer, Jane. Girls and Literacy in America: Historical Perspectives to the Present. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 2003. Internet resource.In Berkshire with the Wild Flowers, by Elaine and Dora Read Goodale. Illustrated by W. Hamilton Gibson. New York, Putnam, 1879-80, n.d. Internet resource.

Porter, F A, and Myron H. Whitney. In the Springtime: Bk. 2. Boston: The New England Conservatory of Music, 1897. Musical score.

Skelding, Susie B. Midsummer Flowers: Designs of Maple Leaves, Clematis, Wild Raspberry, Meadow Sweet, Berries and Ferns : Poems by Prominent Authors. New York: White, Stokes, & Allen, 1885. Print.

Skelding, Susie B., and Fidelia Bridges. Birds of Meadow and Grove. New York: White, Stokes & Allen, 1886. Print.

Skelding, Susie B., and Fidelia Bridges. Songs of Birds. New York: White, Stokes & Allen, 1886. Print.

Woodman, R. H., and D. H. R. Goodale. Old Winter Comes: Song for Baritone or Contralto. Boston: Oliver Ditson Co., 1885. Musical score.


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