The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-06-17
A REMARKABLE COLLEGE.
Interesting Facts About an Institution
i'm the Kentucky Mountains.


Chicago Inter-Ocean.
Berea College is remarkable institution.
There is none like il in all the world.
1t is a college in the Kentucky mountains
designed especially for the stalwart noun
tain population who wear linsey-woolsey
clothes. are handy with "shootin' irons.
and have never seen railroad. 1t is an at
tempt of 'uS folks" to go to the help of
you alrs folks Berea is primitive, a
town set down alongside the most primitive
people in the United States. the Clay
county feudists.
Not long since" says President Frost,
my wife made a visit to Clay county,
where the Howard-Baker feud is in prog
ress. During the last two years thirty men
have been shot In this family quarrel II
required as much time for Mrs. Frost to
make the trip from Berea, seventy miles,
to the center of the Clay county district,
TO go from Berea to Chicago or New
York A part of the way she rode with an
old mail carrier, whose name and bearing.
save for his lack of book learning. would
have assigned him to Drumtochty. He in
quired about the great cities whose names
he had heard. and finally he summed UP
his impression i'm three oracular utter
ances.
Well. L allow that thar's heap o.
things goin 'on up thar that we ali dunno
nary thing about. An hits the case, |
reckon re- dGt that att thars heap @ things soin
thing about Then he concluded philo-
sophlcaily: An mixin' larns both parties"
1t is the children of such philosophers as
the old mail carrier who are coming down
to Berea College to "larn things" Last
Christmas a procession of these students
came in from one of the adjoining coun-
ties. 1t took them three days to make the
trip. In the outfit there were four wagons
drawn by oxen, mules and horses, and
loaded with household goods and young
women. Behind came sixteen boys on foot.
A majority of those young people had never
seen a train of cars and never heard of the
pilgrim fathers; and majority of them
were descended from revolutionary soldiers
Several were clad in homespun of their own
weaving, and at least two brought money
which was the product of a moonshine
still!
1t is the common supposition that South
ern mountaineers. particularly in Kentucky,
are extremely ignorant. 1t is a mistaken
idea They are primitive but not stupid.
Most of them trace their ancestry back to
old English and Scotch-Irish stock Their
forefathers fought in the war of the revo-
luton, and the stock has proved itself
hardy, intelligent and liberty loving
through centuries of history. Northern
pioneers along the great lakes and in the
Mississippi valley were always in constant
communication with the East. They never
lost the connection with modern progress.
But emigrants who crossed the Allegheny
mountains and settled IN the wild and billy
back yards of the Southern States We're
shut off from the rest of the world. While
the rest OF the country has moved forward
these mountain regions have remained a
RODln ftOO0 ldHQ. All lOTBOtten the people
have hunted and fished and raised patches
of corn on the hills:des, spun and woven,
luarreled and made moonshine whisky
The region around Berea is land of sad
dlebags.
When a mountain woman speaks of a
wheel she does not mean bicycle. She
means the spinning-wheel on which she
twirls the flax and makes the wool into
yarn, as her mother and grandmother and
great-grandmotner have done before her.
In the region around Berea on winter
evenings the children recite old English
ballads which have been handed down by
word Of mouth from generation to gener-
alton. Their speech glitters with Shaks-
pearan English. Many of their seeming
crudities of speech are survivals OF the
purest and best English of the Elizabethan
period Mountain patriarchs and their
children are not ignorant. They are mere
~ unaware that the world has been moving
in the past 200 years.
Nearly every young man and woman
who comes to Berea College comes dressed
in homemade jeans and linsey. It costs
from 500 to s120 year TO complete the
term, and the raising of this money is oft
en- herculean task, and very often, it may
be conjectured requires the manufacture
of great deal of moonshine.