Olive Dame Campbell
Elizabeth M. Williams (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813136448
- eISBN:
- 9780813141404
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813136448.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
Olive Dame Campbell is best known as a ballad collector, but she was also a social reformer in Appalachia. Her diary is a the record of a trip that she and her husband, John C. Campbell, made in the ...
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Olive Dame Campbell is best known as a ballad collector, but she was also a social reformer in Appalachia. Her diary is a the record of a trip that she and her husband, John C. Campbell, made in the early part of the 20th century to gather data for the Russell Sage Foundation about the true social, religious, and economic conditions in the Southern Highlands. Visiting eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina, they interviewed missionaries, teachers, and settlement school workers, going to out-of-the-way villages and towns on roads that were often nothing more than creek beds. After John Campbell's death in 1919, she continued his work, finishing his book, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland, the first comprehensive history of Appalachia. All the while, she maintained her interest in folk songs, acquired on their fact-finding trip. She studied the educational principles of Scandinavian folk schools and established the John C. Campbell Folk School near Brasstown, North Carolina, to encourage the local population to continue the tradition of creating native crafts and was instrumental in the establishment of the Southern Mountain Handicraft Guild. Olive Dame Campbell's diary of their investigative trip to gather information is an entertaining and enlightening account of the places the Campbells visited and the people they met, revealing captivating details of everyday life in Appalachia at the turn of the century.Less
Olive Dame Campbell is best known as a ballad collector, but she was also a social reformer in Appalachia. Her diary is a the record of a trip that she and her husband, John C. Campbell, made in the early part of the 20th century to gather data for the Russell Sage Foundation about the true social, religious, and economic conditions in the Southern Highlands. Visiting eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina, they interviewed missionaries, teachers, and settlement school workers, going to out-of-the-way villages and towns on roads that were often nothing more than creek beds. After John Campbell's death in 1919, she continued his work, finishing his book, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland, the first comprehensive history of Appalachia. All the while, she maintained her interest in folk songs, acquired on their fact-finding trip. She studied the educational principles of Scandinavian folk schools and established the John C. Campbell Folk School near Brasstown, North Carolina, to encourage the local population to continue the tradition of creating native crafts and was instrumental in the establishment of the Southern Mountain Handicraft Guild. Olive Dame Campbell's diary of their investigative trip to gather information is an entertaining and enlightening account of the places the Campbells visited and the people they met, revealing captivating details of everyday life in Appalachia at the turn of the century.
Elizabeth DiSavino
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780813178523
- eISBN:
- 9780813178530
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813178523.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
The question of how our initial view of Appalachian balladry might have been different had Jackson published first is explored in detail. Jackson’s ballads are compared to Campbell and Sharp’s 1917 ...
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The question of how our initial view of Appalachian balladry might have been different had Jackson published first is explored in detail. Jackson’s ballads are compared to Campbell and Sharp’s 1917 collection. Sharp’s musical claims to the pentatonic mode constituting proof of a connection to older Anglo music is debunked and the possible influence of other ethnicities upon Appalachian music is examined. Jackson’s emphasis on women as ballad keepers is discussed in detail, as is Sharp’s willful non-awareness of it. A detailed musical comparison between the two collections is given, and reasonable conclusions drawn as to how our understanding of balladry might have been different had Jackson published first.Less
The question of how our initial view of Appalachian balladry might have been different had Jackson published first is explored in detail. Jackson’s ballads are compared to Campbell and Sharp’s 1917 collection. Sharp’s musical claims to the pentatonic mode constituting proof of a connection to older Anglo music is debunked and the possible influence of other ethnicities upon Appalachian music is examined. Jackson’s emphasis on women as ballad keepers is discussed in detail, as is Sharp’s willful non-awareness of it. A detailed musical comparison between the two collections is given, and reasonable conclusions drawn as to how our understanding of balladry might have been different had Jackson published first.
Elizabeth DiSavino
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780813178523
- eISBN:
- 9780813178530
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813178523.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
(Jackson) French approaches Berea College to ask for their support in publication of her ballads. Eleanor Frost is enthused, and President William Goodell Frost promises help. French prematurely ...
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(Jackson) French approaches Berea College to ask for their support in publication of her ballads. Eleanor Frost is enthused, and President William Goodell Frost promises help. French prematurely shares her ballads with Hubert Shearin and Josiah Combs, and they eclipse her as the claimants to primacy of Kentucky ballads. She continues to wait on Frost to seek a publisher for her, knowing she must depend on a male champion, but five years go by and the ballads are never published. Meanwhile, the Ballad Wars are raging, and others vie for the title of Appalachian Ballad Authority. The web of intrigue, jealousies, delays, miscommunications, and ruthlessness is explored in detail. Elizabeth Peck, college historian, finds Jackson’s ballads 42 years later and engineers the reconciliation of Berea and Jackson, and the founding of the Katherine Jackson French Collection at Berea College.Less
(Jackson) French approaches Berea College to ask for their support in publication of her ballads. Eleanor Frost is enthused, and President William Goodell Frost promises help. French prematurely shares her ballads with Hubert Shearin and Josiah Combs, and they eclipse her as the claimants to primacy of Kentucky ballads. She continues to wait on Frost to seek a publisher for her, knowing she must depend on a male champion, but five years go by and the ballads are never published. Meanwhile, the Ballad Wars are raging, and others vie for the title of Appalachian Ballad Authority. The web of intrigue, jealousies, delays, miscommunications, and ruthlessness is explored in detail. Elizabeth Peck, college historian, finds Jackson’s ballads 42 years later and engineers the reconciliation of Berea and Jackson, and the founding of the Katherine Jackson French Collection at Berea College.
Katherine Ledford and Theresa Lloyd (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780813178790
- eISBN:
- 9780813178806
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813178790.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Social Groups
From the earliest oral traditions to print accounts of frontier exploration, from local color to modernism and postmodernism, from an exuberant flowering in the 1970s to its high popular and critical ...
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From the earliest oral traditions to print accounts of frontier exploration, from local color to modernism and postmodernism, from an exuberant flowering in the 1970s to its high popular and critical profile in the twenty-first century, Appalachian literature can boast a long tradition of delighting and provoking readers. Yet, locating an anthology that offers a representative selection of authors and texts from the earliest days to the present can be difficult. Katherine Ledford and Theresa Lloyd have produced an anthology to meet this need. Simultaneously representing, complicating, and furthering the discourse on the Appalachian region and its cultures, this anthology works to provides the historical depth and range of Appalachian literature that contemporary readers and scholars seek, from Cherokee oral narratives to fiction and drama about mountaintop removal and prescription drug abuse. It also aims to challenge the common stereotypes of Appalachian life and values by including stories of multiple, often less heard, viewpoints of Appalachian life: mountain and valley, rural and urban, folkloric and postmodern, traditional and contemporary, Northern and Southern, white people and people of color, straight and gay, insiders and outsiders—though, on some level, these dualisms are less concrete than previously imagined.Less
From the earliest oral traditions to print accounts of frontier exploration, from local color to modernism and postmodernism, from an exuberant flowering in the 1970s to its high popular and critical profile in the twenty-first century, Appalachian literature can boast a long tradition of delighting and provoking readers. Yet, locating an anthology that offers a representative selection of authors and texts from the earliest days to the present can be difficult. Katherine Ledford and Theresa Lloyd have produced an anthology to meet this need. Simultaneously representing, complicating, and furthering the discourse on the Appalachian region and its cultures, this anthology works to provides the historical depth and range of Appalachian literature that contemporary readers and scholars seek, from Cherokee oral narratives to fiction and drama about mountaintop removal and prescription drug abuse. It also aims to challenge the common stereotypes of Appalachian life and values by including stories of multiple, often less heard, viewpoints of Appalachian life: mountain and valley, rural and urban, folkloric and postmodern, traditional and contemporary, Northern and Southern, white people and people of color, straight and gay, insiders and outsiders—though, on some level, these dualisms are less concrete than previously imagined.
Theresa Lloyd (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780813178790
- eISBN:
- 9780813178806
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813178790.003.0703
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Social Groups
The writings in this section, which date from the mid-nineteenth and to the early twentieth centuries, demonstrate the development of the erroneous idea of Appalachia as a stunted frontier isolated ...
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The writings in this section, which date from the mid-nineteenth and to the early twentieth centuries, demonstrate the development of the erroneous idea of Appalachia as a stunted frontier isolated from the rest of the United States and inhabited by mountaineers whose pioneer lifestyle was frozen in time. The texts reflect the rapidly changing nature of life in the region. The era’s local color fiction and nonfiction too often relied on quaintness, stereotype, and sentimentality; that Appalachian people were (and are) frozen in time is a literary conceit. By foisting unfamiliar values onto mountaineers, social reformers attempted to change the very culture that they claimed to be preserving. But the era was pivotal for female authors and educators.Less
The writings in this section, which date from the mid-nineteenth and to the early twentieth centuries, demonstrate the development of the erroneous idea of Appalachia as a stunted frontier isolated from the rest of the United States and inhabited by mountaineers whose pioneer lifestyle was frozen in time. The texts reflect the rapidly changing nature of life in the region. The era’s local color fiction and nonfiction too often relied on quaintness, stereotype, and sentimentality; that Appalachian people were (and are) frozen in time is a literary conceit. By foisting unfamiliar values onto mountaineers, social reformers attempted to change the very culture that they claimed to be preserving. But the era was pivotal for female authors and educators.
