{"id":2523,"date":"2013-11-05T21:34:22","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T02:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/getitright.pmss.net\/?page_id=2523"},"modified":"2018-11-29T17:28:21","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T22:28:21","slug":"a-glimpse-of-the-kentucky-mountains","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/staging.pinemountainsettlement.net\/?page_id=2523","title":{"rendered":"SCRAPBOOK BEFORE 1929 A Glimpse of the Kentucky Mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"
Pine Mountain Settlement School
\nSeries 27: Scrapbooks:\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

SCRAPBOOK BEFORE 1929\u00a0 Glimpse of the Kentucky Mountains<\/h2>\n

TAGS;<\/strong>\u00a0Appalachian mountains ; Kentucky ; \u00a0Christian Science Monitor ; Pine Mountain ; feuds ; moonshine ; coal ; literacy ; oligarchies ; school teachers ; education ; schools ; foreigners ; immigrants ; isolation ;<\/p>\n

A Glimpse of the Kentucky Mountains: Pine Mountain Settlement, Ky<\/strong>. by L.G<\/p>\n

\"glimpse_ky_mnts\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Christian Science Monitor, <\/em>January\u00a01921, in Scrapbook Before 1929<\/em>, PMSS Institutional Records, Series 27: Scrapbooks<\/h6>\n

[The above article, which appeared in the 1921\u00a0Christian Science Monitor<\/em>, tries to capture the essence of\u00a0the area surrounding Pine Mountain and the growing contribution of the Pine Mountain Settlement School just nine years after it was founded. A transcription of\u00a0the article is printed below.]<\/p>\n

TRANSCRIPTION: A Glimpse of the Kentucky Mountains<\/b><\/p>\n

Pine Mountain Settlement, Ky.<\/p>\n

The Kentucky mountains: what do these words suggest to you? Do they suggest “the land of\u00a0feuds and moonshine”? Since the fall of 1919, I have spent a good many months in these mountains, especially in Harlan County, near the Virginia border.<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

I have heard stories of feuds, just as I have heard stories of the Civil\u00a0War, and once in a long while we still get an echo of them from some distant\u00a0hollow, as when Dennis\u2014a fine-looking lad in his teens\u2014came to the Pine\u00a0Mountain Settlement School and presented his old-fashioned gun to the teacher, begging her to take him in at the school because, if he went back home he would have to kill the man who killed his father, and “I ain’t aimin’ to kill him.”<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

But I have never run across direct evidence of feuds that still exist. “The land of feuds and moonshine”! As true it were to call New York the city of bootleggers and robbers.<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

I find it difficult to give you a picture of the Kentucky mountains, and\u00a0quite impossible\u00a0to make general statements, for as I have gone from creek to creek in the rural districts, or from town to town along the railroad, I have been struck\u00a0with the individuality of each place.<\/b>
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True, the towns have some features in common, such as the motion-picture shows and high-heeled slippers, with the influx of “furiners,” including Americans, Negroes, and immigrants from all parts of Europe. And the country\u00a0districts still have in common little wooden or log houses and poor roads or none.<\/b>
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But underneath these superficial resemblances, there is an individuality, the lines of which have not yet been softened by continual or long contact with one another.<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/b>Here are two mining towns side by side, each owned by a large corporation\u00a0and neither permitting union labor. The superintendent of\u00a0one prefers\u00a0foreign labor, and his camp of some 7000 to 10,000 people is composed\u00a0largely of European miners and Negroes. The superintendent of\u00a0the other\u00a0prefers American labor, and very few foreigners are to be seen on the\u00a0streets. Both are little oligarchies, \u00a0but as the type of men running them\u00a0is different, so does the atmosphere of the towns differ.<\/p>\n

At the other end of the line is a union mine. We went there once just\u00a0after a strike. We were fortunate in that we had been invited\u00a0by one of the\u00a0public school-teachers, for the school was considered\u00a0neutral ground by both\u00a0employers and miners. With this exception, the life of the community seemed\u00a0to be\u00a0pretty much in the hands of the union leaders, although we were not\u00a0there long enough to check up on this impression. The superintendent’s wife\u00a0told us that, as soon as the strike was called, the women and children\u00a0ceased to go to her Sunday school classes!<\/p>\n

Between these mining towns that I have spoken of lie many smaller mining camps and communities of various descriptions, such as the county seat with\u00a0its city government, an independent, small town whose government corresponds to the New England township\u00a0government, and many a new community which has not yet emerged from its\u00a0rural atmosphere, although its population is increasing rapidly.<\/p>\n

If we leave the railroad and visit some of the isolated hollows, we shall find again this marked individuality of communities. Here is a settlement at the\u00a0head of a creek in a narrow wooded valley, difficult of access from a county\u00a0seat. It is small wonder that those who wish to make moonshine should have\u00a0flocked to the secret coves of these woods.<\/b>
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On the other hand, here is another valley\u2014not far away\u2014more favored with “bottom lands,” which has long been settled by a steady, ambitious group of families. A few years ago some moonshiners tried to set up stills in the\u00a0hollows leading into this valley, and the people of the community banded together under the leadership of their duly appointed sheriff and, in the darkness of night, raided these stills until those who wished to disturb them had been driven beyond their jurisdiction.<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

As in other widely separated communities, the individualism of the parents is reflected\u00a0in their children. I have often watched the children who come from the remoter hollows try to fit into the life of the Pine Mountain Settlement School. Team spirit is hard to acquire, and even when, after long and often tumultuous experience, boys or girls have learned to be “good sports” on the basketball field, their independence will often show\u00a0itself in somewhat disconcerting ways; as, for instance, when Don, a\u00a0high-school boy, suddenly left the field in the midst of a game, because he\u00a0noticed “his pap,” whom he had not seen for several days, coming down the road.<\/p>\n

To make great sacrifices in order to\u00a0send their children away to school\u00a0is not uncommon in the mountains; but neither is it uncommon to see the very same parents who have made these sacrifices return to the school within a few weeks in answer to a homesick letter from the child, to take him back home again. “My child ain’t satisfied and don’t do no good”\u2014 this is sufficient\u00a0reason for taking him out of school. On the other hand, many an ambitious boy or girl is encouraged\u00a0to go on by parents who need him or her\u00a0sorely at home, for “Vic’s a good girl; she’s aimin’ to make somethin’ of herself.”<\/p>\n

Much has been written, about the rough traveling and the warm hospitality of the country folk who live up the hollows and far away from the railroads. Their isolation is fast being broken in upon by the opening up of new mines and the building of railroads and highways, for southeastern Kentucky lies within the soft-coal region and its seams are rich and thick. To understand these independent people is indeed important, but to consider them only in their isolation seems to me like studying the origins of civil codes, and\u00a0stopping there. L. G.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/colgroup>\n\n\n\n\n
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SCRAPBOOK BEFORE 1929 A Glimpse of the Kentucky Mountains<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n