Folks:This biography, from the American National Biography Online, was posted to
a history list to which I subscribe, with permission to repost.Though the biography hardly touches on that aspect of her career,
Ms. Pettit was an important, if quiet figure in the revival of interest in
American folk music.Ed---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 09:02:02 -0700
From: Robert W. Cherny <[unmask]>
Reply-To: H-Net Gilded Age and Progressive Era List <[unmask]>
To: [unmask]
Subject: Katherine Pettit, Appalachian social workerFrom: ANB onlineThanks to Richard Jensen for forwarding this from ANB online:American National Biography OnlinePettit, Katherine Rhoda (23 Feb. 1868-3 Sept. 1936), educator and social
worker, was born in Fayette County, Kentucky, the daughter of Benjamin F.
Pettit, a farmer, and Clara Mason Barbee. After her early education in
Lexington and Louisville, Pettit attended the Sayre Female Institute in
Lexington from 1885 to 1887. She became a member of the Presbyterian
church in her early years. A family friend, who was a clergyman, instilled
in her a lifelong interest in the hardships of people living in the
mountain regions of Kentucky. While in her twenties she joined the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which was working with the highlanders
of Kentucky, and she became a member of the rural library service of the
State Federation of Women's Clubs. In 1895 she toured the mountain areas of Perry and Harlan and was struck
by their poverty and isolation. She spent the next three summers trying to
help the women of the area. In 1899 Pettit and a co-worker, May Stone,
went with a nurse and two assistants to set up a six-week summer school
near Hazard and Hindman, Kentucky, under the auspices of the State
Federation of Women's Clubs. They borrowed a tent from the state militia
and attracted women with bright decorations and entertainment for
children. They trained the women in domestic affairs and gave them a sense
of dignity and community through games and songs. Pettit wanted to promote
the mountain culture and customs and encouraged people to undertake
traditional arts and crafts. She herself collected mountain ballads. In
1900 they held a similar ten-week summer school in Hindman, on Troublesome
Creek in Knott County, at the request of the residents. They expanded the
experience to fourteen weeks in 1901 at a summer school near Sassafras,
teaching people to read and write, holding Sunday school classes, planning
recreational activities, and lending books. Inspired by this interest and by the success of the urban settlement work
of Hull-House in Chicago, Pettit and Stone decided to experiment with
permanent rural settlement schools. Hindman citizens were so impressed
with these efforts that they donated three acres of land and began to find
contributions to build a school. Pettit and Stone traveled in the East to
raise funds for the project during the winter of 1901-1902, bought more
land, and opened the Hindman Settlement School in August 1902 under the
sponsorship of the WCTU. Although a series of fires led to setbacks in the
early years of the school, it began to flourish under the directorship of
these two women. After William Creech, a Harlan County mountaineer, begged Pettit to start
a similar school on 250 acres of land donated by him, Pettit went to the
county in 1913 to open the Pine Mountain Settlement School. Along with
Ethel de Long Zande, who had been a teacher at the Hindman School for two
years, and Creech, she spent eighteen months building the school from
scratch. Once the base school of thirty buildings was established, the
group expanded its activities in the area to provide health and dental
centers. They also lobbied for improvements to mountain roads and started
farming institutes. In 1914 Pettit was one of thirty-five members of the
first Conference of Southern Mountain Workers. Later she was the first
woman to attend Farmers' Week at the University of Kentucky because she
wanted to apply scientific techniques to the farming methods of the
mountain people. Pettit retired from the codirectorship of the Pine Mountain Settlement
School in 1930. Free from her executive duties, she decided to have direct
contact with the mountain people, and for the next five years she
dedicated herself to encouraging depression-struck farmers in Harlan
County to improve their farming techniques and to sell handicrafts. Pettit's motto was, "If a thing ought to be done, it can be done." Her
goal was to teach the mountain people to be worthy members of their
communities and to add beauty and usefulness to their homes and lives.
Never a comfortable public speaker, she preferred to talk informally with
small groups of people. Pettit herself led by example and was known to
clear paths and to fill mud holes in roads. She was described as having
"understanding ways and great good sense," along with "courage, vitality,
efficiency, initiative [and] independence of judgment" (Frances Jewell
McVey, "The Blossom Woman," Mountain Life and Work 10, no. 1 [Apr. 1934]).
Mountain women remembered her with affection and gratitude. The University of Kentucky awarded Pettit the Algernon Sidney Sullivan
Medal in 1932 for her "high thought and noble endeavor." In 1932 she also
took a trip to South America, where she was determined to be a traveler
rather than a tourist. She wrote enthusiastically about the beauty and
friendliness that she found in the mountains despite setbacks and dangers
including a broken wrist and revolutions. During the last months of her life Pettit found the energy to be active
in a forest preservation project in Kentucky. Never married, she died of
cancer at the home of her sister in Lexington. With her practical, firm,
and respectful approach to the local problems of poverty, Pettit found a
way to promote education and modernization while maintaining the
traditional, independent values of the people with whom she worked. She
introduced a model for compassionate rural social work in the early
twentieth century. Bibliography Pettit's diaries and correspondence and newspaper clippings and other
articles connected with the Hindman and Pine Mountain Settlement Schools
are available on microfilm in the Archives and Special Collections of
Berea College Library, Berea, Ky. The University of Kentucky Library's
Special Collections also contain a few items about Pettit, including a
written account of her trip to South America. The ballads collected by
Pettit are in G. L. Kittredge, ed., "Ballads and Rhymes from Kentucky,"
Journal of American Folklore 20 (1907): 251-77. Lucy Furman based her
novel The Quare Women (1923) on Pettit. See also David E. Whisnant, All
That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region
(1986), for further information about Pettit's life and work. Limited
information about the Hindman and Pine Mountain Settlement Schools is in
Ellen C. Semple, "A New Departure in Social Settlements," American Academy
of Political and Social Science Annals 15 (Mar. 1900): 301-4. See also
Robert A. Wood and Albert J. Kennedy, eds., Handbook of Settlements
(1911), and Henderson Daingerfield, "Social Settlement and Educational
Work in the Kentucky Mountains," Journal of American Social Science
Association, no. 39 (1901): 176-95. An obituary is in the New York Times,
5 Sept. 1936. Carol A. Lockwoodsuggested citation:
Carol A. Lockwood. "Pettit, Katherine Rhoda";
http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00881.html
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