The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-10-29
MOUNT VERNON WAS SAVED BY 4 WOMAN Miss Cunningham's Work
 For Americans WAS A LONG STRUGGLE Part of the Time She Had to Be Carried From Place to
 Place on Air
 Mattresses
WAS LONG STRUGGLE
From the Woman S World.

From the Womans World.
 Let no irreverent hand change it, TO Vandal hands desecrate it with the fingers of progress, Those who go to the home in which he lived and died wish to sec in what he lived and died Let ono spot in this grand country of ours be saved rom changer
 These words formed the warning with which Ann Pamela Cunningham rounded out her work of saving Mount Vernon To achieve success she had worked years, had founded and carried to success the first womans association of the kind in the United States, had subjected herself to a publicity which she detested, and had planned and executed much of the task while she lay near to death.
 Miss Cunningham was an invalid, led ridden, when she began the movement for the salvation of Washington's home. Tn carrying out the work she was transported from city to city on air beds, and once so nearly dead from pain and exhaustion that her life was despared of by her phy- sician and friends.
 It was in 1853 that Miss Cunninghams mother, on her way from the north to Ter family home in South Carolina, journeycd down the Potomac river and passed Mount Vernon. She saw the home of Washing ton by moonlight and noticed that ruin had laid a heavy hand on the place. Al ready the roofs of the mansion and he other buildings needed repairs, and in the grounds there were signs of neglect and disorder.
 This was at a time when John Augus- tine Washington, unable to keep up the estate which George Washington had farmed with profit, had sought to have the national government or the state of Nlr- gnia buy the property and preserve it as place of interest for succeeding genera tions. He had expected to receive $250,O00 for the buildings and two hundred acres of the land. Both Virginia and the United States had refused to make the purchase.
 Mrs. Cunningham. musing over the trag edy. in the countrys indifference toward the home and grave of its father, tad this thought:
 "If the men of the United States will not save Mount Vernon, why cannot the women do it?"
 When she reported this to her daughter, then bedridden and suffering greatly. ;he reply was:
 'I will do it.
 Miss Cunninghams home was the center of a brilliant circle. When she told her friends of her determination to save Mount Vernon they made comments of two kinds: One was that her health was not such as to allow her to undertake he work; the other was in the form of rid icule, the statement that no mere woman could succeed in such task.
 She disregarded the discouragement and the laughter and addressed letter to "Women of America" making it an ap- peal for their united effort to collect enough money to buy and preserve inc neglected home and forgotten grave of Washington. This letter, which she mad signed ''The Southern Matron," was fol- lowed by many others. and all of them were published in the newspapers of the country.
 To supplement this she got out month ly magazine, the Mount Vernon Record, explaining the progress in collecting funds and carrying on the movement. She thea formed the Mount Vernon Ladies' asso- citation, which should be perpetual made up of vice regents and governed by Ie- gent. and charged with the duty of .e- storing Mount Vernon to exactly what 1t had been when Washington occupied it.
 Responses to her appeals were almost instantaneous in the south. The northern press also took up the subject, but com plained that Miss Cunningham was too sectional. since she expected the work to be done and the money to be given by southerners. Miss Cunningham realized the justice of this claim and immediately extended the association so that it was composed of vice regent from each state. She was the regent.
 Her plan was to raise s2Oo000 buy Mount Vernon and the surrounding POO acres and then give it to Virginia to hold as a sacred place forever. Afterward it was decided to purchase the property and nave the association own it and keep it up. AL though the responses to the Southern Matrons' call for help began from the start, the work of organizing such an as- sociation and of getting $200,0O0 was slow and dscouraging But in 1855 the whole country awolke to the bigness and beauty of the project
 All over the country fairs were given and women went to work Individually to collect money. Philadelphia formed clubs and set up boxes for contributions. Ev- erything was going like summer breeze, when suddenly the business men of Phil adelphia began to discourage the work by saying they disapproyed of women mixing