{"id":1696,"date":"2013-10-17T13:50:11","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T17:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getitright.pmss.net\/?page_id=1696"},"modified":"2020-11-22T19:25:45","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T00:25:45","slug":"ethel-de-long-zande","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/staging.pinemountainsettlement.net\/?page_id=1696","title":{"rendered":"ETHEL DE LONG ZANDE"},"content":{"rendered":"
Pine Mountain Settlement School
\nSeries 07:\u00a0DIRECTORS
\nSeries 09: Biography – A-Z: Staff\/Personnel<\/h5>\n

ETHEL DE LONG ZANDE<\/strong>
\nCo-Founder & Co-Director 1913 – 1928<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Ethel de Long Zande with mountain dulcimer, c. 1915. [pmss0005.jpg]<\/p><\/div>\n

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TAGS:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>Ethel de Long Zande ; WCTU\u00a0Settlement School ; Hindman Settlement School ; Katherine Pettit ; Uncle William Creech\u00a0Sr ; co-directors ; co-founders ; Mary Rockwell Hook ; Helen de Long ; fundraising ; hands-on learning ; rural education ; community health ; Appalachian traditions ; Luigi Zande ; dulcimers ; letter-writing ; Nativity play ; Chapel ; Zande House ; Alberto Zande ; Elena Zande ; May Stone ; teachers ; social reform ; Evelyn K. Wells ;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ethel de Long Zande<\/strong>\u00a0(1879-1928) was born Ethel Marguerite de Long in\u00a0October 1879 to George and Arabella M. de Long. At an early age, she demonstrated her lifelong love for family,\u00a0humankind, the natural world, and intellectual and artistic studies.\u00a0<\/span>According to a 1928 article in\u00a0<\/span>Notes from the Pine Mountain Settlement School<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

At the age of eighteen, when youth clamourously\u00a0demands freedom,\u00a0she became [her family’s caregiver], the family at that time consisting of an invalid father, a delicate little mother and a child sister. Unwilling to leave them behind, and unwilling to forego the cherished plan of a four-year course at Smith College, she proposed to set up a home at Northampton [Massachusetts]. Thither the family moved in the summer of 1897, from Montclair, New Jersey, where she was born and had always lived. By availing herself of loan funds, by tutoring from her sophomore year on, by teaching in the Easthampton High School during her junior and senior years, Ethel made her way through college, constantly inspired…by the spiritual encouragement of her mother.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Miss de Long received a B.A. in 1901 from Smith College she, along with many graduates of women’s colleges during this time, elected a career from the few occupations that society considered proper for educated women: teaching and social reform. She worked as a teacher at Central High in Springfield, Massachusetts, until 1905, then moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where she\u00a0taught English at the Manual Training High School for another five years.<\/p>\n

According to the 1928\u00a0Notes<\/em>\u00a0article, \u201cshe worked under two of the best superintendents in the United States, both men well-known in the educational world, Dr. Thomas Balliet and Mr. Calvin Kendall\u201d during her ten years of teaching. \u201cProfessionally and personally these men were her admiring friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recounting Miss de Long\u2019s interests, the article states: \u201cWhile she loved nature with intensity, and books<\/strong> more than nature, she loved people essentially\u201d and her family was at the center of her circle of many relationships. Her chosen subject was English.<\/p>\n

To her teaching she brought [a] wealth of intellectual interest. She was…a born teacher. All the delight of intellectual give and take which she found in conversation, in the writing and receiving of letters, in discussion and debate, she brought into the classroom.<\/em><\/p>\n

Miss de Long was still teaching English at the high school in Indianapolis when she was invited by May Stone and Katherine Pettit to become principal at the newly founded WCTU (Woman’s Christian Temperance Union)\u00a0Settlement School in Hindman (Knott County), Kentucky. The WCTU settlement was the forerunner of Hindman Settlement School officially founded in 1902. Working alongside Katherine Pettit<\/a>\u00a0and May Stone, the co-founders of the WCTU Settlement School, she learned about the life of the mountain people and their pressing needs.<\/p>\n

Around 1911 Miss Pettit\u00a0was approached by a local mountaineer, William Creech Sr.<\/a>\u00a0\u201cUncle William\u201d wished to donate\u00a0land in a remote area of Harlan County for a new school that would address the local area’s lack of educational opportunities and moral guidance. This generous donation and mutually agreed upon mandate were enough to inspire Miss Pettit and Miss de Long to leave Hindman near Christmas of 1912 and to establish Pine Mountain Settlement School by 1913.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t easy for Pettit and de Long, two women who grew up in more prosperous circumstances, to make the second start at Pine Mountain and to start a school in an even more remote location than Hindman. The record of their early struggles\u00a0are, however, filled with the details of life in the remote location, but liberally punctuated by the exuberance, excitement and success of their efforts. During the first several years, with Uncle William’s assistance, they oversaw the clearing of the land and streams, planting of fruit trees, and construction of buildings using natural resources and aided by supplies hauled by men and oxen over the steep Pine Mountain.<\/p>\n

Around 1913 Miss de Long recruited the architect, Mary Rockwell Hook,<\/a>\u00a0a graduate of Wellesley (MA) College who had studied design for one year in Paris under the guidance of Jean-Marcel Auburtin\u00a0at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the distinguished National School of Fine Arts in Paris. Though she did not successfully completed the exam for graduation from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (nor did her male cohorts!) her training served her well. Her master plan for the School including the administration and classroom buildings and the cottages and dorms and their placement on the campus in respect to the farmland is now recognized as a National Historic Landmark site.<\/p>\n

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Angela Melville Album II – Part V. “Helen de Long.”[melv_II_album_218.jpg]<\/p><\/div>\n

Around 1914 through the 1920s, Miss de Long’s younger sister, Helen de Long<\/a>, who, with their mother Arabella, were frequent visitors to the campus, photographed the School and community activities and environment. Helen de Long’s Photograph Album is part of the Pine Mountain Settlement School collections, as are the books collected by the family. The Helen de Long photographs may also currently be viewed in the Berea (KY) College Hutchins Library Special Collections and Archives.<\/p>\n

In addition to assisting with the physical design of the new campus, Ethel de Long was a tireless recruiter for money and for staff. Miss de Long used the fundraising skills she developed at WCTU Settlement School and the network of prospective donors that she had built while attending Smith College. Her contacts at Smith and other Northeastern women’s colleges were also valuable when it was time to hire well-trained and dedicated workers for the School.<\/p>\n

As a result of the work of de Long, Pettit, Uncle William and their well-chosen staff and strong determination, intelligent planning, and compassion for the people of the region, Pine Mountain Settlement School blossomed and grew. Forty students were attending classes and receiving room and board on campus by 1915. From the start, the students not only gained a basic education, but also industrial training. Ethel de Long’s careful educational planning laid the foundation for educational programming in the first two decades of the School and was an inspiration to many of the educational programs\u00a0that were developed later in the School’s history. Hands-on learning experiences in the areas of recreation, health, nutrition, and the preservation of traditional occupations, such as spinning, weaving, dancing, and music were integral to her planning. Ethel became accomplished at many of these creative skills, particularly the dulcimer<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\t\t