WHAT’S NEW! Archive of Promoted Pages and Posts

Pine Mountain Settlement School
What’s New! Archive of Promoted Pages and Posts
2015-2021

WHAT'S NEW! Archive of Promoted Pages and Posts

Sheep shed with “Lady” headed for Big Log. Photo: Helen Wykle 2018. [P1150808-e1555820379540.jpg]


TAGS: archived monthly listings, past announcements, past published pages, biographies, correspondence, publications, calendars, articles, guides, poems, narratives, blogs


WHAT’S NEW! Archive of Promoted Pages and Posts

The WHAT’S NEW! ARCHIVE page is used to store previously selected announcements of historical material that had been added to the PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL COLLECTIONS website.

See November 2018 below for links to pages with Archive information about families in the PMSS community. (For details see: FAMILIES IN THE PINE MOUNTAIN VALLEY COMMUNITY)

These announcements originally appeared on WHAT’S NEW! on the MAIN PAGE. There, WHAT’S NEW! highlights collections were added to the Collections website in the recent month. The listing may also include newly published books, articles, and news items related to Pine Mountain Settlement School.

See Also: ARCHIVE Past Digital Additions 2020-2021 


OCTOBER 2021

SHEEP SHEARING AND CECIL SHARP
(Say that fast!)

It is not likely that Cecil Sharp (1859-1924), the British musicologist, ever sheared a sheep. But, he was, in any case, a close observer of the ruminants and probably an even closer critic of their bleats and baahs! Nonetheless, what Cecil Sharp has left to the history of sheep is a unique auditory trail that helps to re-trace the prevalence of sheep within the rich agrarian history of Great Britain and in the American Appalachian mountains.

Read more about this ballad collector and his capture of the rhythms of shearing …

SEPTEMBER 2021

In Memoriam: JACK CORNETT  (c.1942- 2021)

At the end of September (Sept. 26, 2021) Linda McIntyre, notified us of the passing of JACK CORNETT, following a prolonged illness. Jack was a student in the Community School and lived with Emily and Columbus Creech. He went on to attend Red Bird Mission School in nearby Bell County. He married Juanita Scearce, who was also a student in the Community School and who attended Red Bird. Juanita was one of the oldest of the Frank Scearce children who lived at Incline, near the School. Juanita preceded Jack in death. The couple lived in Tampa, Florida, where Jack worked for a trucking company. His full biography is pending. 

Jack is shown here with his mother, Audrey McIntyre, and his son in an early photograph. (To see additional photographs go to the biography for JACK CORNETT.) Linda McIntyre is the donor of the large  JAMES COLUMBUS AND EMILY HILL CREECH Family Collection recently added to the PMSS COLLECTIONS.  175 “Audrey McIntyre, Jack Cornett.” [creech_columbus_175] 

In Memoriam: RAY BIRD
(December 30, 1932 – August 26, 2021) 

Ray was a friend of many and a close follower of the history and life of the PMSS boarding school. His love of the School can be traced to the life-long friendships he made at PMSS and to the many hours that he gave back to this institution. While Pine Mountain thanks Ray for his service and celebrates a life well-lived, his presence and his animated stories will be sorely missed by many. 

RAY BIRD was president of the Class of 1949, the last class to graduate during the PMSS Boarding School era. In later years, he served on the PMSS Advisory Board and was a longtime member of the Pine Mountain Association of Alumni and Friends. Seen here at the 100th year Celebration of PMSS, 2013. [burkhard_ centennial_043.jpg]

HILDA CONN

For two years [I] was away from civilization. The lack of city attractions [at PMSS] … will not worry me.” [Excerpt from Hilda Conn’s application for a Pine Mountain Settlement School position, August 27, 1929.] HILDA CONN,  was a secretary and bookkeeper in the PMSS Office from 1929 until 1931. Her biography and images of her correspondence were recently added to the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections website.

AUGUST 2021 – (No postings for August 2021)

JULY 2021
DR. GRACE HUSE Correspondence“Doctor’s Directions in case of typhoid. If a case of typhoid should break out this side of the mountain, everyone in the school, except those who have been inoculated in the past year, must be inoculated at once. …” (Memorandum to PMSS staff, 1922.)

Photo: DR. GRACE HUSE with kittens in her pockets and on her shoulders. PMSS’s Big Laurel Medical Settlement physician, 1919-1924. See her BIOGRAPHY

DARWIN D. MARTIN 1927 Correspondence (Part 1)“I didn’t intend to beg when I wrote that letter to you. When I do intend to beg I will always hang up a flag so you will know ahead. ….You are so capable about getting things done promptly and cheaply for us that it is a great temptation to turn over requests to you. …”

Director Ethel Zande then “hangs up the flag” and tells him of PMSS’s needs. (Zande to Martin, March 21,1927)

DARWIN D. MARTIN, Board member (1920-1933), and executive of the Larkin Company in Buffalo, NY. See his BIOGRAPHY and CORRESPONDENCE Guide. [Photo: Portrait of Martin from Wikipedia Free Media Repository]

JUNE 2021
WILLIAM AND ROSE BROWN Students, 1928-1929

“[Rose] has done so well…. And then she is a girl of fine character and spirit and is such a fine influence with the other girls. You see, she is doing as you are doing, helping others to be better just as you do…..” [May 20, 1929. Excerpt from Katherine Pettit’s letter to W.Taylor Brown.]

See also: WILLIAM AND ROSE BROWN Correspondence
Photograph of Rose Brown’s handwritten letter to Miss Pettit, July 31, 1928: [brown_william_rose_026.jpg]

MAY 2021
W. TAYLOR BROWN Narrative, 1922-1926

A Berea College Normal School graduate describes his four years as a teacher at Green Hill, a one-room school-house in Harlan County, from 1922 through 1926. He assisted his half-siblings, William and Rose Brown to attend Pine Mountain Settlement School in 1928-1929.

KATHERINE PETTIT 1899-1900 CAMP CEDAR GROVE REPORT

Report of the Committee on Social Settlements in the Mountains of Kentucky, presented at the State Federation of Women’s Clubs annual meeting, c. 1899. Possibly written by Katherine Pettit.

” … send us a woman, a gentle, womanly woman, a dear old-fashioned woman, young or old, who can win woman’s true rights in that conquest, that in itself is simply being a woman ?

APRIL 2021
DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Trees

A historical overview of the forest associated with Pine Mountain Settlement School, Kentucky including a 1921 inventory of timber, a poem to a sovereign tree, and comments on dispossession and trees, and more …

EMMA LUCY BRAUN Visitor

American Botanist, Ecologist, and Environmentalist. Photographs and documents related to the friendship and conservation efforts of Emma Lucy Braun and her friend Katherine Pettit. 

MARCH 2021
098 IX STUDENTS at PMSS singles I – [Set I] Spanning the years from 1931 until 1944 these photographs (I & II) capture life during the Boarding School years at Pine Mountain Settlement. Photographs of students and staff are included.

098 IX STUDENTS at PMSS singles II – [Set II] Spanning the years from 1931 until 1944 these photographs (I & II) capture life during the Boarding School years at Pine Mountain Settlement. Photographs of students and staff are included.

FEBRUARY 2021
OBJECT COLLECTIONS Weaving

“We of the United States are amazingly rich in the elements from which we weave a culture. We have the best of man’s past on which to draw, brought to us by our native folk and folk from all parts of the world. In binding these elements into a national fabric of beauty and strength let us keep the original fibers so intact that the fineness of each will show in the completed handiwork. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

JANUARY 2021
GLYN MORRIS Is There Any Further Need of a School Like Pine Mountain Settlement School?

“Eventually, unless he leaves the mountains, the student returns to a situation alien to his schooling. Everything is against him …”

1930s – I took two major steps to remedy the situation: (1) Modify the curriculum (2) Annual Youth Guidance Institute …

(IMAGE: A student makes a purchase from two others behind the counter.)

WHAT’S NEW! ARCHIVE 2020

DECEMBER 2020
CHRISTMAS At Pine Mountain Settlement School GUIDE – A guide to archival resources for the NATIVITY PLAY, MUMMERS PLAY, CHRISTMAS CARDS, CHRISTMAS SANTA, CHRISTMAS HOLLY AND THE IVY and other highlights of the Christmas season at Pine Mountain Settlement School, Harlan County, Kentucky, 1920s – 1940s.

KATHERINE PETTIT A MEMORY AND AN APPRECIATION,” by Mary Beech, Lincoln Memorial University, 1942. Founder and Director Katherine Pettit is something of an enigma to those attempting to describe her. She is both a force to be reckoned with, a teller of tall tales, “feisty,” yet a deeply private person. Lincoln Memorial University President McClelland and wife, staff Mary Beech, and Librarian Miss Fuller from Lincoln Memorial University toured Hindman Settlement and Pine Mountain Settlement in Eastern Kentucky with Pettit in 1932. The resulting portrait sketched by Beech gets very close to the essence of Pettit in her last years.

NOVEMBER 2020
A LOVE STORY – MAY RITCHIE and LEON DESCHAMPS

Then I walked up to her with sweet kisses,
And the kisses I gave her was one, two, three
Saying I am the man that they call John Riley
Returning home to marry thee.

John Riley, (English Ballad)

STORYTELLING – 090 LIFE WORK School Library Storytelling single photographs Part I

“… takes place in a time and place set apart: cyclic time, ritual time, or sacred time. Cyclical time is heartbeat body-cycle time; lunar seasonal, annual time: recurrent time, musical time, dancing time, rhythmic time….. A story is told again and again, and yet each new telling is a new event….

The living tongue that tells the word, the living ear that hears it, bind and bond us in the communion we long for in the silence of our inner solitude.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin. The Wave in the Mind, 2004. p. 201, 205. 

064 VII LIFE WORK General Maintenance Farm Grounds single photographs – I can think of nothing so satisfying on a cold morning as a hot-buttered biscuit with warm sorghum running between the fingers or even down the chin. Photographs found in the Pine Mountain archive, provide a window into the production and use of sorghum molasses at the School. The production of sorghum molasses is a practice that has been resurrected many times throughout the history of the institution.

OCTOBER 2020
HISTORIES 1899 A Novel Excursion by Maria McVay – An interesting 1898 camping trip taken by Katherine Pettit and 19 others to Eastern Kentucky. Organized by Berea College, this trip led to Pettit’s founding of Pine Mountain Settlement School in 1913. 

SEPTEMBER 2020

AUGUST 2020
DEAR FRIEND LETTERS – INDEX 1911 – 1971 – “DEAR FRIEND” LETTERS come in many forms. Explore the history of Pine Mountain through its appeal letters from the 1918 pandemic to the early 1980s, as the world changed. The letters capture the resilient and resourceful character of mountain families through those years of change.

AUGUST 2020
MARGARET MOTTER Talk: “Mixin’ Larns Both Parties”

A mountain man’s comment to a visitor:

“Well, I allow that thar’s a heap o’ things goin’ on up thar that we all don’t know nary thing about.

An’ hit’s the case, I reckon, that thar’s a heap o’ things goin’ on down hyre that you all don’t know nary thing about.

After a short pause, he came to this philosophical conclusion: “An’ mixin’ larns both parties.

JULY 2020 (No postings for July 2020)

JUNE 2020
OLIVE COOLIDGE Nurse’s Assistant – Olive (“Oggy”) Coolidge came to Pine Mountain in 1941 soon after graduating from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She was familiar with Southern Appalachia not only through her studies in sociology but more importantly through her aunt, Olive Dame Campbell, founder of the John C. Campbell Folk School Olive Coolidge’s PMSS work as a nurse’s assistant was unlike anything she had experienced in her young life. Read the details concerning her work assignments, her life after Pine Mountain (including a return to college in 1968 at age 48), and her correspondence.

RUTH STRANG – Guidance Institutes Leader – In 1936 Ruth Strang worked with PMSS Director Glyn Morris to develop the Rural Youth Guidance Institutes in Harlan County, Kentucky. She then continued as a consultant for the annual Institutes which focused on vocational opportunities and programming for mountain youth and often met at Pine Mountain. In spite of several health problems and roadblocks along the way, Ruth Strang dedicated her life to developing a variety of educational areas. Her many contributions to educational practices continue to be significant today.

The Mountaineers: Our Own Lost Tribes by Rollin Lynde Hartt and illustrated by John Wolcott Adams. 1913 

“Nothing is typical of five and a half million Americans inhabiting 112,000 square miles of alpine paradise. Mountaineers differ, mountain neighborhoods differ, and much that characterizes the mountains characterizes also the lowlands.” 

(IMAGE: Sketch of house, covered wagon and man on horseback by John Wolcott Adams.)

MAY 2020
DIS-EASE – THE PANDEMIC OF 1918-19 IN THE APPALACHIAN COALFIELDS: The Appalachian coalfields, the Settlement Movement, and transnationalism. (IMAGE: Three men carrying sick person on litter in wooded setting.)

1932 Health Survey of Harlan County – Captures a glimpse of the people, the coal camps, the doctors, the churches, and the diversity of the county during a challenging period in the history of the U.S.A. (IMAGE: Nurse watching dentist working with small boy in chair.)

APRIL 2020
EARTH – “Some things never change.” BUT SOMETIMES THEY DO.
MARY ROGERS Biography and EARTH DAY 2020 (IMAGE: Mary Rogers.)

PMSS COVID 19 NOTICE – “PRESS RELEASE, Harlan, KY – March 20, 2020: Official Statement from Pine Mountain Settlement School – COVID-19 Response and Layoffs” (IMAGE: Press Release.)

MARCH 2020
A BRAVE AND IMAGINATIVE PLAN TAKES SHAPE: Lewis Lyttle – A Key Player in the Founding of PMSS

“I think there is a good place here where Greasy, Middle Fork, Line Fork, Straight Creek, Leatherwood, Cutshin, all head in against the Pine Mountain. Pure air, pure water and plenty of children to enjoy it.” (IMAGE: Lewis Lyttle.)

FEBRUARY 2020
HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE THE FEET OF YOUTH UPON THE MOUNTAINThe optimism of youth in wartime from the publication Conifer edited by the students at Pine Mountain Settlement School in 1944. Lessons for hard times and good times. (IMAGE: Students dancing in a circle under blossoming trees.)

HOLIDAY GREETINGSFrom the archives a touching poem and a pause to be thankful for those who came before us and who shared the wisdom of their lives, hoping to build a better world. (IMAGE: Page from a publication.)

JANUARY 2020
SALAMANDERS – Limestone Creek is a favorite salamander hideaway at Pine Mountain where, in 1927, herpetologist Clifford H. Pope gathered his specimens for the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. (IMAGES: Color photo of creek in woods; Path to the Infirmary (Hill House). Fall 2014. Photo: H. Wykle)


WHAT’S NEW! ARCHIVE 2019

DECEMBER 2019
PINE MOUNTAIN’S RARE BIRD – SUTTON’S WARBLER

How do you know but ev’ry bird
that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight,
clos’d by your senses five?

— William Blake

In the Spring 1942 issue of a little-known publication called Snowy Egret Vol 16 No. 1, Thomas R. Henry of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican wrote a short article about the discovery of a new warbler, the Sutton’s Warbler. The rare bird was spotted for the first time in 1939 in West Virginia and was described in the publication NANA, a bird-watchers guide.

The small bird at first was not defined as a new species but was thought perhaps to be a hybrid variety of the common yellow-throated and parula warblers. Hybrids rarely reproduce but can do so in optimum environments. The discovery of the new warbler species, in West Virginia, was quickly confirmed by ornithologists at the Smithsonian and published in their journal. More …
(IMAGE: Sutton’s Warbler as depicted in the article by Thomas R. Henry in the Snowy Egret, 1942,Vol 16 No. 1.)

NOVEMBER 2019
“THE WORLD IS SMALL” GRACE FENG LIU – Grace Feng came to Pine Mountain to serve as a volunteer summer worker to relieve the School nurse, Grace Rood. Her brief stay of two summers left an indelible memory on many in the community.
(IMAGE: Grace Feng Liu)

“I was born in a small place, and when I was very young I played with a few girls almost the same age. My father was a farmer, and often I played in the fields …” MORE … Grace Feng Liu

MOONLIGHT SCHOOLS “The work opened out before me step by step,” she said. “If I had known or foreseen the road ahead, a typical mountain road, I doubt if I should have had the courage to try.“ — Cora Wilson Stewart

OCTOBER 2019 (No postings for October 2019)

SEPTEMBER 2019
STREAM ECOLOGY HOPSCOTCH – Have you been to Pine Mountain Settlement School and wondered about this lovely mosaic mural on the playground. It has a history and a purpose. Do you know the rules of Hopscotch? Part of a county-wide art project federally and locally funded, the children’s game physically guides students through the many critters that live in the streams at the School ...read more … (IMAGE: Color photo of mosaic.)

COMMUNITY FAIR DAY – FAIR DAY has come and gone this year (It was on Sept. 7). Discover the early history of this annual Community Fair Day and read the many commentaries written by staff and community participants. Starting in 1914, with “Farmer’s Day” until the early 1950s, follow the changes in the years through the COMMUNITY Fair Day Guide

Get your sweet tooth ready for next year’s SORGHUM MOLASSES STIR OFF by reading about molasses history at the School. Want to read a bit deeper about the history of sorghum in the Pine Mountain Valley? See DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Stir-Off and Sorghum Molasses. [BLOG] “The sun is a-shining to welcome the day and it’s a heigh-ho, come to the fair …..”

Since c. 1915 Pine Mountain Settlement School has been holding its annual Community Fair Day with only a few skipped years to accommodate the needs of WWI and WWII. Read more … (IMAGE: Cover of program for “Pine Mountain Community Fair,” September 29, 1928.)

AUGUST 2019
INDIAN CLIFF AND EXPLORATION – In 1923, three men who shared a keen interest in the sites of prehistoric native peoples came to Pine Mountain Settlement School (PMSS) to excavate the Indian Cliff Dwelling on the School’s property. When the overhanging rock shelter, located across the road from the entrance to PMSS, was discovered by a student to have ancient bones, Co-Director Katherine Pettit quickly summoned William D. Funkhouser, a zoology professor at the University of Kentucky (UK), knowing of his interest in responsible and careful archaeological exploration. He, in turn, invited Dr. Arthur M. Miller, a UK geologist and Victor K. Dodge, a Lexington businessman, to join him in a systematic excavation. 

Their endeavors were successful in finding skeletons, other bones, and artifacts, as he later described in a short summary in Ancient Life in Kentucky (The Kentucky Geological Survey, 1928), an influential work on Kentucky archaeology.Impressed with the School’s students, mission and accomplishments, the men interacted with PMSS students, presenting talks on birds, snakes, the geology of Pine Mountain and other subjects related to their scientific specialties and taking the students on a bird walk. The biographies of these three men have been recently published on the PMSS Collections website. You can read their stories here: ARTHUR M. MILLER, VICTOR K. DODGE, WILLIAM D. FUNKHOUSER. For a history of the Indian Cliff Dwelling, go to INDIAN CLIFF DWELLING. (IMAGE: Indian Cliff Dwelling, general view. [indian_cliff_01.jpg])

JULY 2019
DEAR FRIEND LETTER, 1911 (Hindman) – PROSPECTING PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL –

We were at once struck with its strategic position … Though we knew of no means of getting it, it seemed such an ideal location for a school that we “made believe” we could have most of the land in sight, though with hardly a glimmering hope of its actuality. We laid out “house seats” on the little low spurs projecting from the foot of the mountain, we planted crops and set out orchards in the bottom- land … We planned a reservoir on the mountainside to catch the waters of a splendid limestone branch that came down the mountains under the spruce pines. In short, we spent three hours playing at the impossible, making believe at something too good to be true. And then at sunset, we walked up the valley under young oaks rarely colored to the quaint old-fashioned home of Mr. and Mrs.William Creech [Uncle William and Aunt Sal] whose simple goodness and kindly courtesy were like an evening benediction.” more … (IMAGE: Distant view of woman walking on a dirt road.)

MAY 2019
GLYN MORRIS 1931-1941 General Review for Board of Trustees on Work at Pine Mountain – Glyn Morris arrived at Pine Mountain at the age of 26 to assume the role of Director of PMSS. An immigrant from Wales, a graduate of Union Theological School in New York City, short and opinionated, it would seem that he would be challenged at every level. He was. Yet, Pine Mountain had ten of the most successful years in its history …

APRIL 2019
MARY ROGERS AND EARTH DAY – March 21. It was the time of Equinox when night and day are of equal length and when the earth seems to hesitate in its spin as it slips into the longer communion with the sun. In 1983, on March 21, Mary Rogers slipped away to what she called her “sub specie aeternitatis” [Latin for “under the aspect of eternity’] By 1983, March 21 had already been changed to April 22 as the universal date of Earth Day, but, Mary Rogers, now beyond time, was on a new adventure. Her Earth Days, 365 of them in nearly every year of her life were now seeds in the minds of those she touched in her lifetime. Her small collection of notes gathered as “Seed Notes” record her love of nature and her deeply spiritual reflections on her love of the earth. (IMAGE: Glyn Morris playing the violin to students seated around him.)

MARCH 2019
NEW LEADERSHIP: PRESTON JONES, an energetic and productive innovator, says of his new leadership role, 

“… “I am truly honored. Having grown up in Harlan County. I often wondered if there was a future for me here. My experience at Pine Mountain has reinforced what I always knew to be true, there is a future for Harlan County and the region, and that Pine Mountain is uniquely positioned to pave the way forward… I’m excited about the trajectory of the School and look forward to working with you all to carry out your remarkable mission.MORE … (IMAGE: Preston Jones.)

LATEST BIOGRAPHY: EVE NEWMAN – Katherine Pettit and Ethel de Long were fortunate that, in 1913, Eve Newman followed them from Hindman Settlement School to assist in the establishment of the new Pine Mountain Settlement School. Not only was Miss Newman an adept fundraiser and office and field secretary but, due to her lively and amiable personality, easily made friends with the PMSS “family” and community.

Using information from the PMSS archives, found mostly in the Marguerite Butler letters, the biography describes Miss Newman’s experiences with her friends, such as sleeping in a tent, planning for classes, riding muleback over the mountains and hiking 20 miles “down Greasy.”

Eve Newman’s biography provides further information from “The Newman Aunts,” a website about six Newman sisters, including Eve, who grew up in the early years of the 20th century. Eve Newman’s pages track her life and career before, during and after Pine Mountain. The site was written by the sisters’ great-great-niece who graciously gave us permission to borrow details about Miss Newman. All of the sisters’ biographies are inspiring and intriguing stories of women during the Progressive Era.

FEBRUARY 2019
[BLOG] DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Cows – Living with cows is a journey not to be taken lightly. Ruminating bovines need careful cultivation if they are to share their space and their milk with their owners. These authors offer a few suggestions. (IMAGE: Boy milking cow. [mccullough_IV_235b.jpg])

VALENTINES FROM THE PAST – In various ways, the PMSS staff, students and community of the past have sent us valentines. Through letters, narratives, publications, photographs and reports, they told us who they were and how they lived and worked. And throughout the 100-plus years of the Pine Mountain Settlement School’s existence, forward-thinking people saved these treasures so that succeeding generations may gain a deeper understanding of days gone by. To celebrate Valentine’s Day, enjoy these valentines from the past … about valentines.

JANUARY 2019
CALENDARS – New Years start with new calendars and the calendars of Pine Mountain Settlement School tell us much about the people, the history, and the desires of the School. Taken as a whole the calendars of Pine Mountain create memories of the past, acknowledgment of now, and imaginations of futures. In our here and now, calendars are arrows to past, and to future. And, most importantly, calendars capture in our now, a range of personal viewpoints as each calendar creator and viewer aims their own “arrow of time.”

This month we are sharing over 30 calendars created from 1914 until 1977. What stories can you see in these temporal keepers of history? How do the annual summaries below speak to the calendars?

Each school year has its own page. To view any of the 145 pages, go to GUIDE TO HISTORY PMSS Summaries 1937-2000 and click on the school year of your interest.
(IMAGE: Calendar for Oct, Nov., Dec., with Spelman sketch of houses, road and horse.)


WHAT’S NEW! ARCHIVE 2018

DECEMBER 2018
IN MEMORIAM: BEN BEGLEY (1952- Dec. 2018) – On December 12, 2013, Kentucky State Nature Preservation Committee bestowed its highest honor, the 2013 Biological Diversity Protection Award, to Ben and Pat Begley. The award was given in recognition of their 28-year tenure teaching environmental science to more than 75,000 students at Pine Mountain Settlement School. Ben left a legacy of hard work, expertise, and dedication that still forms a foundation for the Environmental Education Program at Pine Mountain Settlement School. (IMAGE: Ben Begley.)

The NATIVITY PLAY, an annual event at Pine Mountain Settlement School, was snowed out for a performance this year. For those who did not get to experience one of the iconic events at the school, you may visit the following pages for a sampling of Christmas at Pine Mountain across a century of celebration…. and make your plans for 2019.

Guide to CHRISTMAS AT PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION – During the Winter months at Pine Mountain, the interns and staff catch their breath in the sharp, fresh air of the valley and start planning for the next year’s programs. Environmental Education has always been the backbone of programming at the school since the early 1970s. In the Archive we have begun to gather material from the earliest years to assist our programming staff at the School but we thought you might like to see where we have been digging in the archive. The Guide to Environmental Education will take you to some of the corners we have explored in the archive. If you participated in any of the early EE programs you may want to explore the photographs in 029 V EE Indians and Settlers.

GUIDE TO ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION (ee) 1972- Present 
029 V ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION Indians and Settlers

NOVEMBER 2018
UPDATE: FAMILIES IN THE PINE MOUNTAIN VALLEY COMMUNITY – Since the Families project began in May 2018, a total of 30 Family pages have been published. Each page brings together information about a family whose members share a common surname (or variant spelling thereof). They are families who have ties to the Pine Mountain valley community in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Each Family page includes photographs and historical highlights, as well as members who were community residents, PMSS workers and PMSS students based on information that has been recorded on the PMSS Collections website.

The number of Family pages continues to grow. Since we introduced this series in WHAT’S NEW! in June 2018, we’ve added many more families and updated others. We welcome corrections or additional information from readers. Here are the latest:

BOGGS FAMILY
BROWNING FAMILY
CALLAHAN FAMILY
CAUDILL FAMILY
COMBS FAMILY
COOTS FAMILY
COUCH FAMILY
CREECH FAMILY HIGHLIGHTS
WILLIAM & SALLY CREECH FAMILY
ELY FAMILY
ENIX FAMILY
HALL FAMILY
HOWARD FAMILY
HUFF FAMILY
JACKSON FAMILY
LEWIS FAMILY
LEWIS FAMILY, Dosha, John Clyde, Rhoda
NOLAN FAMILY
SHELL FAMILY
STURGILL FAMILY
WILDER FAMILY
WOOTON (WOOTEN) FAMILY
WOOTON FAMILY STUDENTS

For a complete list with links to the pages, go to Guide to FAMILIES IN PINE MOUNTAIN VALLEY COMMUNITY.

OCTOBER 2018
EVERETT K. WILSON “A Pine Mountain Study in Civics” 1937 – A hand-bound booklet that aimed to prepare students to become civic-minded contributors to their community and culturally experienced adventurers in the progress of humanity.

John Dewey noted: “To keep the eyes on the book and the ears open to the teacher’s words is a mysterious source of intellectual grace.” Everett Wilson, author and teacher, knew how to spread grace all around in this small instructional book. (IMAGE: Print Shop, c. 1942: Student at printing press (1). Harmon Fdn. movie still. [pm_harm_094.jpg)

KITTY RITCHIE – Kitty Ritchie came from one of the most well-known ballad-singing families of Kentucky. Music was central to the lives of the Ritchie family. They sang as they went about their house and gardening chores and at family gatherings, a custom that continues to this day. Kitty’s youngest sister, Jean Ritchie, became the most well-known of her siblings as a commercial performer, author, recording artist, composer and folk music collector.

Kitty was born the sixth of 14 children and was one of six Ritchie siblings who attended Pine Mountain School throughout the 1920s. After graduating from Pine Mountain School, Kitty went on to study at Berea (Kentucky) College.

Several of the Ritchies were adept at spinning, weaving, quilting, and basket making. Kitty and her sister Mallie learned from their older sister, May Belle Ritchie (Deschamps) a very special craft that she first saw at Hindman Settlement School. It consisted of the construction of dolls, usually in pioneer costume averaging 10 inches in height, from corn shucks, the dried leaves or “husks” of corn cobs. The Ritchies’ talents have long been widely admired and are kept alive by the succeeding generations of the Ritchie family to this day. Read more about Kitty Ritchie and the Ritchie family at: KITTY RITCHIE and MAY RITCHIE. (IMAGE: Ritchie family crafts. [dolls_baskets_009.jpg])

[BLOG] DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH: Stones, More Stones, and Scalloped Potatoes – Pine Mountain’s dance with stones started very early as this excerpt from a 1914 letter describes:

“Another piece of economy has been the application of the two-birds-with-one-stone theory to the loose stones on our cultivable ground. We have secured building material for two sanitary closets and a fine tool house by gathering wagon loads of obstructive stone from our potato fields. As to rocks, we still have more worlds to conquer and we shall use them for building and retaining walls, paving, and roads.”
— Nov. 14, 1914, Letter to Friends from Ethel de Long

Stone soup, dry stack walls, scalloped potatoes, limestone kilns, and more stone stories are included in this blog about Pine Mountain’s stone gifts and obstacles.
(IMAGE: Helen Wilmer Stone.” on a stone-strewn path. [047_IV_FN_03a_024.jpg])

SEPTEMBER 2018
PACK HORSE LIBRARIANS – Want to learn more about some of the early Pack Horse Librarians at Pine Mountain Settlement that were recently featured in the new Kitchen Sisters Podcast series, THE KEEPERS Podcast #2 “The Pack Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky”?

PACK HORSE LIBRARY SERVICE at PMSS
COMMUNITY GROUP ASSEMBLY May 20, 1942
RUTH SHULER DIETER
RUTH SHULER DIETER ALBUM
RUTH SHULER DIETER Appreciation Album I & II
LUCILLE CHRISTIAN
SIDNEY ALBERT HELTON
NAN MILAN

MOUNTAIN CRAFTSMAN: JESS PATTERSON – One of our latest additions to the PMSS Collections website is the biography of Jess Patterson, a Pine Mountain Settlement School student and worker, who became a notable dulcimer-maker and who was featured in Craig Evan Royce’s book, Country Miles Are Longer Than City Miles (1976).

On a pivotal day in the 1930s, Pine Mountain Settlement School’s woodworking teacher, Boone Callahan, suggested to Jess Patterson, the School’s bus driver, “Jess, why don’t you go up in the wood shop and make something?” That question and Jess’s response were the first steps toward Jess’s future career as a well-known and respected craftsman.

Jess Patterson (1909-1983) gradually developed his woodworking skills at the same time he was employed as the School’s maintenance and farm worker. Eventually, his tables, crafted after the large “tilt-top” tables in the Laurel House dining room, became much sought after. He was one of the few staff members who could instruct in the craft of hickory chairmaking and hickory caning (weaving strips of hickory bark for the chairs’ seats). He learned the art of “riving” (splitting) boards, which he used to re-shingle Creech (Aunt Sal’s) Cabin.

Jess’s finest creations were his beautiful dulcimers. They continue to be highly regarded to this day, not only because of the traditional techniques that he used to maximize tonal quality but also for their unique designs.

In his youth, Jess had been a student at the School along with his future wife, Edna Mae (Metcalf) Patterson (1910-2001). Edna also became a worker at the School, excelling in the art of weaving.

Click on their names to read more about the lives of these two Pine Mountain artisans and their contributions to the history of Kentucky crafts. (IMAGE: Dulcimer, front view, crafted by Jess Patterson in 1969. Image courtesy of Geoff Reeve-Black, RevelsMusic. co.uk, 2018. [pmss_dulcimer_ patterson_-8.jpg])

Guide to FAMILIES IN PINE MOUNTAIN VALLEY COMMUNITY

AUGUST 2018
We managed to let the month of August get away from us but we went back to re-visit a favorite Fall celebration at Pine Mountain Settlement School. The GUIDE TO COMMUNITY FAIR DAYS follows many years of community gatherings celebrating the harvest season in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. Beginning in 1914, Fair Day was held at the end of August into the early weeks of September. These brief accounts follow the festivities until the mid-1940s. The Fair still continues. (IMAGE: Community Fair Day. [III_campus_life__0766.jpg])

JULY 2018
MARY ROCKWELL HOOK has been a focus of our ongoing archival work this month. As the Master Architect of the School, and one of the earliest women architects in the country, she is a critical player in the creation of Pine Mountain Settlement School. She stuck around for almost six decades as a Board of Trustee, consultant and continuing architect for the School. Her correspondence through the years is voluminous. We continue to work on it. Her autobiography, “This and That” is a delightful romp through Kansas, Europe, Kentucky, Colorado, and Florida and most stops in-between. Follow us as we continue the exploration of this amazing architectural pioneer.

MARY ROCKWELL HOOK
MARY ROCKWELL HOOK “THIS AND THAT” (Autobiography)
GUIDE TO MARY ROCKWELL HOOK CORRESPONDENCE

JUNE 2018
FAMILY – For all the Fathers whose families are represented here — HAPPY FATHER’S DAY! We hope that in this digital presentation we have been able to share images and accounts that will be of interest to families who have ties to the Pine Mountain valley community in the first two decades of the twentieth century. For example, the Lewis children were among over 100 children who were educated at the School in its very early years and who are now being rediscovered by family through our digital collections. Thank you, Ann Angel Eberhardt, co-editor of this website, for starting this family resource and for pulling together the beginnings of our ‘FAMILY’ collections. Check back as new families will be added and new material will continue to grow the many family listings.

BLANTON FAMILY
BOGGS FAMILY
BROWNING FAMILY
CALLAHAN FAMILY
CAUDILL FAMILY
COMBS FAMILY
COOTS FAMILY
CORNETT FAMILY
COUCH FAMILY
CREECH FAMILY / CREECH FAMILY, William & Sally
DAY FAMILY
ELY FAMILY
HALL FAMILY
HOWARD FAMILY
HUFF FAMILY
JACKSON FAMILY
LEWIS FAMILY / LEWIS FAMILY, Dosha, John Clyde, Rhoda
METCALF FAMILY
MINIARD (MINYARD) FAMILY
NAPIER FAMILY
NOLAN FAMILY
SCEARSE (SCEARCE) FAMILY
SHELL FAMILY
STURGILL FAMILY
TURNER FAMILY
WILDER FAMILY
WOOTON (WOOTEN) FAMILY / WOOTON STUDENTS

See Also:
Guide to FAMILIES IN PINE MOUNTAIN VALLEY COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY

MAY 2018
Explore Harlan County and eastern Kentucky in early news sources, pamphlets, and bibliographies. Learn about early Native Americans, early Pioneers, farming, religion, schools, mining, ancestors, and more.

History of Harlan County

Graves of Unknown Dead on Warrior’s Trail (1922)

Harry C. Batts, Descendent of First Party of White Men Through Gap (1922)

Cumberland Gap and Wilderness Road. Indian Outrages Succeeded by Those of White Bandits (Harpes Brothers)

Indian Tragedy of Mingo Hollow (1921)

Cumberland Gap 1815 – 1861 [Part I]

Cumberland Gap and Vicinity. Fall and Early Winter of 1861, Incidents Recounted By Rev. S. Owsley and Others. [Part II]

Cumberland Gap 1861 – 1862 [Part III]

Pioneer Life at Callaway

Hazard. “Heart of the Coalfields” by Samuel Morse Chewault [c. 1920s]

Wallins Creek. Red Men Revive Interest in Search for Silver Mine

Health Survey of Harlan County, Kentucky 1932

FARM Harlan County Soil Conservation District 1958, 1960

Bibliography of Harlan County, Kentucky

MOTHER’S DAY is every day

The Washing
You lay still, Rosie!

I’ll pack the clo’es, and wash ’em down to the branch:
The waters high
And the sun’s right warm, I reckon.

Yes, it’s Sunday,
But what o’ that?

You jes’ lay still. Mind this: That littlum there
He’s got a mother —
I say, he’s got a mother, and her valuation
Hit couldn’t be priced!

Dora Read Goodale, Mountain Dooryards

FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS Mothers, Children, and Family Groups VI 39
FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS Mothers, Children, and Family Groups VI 42

APRIL 2018
BLANCHE RANNELLS Our Mountain Neighbors 1924

“Some writers have gotten into the habit of calling us modern Appalaches ‘mountain whites,’ a term that implies peculiarity and inferentially, inferiority. We are not deeply in love with that nomenclature.”

ETHEL S. NORTON – “My Dear Everybody Back Home” – A new teacher’s arrival at Pine Mountain Settlement and her letter home telling of her new adventure. Her photographs document her trip and her stay at the School. https://pinemountainsettlement.net/?page_id=24691

MARCH 2018
FLORENCE REEVES Aunt Phronnie Say by the Fire Peeling Apples … A little taste of translated English-Irish.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY, MARCH 8, 2018
A woman for all times and all places:
SALLY DIXON CREECH
KATHERINE PETTIT
ETHEL DE LONG ZANDE

FEBRUARY 2018

Guide to LITERATURE BY PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL

1915 BROCHURE
1915 PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL IN THE MAKING
NOTES – INDEX
DEAR FRIENDS LETTER – INDEX

ETHEL DE LONG ZANDE Pine Mountain School A Sketch from the Kentucky Mountains “… a people with their faces set toward the morning...” It is an image that never lost its power to describe the hope that many workers found in the Kentucky mountains and one that they continue to foster.

JANUARY 2018
Between Kingdom Come and Hel-fer-Sartin, many a “tall tale” and “tell-all” has been spun. In January we bring you a few of these rich facts and fictions. “Comment” has been turned on so you may add your corrections and/or embellishments.

JAN 1  ALICE COBB STORIES “Trouble and Satisfaction” in NOTES November 1927″
JAN 2  ALICE COBB STORIES “Chris Anderson and Josiah Combs Accounts of Their Own ‘Death’
JAN 3  ALICE COBB STORIES “Walking the Railroad Ties”
JAN 4  ALICE COBB STORIES “John Shell in NOTES 1927”
JAN 5  ALICE COBB STORIES “The Big Log Little Girls”
JAN 6  ALICE COBB STORIES “Abner Boggs’s Lamentation for His Wife”
JAN 7  ALICE COBB STORIES “A Trip to Turkey Fork and Big Laurel, 1937”
JAN 8  ALICE COBB STORIES “Visit to Uncle Hen Turner, 1934”
JAN 9  ALICE COBB STORIES “Howard Burdine Tail of Old Red”
JAN 10  ALICE COBB STORIES “About Sarah Bailey, 1940”
JAN 11  ALICE COBB STORIES “Death of Manilla Blevin’s Alice”
JAN 12  ALICE COBB STORIES “May Graveyard Meeting at Big Laurel, 1934”
JAN 13  ALICE COBB STORIES “Party for Logging Boys May 25, 1934”
JAN 14  ALICE COBB STORIES “Logging on Gabes Branch and Holiness Service”
JAN 15  ALICE COBB STORIES “Visit to the Harmon Turners … or Not …”
JAN 16  ALICE COBB STORIES “Pre-Christmas Sunday School at PMSS, 1934”
JAN 17  ALICE COBB STORIES “Sunday School at Divide 1934-35”
JAN 18  ALICE COBB STORIES Visit to Jasper Cornett’s Place, June 1, 1934
JAN 19  ALICE COBB STORIES The Ballad Singer PMSS Notes Nov. 1935
JAN 20  ALICE COBB STORIES Taking Moving Pictures Down Greasy, Oct 30, 1935
JAN 21  ALICE COBB STORIES Visit to Line Fork with Mrs. Morris, Oct 19, 1935
JAN 22  ALICE COBB STORIES Migration from Hinterlands to Industrial Area, c. 1940
JAN 23  ALICE COBB STORIES Farewell Trip to Line Fork, June 14, 1937
JAN 24  ALICE COBB STORIES Boys Industrial Building Fire, 1935
JAN 25  ALICE COBB STORIES Stapleton’s Leaving Line Fork, May 31 – June 1, 1937
JAN 26  ALICE COBB STORIES Sunday School at Divide, April 25, 1937
JAN 27  ALICE COBB STORIES Handing Over ..Sunday School to Miss Cold, June 1937
JAN 28  ALICE COBB STORIES From Abner Boggs – Quotes and Thoughts
JAN 29  ALICE COBB STORIES The March of Time in Greasy Valley, 1936
JAN 30  ALICE COBB TRAVELOGUE 1941 She becomes the observer of the urban environment and benefactors. She travels to Pittsfield and other Massachusetts towns and cities.
JAN 31  ALICE COBB TRAVELOGUE 1942 Travels to Boston and New York.


WHAT’S NEW! ARCHIVE 2017

DECEMBER 2017
CHRISTMAS AT PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL – Christmas is one of the most memorable times of the year at Pine Mountain Settlement School. The holiday is eagerly anticipated by the whole community, particularly the presentation of the NATIVITY PLAY, a community event given in the Chapel at the School – December 17, 2017, 2:30 pm and 6:30 pm.

Using a script written by founder Ethel de Long in the second decade of the twentieth century and costumed in mountain homespun and decorated with boughs of hemlock and pine from the nearby mountain, the solemn play is a simple and direct telling of the birth of Christ punctuated by Christmas carols and ballads. Within the setting of the small Chapel, the event is intimate and quietly inspirational.

LUCILLE CHRISTIAN McKINNEY 

When the Student Interviewers called at the big rambling smoky coal camp hotel to interview Lucille’s sister, [Ruth?], who was applying for admission to Pine Mountain in 1933, Lucille appeared in the back hall, too timid to come out in the open with her rumpled towhead and bare feet.

Her father, a deputy sheriff, had shot and killed Jim Lee. A few months later he [her father] was killed by George Lee, Jim’s brother. The mother had remarried, but not very successfully. ‘Her second husband had nine children of his own. His oldest daughter killed herself while working in a Harlan restaurant. The father went down, shot the proprietor, missed, and fled the county.

Lucille Christian McKinney, the last remaining PMSS Girl’s Octet member, died in August 2017, in Cary, NC, at the age of 96. Her life is a remarkable journey of courage, optimism, service, success, and inspiration. Lucille Christian’s long association with her Pine Mountain Settlement School friends, her Berea College classmates, and the many friends she made on her life journey speak to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity…. a lesson for us all.

(IMAGE: John A. Spelman III, “On Big Laurel” Christmas Card. n.d. [1940’s?] Christmas card to Arthur Dodd and to PMSS staff. [spel_corrsp_001.jpg])

NOVEMBER 2017
HARRIET CRUTCHFIELD (Biography) – In her short two years (1928-1929) as a teacher at Pine Mountain, Harriet wrote a series of letters home to family. The letters, later gathered in a JOURNAL form, provide a detailed account of the Pine Mountain School at the close of the Roaring 20s. The time between the wars was one of rapid cultural change, cultural tension, and economic pressure and exuberance. The era can be read in her personal and powerful observations of railroad travel, foodways, staff colleagues, administrative arrangements. student activity, educational initiatives, political views, and perceptions of place. Her observations were spontaneous, eagerly formed reflections of a young and impressionable mind. She was not quite fully independent, but clearly shows more grit than most women of her day, Harriet kept the rails busy delivering her comfort foods and goods from home, while relishing the hardships of the remote School. 

As the daughter of James S. Crutchfield, eventual President of the American Fruit Growers Association, she came from a family of privilege and power. Her father, later a PMSS Board of Trustee member, was followed in later years by Harriet as an Advisory Board member. While she was born privileged, Harriet’s values were, in many ways shaped by her Pine Mountain years and her family. She placed a high value on service. Like her many colleagues, she came to make changes but like her pupils, she too, changed. Her journal eloquently captures the formative two years of her life. (IMAGE: “Harriet Crutchfield.” [kingman_086b])

HARRIET CRUTCHFIELD JOURNAL (Guide)

OCTOBER 2017
NATIONAL ARCHIVES MONTH – Each year in October, the NATIONAL ARCHIVES celebrates American Archives Month to raise awareness about the value of Archives and archivists. This year we also celebrate “Archives Across America” by taking a closer look at the National Archives around the country.

PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL ARCHIVE TURNS A CORNER – Our close association with the former residents of the archive space has come to an end. Read more …

CECIL SHARP AND MAUD KARPELES AT PMSS – Helen Wykle, Ann Angel Eberhardt, Peter Rogers, and James Greene III, re-collect the history of the international folklorist’s visit to Pine Mountain where, along with his secretary, he “discovered” the Kentucky Running Set.

JAMES GREENE ACCOUNT OF CECIL SHARP AND MAUDE KARPELES AT PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL

PETER ROGERS ACCOUNT OF CECIL SHARP AND MAUDE KARPELES AT PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL

[BLOG] DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH: ENGLISH COUNTRY DANCE AT PMSS (Photograph gallery)

ABBIE WINCH CHRISTENSEN – Biography (English Country Dance Instructor)

DOROTHY BOLLES – Biography (English Country Dance Instructor)
DOROTHY BOLLES CORRESPONDENCE GUIDE 1925-1935
DOROTHY BOLLES CORRESPONDENCE I 1925-1930
DOROTHY BOLLES CORRESPONDENCE II 1931-1935

MAY GADD – Biography (English Country Dance Instructor)

SEPTEMBER 2017
COMMUNITY FAIR DAY

The sun is ashining to welcome 
the day, with a heigh-ho, come
to the Fair.

Fair Day anywhere is likely to be a gay time, but at Pine Mountain, it is one of the rare occasions, along with the spring ‘graveyard meeting’, the occasional ‘working’, and the fall stir-off, when widely separated families come and enjoy each other’s company. It always begins, and did this year, with a protracted and delightful program of ‘norating.’ With no newspaper to send the news, we did it on foot and by grapevine, down Greasy Creek, and Big and Little Laurel, Turkey Fork, Isaac’s Creek, and to far away Line Fork and Bear Branch, and lonely Puncheon holler, until every oldest and least one had word of the Fair.
— Alice Cobb, 1937

On September 9, 2017, come join us at PMSS for another Fair Day and Sorghum Stir-off

[BLOG] DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH: SORGHUM “STIR-OFF”

 … [W]e looked at the trough, which was like a wide flat boat, divided into two sections, and about three-quarters full of dark liquid, now beginning to foam on the top. It was not yet ready because the foam was still green, although some of us were licking green foam to Henry’s mild disapproval. He said it ‘would cause stomach complaints’ before it was ripe.

Then you cook it, and it has to cook for about eight hours, ’till it boils up and foams over the top, and when the foam comes on you skim that off and throw it away—and finally it’s a nice yellow foam, and that’s when it’s good for licking—and then you decide when it’s done and pour off the molasses in a lard can, and that’s all. (IMAGE: Sorghum Stir-off – Henry Creech, Harrison Cornett [nace_1_047b.jpg])

AUGUST 2017
GUIDE TO LOCAL HISTORY SCRAPBOOK – More tales. These tales and gathered materials come from a scrapbook titled “LOCAL HISTORY” and includes a diverse selection of material about southeastern Kentucky. Many in the region will recognize ancestors and places that are familiar. The newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and small pamphlets are filled with stories that catch the imagination and sometimes are not far removed from life in the Eastern Kentucky mountains of today. If you feel inclined, transcribe a few of these short articles and send us the transcription as a word attachment. We will publish your good work and possibly your comments and you will make reading sooo … much easier. Send to: office@pinemountainsettlementschool.com

THE “GREEN BOOK” and ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION Mary Rogers was a central force in the creation of the Environmental Education Program. The “Green Book,” the early manual for the Environmental Education program at Pine Mountain, was largely the work of Peter Westover and Nat Kuykendall. Afton Garrison, Candace Julyan and John Rupe and others also contributed to the manual. But, it is Mary’s inspiration that shines through the thoughtful concepts of the 1974 publication. The manual was groundbreaking. It continues to be consulted and refined by the current EE staff at the School as they develop new programs for our outdoor — and indoor classrooms and as they share their knowledge with students and educators. (IMAGE: Cover of THE GREEN BOOK: Teaching Ecological Concepts Outdoors.)

JULY 2017
SOME WHOPPING TALES – Telling stories in Appalachia comes with the territory — and what territory it is. Some samples from folks in the community of Pine Mountain and some samples of stories by workers at the Pine Mountain Settlement give an idea of the rich lore to be found in the School archive.

This one mystified me: MR. NAPIER’S OBSERVATIONS ON PINE MOUNTAIN
This one enchanted me: ABOUT SARAH BAILEY, 1940 by Alice Cobb

FOURTH OF JULY AT PINE MOUNTAIN – Evelyn Wells in her Record of Pine Mountain Settlement School 1913-1928 laments:

Gatherings at Pine Mountain were more frequent in the early days than they are now when practically the only days we see our neighbors at the school are the Fourth of July and the Community Fair. People came for workings, box suppers, Christmas, Sunday preachings at the House in the Woods, parties on Fridays or Saturdays. such gatherings here have grown infrequent for a number of reasons: social life, if we may call the meagre and pitiful neighborhood intercourse by that name, has grown more interesting, with the growth of lumber camps and the improvement in the country schools and in living conditions; people go across the mountain more for their entertainment; our own extension centers provide something more easily attainable; and the life of Pine Mountain has grown so much that perhaps our neighbors do not feel so well acquainted. In the days when neighbors were building and working for us, it seemed more natural for them to come here. Knowing our neighbors through their visits at Pine Mountain was a part of the life of the early days that could still be lost, and we must regret that the growth of the school and the countryside have been away from each other.

This brief excerpt from Pine Mountain correspondence captures that which “could still be lost.” Today we might paraphrase, “we must regret that the growth of the city and countryside have been away from each other,” as we watch many place-based celebrations fall away and see them replaced by electronic images on our phones, our TV, or our computer. We might all pause and take a few moments to recall how we came to celebrate the Fourth of July and how that day, a melting cone of ice-cream on a hot July day with family, with friends — with community, is a precious gift.

Just published! LADEN TRAIL (“THE ROAD”) CORRESPONDENCE, covering the building of the road to the top of the north side of Pine Mountain from the railroad at Dillon, Kentucky. A graded road to replace the existing trail was essential to getting supplies to the fledgling School and opening up the isolated area to the rest of the world.

The pages consist of listings of the letters, their dates, authors, recipients, and contents. The letters, largely written by the women who conceived of the road, fought for it and raised the funds to build it, are from the earliest years of the Pine Mountain Settlement School: Part I (1916-1919) and Part II (1920-1921).

The correspondence to and from Katherine Pettit, one of the School’s founders, and the road-building officials tells the intriguing story of the twists and turns, both figuratively and literally, they encountered while undertaking one of the most difficult engineering and political road projects in Eastern Kentucky.

Read how Ethel de Long Zande, PMSS co-founder and co-director, learned “on the job” the essential elements of road-building, dealt with road-building officials, kept a close watch on charges for services, prodded supervisors to cooperate more efficiently, kept tabs on fundraising and pledge payments, participated in hiring and firing decisions and encouraged commissions to make decisions in favor of the Road. The participation of convict laborers in the project will interest historians seeking to understand the push and pull of labor relations, ethics, race relations and the role of African Americans in early infrastructure projects in the Appalachian South.

While building a settlement school in a remote wilderness and caring for her newborn child, Ethel de Long carried the logistical side of the construction project, Celia Cathcart, Evelyn Wells and other women shared in fund-raising, while Katherine Pettit executed the heavy lifting on the political side. What is remarkable in the correspondence is the attention to professionalism, tact, and graciousness by the women in the ever-present rough and tumble of the male-dominated construction world.

See Also: DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH: Laden Trail or The Road [BLOG]

MAY 2017
The INDEX TO ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS has a new look and is under construction. Some large sections have been moved and others consolidated. Please bear with us as we try to improve the search process for the growing web site.

May is one of the most beautiful months at Pine Mountain Settlement School and recent photographs and quotes capture its beauty as it cloaks itself in joyful green and its colorful accents. For photographs, go to 2017 MAY AT PMSS.

“I don’t look after wealth for them, just the prosperity of our nation …” said UNCLE WILLIAM CREECH as he drew up his 1913 agreement with Katherine Pettit and Ethel de Long to give land to found a school in the deep heart of Appalachia. His wisdom was a driving force behind the creation of Pine Mountain Settlement School. Read Ethel de Long’s timely article for New Outlook vol. 115, 21 February 1917,The Pine Mountain School: A Sketch from the Kentucky Mountains,” that describes Uncle William’s reasons for approaching the two women founders. His reasons still resonate with those looking for sound wisdom in a time of turmoil, graft, and change. Then, follow the path of this early pioneer as he describes life in the remote mountains of Eastern Kentucky. The revealing autobiography, “A Short Sketch of My Life,” dips into the well of his Uncle William’s wisdom.

Follow William Creech’s autobiography with the tribute to his wife, AUNT SALLY DIXON CREECH, as she is quoted and admired by her family and her new friends, the so-called “Quare Women” of Pine Mountain. Her motherly wisdom and her shrewd understanding of human nature shine in these two important autobiographical writings by the founding members of the Creech family.

GUIDE TO WELLS’ RECORD OF PMSS 1913-1928 by Evelyn K. Wells – Work continues on the extensive Evelyn K. Wells material found in the PMSS collections. Her careful gathering of material titled GUIDE TO WELLS’ RECORD OF PMSS 1913-1928, is a rich synopsis of the history of the school from its beginning years until 1928, as well as anecdotal stories of her colleagues and her neighbors in the surrounding community.

APRIL 2017
The March WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH biographies were just short of the 30 women we aimed for. But, we believe women should be recognized all year long and we especially want to round out WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH with these women’s histories. SEE:

OMA CREECH (FISKE)
MAY BELLE RITCHIE (DESCHAMPS)
BECKY MAY HUFF
GLADYS HILL

We also want to feature, in depth, the work of two of the notable women we presented in March. As we surveyed in our collections, Evelyn K. Wells, Teacher, Secretary and Board of Trustee member and Alice Cobb, Teacher, Fundraiser and Trustee, stand out as particularly important to an understanding of the early years of Pine Mountain Settlement School. So …in addition to the biographies on our women’s list, Evelyn and Alice will receive special attention during the month of April. Follow our expansions of the biographies of Evelyn K. Wells and Alice Cobb during the month of April and prepare to be entertained and inspired.

EVELYN K. WELLS GUIDE TO EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS HOME 1913-1928
ALICE COBB GUIDE TO WRITING AND LETTERS

MARCH 2017
WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH for March 2017 was celebrated by a month-long recognition of women associated with Pine Mountain Settlement School. Our goal on WHAT’S NEW! was to list 30 of these women, one for each day of the month.

The following are just a few of the women whose lives intersected with Pine Mountain Settlement School. Each of them and many more left a remarkable legacy of accomplishment, adventure, and inspiration at the School and beyond.

ALICE JOY KEITH – Teacher, scientist, inventor, environmentalist, Keith was always ahead of the curve. An inspiration to aspiring scientists at PMSS she went on to a successful career with the Navy Electronics Lab at Point Loma, CA. Her work and writing on sonar systems for the U.S. Navy were experimental and complex. Working for the Defense Technical Information Center she dealt with the travel-time of refracted rays of sound as they are found in underwater sound propagation, work that was often ground-breaking and critical to the later development of signal processing systems such as LORAD (Long-Range Air Defense) and related fields. An outspoken advocate for the environment. Keith fought to stop the Glen Canyon Dam and to save the “Roosevelt Tree” in San Jose, CA.

EVELYN K. WELLS (1917-1987) – Secretary, teacher, folklorist, author, Wells left rich records of the School from 1913-1928. Aloof and distant, but light as a feather when she danced, and passionate about those ideals she held dear. Her letters describe a young woman as she matures through tragedy, loss, and personal achievement, never letting go of her sense of self but rarely revealing the angst that followed her through life.

KATHERINE PETTIT I (1868-1936) – Co-founder of PMSS, Pettit was fascinated by mountain craft. In her search for the perfect “kiver” she found a world that resonated with her own. She was taught the hard lessons of listening and learning and heard the wisdom that lived in mountain folk. Often invited into the homes of neighbors she recorded the speech, lifestyle, beliefs and insight of women as they worked to understand their lives. “I just sat and had a piece of satisfaction,” said one. Another, “We’un’s what can’t read and write have to do a heap of thinking — that’s the reason we knows so much more than you’uns.” Her work with agricultural training in the steep mountains of eastern Kentucky was foundational.

EDITH COLD (1879-1980) – Teacher, dietitian, housemother, Cold was tiny in stature but a giant in courage. Before coming to the School she had stood off the butchering rampage of the Ottoman Turks to save orphaned children in Armenia. A quiet Quaker, Cold was always a force to be reckoned with and a champion of children though she had none of her own. She remained devoted to children and their welfare throughout her life.

ELIZABETH C. HENCH (1869?-1939) – A member of the Board of Trustees of Pine Mountain School, Hench was funny, witty, articulate and a lover of cows. She developed and supported a premiere herd of Ayrshire cows that kept the School supplied with milk. She also started Miss Elizabeth Hench’s Joy Stock Company and kept her stockholders laughing as they wrote their checks to maintain the herd.

MARY ROGERS (1914-1993) – Founder of the Environmental Education program at PMSS, and artist, naturalist, and librarian. Mary Rogers was profoundly committed to the community and to living life with purpose. Born in England, she worked in China and India, knew Gandhi’s work and understood the lessons of poverty and service. “Ah, no man knows through what wild centuries roves back the rose,” she once quoted. As she read to children, she encouraged them to search those “wild centuries” and to build on their dreams. Her contributions to the School from 1937-1993 are still pervasive in programming, aesthetics, culture and consciousness in the PMSS community.

ALFREDA WITHINGTON (1861-1951) – Physician, educator, intrepid traveler. Withington was the 1st woman student admitted to K. K. Allgemeines Krankenhaus teaching hospital in Vienna, Austria, the 1st woman to perform an autopsy; the 1st woman resident physician at the Czech National Obstetrical Hospital (c. 1889); 1st woman physician to practice in Prague ; 1st woman to open a medical and surgical practice in Pittsfield, MA (1891); played an important role in the creation of a Tuberculosis Society (c. 1907); during WWI, was chief physician of the American Red Cross, worked at the Franco-American Dispensary in Dreux, France (1917); THEN in 1924 at the age of 63 she answered an ad in the Journal of the American Medical Association: Wanted, a woman physician for settlement work in the remote Kentucky mountains; all calls to be made on horseback, no other licensed physician within twenty-five miles. In 1924, Withington took the job. At the age of 63 and for seven more years, she worked at Pine Mountain’s clinic at Big Laurel.

KATHERINE PETTIT II (1868-1936) – Co-Founder of PMSS, agronomist, educator, planner, ever the manager. An entry in Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary (p. 57) describes Miss Pettit as having a “strong face [that] revealed her personality; a firm planner and manager, yet outgoing, patient, and kind. She was beloved by children and overworked mothers for her suggestions and personal advice….” The list of K.P.’s friends is a long one from Jane Addams to the overworked mother, but the list of photographs of her is a short one… “scarce as hen’s teeth,” some have said. She rarely sought the limelight, preferring the margins where the more interesting living and thinking take place and where managing has its most profound impact. And, she had impact. In late 1932, she was awarded the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Medallion by the University of Kentucky as an outstanding citizen of Kentucky. The institution she helped to create is now over 100 years old, testimony to the strength of her foundational ideas.

PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL GIRLS’ OCTET (1936-1937) – traces of the lives of 8 PMSS women students whose educations were enriched by their travel throughout the Northeast and Midwest. performing ballads and dances of Appalachia. Three Ayers sisters, three Christian sisters, Fern Hall, and Nan Milan, sang and danced at the White House for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt; danced with Henry Ford; were recorded by Alan Lomax; and their songs can be found in the Library of Congress. PMSS wrote of their importance to the School:

From the beginning Pine Mountain has been conscious of the wealth of folk material in the locality. The school has been a center for an artistic revival of this innate culture and has fostered an appreciation of English forms, in song and dance, which are the background of this pioneer inheritance, Folk songs and folk dances are a natural and delightful part of the daily life, reaching their climax in the May Day Festival at the school. The children sing Bach but also the mountain ballads, and the traditional country dances are their popular recreation.

Enrichment has a way of spreading itself around and is rarely a one-way process.

ABBIE WINCH “(WINNIE”) CHRISTENSEN (1887-1969) came from a Quaker family of socially-conscious activists. Her mother, Abbie Holmes Christensen, was a suffragist and abolitionist and her father and brother were supporters of human rights, particularly those of African Americans. Abbie’s interests and experiences were varied. During World War I, she served with the Red Cross in France. She became a leading expert on English and American folk dance which she taught at PMSS, along with weaving and mechanical drawing. Her habit of “dancing” as she walked about the campus was a familiar sight during her 25 years at PMSS. As part of the WWII war effort, she produced elegant aeronautical engineering drawings which are now in the PMSS Collections. In addition, she studied botany, an interest that she continued later in life as a florist shop owner in her hometown of Beaufort, SC. [AAE]

MARGARET MOTTER (1883-1994) Principal, teacher, head of the English department, prolific writer, humanitarian, weaver, Motter said of her ten years at Pine Mountain that “There is always a peculiar joy in returning to a place where one has invested a part of oneself. …” When asked “Why Pine Mountain?” She replied, “The real reason for my going to Pine Mountain was that I wished to have a different type of teaching.” She soon found out how “different” a teaching experience at Pine Mountain Settlement School could be. In one of her talks, “A MOUNTAIN SCHOOL” she speaks of making dreams a reality. She quotes from a poem, “He only is a dreamer who makes his dream come true…” Gender aside, SHE and the women she taught were both dreamers and doers. Her sentiments often found a large audience and her talks and writing engaged many new friends for the School. She was not afraid to be sentimental, caustic, judgmental, empathetic, and funny and her fearless style was infectious. She helped build dreams that resonated with her students, her donors and her colleagues. Her contributions to the School are numerous. She was also effective.

GRACE M. ROOD (1897-1988) – Taking care of people was a lifetime occupation for Miss Rood. This was particularly true during her 26 years at the Pine Mountain Settlement School, where she was a nurse and then superintendent in charge of the Infirmary. It was also where not only the ill were tended to, but many a baby was born. In 1923 Rood received an R.N. degree from Johns Hopkins School for Nurses in Baltimore, MD and then left for 5 1/2 years in southern India where she was superintendent of nurses and principal of a nurses’ training school. This international work was followed next by 7 years work with the Visiting Nurses Association of New Haven (CT). In 1932 she arrived at Pine Mountain Settlement School where a 1938 Pine Cone article describes her as “responsible for the health of the school,” a job she excelled at as she taught classes in practical nursing, kept medical records, traveled with the doctor on house calls, gave inoculations in the district schools, rendered first aid and gave talks about staying healthy. All this and more were in addition to her Infirmary responsibilities and serving patients all over the back country in her trusty four-wheel-drive Jeep. She retired in 1962. At the age of 86 she returned for a PMSS Homecoming and crowds of people lined up to thank her for “the interest, love and guidance she gave to students” as well as the surrounding community. [AAE]

MARY ROCKWELL (HOOK) (1897-1978) – If there was a Mount Rushmore for Pine Mountain’s important historical figures, one of the sculptures would certainly be Mary Rockwell Hook. After graduating from Wellesley in 1900, she was the first woman to attend the Chicago Institute of Art’s architecture department. She later studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Although her family’s wealth enabled Miss Rockwell to exercise options not available to many women of her time, it did not protect her from gender bias that she encountered throughout her years of study and job applications. However, Miss Rockwell prevailed. While working as an architect in Kansas City, Missouri, Mary Rockwell was recruited by Ethel de Long in 1913 to design the campus and buildings for the new Pine Mountain Settlement School. Over one hundred years later, her buildings continue to be appreciated for their attention to place and their harmonious blending with their natural surroundings, an innovative approach for an architect of her era. [AAE]

ETHEL S. NORTON ( d. 1988) “… even though the air in these mountains is dangerously filled with weird shots and strange sounds, it is perfectly beautiful here now. In that same air is the fragrance of ‘the green trees a-growin’, and the sound of the birds singing.” So wrote Ethel Norton when she came to Pine Mountain in 1927, the year she graduated from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She was one of many Antioch students who came to PMSS through an exchange program for teachers. At PMSS she taught the fifth and sixth grade classes — an activity recorded in her extensive Scrapbook and Photo Album. In her delightful “My Dear Everybody Back-Home Letter,” she writes in detail of her experiences teaching and traveling in the surrounding region. Her letter recounts the well-known story of Rebel Rock and the years of the Civil War. After departing Pine Mountain in 1928, Ethel served in several teaching positions including instructor of English at a high school in Amityville, Long Island. For a time she also served as Dean of Women at Albright College in Reading, PA, and in the war years as a director of YWCA programs for the USO (United States Organizations, Inc.). In 1943 Ethel married and settled in Oregon where she taught at the University of Oregon in Eugene until her retirement in the town of Gold Beach, Oregon.

DR. IDA STAPLETON (1871-1946) Her story is not for the faint of heart. As we battle over our personal medical benefits, it is well to remember those we must battle for. There is no question that Dr. Ida Stapleton knew those selfless battles and met them head-on, or horse-on. Traveling to remote villages in Turkey and the hollows of Eastern Kentucky on horseback to wait for and deliver babies, to patch up gun-shot wounds, to mend broken bones, to gentle savage psyches, and to always educate, was part of Dr. Ida Stapleton’s week. But, then, she had already encountered far more profound human suffering. As a worker for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in Turkey in the 1920s, she and her husband had seen the cruelest of human actions. Starvation, torture, massacre, deception, — evil at its most extreme. The Storm of Life: A Missionary Marriage from Armenia to Appalachia, (2016) by Gretchen Rasch, granddaughter of Ida and Robert, captures the full sweep of Ida’s work at Erzerum, Turkey and her last years during the Great Depression spent at Line Fork settlement in Letcher County, a satellite of Pine Mountain Settlement. Her personal sacrifice and complete dedication to the welfare of her fellow travelers on this earth will make most of our lives seem shallow. As we argue over health care in our country, we would do well to think what matters most. How much we ask for ourselves and how we care for those who cannot ask or care for themselves.

AUNT SAL CREECH (1866-1925) Miss Sally Dixon, later well-known and well-loved as Aunt Sal Creech, wife of William Creech, helped her husband argue for the founding of a school in the Pine Mountain valley — Pine Mountain Settlement School. “Aunt” Sal [“Aunt” was a familiar form of address for the elders in the Pine Mountain valley] was the daughter of William and Mary (Gilliam) Dixon. Her parents were among those bold and rugged pioneers who carved homes out of the Kentucky wilderness, survived many hardships, and created a life and culture that became a colorful and important part of the nation’s history. She was the mother of nine children: Absolom, Polly, William R., Nancy Ann, Henry C., Columbus, Rhoda, Martha (who died in infancy), and Joe. But, Aunt Sal was mother to a far larger family, the early staff at the settlement school. Remembered for her wise and witty sayings, her love of nature, and her kitchen, where

Everyone was welcome to share the fire, to eat, to stay all night….Her hands were never too full to set a meal of victuals out of hours, and table-full might follow table-full in her kitchen…The children played all over the yard, and chased the chickens and turkeys…the grown folks helped with the work or sat quiet as they chose….For every chunk of a boy or girl she had a special apple or a large piece of sweet-bread.”

Her wisdom often got right to the heart of the matter: “ “Well, we ‘uns that cain’t read or write, we have a heap o’ time to think, and that’s the reason we know more than you all!” And she did know a heap that we miss in our information-saturated world.

LUCRETIA GARFIELD (1894-1968) Lucretia Garfield was born January 18, 1894, in Ohio. The daughter of Harry “Hal” Augustus Garfield and Belle Hartford Garfield, Lucretia came from a remarkable legacy. Harry, her father, was President of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the son of President of the United States, James Garfield and First Lady Lucretia, or “Crete” Garfield. It was one year following the death of her grandmother on March 14, 1918, that 25-year-old Lucretia came to Pine Mountain as a summer worker. She had served for a brief time in the War Relief Service but had little work experience beyond that. She was charged to establish and run a Girl Scout program for the School. It was, apparently, one of her first experiences in a hired position and from all reports, she was a lively, competent and engaged worker at the School — well liked by her colleagues. Lucretia Garfield stayed in touch with Pine Mountain for many years sending pictures of her children after her marriage to John Preston Comer, Assistant Professor of Government at Williams College.

BIRDENA BISHOP (1899-1989) Counselor, house mother, teacher, community organizer, a talented speaker and motivator who was often asked to talk before large and small groups. Most often her talks were about Pine Mountain Settlement School and her passion for education, for industrial training and for life in Appalachia. Several of her talks were more philosophical. Her inspirational short talk, “A Philosophy of Freedom,” for the 1942 commencement at Pine Mountain Settlement perhaps captures best her personal drive and heartfelt convictions regarding her work and life and what she hoped for in the students at Pine Mountain. Her talk beautifully captures the sense of place at the school but it also captures the kind of educational direction and sense of community that Birdena and her colleagues helped to build within the students. As Birdena noted in her 1942 “A Philosophy of Freedom, ” short talk:

Had our liberal education not set us free we would be bound by ignorance (which means simply lack of knowledge). We might also be bound by other negative, unbeautiful traits — intolerance, fears, hate, envy, jealousy, suspicion, superstition, prejudice — all of them more dreadful, more fatal to our freedom of soul and spirit, than clinking chains of iron. We might have been our own jailers.

ALICE COBB (1917-1995) Came to work at the School in the late 1930s and continued to come as a visitor, sometimes fundraiser, and consultant to the campus until her death in 1995. Pine Mountain, no doubt, made important contributions to the interests and talents of Alice Cobb, as well. The influences of Pine Mountain can be seen and felt throughout her life’s work. She was an accomplished writer and a prolific writer. Not always published, her observations are extensive, amusing, intense and engaging reading. Her narrative reports and analysis of work at Pine Mountain was probably her most valuable contribution, though, for some readers the reports are also problematic. She filtered through her own perspective and often this perspective was not in line with the current opinion or could be read as overly critical. But, critique she did, and today her keen observations are refreshing and candid and possibly the most honest observations we have of life at Pine Mountain Settlement School and related surrounding communities in the late 1930s and 1940s. She was well-known in the Pine Mountain community and her blunt style was a remarkably good fit with the direct and honest observations of many valley families.

DR. GRACE HUSE (1884-1971) A gentle contrarian, Dr. Huse knew how to herd cats (See her photograph to figure that one out!) Her experiences at the rural Medical Settlement at Big Laurel from 1919 to 1924 were a far cry from those of her genteel medical school in Philadelphia, PA, and teaching position at the Women’s College in Greensboro, NC. Even so, she quickly got up to speed as she established the Pine Mountain’s medical extension with her nurse and rural mentor, Harriet Butler. Her academic preparation in the medical sciences and her commitment to education were valuable assets in her position at Pine Mountain. The early experiences and models provided by Dr. Huse, Harriet Butler and other women who worked in the extension centers are only part of the rich medical legacy in Appalachia inherited from the rural settlement movement. [AAE]

MILLY MAHONEY (d. 2015) If you had the invincible Mildred Mahoney as a teacher you no doubt received a gift that keeps on giving. One of the most accomplished teachers at Pine Mountain during the Community School years and founder of “Little School,” Mahoney’s wise educational counsel was nationally recognized as foundational to the creation of Head Start. The creation of the pre-school program in the deeply rural area of Eastern Kentucky and her careful assessment of the early childhood education program trained a core of superb teachers and inspired the founders of Head Start as they created guidelines for the national program. Her early work set the bar for “Little Schools” across the country. Through Head Start, the lives millions of children were changed and they were given the skills and confidence to enter the educational process and families were guided as they moved forward with their children. Her contributions to the life experience of children, their families and to the total community will be forever honored and remembered by those she served.

MARY ANGELA MELVILLE (1886-1977) – Following Ethel de Long Zande’s death in 1928, the PMSS Board turned to Mary Angela Melville to assume Mrs. Zande’s duties as an interim associate director of the School. She was hesitant, fearing that Katherine Pettit, the longtime co-director and co-founder, might consider her a young, interfering “whippersnapper.” Nonetheless, Melville’s excellent negotiating skills brought about a workable relationship for the two years that she served. Those skills most likely came from her previous experiences as a field representative for the Credit Union National Extension Bureau (CUNEB) when she organized credit unions in mostly rural Southern communities. Miss Melville was not a stranger to the School. From 1916 to 1920, she worked in the office and, as an effective speaker, raised funds for the School. Sheatsley had an innovative approach to education, as reflected in her writings, that was barely recognized at the time. It is only now in a review of her work at the School that her contributions are being seen in their true light as ahead of her time and formative for the years that followed. [AAE]

GLADYS HILL (1906-1952) – Teacher, Counselor, Secretary, Interim Director, Hill’s service to Pine Mountain School was longer than any other staff, including the founders. She started under the supervision of Katherine Pettit and remained at the School until the administration of Burton Rogers. When she died suddenly of a heart attack in 1952 she left a gap in leadership, inspiration, and institutional memory. Her colleagues said of her that she “was born to teach. She had a personal, compassionate interest in all children [that] brought from them the best they were capable of.” She established the Cooperative Education program at the School which received national praise from the editor of Consumers’ Cooperation, the official publication of the Consumers’ Cooperative Movement in the U.S.A. An excellent film produced by the Harmon Foundation on the Cooperative Movement at Pine Mountain was captured for national distribution in 1941 by the award-winning film team of Virginia and Ray Garner.

Colleague Fred Burkhard noted that

Pine Mountain was her home. She gave it everything she had, and it was more than most people knew. She never entered into campus politics, no matter who came or went. She had a job to do, and politics was not a part of it. She got along with all the students who were bright and who were poor and who could not learn fast…. She knew the whereabouts and the doings of all former students and workings of the people of the community. She worked through several administrations and got along with all of them. She was quite a woman.

The tributes to her fill two folders in the archive, but the hole she left in the hearts of many at the School could not be easily filled.

BECKY MAY HUFF (b. 1906) – Student, Teacher, Weaver, Dancer, Dyer, Becky was one of the first students to come to Pine Mountain Settlement School. Her name appears frequently in the records of the School and often in association with her skills at weaving. Under Katherine Pettit’s instruction, Becky became a master weaver. Pettit, long an admirer of weaving skills, followed Becky as she left the School to attend Berea College and later as she taught at various locations, including Aiken Hall in Olive Hill, KY. Becky also studied vegetable dyeing of wool with former PMSS staff member, Helen Wilmer Stone Viner, in Saluda, NC. In 1930 Pettit wrote to Becky inviting her back to Pine Mountain saying that,

 “I am especially anxious to have you because I think you have a real understanding of our desire to do the old things and not just make mercerized…things and that you will help to hold up the standards upon which this department [weaving] was started. Becky replied that she could “hardly wait to get back to Pine Mountain again. I feel like I’m really going home again.”

Before she arrived, Evelyn Wells at Pine Mountain arranged to send Becky to Amherst where she would be further trained in folk-dance so she might also instruct in that area when she came to PMSS. The weaving program only lasted two more years and at the end of 1932 Becky May left to marry Ova Sexton. The School moved into the Glyn Morris boarding school years, where weaving did not hold the same level of interest to the new Director.

MARGUERITE BUTLER (BIDSTRUP) (1892-1982) – When Marguerite Butler arrived at Pine Mountain Settlement School in 1914 from Vassar College in New York, the newly established School had many challenges ahead for her, from living in a rustic environment to teaching and caring for the mountain children. However, she was well-equipped to deal with both the good and the difficult times during her eight years at the School. The many letters she wrote to her family from 1914 to 1923 (available on this site) describe in detail her teaching experiences. By 1920 Miss Butler was appointed the superintendent of all of the School’s extension projects. In her last years at Pine Mountain, she was the supervisor of eleven one-room schools that had then been assigned to the Harlan County Superintendent of Schools, a position which included visiting the schools on horseback. Also in 1920, Miss Butler spoke before the fiscal court to procure money for the proposed Laden Trail road. A year later she was sent on a speaking tour to various Ohio cities and Chicago to raise money for the road and the School. In 1924, she was recruited by Mrs. Campbell to assist in the founding of the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC, based on the Danish model that the two had learned about in their travels together. It was there that Marguerite met her future husband, Georg Bidstrup. Miss Butler’s effectiveness at PMSS was due to her leadership abilities, congeniality and appreciation for the good in life, and her attributes and accomplishments continue to be admired over 100 years later. [AAE]

MAY BELLE RITCHIE (DESCHAMPS) (b. 1896) was among the many PMSS students who not only flourished at Pine Mountain Settlement School but brought with them talents of their own. She was the oldest of fourteen children in a Viper, Kentucky, family that was celebrated as the “Singing Family of the Cumberlands.” In 1917 Cecil Sharp, the well-known ballad and folk song collector from Great Britain, so admired them that he documented songs performed by May and her sister Una Ritchie for his collection. Five of the Ritchie children attended Pine Mountain School throughout the 1920s, including May Ritchie from 1921 to 1924. (Others in the family attended nearby Hindman Settlement School.) May married Leon Frantz Deschamps, who worked as the School’s forester, and the couple often attended or hosted social gatherings that included their co-workers. May Ritchie’s contributions to the School included her knowledge of traditional Appalachian folk songs and foodways, as well as her skills as a craftsperson, evidenced by her cornhusk doll collection at the Mountain Heritage Center, Western Carolina University. After over a decade at PMSS, Leon moved the family, now including their three children, to the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. The couple brought with them the skills they had honed at PMSS. [AAE]

MAYA SUDO (d. 1924) – A nurse at Pine Mountain who traveled by horseback to deliver babies, minister to the sick and who introduced a new cultural awareness to a sheltered community. An immigrant from Japan, whose personal journey was fascinating and heart-wrenching, and all too short, Maya found joy in the world through service to others. Her photograph album captures her years at the School and beyond.

ETHEL DE LONG ZANDE (1879-1928) – Co-founder of the School, loving and very literate, de Long educated and shaped the lives of many in the short years of her own life. Strict, caring, fair and fast in her friendships, she was a model for many. “Gee, I like my new teacher. She’s as ill as a hornet!” one might say. I think we all understand this perceptive and admiring mountain metaphor — or perhaps, not. Zande expected the best from all those around her and she extracted it through love and respect.

OMA CREECH (FISKE) (1909-1986?) came a long way from the shy little girl in the photograph wearing boots and a floppy hat and holding a hoe. The second of Delia and Henry C. Creech’s eight children and Uncle William and Aunt Sal Creech‘s grandchild, she showed great promise and lived up to it. By 1943, after PMSS graduation and medical training, she was a practicing physician in Kentucky. She was soon sent overseas in WWII as a major in the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), an international relief agency. All the while, she kept in close contact with PMSS where her training and aspirations began. After two years with UNRRA, Oma returned to her home state to continue working as a doctor and health supervisor and to realize her hopes for a healthier Kentucky. [AAE]

FEBRUARY 2017
SAWMILL 1913-1914

All during July [1913] I felt quite sure that I could begin this letter by saying that the new sawmill was on the ground sawing up the great piles of logs that the people here have cut and given to the School, Today finds us with part of it on our lumber yard, part at Incline, and part at Ross Point. Fitzhugh [Fitzhugh Lane] has gone today to take care of the engine as it comes across Pine Mountain on the Incline [rail] road. The effort to get it here is a difficult one. The men who brought the boiler in with eight oxen said to me ‘This is a safe and easy way compared to that risky Incline road across Pine Mountain. Some places the small steel rails are broken or slipped apart at the end and a piece of wood is supplied for a rail. Many places the cross ties are rotten under the little rails. Everybody was careful and came so slowly that we had only one wreck.’ The well on top of Pine Mountain which furnishes the water to run this road [Incline] is often dry and they have to wait between trips for the water to run in. Mr. McSwain [Horace McSwain], our farmer went down and suggested that they clean the mud out of the well which helped some.

It was a picturesque sight to see the eight yoke of oxen coming up the narrow, rough, short-curved road to the school grounds with the boiler. The two drivers managed it well. Three other men were behind to hold the boom pole to keep it from turning over the banks.

(IMAGE: Eight oxen pulling a boiler on a dirt road.)

JANUARY 2017
FRED J. BURKHARD AND ESTHER WELLER BURKHARD Biographies, collected correspondence, and photographs of two early staff members of Pine Mountain Settlement School.

EVELYN K. WELLS. EXTRACTS FROM A PINE MOUNTAIN WORKER’S FAMILY LETTERS, 1915-1927 

Evelyn Wells describes her “Extracts from a Pine Mountain Worker’s Family Letters 1915-1927:

These are in no sense a ‘history’ of the School since they are by their nature fragmentary, and sometimes not dated — hence arranged from internal evidence or comparison with the School’s literature. 

They may, however, aid in giving some idea of one worker’s reactions to life at the School during its formative years, and they may add bits of local color and information to the School’s existing records.”  — Evelyn K. Wells

For example: “At Big Log, Lindy, age five, laid up with an infected leg, sits on the porch and shells cowpeas , and usually has some ridiculous remark for passers-by. She’s the one who when caught in the dining room after dinner said she wasn’t eating anything but the crumbs in her teeth. She has absolutely no front teeth.”

1915 TRANSCRIPTIONS
1916 TRANSCRIPTIONS
1917 TRANSCRIPTIONS
1918 TRANSCRIPTIONS
1919 TRANSCRIPTIONS


WHAT’S NEW! ARCHIVE 2016

DECEMBER 2016
ALICE COBB – WAR’S UNCONQUERED CHILDREN SPEAK (1953) IS REPUBLISHED – A book by Pine Mountain staff member, Alice Cobb, is as timely today as it was in 1953, following WWII. Recently re-published by Cobb’s long-time friend and publisher, Mary Catharine Nelson, War’s Unconquered Children Speak, chronicles a four-month journey made by Cobb in the Middle East and Europe where she met and interviewed children of war. In this new edition of the original 1953 book by Beacon Press, now out of print and rare, Nelson has added a preface by a displaced Syrian teenager. Hiba’s [a pseudonym] account of her ordeal in the Syrian city of Aleppo, including the loss of both parents and a sister, only underscores the terrible toll war takes on children and their families as recorded earlier by Cobb. Sophia Fahs, who wrote the introduction to the first 1953 edition asks us all to consider the plight of children in war. This book is for anyone “… willing to listen when the children of war themselves speak.”

The book is available on demand from Ideas Into Books at Westview Press or Amazon.  <https://www.amazon.com/dp/1628800992/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=>

HELEN LOUISE MADON HEATH (1920-2016) – STUDENT – When Helen Louise Madon Heath came to Pine Mountain Settlement School in 1935, she, like so many of her fellow classmates, knew they were given a special gift in the immersive and experimental education of the unique school. Helen Heath used her gifts to give back to her many communities.

1938-39 BULLETIN OF POST GRADUATE WORK AT PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL – In 1938-39 Pine Mountain offered a unique and unusually rich vocational training program to their graduates who did not elect to go on to college after graduation from high school. As described by the School, it aimed to “place the emphasis upon learning to live a full and satisfying life [where] individual responsibility and initiative are stressed,” and where “the intelligent use of knowledge is emphasized, rather than the collection of non-usuable facts.” The entrance fee was $10 and the tuition per month was $10. Board and room were paid for by two hours of labor each day at the School.

CHRISTMAS AT PINE MOUNTAIN – In 1914 an anonymous author wrote about Christmas at the School:

‘Pears like I’m bound to run look at that picter of Santy Claus. I jus’ cain’t hardly git my work done. You’d ought not put hit up, if you want me to do my jobs.

Ten year old M— expressed a universal difficulty in the week before Christmas, for certainly we grown-ups wanted to fly from our jobs, when the post rider brought in Christmas bundles of every shape and neighbor boys came in with arms full of holly, the likes of which no city market holds, and when from ‘clean across the Cumberland’ they fetched us such great bunches of mistletoe as most of you have never dreamed of.

The stories about Christmas at Pine Mountain are many and varied. They range from early accounts of celebrations interrupted by guns and liquor to the pastoral lines of the shepherds in the Christmas Nativity Play which continues today. With the many stories comes hope. It is a hope that we hold for all of us in this Christmas season and beyond.

MARGARET MOTTER, a former principal of the early school at Pine Mountain shared her vision for the future:

Those of us who are deeply interested in the welfare of the mountain folk hope that through the right sort of educational program carried on in community centers and in good schools, the fine, innate characteristics of these people will not be lost but rather adapted somewhat to changing conditions, so that life for these dwellers of the hills will be broader and richer in the future.

NOVEMBER 2016
70 YEARS OF SERVICE – RUTH SHULER DIETER – True to the original training she received at Pine Mountain Settlement School, Ruth Shuler Dieter reacted to praise for all the good work she has done by stating, “That’s what life is, it seems to me…to feel like you’ve given something to someone else.” To explore her life and be inspired read about Ruth and her 90-year journey.

MARIAN KINGMAN PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM – A large and early photograph album has been processed which includes photographs of students, staff members (Marian Kingman, Harriet Crutchfield, Margaret Motter, and others), buildings, events, and visitors. It captures life at the School during the “Roaring Twenties.” Also included are photographs of Community Fair Day, milling sorghum, processing maple syrup, and other community activities. The photographs are well preserved and have many images of local families, particularly “Fiddler” John and Louise, the Sol Day family, the Frona [Lewis ?] Cooper family, and others.

MARIAN KINGMAN PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM [Full pages, Parts I – IV]
MARIAN KINGMAN PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM INDIVIDUAL PHOTOS  
MARIAN KINGMAN ALBUM INDIVIDUAL PHOTOS – PART I
MARIAN KINGMAN ALBUM INDIVIDUAL PHOTOS – PART II
MARIAN KINGMAN ALBUM INDIVIDUAL PHOTOS – PART III
MARIAN KINGMAN ALBUM INDIVIDUAL PHOTOS – PART IV

OUT OF THE ASHES. The Mary Sinclair Burkham School House I at Pine Mountain Settlement School was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day 1917. It served many functions in its approximate fourteen months’ existence and honored the wishes of the donor, Caroline Burkham of New York, who gave the money for the building in honor of her sister, Mary Sinclair Burkham. The estimated worth of the building was given as $18,000 at the time of its destruction by fire in January of 1919. Unfortunately, the insurance only covered $10,000 of that value. Construction of a new building would cost far more but would also re-site the structure so it would not endanger any other building if it also caught on fire. Out of the ashes of that early tragedy came a new school house, Mary Sinclair Burkham School House II and a renewed determination to build an educational program that would serve the Community and stand the tests of time. Mary Sinclair Burkham School House II was also consumed by fire in 1984. Out of the ashes and the double tragedy, Pine Mountain Settlement School in its 103rd year continues to move forward. Today we give thanks for the resilience of people, for a continued belief in community, and an institution that is dedicated to service, to successful educational programming, and to the power of shared good ideas.

OCTOBER 2016
BLOG] DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH – XII – FOREST AND FIRES – On  November 28, 1922,  the mountains around Pine Mountain Settlement School caught fire and threatened the entire community.  As reported in the Pineville (Ky.) Sun the terrible fire created a serious re-assessment of the forests and the threat of fire to part of the School’s important resources.  10 students at Pine Mountain, led by Leon Deschamps, the school forester and also the leader of the local Boy Scout troupe put forward a petition which they hoped to forward to Kentucky’s Governor Morrow. The petition was also signed by 19 girls, members of the local Girl Scouts and supplemented by a letter from their Scout Captain, Miss Lucretia Garfield, grand-daughter of President Garfield, who was on the staff of the School as a teacher and Scout leader from 1919 to 1922. The petitioners asked that the Governor establish a forestry service and a state forester to be appointed to Harlan County.  As part of the petition each of the boys who fought the fire, for an estimated 30 hours each, wrote of their personal experience fighting the fire in individual letters attached to the petition. See also:  DESCHAMP’S  “PERFECT ACRE.

ANGELA MELVILLE ALBUM – A large photograph album (334 images) assembled by PMSS staff member, Angela Melville.  Images are duplicated in order to capture the original damaged item and its modification. The Album includes many images from the earliest years of the School.

ANGELA MELVILLE ALBUM II – PART I
ANGELA MELVILLE ALBUM II – PART II
ANGELA MELVILLE ALBUM II – PART III
ANGELA MELVILLE ALBUM II – Part IV
ANGELA MELVILLE ALBUM II – PART VI
ANGELA MELVILLE ALBUM II – PART VII

BIOGRAPHIES COMPLETED:
B.C. “BOONE” CALLAHAN
BRIT WILDER 

AUGUST 2016
LITTLE SHEPHERD TRAIL – When Marguerite Butler took her hike to Jack’s Gap on August 14, 1914, an ascension of some 2,800 feet up the north face of one of Kentucky’s most unique and rugged mountains, she did not complain. John Fox Jr. didn’t complain either. He memorialized the journey in his The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come about a young man’s coming of age as he traveled from Big Black Mountain across Pine Mountain, down the Kentucky River, and into the Civil War. Today, many visit the overlooks of Harlan and Letcher counties from atop Pine Mountain by driving along the Little Shepherd Trail. Originally a forester’s trail for quick access to hard-to-reach forest areas, the trail was upgraded by the CCC in 1933-37, and in 1961-62 an additional 21 miles were added by the Kentucky Division of Forestry staff at Putney, Kentucky. The troubled history of this rustic but noble trail is explored in a description of its past, present, and future.

THE GUIDE TO COMMUNITY FAIR DAYS at Pine Mountain Settlement School explores through photographs, programs, and narratives of the nearly 95-year-old tradition held in the Fall at the School. Come join in the FAIR DAY celebration on Saturday,August 27, 2016.

JULY 2016
ANTIOCH COLLEGE CO-OP AT PMSS describes a program that supplied a steady stream of practice teachers for Pine Mountain Settlement School in the 1920s and 1930s. The page portrays this partnership using excerpts from letters and narratives written at the time and which are now part of the PMSS Collection. Also featured is a list of the names of many of the work/study students and hired teachers who came from Antioch to teach at PMSS.

The Co-op program began at Antioch College over 90 years ago and continues to be a signature part of the college’s curriculum today. At the time, it was an innovative program that was a good fit for both Antioch College and PMSS.

VII 52 LIFE WORK CHILDREN AND CLASSES [Part I – 85 images] – Includes students in the 1960s. David Saylor ; Tony Ely ; Vickie Hoskins ; Celest Lehigh ; Norma Lewis ; Glenda Callahan ; Flora Johnson ; Evelyn Wilder ; Anita Baker ; Evelyn Wilder ; Delora Turner ; Danny Boggs ; Dwight Baker ; Eddie Hoskins ; Ray Cox ; Ernie Huff ; Sue Cox ; Sue Gross ; Myria Watkins ; Steve Wilder ; Rodney Huff ; Billie June Lewis ; Vicky McCoy ; Hollis Boggs ; Debbie Turner ; Bobby Bo Callahan ; Glenda Callahan ; Brenda Lewis ; Clyde Wilder ; Connie Cornett ; Mark Workman ; Lorene Lewis ; Doris Merrill ; Jerry Day ; Don Wilder ; Norma Callahan ; Debbie Middleton ; Connie Cornett ; Audry Shepherd ; Pattie Whitaker ; Suzie Whitaker ; Don Boggs ; Kathy Wilson ; Bonnie Lewis ; Anita Baker ; Artie Merrill ; Barbara Callahan ; Kathy Brown ; Jerry Caldwell ; Judy Hoskins ; Julian Turner ; Titus Boggs ; Mina Jane Huff ; Chloe Middleton ; Rickey Turner ; Kitty LeHigh ; Judy Turner ; and others.

VII 52 LIFE WORK CHILDREN AND CLASSES [Part II – 55 images] – Continues VII 52 Life Work – Children & Classes Part I and covers students in the classes of Mrs. Campbell, Mrs. Whitaker, Mrs. Wilson and others. Photographs were largely taken in 1965.

VII 63 LIFE WORK MAINTENANCE, FARM, GROUNDS [123 images] – Maintenance and work at the Pine Mountain Settlement School Campus. Multiple pages. Automobile mechanics ; auto repair ; gasoline ; gas station ; gasoline pump ; planting garden ; tractors ; sorghum ; gardening ; maintenance ; farm ; farming ; rock work ; roofing ; stone walls ; Boyd Harris ; Brit Wilder ; Hobart Wilder ; Jess Patterson ; Omer Lewis ; Lonnie Lewis ; Julian Lewis ; Burton Rogers ; Gib Lewis ; Fred Lewis ; Asrel Browning ; Burkham School House ; Farm House ; bee keeping ; apiaries ; composting ; sowing ; painting ; ditch digging ; butchering beef ; seeding ;

VII 64 LIFE WORK MAINTENANCE, FARM, GROUNDS [66 images] – Maintenance and work at the Pine Mountain Settlement School Campus. Tags: William Hayes ; Hobart Wilder ; chickens ; Ayrshires ; cows ; farms ; farming ; barns ; silos ; pastures ; model farms ; sheep ; chicken houses ; tractors ; hay baling ; corn ; fodder ; stock ponds ; Jesse Patterson ; sugar cane ; sorghum ; syrup ; mills ; cane ; sorghum pans ;

VERTICAL FILES – The vertical files at Pine Mountain Settlement School contain a varied collection of materials that relate to the School, to Harlan County and to the broader Appalachian region. The material is rich in Harlan County newspaper information and collected material for the Settlement Schools of the Southern Appalachians (SIA) and related institutions. Largely comprised of newspaper clippings and publications, the collections also contain some primary source material. The VERTICAL FILES online are currently available only as a list. No online access to full text is available at this time.

THE ROAD – LADEN TRAIL – From Katherine Pettit regarding progress on the Laden Trail, c. 1920:

You’d be interested in the preliminary report Mr. Obenchain [State Engineer] has just gotten out. On this side of Pine Mountain, there is a rise of one foot in every 1.34 feet (less than 45 degrees). The distance through the mountain is 1-7/8 miles, but we shall need almost 12 miles of road at $6,000 a mile, with an ascent of five feet in every hundred feet. Some undertaking!

JUNE 2016
Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections Website Launches on H-Net Commons and H-Kentucky, June 1, 2016 – Thank you, Dr. Randolph Hollingsworth , Assistant Provost, University of Kentucky; President, H-Net:Humanities & Social Sciences On-Line, for your nudge to get Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections connected to this national network of scholars. Thank you, as well, for the recent visit to the Settlement School and your encouraging support of our community-centered programming.

Dr. Hollingsworth, currently editor of H-Kentucky, noted that the goal of H-Kentucky is to

… create an online collaborative environment to facilitate communication and the exchange or scholarly and pedagogical ideas among teachers, researchers, scholars, advanced students, and related professionals (e.g. local historians, librarians, archivists, genealogists), all in an open, democratic, respectful and non-partisan manner. H-Kentucky especially welcomes those who are interested in Kentucky, as well as those in any history/humanities field who live and/or work in Kentucky.For instructions on subscribing to H-Kentucky go to: http://networks.h-net.org/node/905/pages/965/subscribing-network

MAY 2016
A new book by New Zealander, Gretchen Rasch, explores the lives of two workers at the Line Fork Settlement extension of Pine Mountain Settlement School. Her well-researched book, The Storm of Life covers the lives of Dr. Ida Stapleton and her husband, the Reverend Robert Stapleton, from their earliest work in Turkey to their work in Eastern Kentucky during the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century.

Witness to the deportation of Armenians from Erzurum and the subsequent battle for the city between Turkish and Russian forces during World War I, the Stapletons were well-seasoned to address the severe medical, social, and religious needs of the Line Fork area during 1926-37.

The Stapleton Reports and Letters at Pine Mountain Settlement School form the foundation of Rasch’s research for the Stapletons’ Kentucky years and provide graphic descriptions of life in the small community of Line Fork in Letcher County, Kentucky. [Rasch, Gretchen. The Storm of Life: A Missionary Marriage from Armenia to Appalachia, Gomidas Institute, 2016. [ISBN : 9781909382237]

Author Gretchen Rasch’s interests are a nice fit with PMSS. With a background in threatened species protection, she worked with the US Forest Service, NZ Forest Service and the Department of Conservation. Her work in aquaculture permitting at the Ministry of Fisheries, where she “trained staff in report writing and the use of plain English,” certainly prepared her for this excellent book on her great-grandparents. A great read! (IMAGE: Angela Melville Album II – Part III. Rev. and Dr. Stapleton. [melv_II_album_298.jpg])

See: http://www.cawthron.org.nz/people/132-gretchen-rasch/#sthash.Kp0je2rg.dpuf

APRIL 2016
JOHN A. SPELMAN III, an artist and member of the Pine Mountain staff, produced AT HOME IN THE HILLS, an illustrated book that is an exquisite reminder of the beauty of vernacular architecture in the Appalachian mountains.

Spelman’s linoleum block prints, drawings and watercolors capture the early architecture of the region and the surrounding landscapes and may be explored in JOHN A. SPELMAN III; BLOCKS, DRAWINGS & PAINTINGS and in JOHN A. SPELMAN III BLOCK IMPRINTS.

The John A. Spelman Correspondence is a window into the struggle of an artistic spirit in a demanding work environment as well as the negotiation surrounding his illustration of the book, THE KENTUCKY, by Thomas D. Clark. One of the most outstanding contributions to the “Rivers of America” series, THE KENTUCKY captures the course of the important Kentucky river from its origin near Pine Mountain Settlement School until it leaves the State.

MARCH 2016
The DOROTHY NACE PHOTOGRAPH ALBUMS I, II, and III provide a visual slice of life at Pine Mountain Settlement School during the 1930s and 1940s. Focused on staff and students at the School, scenes of the campus and its architecture, and illustrations of activity in the School programs, it is a rich collection that documents an important era of the School’s history.

FEBRUARY 2016
CALENDARS INDEX – GUIDE TO PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL CALENDARS many of them illustrated by John A. Spelman, artist-in-residence at PMSS in the late 1930s.

MARY ROGERS DRAWINGS – Illustrations and small sketches of life on the Pine Mountain Settlement School campus and in the surrounding community from 1942 – 1980.

CAMPUS LIFE – Photographs of various recreation activities at Pine Mountain Settlement School throughout its early history.

SECOND GENERATION PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM – A small album of images, gathered by an unknown individual, depicting early staff and families at Pine Mountain Settlement School. Many of the photographs are of the second generation of Pine Mountain staff and students.

JANUARY 2016
ROCKWORK AT PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL – A visual exploration of rockwork at the School from the earliest days to the workshops offered in dry-stack rockwork in the 2000s.


WHAT’S NEW! ARCHIVE 2015

DECEMBER 2015
FERN HALL HAYES Biography and Correspondence – A student and staff member at Pine Mountain Settlement School from 1933 to 1953.


See Also: The latest notice at “WHAT’S NEW!” on the ABOUT (MAIN) page