UNIVERSITY EXTENSION IN THE SOUTHERN 
 
 MOUNTAINS 
 
 Bv WILLIAM GOODELL FROST, Ph.D. 
 
?3' 
 
 r-1 
 
 Reurinted fro7n The Ontlook of September j", ih 
 
HAND MILL 
 
/^ 
 
 University Extension in the Southern Mountains 
 
 T 
 
 By William Goodell Frost, Ph.D. 
 
 'HE picturesque adventares which we 
 are to describe are somewhat of a 
 satire upon the dio;nified work known 
 as university extension, but they have the 
 same purpose — to bring the best elements of 
 civilization within reach of the people — and 
 they have the primal pedagogic quality of 
 adaptation. 
 
 To estimate the success of this adaptation 
 we must know the country and the people. 
 How shall the ideas which characterize a 
 modern university be interpreted to the 
 family of a moonshiner on " Hell-fer-sar tin 
 Creek " ? Externally the inhabitants of the 
 Southern mountains are not, at first glance, 
 prepossessing. Their homespun garb, often 
 in tatters, rude speech, and shuffling gait, 
 might lead us to class them with the "poor 
 white trash." But there could be no greater 
 mistake. The landless, luckless " poor white," 
 degraded by actual competition with slave 
 labor, is far removed in spirit from the 
 narrow-horizoned but proud owner of 
 a mountain "boundary." The "poor 
 white " is actually degraded ; the 
 mountain man is a person not yet 
 graded up. 
 
 The mountaineer is to be regarded 
 as a survival. From this point of view 
 his variations from the regulation type 
 of the American citizen are both inter- 
 esting and instructive. In his speech 
 you will soon detect the flavor of 
 Chaucer ; in his home you shall see 
 the fireside industries of past ages ; 
 his very homicides are an honest sur- 
 vival of Saxon temper — in a word, he 
 is our contemporary ancestor ! 
 
 The causes which have retarded his 
 development are not far to seek. Take 
 the circle of Southern States east of 
 the great river, and each of them, ex- 
 cept Florida and Mississippi, has a 
 mountain back yard of large propor- 
 tions. Bunched together, these moun- 
 tain fractions constitute one of the 
 largest horseback areas on the globe. 
 From Harper's Ferry to the iron hills 
 of Birmingham, two hundred miles 
 and more in width — " knobs," caves, 
 ridges, forests — stretches this inland 
 empire which we are beginning to rec- 
 
 ognize by the name of Appalachian America. 
 It has no coast-line like Greece, no arms of the 
 sea like Scotland, no inland lakes or naviga- 
 ble rivers like Switzerland. Is it any wonder 
 that pioneer conditions have lingered in a 
 country where the only highways are the beds 
 of streams ? The whole South has been very 
 slow about " coming to town." The Governor 
 of one of the.ic States recently said that a 
 quarter of the people had never seen the 
 court-house in their own county. And the 
 people on " Ciitshin " or "No Bizness 
 Branch " have a good excuse. Progress must 
 be slow in a land of saddle-bags. 
 
 Our extension work began with a prelimi- 
 nary tour five years ago. Our mountain guide 
 was an old soldier who had moved to Berea 
 to educate his family. •• Children was all 
 gals — all but the least one — and there was a 
 better show fer 'em to teach in the mountings 
 than to raise craps." He could find some 
 
 MOUNTAIN GIRLS COMING TO BEREA 
 
r 
 
 >)<ifate 
 
 t 
 
 mmd 
 
 MOUNTAIN PRKACHERS FROM THE BLUE RIDGE 
 
 kinsfolk or an old comrade in nearly every 
 countv. 
 
 The time chosen was August, when the 
 roads are least forbidding, and the mountain 
 schools in session. The outfit was a saddle, 
 saddle pockets, extra woolen shirt, rubber 
 blanket, insect powder, com^b and tooth-brush, 
 pocket knife, five dollars in silver dimes, a 
 Testament, package of postal cards, and a 
 few leaflets. 
 
 The general plan was to speak at the school- 
 houses, sending a boy ahead to "norate" 
 the people the day before. We could visit 
 a school-house as early as eight o'clock in 
 the morning, and by hard riding reach a 
 second school-house by eleven. Here, after 
 the " speakin'," we would be invited to " come 
 by " with a neighbor, and take a " snack." 
 Another ride would bring us to our third 
 school-house, where we would speak, take 
 supper in the neighborhood, and preach at 
 " early candlehght." Our " gaited " horses, 
 with their '• running walk " or •' single step," 
 never fatigued us ; invitations were plenty, 
 chickens abundant, and week after week we 
 kept up our four meetings a day. Saturday 
 was set apart for rest, and on Sundays we 
 planned to strike some " Association " meet- 
 ing, or funeral. 
 
 The mountain funeral is a survival from the 
 
 time when preachers were scarce. It rarely 
 takes place at the time of interment. It will 
 be remembered that the boy Lincoln had a 
 funeral sermon preached for his mother long 
 after her death. In the mountains it is a 
 convenience to have this ceremony at a time 
 when the roads will be passable, and there is 
 likely to be a large gathering of kinsfolk. 
 Several memorial sermons will sometimes be 
 preached on the same day. The prominence 
 thus given to funerals during the months of 
 good roads assists the fatalistic doctrines of 
 the preachers in giving a very somber cast to 
 their religion. 
 
 The Association meetings are held in the 
 summer for the same reason. In one thing 
 it must be confessed the mountain people 
 have degenerated— T-they have lost the great 
 Protestant idea that a minister must be an 
 educated man. A few of their preachers 
 aspire to greater knowledge — several have 
 moved to Berea and entered school. But 
 the majority rather glory in their ability to 
 speak " as the Spirit gives them utterance." 
 And their utterance is loud. The present 
 writer was invited to preach at one of these 
 associations, and in the middle of his dis- 
 course one woman nudged another, with the 
 remark, " I wish he'd quit talkin' and go to 
 preachin' !" 
 

 
 MRS. YOCUM STARTING ON EXTENSION WORK 
 
 man unusually well 
 court day," we asked 
 
 " I couldn't get nary 
 
 And it is sad to see that this class of 
 preachers is still being replenished. One 
 young man, persuaded to attend a Southern 
 theological school, was backiin three months 
 fully equipped. 
 
 " Yas," he said, " the Seminary is a good 
 place ter go and get rested up, but 'tain't 
 while fer me ter go thar no more 's long as 
 I've got good wind.'" 
 
 Meeting a young 
 dressed at a mountain " 
 if he was a teacher. 
 
 " No," he answered ; 
 certificate." 
 
 •' What are you doing, may I ask ?" 
 
 " I'm tendin' some churches," was the un- 
 abashed reply. 
 
 And in proportion to their lack of educa- 
 tion is their sectarian assurance. We found 
 four kinds of Baptists, each refusing to rec- 
 ognize the validity of the ordinances as per- 
 formed by the others. 
 
 In order to appeal to their strong religious 
 sentiments, and yet avoid sectarian entangle- 
 ments, we confined our preaching pretty 
 closely to the Ten Commandments and a 
 few undisputed but neglected truths and 
 duties. If we preached to Baptists, they paid 
 us the compliment of saying, " That's good 
 Baptist^doctrine." If we were among Meth- 
 
 odists they, too, claimed us. On one occa- 
 sion they came to our guide to ask to what 
 '■ persuasion " we belonged. His answer was 
 diplomatic : " If you air a preacher, and hev 
 got yer Bible, and then can't spot yer man 
 when ye hear him, I hain't a-goin' ter tell ye." 
 
 Following our tour of observation, we sent 
 out a quartette of singers — a Berea teacher, 
 a student of mature years, and a man and his 
 wife who had been born in the mountains 
 but educated in Berea. This " troupe " gives 
 two entertainments on successive nights in 
 the same place, and a varied programme of 
 songs and addresses. They are followed 
 from place to place by crowds of young people 
 on horseback. The entertainments are given 
 at night, and during the day the quartette 
 disperses to visit schools and homes. Hos- 
 pitality is unbounded, and many of the most 
 important lessons are given at the fireside. 
 Not infrequently the people will keep us 
 awake till a late hour with questions, and 
 sleep on the floor to give us a bed. 
 
 And this reminds us of the surprising pro- 
 priety with which a dozen people of both 
 sexes can sleep in the same room. Such an 
 arrangement is expected on the occasion of 
 all great gatherings, and is the regular way 
 of living in most households. A lady of our 
 party once went alone to lodge with an old 
 
couple whose children were all married and 
 gone. The lady was shown into one of the 
 two rooms of the house, and the hostess 
 kindly said, " Now there air plenty of beds in 
 this room. Me and my ole man generally 
 sleep in the other room, but if you air the 
 least mite lonesome we will come in here and 
 sleep.'' 
 
 Each year the work has become more sys- 
 tematic and effective, and with increasing 
 acquaintance we can profitably make a longer 
 stay in each place. This makes the work 
 much less arduous, especially for our ladies. 
 One way of unobtrusively correcting the gro- 
 tesque ideas Disseminated by the mountain 
 preachers has been to send a lady teacher to 
 give '• Bible readings." There is the utmost 
 reverence for the IMble, and while religious 
 teaching by a man would be watched for 
 points of controversy, and religious teaching 
 by a woman would be considered out of 
 place, the reading of select portions of Scrip- 
 ture, with natural explanations, meets with 
 nothing but open-mouthed and grateful atten- 
 tion. Mrs. Yocum, of our Normal Depart- 
 ment, accompanied by her little son, rode 
 above five hundred miles the past summer. 
 
 As our illustrations show, there has been 
 opportunity for not a few observations of 
 mountain life which have been instructive 
 and exciting to the lecturers themselves. 
 
 " Known to be preachers or as s^ood as preach- 
 ers," they move among the roughest people 
 with entire safety, and even find pertnission 
 to photograph a moonshine still. And many 
 are the tales of adventure connected with the 
 late war — border tales that remind us of the 
 Revolution — recounted by our friendly hosts. 
 The mountain people were divided, though 
 the greater part were steadfast in loyalty to 
 the old flag. 
 
 " W ere 3'ou in the war ?" 
 
 "Yes, sir; I was one of Morgan's horse- 
 thieves." 
 
 " How fast could you ride when the Yanks 
 were after you ?" 
 
 "Well, I couldn't ride fast enough, fer 
 thev caught me and sent me up into Ohier." 
 
 Jackson County, Kentucky, cla'ms to have 
 sent more men into the Union Army in pro- 
 portion to its population than any other 
 county in the Nation. It is one of twenty 
 contiguous counties without a printing-press. 
 They adjourned court there to listen to a talk 
 on education, and at its close one of the 
 natives said, " Stranger, I could understand 
 right smart of what you was a-tellin'. We 
 had an officer in our regiment from New 
 York or summers what spoke the same dia- 
 lect as yeou do !" 
 
 The characters of the Craddock tales are 
 easily verified in these excursions as types of 
 
 HAND LOOM 
 
AMtRICAN HIGHLANDERS 
 
 real life, as well as Abe Shivers, and Easter, 
 the lovely heroine of John Fox's " Mountain 
 Europa." Mr. Cable has touched mountain 
 life only in " John March, Southerner." but his 
 pictures are very characteristic. Lillian Bell, 
 in her "Little Sister to the Wilderness," has 
 given a picture of similar life in western 
 Tennessee, and a word from her preface 
 justly describes some of our highland friends 
 
 " I have been led by the cry of the inai 
 ticulate, of that large, not-to-be-ignored por 
 tion of humanity whose thoughts need an 
 interpreter : who, with womanish, nice percep- 
 tions, lack equally nice distinction in terms to 
 enable them to express the fine shades of 
 meaning which it is their gift to feel. 
 
 " They belong to that vast majority of 
 people who, when you have taken pity on 
 their hesitation and finished their sentences 
 for them, cry out to you in gratitude." 
 
 The native refinement of some of the 
 mountain folk is surprising. The women 
 commonly wear knitted woolen mitts at all 
 public gatherings, even in the summer-time, 
 as a tribute to conventionality. Many a girl 
 who has come to us barefooted, and without 
 so much as a night-robe or an "individual 
 comb," has been transformed within six 
 months into a neat and self-possessed young 
 
 woman, whose humble origin would not be 
 suspected. 
 
 The extension work has not been merely 
 a series of excursions. We feel that there 
 has been too much "touring" and "exploit- 
 ing " of the mountains even by well-meaning 
 preachers, who have made no provision for 
 permanent results, and who seem to the 
 people rather irresponsible. The university 
 extension work has been purposeful from 
 the start. It has proceeded from one well- 
 known centei, and the people have felt that 
 " that thar College at Bereer what old Fee 
 and Cassius Clay started before the Wah, is 
 a-sendin' these speakers." It has been made 
 personal and " friendly " by the acquaintance 
 of a few Berea students even from the most 
 remote counties. 
 
 And the lines of effort have been well de- 
 fined. The problem is to make the belated 
 dwellers in the hills sharers in the best ele- 
 ments of our civilization. This is quite unique 
 as an educational undertaking. There has 
 never been such a problem before. We had, 
 to be sure, a great Western frontier, but its 
 pioneer settlements were always furnished with 
 some proportion of educated men, and were 
 closely bound to the older parts of the country. 
 But in the case of this vast mountain region 
 
LOG SCHOOL-HuaSE ON BUFFALO HILL 
 Atteaded by thirty-five pupils. 
 
 there is no such leaven, and no such bond of 
 communion with the rest of the world. There 
 has never been a clearer call for the interven- 
 tion of some intelligent guiding force. 
 
 Two principles have been kept steadily in 
 mind : In the first place, our aim has been to 
 give the essential rather than the accidental 
 elements of civilization — to make the people 
 sharers in the best things, but leave them un- 
 sophisticated. We will not teach them to 
 despise the log-cabin, but to adorn it. And, 
 in the second place, we respect their sturdy 
 independence and endeavor only to help them 
 to help themselves. The work is interde- 
 nominational — we co-operate with all Chris- 
 tian bodies. Instruction in the arts of life — 
 hygiene, forestry, thrift, etc., is provided to give 
 them at once new motives and new resources. 
 And, above all, we propose to teach them to 
 make the most of the common schools, which 
 are barely in existence but have in them the 
 germs of all good. 
 
 The States concerned in Appalachian 
 America are all poor, inexperienced in popu- 
 lar education, and wholly unable to deal with 
 the mountain problem. In many localities 
 the school-houses are so far apart that half 
 the population is practically debarred. The 
 schools are so short that little learning is 
 possible for the pupil, and little professional 
 equipment for the teacher. And, finally, 
 there is no one in the district who has an 
 ideal of what a school ought to be. 
 
 To meet these conditions extension work 
 seems more practicable and useful than great 
 "conventions" or "conferences." The con- 
 ference brings together those already inter- 
 ested ; the extension work wakes up the 
 people who are indifferent. Various forms 
 of instruction are adopted. The popular 
 lecture " The Ladder of Success " has been 
 given hundreds of times. Talks on United 
 States history are enjoyed by young and old. 
 Discourses on how to make the most of the 
 
A MOONSHINE STILL 
 The lecturer was led to this spot blindfolded, and the proprietor of the still prudently turned his back. 
 
 free school, the duties of school trustees, 
 etc., and special meetings for farmers, for 
 housewives, for preachers, and for teachers, 
 are examples of the varied adaptations. Not 
 least important is the discourse on " Arbitra- 
 tion," or " How to Settle Family Feuds with 
 out Bloodshed." Extension libraries and 
 extension publications have been used as 
 freely as our means would permit, and have 
 helped to make the long period of " bad 
 roads " less a time of mere hibernation in the 
 mountains. 
 
 Very considerable results are already ap- 
 parent. The people begin to understand what 
 education means. New topics of thought 
 and conversation are introduced. New stand- 
 ards are set up. The tone and even the 
 outward appearance of many communities 
 has been noticeably changed. And a very 
 furor of desire for more of the same thing 
 has been awakened. 
 
 Our lecturers not only give but gather much 
 
 useful information, picking up old EngUsh bal- 
 lads with interesting variants, and collecting 
 countless " specimens " of old-time customs 
 as well as ottier fossils from the hills. 
 
 We cannot allow our clients, the mountain 
 people, to be called ignorant, for that term 
 implies a certain moral delinquency. Rather 
 let us paraphrase it and say that, Hke the 
 patriarchs, they are unaware of the distinctive 
 features of modern life. 
 
 Nor are they to receive this service at our 
 hands simply because of their need. We 
 need them also. What does America need so 
 much as Americans .-' And here they are — 
 vigorous, unjaded of nerve, prolific, patriotic 
 — full of the blood and spirit of Seventy-six. 
 For many years they will not need a univer- 
 sity ; but if they are to be set in step with the 
 world, and saved from the corrupting influ- 
 ence of the baser elements of civiUzation, 
 they must have the sympathetic and skillful 
 guidance of this university extension work. 
 
 11 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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