{"id":53959,"date":"2018-06-12T15:01:52","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T19:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.pinemountainsettlement.net\/?page_id=53959"},"modified":"2020-04-22T15:14:09","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T19:14:09","slug":"blanche-rannells-our-mountain-neighbors-1924","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/staging.pinemountainsettlement.net\/?page_id=53959","title":{"rendered":"BLANCHE RANNELLS Our Mountain Neighbors 1924"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pine Mountain Settlement School<\/strong>
\nSeries 09: Biography – Friends, Visitors<\/strong>
\nLadies of the Kentucky Aid Society<\/strong>
\nBlanche Rannells, Cleveland, Ohio<\/strong><\/p>\n

BLANCHE RANNELLS Our Mountain Neighbors 1924<\/h2>\n

TAGS:<\/strong> Blanche Rannells; Blanche Rupe Rannells; Blanche Brewer; Our Mountain Neighbors; Ladies of the Kentucky Aid Society; Pine Mountain Settlement School; Hindman\u00a0Settlement School; New York City; philanthropy; civic responsibility; Appalachian settlement schools; community; industrial training; poetry; Ann Cobb; rural settlement work; mountain settlement work;<\/p>\n

[We are looking for more information about Blanche Rannells. Please contact office@pinemountainsettlementschool.com<\/a>\u00a0if you have information to share.]<\/span><\/p>\n

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Blanche Rannells, the author of Our Mountain Neighbors<\/em> and founder of the Ladies of the Kentucky Aid Society and speaker at the Civic Club at Tipp City, Ohio on April 21, 1924, was a staunch\u00a0supporter of mountain settlement schools. When she spoke to the Civic Club at Tipp City,\u00a0Ohio in 1924, about settlement schools in the Southern Appalachian mountains she focused on the need for women to support the\u00a0mountain institutions of Pine Mountian Settlement School and Hindman Settlement School, the earliest rural settlement schools in the Southern Appalachians.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Blanche Rannells Brewer, was a resident of Argos, Indiana. She was connected to Hindman Settlement and then to Pine Mountian through mutual friends who were apparently associated with the Women’s Clubs of Kentucky.\u00a0 Her father the Rev. J. C. Rupe, was the pastor at the Argos United Methodist Church in Argos, Indiana for many years and was also in later years a pastor for the Evangelical United Brethren denomination.\u00a0 Blanche U. Rupe, one of Rev. Rupe’s three daughters, was influenced by a growing trend among the clergy and women’s clubs of the day, that sought to address what they believed to be a growing problem with “poor whites” in the mountains of the South.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1950s’ the Rupe family appears to have settled moved to Altoona, PA <\/span>where Rev. Rupe served as Superintendent of the E<\/span>,U.B. in the area. The efforts of the Evangelical United <\/span>Brethren, were instrumental in the formation of Red Bird Mission School in Bell County, Kentucky. It is not known if Rev. Rupe or his daughter had any later relationship with this Kentucky mission school which is similar in many ways to Pine Mountain Settlement and Hindman Settlement schools and is located in an adjacent county.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just how Blanche Rannells first connected with Pine Mountian is not fully known, but she was the founder of the Ladies of the Kentucky Aid Society while married to Mr. Rannells and living at 1853 East 75th Street which appears to have been in Cleveland, Ohio, not in Kentucky.<\/p>\n

The connection of Appalachian settlement schools with such\u00a0intensely urban women was not unusual for the time and the growing social awareness of Rannells fits well with the growing interest in social service occupations of women, particularly those exposed to the urban settlement movement. Henry House in New York, Hull House in Chicago, and other settlement houses in the large eastern and mid-western cities attracted a growing number of women who were being educated in elite eastern women’s colleges, particularly Vasser, Mt.\u00a0Holyoke, Smith, Wellesley and other women’s colleges. It is unclear where Rannells fits in this educational picture or what prompted her interest in the settlement movement, but it appears that she first encountered Pine Mountain through Kentucky contacts at Hindman Settlement.<\/p>\n

Her contact with the newly formed school at Hindman planted a seed that led to her trip to Hindman in 1923 and later to Pine Mountain to see for herself the work that was being done in the two institutions. Her own woman’s club, the Ladies of the\u00a0Kentucky Aid Society, was a central focus of Rannells and suggests that she had strong connections with Kentucky Women’s Clubs.\u00a0\u00a0Her report focuses on a variety of contributions by the Society she formed.\u00a0<\/span>The Aid Society record as recounted by Rannells describes the philanthropic work of the Society in 1922 and its steadfastness to the idea of mountain “uplift.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Mountain “uplift” was part of a growing vocabulary about the region that began at the turn of the century and by the 1920s was well accepted. Samuel Tyndale Wilson’s small book, The Southern Mountaineers<\/em> wrestles with descriptive language of the region in 1902 when he attempts to isolate the Southern Mountaineer or “Our Neighbors” into classes. A similar struggle may be seen in the essay by Rannells, “Our Mountain Neighbors” which follows the account of her Kentucky Aid Society and her description of her visit to the mountains of eastern Kentucky. The muddled idea of “poor mountain whites” creeps into her language throughout her essay-talk to potential donors and feeds into the commonly held belief that Northern “do-gooders” put their stamp on settlement work in the mountains. This debate promoted by David Whisnant in his contested work, All That Is Native and Fine: the Politics of Culture in an American Region<\/em>\u00a0(1983) seems to never rest and is lately energized by the publication of J.D.Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy<\/em> (2017). Further, the publication of Nancy Isenberg<\/a>‘s<\/a> White Trash:\u00a0<\/em>the 400 Year Untold History of Class in America (2017), muddies the water by focusing out attention on the volatile language of class and points the reader toward a growing perception of anti-intellectualism in the Appalachian population. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Samuel Tyndale Wilson, a Presbyterian minister and former President of Marysville College in Tennessee, notes in his small book The Southern Mountaineer<\/em> (1902), that the descriptive language for the southern mountaineer often uses “poor whites” and “mudsills” and other descriptors, but he is quick to note that the poverty seen in the mountains is not unlike that seen in the slums of many of the major cities of the day. He goes on to say<\/p>\n

“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<\/em>. It sounds too much like “poor white trash,” the most opprobrious term known in the South. Fancy how it would sound to hear the inhabitants of the Buckeye State spoken of as “Ohio whites” !\u00a0<\/em>…. There is no evil hint in the word mountaineer in the Appalachians, but rather the reverse — an honorable ring. Better use no class name at all, if possible’ but if one must be used, let it be a generous one.” <\/em>[Wilson, The Southern Mountaineers <\/em>p.20]<\/p>\n

Blanche Rannell’s 1924, talk on “Our Mountain Neighbors” captures the essence of prevailing trends in social service work,\u00a0class consciousness, confused approbation. and the\u00a0 Southern Appalachian programming in many women’s clubs that followed the national settlement house trends of the first quarter if the twentieth-century. Cleveland, Ohio was a central location of a large settlement house movement<\/a>. By the 1920s the Cleveland settlement houses became centers for philanthropic work that soon created a very competitive atmosphere for raising money. And, by the 1930s the urban settlement movement had shifted to unified social services, often not located in the service site.<\/p>\n

TO THE LADIES OF THE KENTUCKY AID SOCIETY 1922<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\t\t