NOTES – 1921

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 17: PUBLICATIONS PMSS
NOTES 1921
November

NOTES – 1921

“Notes from the Pine Mountain Settlement School”
November

GALLERY:  NOTES – 1921 November

Social, economic, and moral factors in the lives of the elders bid fair to destroy the ancient civilization of the mountains. To rescue it, and set the feet of the children in a fair path, is the great task at Big Laurel [Medical Settlement].

TAGS: NOTES – 1921 NOVEMBER: families, crafts, sewing, fire line, forestry, Dr. Grace Huse, roustabout, Miss Harriet Butler, Dr. Farrand, Rhoda Melinda, storytelling, Laura Drake Gill, Mr. Leon Deschamps, Uncle Calvin H. Nolan, Mary Wadkins, Calvin N. Kendall, Medical Settlement, Miss Peters, weaving, Presley Atkins, list of workers, district school teachers, Marchbanks Press

NOTES FROM THE
PINE MOUNTAIN
SETTLEMENT SCHOOL
PINE MOUNTAIN – HARLAN COUNTY – KENTUCKY
Copyright, 1921, by the Pine Mountain Settlement School

Volume I     NOVEMBER, 1921     Number 6

P. 1

WE hear a good deal about the malignant things one bad apple can do in a barrel-full of good ones. Against this depressing fact is the power of seed to grow, of one lamp to light another, of a group of women living in a neighborhood where every moral and physical evil exists, to help and save. The Medical Settlement, begun by Miss Harriet Butler and Dr. Grace Huse, now includes a district nurse, the county school teacher for Big Laurel, and a general “roustabout” with miscellaneous and innumerable duties.

Can you imagine a day in that little log house? The family must get a “soon start”, for often there are patients at the doctor’s office before six, and the women must get their own work done early so as to be ready for the day. Like as not, the doctor has been called in the night, on a baby case perhaps, so the nurse treats the bad eye or dresses the sore leg before she starts off. Often they all eat breakfast with several people visiting them or waiting for medicine.

Miss Butler, whose vision shapes the work of the settlement, is the stay-at-home in that house by the side of the road. The others fare forth afoot or on horseback. She keeps the hearth bright for them and for the neighbors, sees all who come, feels the pulse of things, and plans.

You would have to know Dr. Huse to appreciate the devotion the whole country gives her. The only “diplomy doctor” in a circle of twenty-five miles, she rides her horse Billy by day and night (she has never refused a call), wet, hungry, muddy, frozen, exhausted, to take care of the sick and introduce little new-comers to a world incredibly happier and more wholesome for them because of her.

A mother has lost six children with pneumonia. The youngest child falls sick with it, and thanks to the doctor and the district nurse, is pulled through. Do you wonder that the father says that no doctor who has studied all over Ameriky and Europe can beat her? A woman is saved from death in an acute and terrible attack of gallstones. A child, stricken with “the chokin’ disease”, is saved by an antitoxin given when there is barely room for hope. No wonder they can scarcely spare her to visit her kinfolk for a few weeks in the year. Before her, whose skill, gentleness and wisdom make her an ideal doctor for this country, there was no one to help them, and dumb hearts tried to find comfort in a stark fatalism, “I reckon his time has come; he’s aimin’ to die.”

The most cheerful group you can find in our country is the doctor’s babies, and it is a marvel to contrast them with their older brothers and sisters, who came into the world by the hands of a midwife and were lucky if there was anything but an apron for them to be wrapped in. The doctor’s regular fee for a baby case is $5.00, two and a half times the midwife’s, but everyone wants her in spite of this contrast. Through outside friends she has provided layettes, entirely simple yet perfectly adequate, to sell at low prices to mothers who know better how to split rails or lay by a corn crop than to fashion baby garments. Sometimes a woman might have to go across the mountain to the next creek to borrow a needle for this work, and everyone knows that tiny…
[1]

P. 2

…clothes are harder to make than full-sized ones. For two years now the babies have found things ready for them, bought by their mothers, and not an outsider’s gift. And how the mothers have tried to bathe and clothe and feed the babies, according to the doctor’s directions! As we remember the sore-mouthed, sore-eyed, sore-headed, fly-covered babies of three years ago, suffering too from sick stomachs or locked bowels, we rub our eyes at the rosy, fresh babies of today.

The doctor charges for her visits from fifty cents to five dollars, according to the distance she has to go, and the circumstances. Fees for office calls vary from five cents to twenty-five, the doctor wishing through low fees that do little more than pay for the medicine, to build up her office practice. In spite of the lack of money in this country, and the many feet to be shod in most homes, she has no bad debts, and is always paid promptly.

A large part of her time is given to our big family, and to directing the work of the nurse at our school infirmary. Beside its preventive aspect, and the examinations and watchful care required to build up every one of our children, there is a most important curative and corrective side, which includes hookworm treatments, prescriptions for glasses, operative cases to be got off to Louisville, as well as the care of sickness and broken bones. The Line Fork Settlement nurse looks to her for direction and for help in emergencies.

In all this work the district nurse is the doctor’s staunch ally. A whole family has hookworm and has asked for treatment. She will stay with them two days and get them through it. The mother of twelve wants her last baby to be better cared for than the other eleven. The nurse spends the day with her, and tells her just when to feed it and when to ignore untimely cries. Since last March Miss Peters has not had one day’s vacation, for beside her great Sunday School class on Sunday, she often goes out on that day to see after some of her patients.

And do not forget the roustabout, who helps the district teacher with her overcrowded school, plays with the children on the Settlement playground, a marvellous piece of level land big enough for even a baseball game, teaches sewing and is generally accessible to everybody.

Dr. Farrand, in his inaugural address at Cornell, said that the immense problem of today is the rescue of civilization. That is the Medical Settlement’s problem also. Social, economic, and moral factors in the lives of the elders bid fair to destroy the ancient civilization of the mountains. To rescue it, and set the feet of the children in a fair path, is the great task at Big Laurel.

*****

BEFORE you round the bend of the road that hides you from the Old Log House, the thump of the batten tells you that the looms are busy. By the doorstep, hands of yarn simmer gently in the dye-pot. On the porch, hung on wooden pegs, reels, chair-backs, anything that will hold them, are the long skeins already colored with madder, hickory, walnut and other colors that in these days of autumn glory are close kin to the woods that surround us. Four of our children are weaving these days. Arlena and Rhoda Melinda are copying ancient striped blankets, throwing their shuttles almost as skillfully as their grandmothers might have done; Grace is a true enthusiast, a stern critic, too, of what is a spurious introduction into this ancient mountain craft, and what truly “belongs.” Ralph, only eleven, is at work at the clumsy old colonial loom, his bare feet hardly able to “tromp the treadles.” His sample is a scrap of cotton counterpane rescued from an old patchwork quilt, over a hundred years old.

*****

“Tomorrow we’ll have sewing,
Tomorrow we’ll have sewing!”

THIS is the joyful chant composed by the “least” sewing class, in the hope that their teacher, Miss Laura Drake Gill, might hear them singing it, and understand their enthusiasm. Originally Miss Gill was to have fifty-five girls in sewing, a full hand, but she was waited on by some dozen boys begging to be taught how to sew on buttons and put on a patch. Of course she found a place for them, somehow, in her full program. Miss Gill has a double purpose, wanting her classes not only to do good work but to enjoy themselves doing it. You should see the girls’ delight in their pretty underwear, their initials embroidered on each garment.
[2]

P. 3

And if you should hear the conversation in her classes, you would appreciate doubly the comment of a small boy who said Miss Gill knew more about everything than any other woman, even when the subject was elephants! Our children are greatly privileged to be taught by her.

*****

[Leon] Deschamps and his boy foresters have a full program ahead. They have made a fire line all around the school property, on the mountain; have estimated the amount of standing timber we own, and have two plots of woodland perfectly forested. 120 acres more are to be put in proper condition as rapidly as possible. Mr. Deschamps gives all his time to forestry, with the exception of Saturdays when he has two large groups of Boy Scouts.

*****

THE talk of our old neighbors, who remember when land was bartered from the Indians, and witch doctors could charm a bullet so it would go round a corner after an enemy, is the precious treasure of Pine Mountain. These pioneers of the “young times”, whose like the world will never know again, hold you spellbound with tales told them by their grandsires.

The other day Uncle Calvin, as he sat on his porch in the mellow autumn sunshine, fell to talking of the Nolans, his forebears. His “great-grandpap, when he was only a chunk of a boy”, was playing on the deck of a ship in the harbor of Dublin, and was carried out to sea before he knew it. The sailing master would not turn back, and the lad was forced to work his passage to America, “as was the way for one in his fix.” He landed in Maryland and was bound out seven years to learn the potter’s trade. One day while he was moulding saucers, Miss Mary Wadkins came along and showed such interest in his occupation that he dropped a hot saucer into the apron she daringly held outstretched. The saucer burned a hole through, and broke as it fell to the ground! “This action,” said Uncle Calvin, “led to talk, which produced an acquaintancy, out o’ which grew the intimacy of love — so to courtin’ an’ weddin’.”

The tale has it that he became one of the first gentlemen of Maryland, and one of Washington’s bodyguard. When the Revolutionary war had passed, he settled in Mecklinburg County, Virginia, where Uncle Calvin’s grandfather was born. Then you have the picture of the pioneer going deeper into the wilds, as far as the Clinch River in Virginia. “Come along the war of 1912,” and he volunteered at Tazewell, fighting under General Gaines at Fort Erie. Later, being the “game-follerin’ kind,” he led his family along the Wilderness Road, through Cumberland Gap, and into Kentucky County, Virginia, as Kentucky was then called. Where Middlesboro is now, he found a “wild and unappropriated land,” which he and his son surveyed, and which “properly would belong to the Nolans,” had they not continued to follow the game up the Pine Mountain Valley. “Grandpap’s twelve children populated the wilderness a right smart in those days.”

If you press him to tell about his own life in the valley he will say, “Hit aint worth tellin’,-livin’ off so fer I didn’t git much education, but I’ve had time to ponder on the Good Book, an’ hit calls for study if you’re to act by it. I’ve had my hand in politics hereabouts, and reckon we’ve got to keep the government clean. Look at that mountain! There haint nothin’ fairer in the world than hit October-colored as hit be now.”

“Well, I’ve seed a sight of changes in my day. Them war the days of Injuns behind trees and panters a-yellin’ of a night. I’ve seed the woods full of wild turkey and deer, and I’ve seed ’em go west that man wouldn’t molest ’em. My pappy used to throw stones out of the path and say they’d be a road through here some day, and now there is, and another ‘n a-comin’ across the top of the mountain, and there’s the School a-settin’ up the road.”

Mention of the School brings him to Victoria, his granddaughter. “Hit’s the only young thing the old woman and I have got, but hit’s the steadfast, studyin’ kind, so we’re a-sendin’ hit to stay at School and git hit’s chance.

“Some day, if you come ag’in when my mind haint so tuck up with ‘lectioneering for the new magistrate, and this here railroad strike that’s threatenin’ the country, maybe I can recollect somethin’ else fer ye.”

*****

NOT everyone views the Atlantic Monthly with the high favor of those correspondents…
[3]

P. 4

…whose letters so frequently appear in the Contributor’s Column. A small boy who had had to dust the living room table morning after morning had drawn up his own notions of that periodical and was quite surprised to be interested by the story “Pioneers” when it was read to a group of children one night. “Why, that book is some ‘count, haint hit? I’ve studied’ bout th’owin’ hit away a heap o’ times, when I’ve seed hit a-layin’ on the table, ’cause hit never had no pictures, but hit’s some ‘count after all, haint hit?”

*****

At the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees at Pine Mountain in October, Mr. Presley Atkins of Pineville was elected to the place of Dr. Calvin N. Kendall, who died in August.

*****

PINE Mountain takes pleasure in introducing you to its winter corps of workers. If we could also introduce you to their colleges, special training courses, normal schools, certificates and degrees, which range all the way from Pine Mountain to the Sorbonne, you would see that they are as numerous and varied as the four points of the compass from which the faculty is gathered.

MISS MARY L. ATKINS, Lexington, Ky. Housemother and in charge of poultry

MISS DAISY BILBREY, Monterey, Tenn. Teacher of weaving

MRS. MARTHA BURNS, Oneida, Ky. Farmer’s assistant

MISS HARRIET BUTLER, R.N., Pine Mountain Head Resident, Medical Settlement

MISS MARGUERITE BUTLER, Cincinnati Extension worker

MISS ALICE COLLINS, Springfield, Mass. Teacher

MISS JESSIE CONNER, Cincinnati Teacher

MISS NELLE DARRACOTT, Eminence, Ky. Bookkeeper

LEON F. DESCHAMPS, Pine Mountain Forester

MISS RUTH B. GAINES, Granville, Mass. In charge of girls’ work in kitchen and laundry

MISS LUCRETIA GARFIELD, Williamstown, Mass. Recreation and Girl Scouting

MISS LAURA D. GILL, Leonia, N. J. Teacher of sewing

MISS ANNA HENNEBERGER, Springfield, Mass. Industrial worker at Medical Settlement

MISS EMILY HILL, Jeff, Ky. Assistant to Miss Gaines

MISS MARGARET P. HUMES, Jersey Shore, Pa. Outdoor worker

GRACE HUSE, St. Louis, Mo. In charge of all medical work

MISS MILDRED MANSON, South Hadley, Mass. Teacher

MISS ANNE RUTH MEDCALF, R.N., Baltimore, Md. District nurse at Line Fork

MISS MARGUERITE PARKINSON, Topeka, Kan. Housemother

MISS ANNA K.PETERS, R.N., Brooklyn, N.Y. District nurse at Medical Settlement

MISS KATHERINE PETTIT, Pine Mountain Member, Resident Executive Committee

MISS MABEL SIDELINGER, Nobleboro, Me. Teacher

MISS WILMER STONE, Red Fish, La. Housemother

MISS MAYA I. SUDO, R.N., Yokohama, Japan Resident nurse

MISS NANCY WEBB, Cincinnati Assistant Housemother

MISS EVELYN K. WELLS, Summit, N. J. Secretary

MISS LOUISE WILL, Louisville, Ky. Teacher

MISS CLARA WILSON, Washington, D. C. Housemother

MISS KATHERINE O. WRIGHT, Bristol, Tenn. Office assistant

MRS. ETHEL DELONG ZANDE, Pine Mountain Member, Resident Executive Committee

MR. LUIGI ZANDE, Pine Mountain Superintendent of grounds and farm

*****

*DISTRICT SCHOOL TEACHERS

MISS DIXIE BURNS, Oneida, Ky.
MISS MINNIE DUNBAR, Lenox, Mass.
MISS MABEL MUMFORD, Sturgis, S. Dak.
MISS ANNA PAVEY, Frankfort, Mich.

    • The district school teachers are employed by the State, but chosen by the School at the request of the local trustees, who were unable to get satisfactory teachers themselves. No work at Pine Mountain can be sounder than this piece of cooperation with state and county agencies to secure real returns from the use of the school tax.
      [4]

The Marchbanks Press
New York

Previous:
NOTES – 1920
Next:
NOTES – 1922

See Also:
ARTS and CRAFTS WEAVING Guide
BIOGRAPHY – A-Z
MEDICAL Guide
NOLAN Family
WELLS RECORD 03 PMSS 1920-1921
WELLS RECORD 03 PMSS 1921-1922

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