Hutchins Library. Special Collections,

Stuart Robinson School was a Presbyterian mission effort began in 1913 by the Rev. E.O. Guerrant. The school was located in Blackey, Letcher County, Kentucky and named for the Rev. Stuart Robinson, a Louisville Presbyterian minister who was particularly supportive of such eastern Kentucky mission work. Students at the school held various labor positions on campus in addition to their academic studies. Among the school's more notable graduates are former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Juanita Kreps and Gurney Norman, who wrote Divine Right's Trip.

Katherine Jackson French began collecting ballads and songs in 1905 after attending a lecture on the subject at Berea College (Ky). After finishing doctoral studies at Columbia University she returned to Kentucky and continued ballad collecting through 1910. French sought the aid of Berea's president William Frost in getting her collection published, but it was never accomplished. Berea College historian Elisabeth Peck approached French in the early 1950s and obtained the collection as a gift for the college. French lectured on English literature from 1919 to 1937 at the Women's Department Club in Shreveport, Louisiana, and became professor of English at Centenary College in 1924. Her published works include a book on Pennsylvania history and several articles related to her field of study. She retired in 1948.

Harry Caudill was a native of Letcher County, Kentucky, a World War II veteran, and a graduate of the University of Kentucky School of Law. He practiced law in Whitesburg, Letcher County, Kentucky and was elected to public office, including the Kentucky House of Representatives. Caudill is best known for his influential 1963 book, Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area. In it he examined Eastern Kentucky's history, the coal industry, and the effects of strip mining. His theory that eastern Kentuckians suffered from the poor gene stock of their Scotch-Irish and German predecessors was very controversial. After retiring from law practice, Caudill taught at the University of Kentucky, delivered many speeches on eastern Kentucky social and economic problems, authored 6 more books, and numerous articles and editorials. He died 11-29-1990 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in despair over increasingly poor health.

Doris Ulmann was born in New York City in 1884. After public school, she attended the School of Ethical Culture and Columbia University and later studied photography at the Clarence H. White School of Photography. She made many portraits of southern Appalachian people during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Her work from that period is especially remarkable for the large number of students and others related to John C. Campbell Folk School and Berea College that she included among her subjects. Ulmann's published works include Portraits of the Medical Faculty of the John Hopkins University (1922), A Portrait of American Editors (1925), Roll, Jordan, Roll (1933, text by Julia Peterkin), and Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands (1937, text by Allen Eaton). In 1971, the Jargon Society published The Appalachian Photographs of Doris Ulmann, with a remembrance by John Jacob Niles, a folklorist and ballad collector who accompanied Ulmann on her Appalachian travels. Ulmann died in New York City on August 28, 1934.

Greenup County, Kentucky native, Jesse Stuart (1906-1984), was a graduate of Greenup High School (1926) and Lincoln Memorial University (1929). He spent his life as a schoolteacher and administrator, farmer, and author. He wrote mostly about life in his home-state, authoring more than 500 volumes, including novels, short stories, and poems. Among these are Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow, his first published book of poetry, and several autobiographical works including The Thread that Runs So True, The Year of My Rebirth, and God's Oddling. Stuart was the recipient of numerous literary honors over the course of his career including a Guggenheim Award, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Award, and Academy of American Poets Award. He was designated Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1954 and "The World of Jesse Stuart" was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1975.

Pine Mountain Settlement School was founded by Katherine Pettit and Ethel DeLong in 1913 and operated as a boarding school until 1949. There were also medical services that included vaccination, trachoma, dental, and maternity clinics. Health education was carried on in rural schools and extension centers that also offered homemakers' groups, community recreation, and Sunday Schools. In addition to regular academic subjects, students were involved in traditional music and dance activities, and a labor program that helped run the school and develop useful skills. In the 1930s the curriculum was refocused towards trade professions and skills for rural community living. During the 1940s, the school temporarily came under the administration of Berea College due to financial problems. In 1949, the boarding program ended and Pine Mountain became part of the Harlan County school system. Since the 1960s and as late as 2003, the school has operated an environmental education program that serves a wide variety of school age and adult groups.