Oral History Interview with Robert C. Young

NATHAN MULLINS: Okay, we're rolling.

ROBERT C. YOUNG: Okay.

N.M.: You can sit back, it will pick it up.

YOUNG: I'm Robert Charles Young. I graduated from Hindman High School in nineteen sixty. When I was growing up, I was known as Bobby. When I went away to college I thought that sounded childish, babyish and maybe even sissy. So I just really insisted on people calling me, Bob. Now when I hear somebody calling me Bobby and a few people call me Bobby Charles. Because there were three little Bobbys in school, when I started in first grade. And so two of them were called by their last names and I was called by my middle 1:00name, to distinguish me from the other Bobbys. But now when I hear somebody say Bobby, my heart skips a beat and I know it is somebody from way back when. So it is no deal now, to call me Bobby and I rather like it. But I did go through a period of time when I didn't want to be.

N.M.: Well, today is June the twenty-sixth, nineteen ninety-eight, if I am correct. And I am, that's good.

YOUNG: You're right.

N.M.: When you went to Hindman High School, you didn't stay on campus?

YOUNG: No, I lived in the house where my father was born and raised on a street called Frogtown. We're on Frogtown right now. I live in a different house on the same street. But except for the time I was in college, and I've lived away in other towns, some of my adult life. 2:00I've otherwise lived here in Hindman. And of course, always walked to school. I went to grade school at Hindman, it was on the settlement campus. The grade school building where I went was a big frame building that was situated exactly where the Knott County Public Library is now. We call that the Elizabeth Watts Building. But that building was built, I'm guessing, I don't really know. I wasn't here. But I think it was built, probably in the neighborhood of nineteen ten. It was the main school building at that time. But it was a huge three story structure, rickety as it could be and painted kind of brownish red. A wonderful place. It had a certain smell 3:00to it. And when I was growing up, it was just an elementary school. They called it the Hindman Grade School. Vinnie Dyer was the principal the whole time I was there. And for several years after I was out of elementary, and for several years after I was in college. When they built the new elementary school in nineteen sixty, I believe, down below Hindman. Vinnie Dyer went down there as Principal and some of the same teachers. I don't know how many years he was down there. Vinnie Dyer was the principal all of my growing up and my brothers, as well. But my first grade teacher, when I, I didn't get to go to Kindergarten for some reason. Well, I was probably too young. I really started first grade when I was five years old. 4:00Terrible mistake for little boys, normally. Little boys, especially some that are not terrible smart, like I wasn't. [Laughing] Probably don't need to start school when they're five years old, but I did. And struggled quite a bit because of it. Nevertheless, my first teacher was Verna Perkins, Carl E. Perkins' wife. And that year, he was elected to congress in November of that school year, when I was in the first grade. I believe that was in forty-six, forty-seven, forty-seven I think.

N.M.: That was his first year in Congress?

YOUNG: Yes, then he started in Congress in January of that next year, I guess it was forty eight. I don't remember. But she then bowed out as my teacher at Christmas 5:00time. After Christmas, when I went back I had another teacher. And it was Tressie Messer. Tressie Messer is a lady who, she still lives, she lives in the head of, what do you call that, Buckhorn or Quicksand or something over there. You go over to Ball and across the hill, and then she lives over there. Anyway, when I was growing up, she lived up here in Frogtown, where Otis Cornett lives and Josephine. You know where the house is? Tressie and her husband, I believe are the ones that built that house. Tressie Messer. Tressie Messer is a sister to Mildred Risner, Willie Prather, Paul Prather. She was a Prather. There was a huge family of those, Wilma and Eva and James, goodness there was a huge family. 6:00They are wonderful people. Tressie is I believe, is one of the older ones, if not the oldest. Nevertheless, she was my first grade teacher the second semester. The first semester of my first grade, I believe I was in the upstairs room. On the left when you entered the old grade school building, there was a huge foyer, an open space in the front of that building. And there was two rooms on the left and two rooms on the right. And then there was a room, a little room that probably was, if it was six feet square, I'd be surprised. It was eight feet at the very most. They had a little table in the middle, it was under the stairway. The stairs went up on each side and then up 7:00in the middle on the top. Underneath was this little room that had enough chairs for five or six teachers to sit at and there was a little table in that room. And they often sold Blue Horse paper and pencils and Zero candy bars and Sugar Daddies. They had a little store in there and the teachers sat there. It was kind of like a teacher's lounge.

N.M.: What about all the smoke?

YOUNG: There was no smoke. Teachers didn't smoke in those days. The ones that I had didn't, I guess. I never did catch them if they did. But Tressie Messer was my teacher and I was downstairs. There was a huge room downstairs that was where we had the second part of my first grade year, when Tressie Messer was my teacher. Then when I came into the second grade, I stayed in that same room 8:00downstairs on the first floor. And Mabel Hall was my second grade teacher. You remember Mabel? She hasn't been dead too long. She was retired for a lot of years and she was in a car wreck, and was physically impaired to a great extent. She had a bump on her head that caused everything to go berserk. And so, pretty soon after that happened, her husband died. And she was alone several years by herself, and physically impaired. And she was walking to town one day and stepped off the edge of her bridge. Or some people thought that maybe she dropped her keys over the edge of the bridge. She crossed the bridge, you know, to come over to the street, across 9:00the creek, a big, driveway bridge. Somehow or another she got in the creek and drowned and washed down almost to Cowtown, when they found her body. And there wasn't all that much water in the creek. But somehow or another she got in the current and was carried that far. Terrible tragedy. Mabel Hall, she was a Boggs before she married Carl E. Hall. Uh, go ahead.

N.M.: I was going to say, you were telling me about the grade school building, was there another building beside of it or was it a lone building?

YOUNG: The grade school building, no, it was a huge, square-like building. There were two huge rooms on the first floor, down on the ground level. They were about four feet off the ground, they were. But that was the ground level. 10:00Part of it was underground, because the hill went way up to the street. The second floor was almost on the street level. You entered the front of it. And then there were four rooms on the middle floor. And then there were two, huge rooms upstairs on the top floor.

N.M.: So would the old grade school building, would it have gone up to where the road is now?

YOUNG: It was closer to the road than the other one, yes. As a matter of fact, the street, they had .... When I was in grade school they had put a concrete street, sidewalk. And the school building came right up to it and there was just room for one person to walk between the comer of the school building and a big retaining wall that was built of concrete. 11:00The street was up here and the building was like right up against it. And you could get around there, there was room for one person at a time to walk between the corner of the building.

N.M.: That wall's still there.

YOUNG: And that wall is still there, yes.

N.M.: I see what you're saying.

YOUNG: And actually I suppose the old grade school building was farther toward, a little closer toward town than the Elizabeth Watts Building is, because there were two playgrounds between the grade school building, actually they were basketball playing fields, between the grade school building and the library. Where incidentally, when I was in third grade, James Still came back to be librarian.

N.M.: So the library is now where the grade school building was.

YOUNG: It was the same building, yes. It was just, I've got pictures of all of that. One of these days, you and I will look 12:00at my pictures. It's very much like it was then.

N.M.: I remember some of that. ..

YOUNG: It was a beautiful building. That building was built in nineteen forty-five. And it was built on a plan, now I'm talking out of school a little bit. Because I don't know this for a fact. But I'm pretty certain that Elizabeth Watts wanted that building built, patterned after a building, I don't know if it was her home or it was some building that she was familiar with ...

N.M.: Was fond of.

YOUNG: Up east. Yes. Where she comes from, New Jersey or wherever her home was. And of course, it was a gorgeous building. Oh, it was beautiful. And had a wonderful odor in it. That was another one of the things about, even the old grade school building, that stays in my mind. 13:00It was a wonderful wood odor. Now the old grade school building, they oiled the floors, so you got some of that oil smell, but it was highly perfumed.

N.M.: Now talking to other people. I've heard that they always kept it.. ..did they keep it real clean?

YOUNG: Scrubbed, yes everything was scrubbed. Scrubbed, scrubbed. The floors, for instance, they didn't polish floors, sand them and polish them, in those days, like we do today. They would bring in, they had these scrub brushes, and they had a name for them. I don't remember what it is now. Hickory broom, I believe is what they called them. They would take a hickory log and on one end of it 14:00and they would shave it, you know peel it back. Just shavings, but not off. Just peel them back, until you got this big, hairy looking contraption. And they would throw sand on the floor, sand, pure sand on the floor. They would put water on it and some soap probably, Clorox maybe. And they would scrub that sand, they would literally sand the floor with those old, hickory brooms. And they, of course, the students worked. They were on work shifts, everyone of them. If you stayed at the settlement, you worked. You worked on the farm, or you worked in the kitchen or you worked in the laundry. You worked at the barn. Or you mowed grass. You worked in the office. You made beds or whatever, scrubbed floors.

N.M.: Everybody worked.

YOUNG: Everybody worked. 15:00And being a town kid, I stood and watched all that. A few times I ate in the dining room, which was a most beautiful, wonderful place. I felt like I was in a fairyland when I walked into the old Orchard House. Every part, now I wasn't on the third floor very much, because that was the girl's dormitory. But the dining room and the front parlor, I forget now what they called that. They didn't call it the parlor, maybe they did. Anyway there was a huge front room. I took piano lessons in that room a lot, under Ruthie White. It had a huge fireplace. And it had these wonderful old chairs. And it had this marvelous, you know the wall in the dining room? The oak strips, broad wood with strips on it across each crack. Well, all the buildings had that, that 16:00was how they were built. And they weren't painted, varnished like that wall is. They were scrubbed down, once a year. And you always had that wonderful wood odor. It was chestnut. And of course, the lumber that they used that was used from trees that were dead already. That's the reason that they used so much chestnut. But it had the most wonderful...

N.M.: Wormy chestnut on all of them?

YOUNG: Yeah it was, what we would call today, wormy chestnut. You can't get it anymore.

N.M.: Extinct, yeah.

YOUNG: Because the chestnut trees all died. Back to the building, because I want you to understand about that building. I want you to get a picture of it in your mind. The two first rooms on the first floor. The one, if you entered the back of the building.

N.M.: Now this is the grade school, right?

YOUNG: This is the old grade school building. 17:00If you entered the ground level floor on the back, the very back of it. There was actually a level below the first floor, where the furnace was. And of course, it was an old steam heat. And coal, they burnt coal. I remember Dean Williams was the main janitor, big, tall, skinny man. And he shoveled coal. There was no bathrooms in the building. They actually had four outdoor toilets. But they had huge, old ground, I forget now what you call it. Anyway, you would have a toilet here and then there was a long, concrete 18:00thing, all that was a hole underneath there. Just a big, huge hole dug, probably with a bulldozer underneath. And another toilet on the other end. One end would be the boys' toilet. The other end would be the girls' toilet. And the hole, the ... .I forget. I know what the name is, but can't call it up right now.

N.M.: Septic tank?

YOUNG: But underneath was like a septic tank, but except it was not a tank, just a hole. Toilet hole. [Laughter] But it was covered with, and we sat up on top of that thing and ate our lunch quite often. It wasn't a ...

N.M.: Okay, no, we're all right.

YOUNG: But there was one right there close to the playground, between, close enough to the library that if you came from the library and took a toilet there.

N.M.: What happens when it gets full?

YOUNG: It was never going to get full. You take a hole 19:00as big as this house.

N.M.: And then they just covered it up?

YOUNG: No, it was covered over with concrete.

N.M.: No, I mean after you ....

YOUNG: When they tore it down, I expect that they just tore the toilets down and they took a bulldozer and just pushed the concrete down. It's probably there somewhere still. But again there, you know, you think how awful that must have been. Say how bad it smelled and all that kind of stuff. Now they were constantly putting lime or something in there. There was never an odor. I don't remember every hearing, ever smelling [Laughing] hearing. I don't remember ever smelling an odor around those toilets. They were even clean inside the toilets. But they kept lime and stuff in there, so it was not offensive at all. But the two lower rooms 20:00in that building, one on the right, once you entered the building downstairs, was always a lower grade room, either a first or a second grade room. Depending on the size of the class. Some classes were larger than others. They would shift them around. There was also a room upstairs. The one that I had my first, first grade in, was also a primary room. And they switched them back and forth depending on the size of the room. The third grade was always, as far as I know, at least when I was there, when you entered the front door of the old grade school building, this huge room. No furniture or anything, just a huge room, like a foyer. To the right, the extreme right was the third grade room. 21:00Alma Pigman was the third grade teacher. She was my third grade teacher. That's where the third grade was. The fourth grade was back on the left side, the back room on the left side. And my fourth grade teacher was Mildred Patrick. And she married somebody, I believe a Fields, probably before I finished fourth grade. But I just remember her as Mildred Patrick. And then my fifth grade teacher was in that same room, and Mavis Ingle was my teacher, wonderful person. I'll always remember Mavis Ingle as a very special person. Now, you may know something about her. She's still living. She's married to Shelby Stewart. And she's first cousin to Bevie Pratt.

N.M.: I've heard that name.

YOUNG: You know Bevie, or heard about Bevie at least. Anyway they're kin to the Calhouns. They were first cousins. 22:00Nevertheless, Mavis was my fifth grade teacher, wonderful person. I'll always remember and love her. She was real special. She made it a point to help me, because I was really struggling. I got a bad start. And she encouraged me musically. Now I started taking piano lessons when I was in second grade under Ruthie White. And at first, when I first started taking piano lessons, I took them over in the front room of the Orchard House, which housed the dining room and the kitchen and the laundry and all that stuff. And Ruthie White was a Music teacher, who came here from Knoxville, Tennessee, I think about thirty-nine, somewhere along through there. That was before I was born. 23:00But she had been here a few years. Then when I got in the second grade, she took students starting in the second grade. Music was one of the things that I was able to do, even at a very young age. Before I started to school, when I was four years old, dad had bought a piano. And old piano, it's down in the store now. It's upstairs in the store building. Old piano that was bought for me, it was a used piano when I was four years old. So, long before I ever went to school, I was banging on the piano, picking out little tunes. So it was obvious that, that was going to be the thing that I was able to do easier than anything else. But Ruthie White was a wonderful person. And she ... .If I 24:00tried to pattern my life after anybody, it was probably her at a young age. And Beulah Bell was a musician at church. From a very young age, I saw her sitting at the piano and I just thought, oh how wonderful that must be. But Ruthie White was not married. She was very good friends with Edith Orrick. Edith Orrick was the Home Ee teacher. She was hired by the settlement. And they lived on the settlement grounds. When I first started taking piano lessons with Ruthie White, she lived at Eastover, which was the men's dormitory. It was generally where, above 25:00Miss Earp's house. It was up there, it sat up there about where the parking lot is for the Pettit Building. That was where Eastover was. You came out of Eastover and suddenly you were there at that little bridge that's there behind ...

N.M.: The office?

YOUNG: The office. Now the office building is what was always known as the Fireside Cabin. And it was originally built in nineteen ten, I think nineteen ten, for Doctor Stuckey. He came here during the summers to treat. ... Well he ended up, I can't think. He was just a Doctor came to just general practice originally. But he found an unbelievable amount of people that had trachoma, which was an eye disease. And don't ask me much about it, because 26:00I don't know much about trachoma, except that Doctor Stuckey discovered a cure for trachoma in Hindman, Kentucky. And he only came here for ten weeks or something, every summer for several years. And they built the Fireside Cabin for his little hospital. And it was built over there in the field. Generally down behind, you know where that big chimney is that's sitting up there, that's just a big chimney? There was a huge building there, that was called the Kindergarten Building. And the whole upstairs was basically two rooms. And one whole end of it, I mean you go up on the front porch, there were 1..2..3..there were six doors the size of a window. And they were on hinges. And they all folded 27:00out like this and you could open up that whole end of the wall on the front porch. And it was just a big open room, and had glass windows all the way around it and a huge fireplace. Quaint, beautiful, wonderful place. I had piano lessons there from the time I was about in the third grade all the way through. Because they didn't use it for Kindergarten then. It was just basically a music room. And they had parties and when Miss White gave her recitals, we had our recitals in that building. They sat these, those kind of chairs, you know.

N.M.: The ones they made on campus?

YOUNG: Pardon?

N.M.: The ones they made there?

YOUNG: Yeah. Well, at that time, no. Maybe not. I'm not sure they were making chairs at the settlement at that time. But that's the only kind of chairs they had. They really didn't 28:00start making chairs at the settlement until probably when I was in high school, maybe a little bit later. When it became a chair factory. At the time that I was growing up, that building was a barn.

N.M.: Oh, okay.

YOUNG: Had cattle in it. But the Kindergarten Building underneath, the bottom part, then on the ground level, was the Art department. It had the looms in it. And old lady by the name of Frances Bradley was the Art teacher. And she left before I got into high school. They only had that for high school students. But she taught the weaving and all that part of it. And the upstairs then was the Kindergarten and all, and then it became the music, piano place. But 29:00it was still always called the Kindergarten. Back to the grade school building. And then the fourth and fifth grade was in the back left room on the middle floor. And then my seventh grade, sixth and seventh, both years, sixth and seventh. And I had the same teacher for both years, J.C. Waddell was the teacher. We called him "Waddles", in those days. But he became a Waddell, sometime later then. He was my sixth grade teacher and because it was such a large class .... Martha Allen was the seventh grade teacher. When we got to the seventh grade, and we had her for a few days upstairs in the room, where she taught, up on the top floor. But she just didn't want to teach a huge class and so she started teaching sixth grade and J.C. Waddell kept us 30:00as seventh grade.

N.M.: Came up to the seventh grade.

YOUNG: And then the eighth grade of course, was upstairs in this huge room. The classroom, if you can picture the room, was the full length of the building. Well, except for Miss Allen's room. The whole back of it was almost like a library or a sitting, seating area. It had tables and chairs and stuff back there. Then there were desks and then up front, in the very front was a stage. And Mr. Dyer's desk was up on that stage. There was a piano up there. All through grade school, Ruthie White was our Music Teacher. That was one of the things about this school. And she came to the room. And when we got in the eighth grade, there was a piano. And so she used the piano to teach music. 31:00We had Music once or twice a week, all through grade school.

N.M.: All through grade school.

YOUNG: And that was a very unique thing in eastern Kentucky, because no schools around had music teachers. The boards of education of most of the schools in eastern Kentucky would not have ever spent money on a music teacher. That was just something they didn't feel like they could afford.

N.M.: So how did you all have it?

YOUNG: The Hindman Settlement School provided a music teacher. They provided the art teacher, they provided Home Economics, they provided the library.

N.M.: So, you went to school at Hindman High School, which is part of the public school system, but at the same time, the Hindman Settlement School still provided a lot of the services.

YOUNG: Provided a lot of the teachers and a lot of the services, most of them, as a matter of fact. Well, the first thing you need to know about, as far as Hindman High School's concerned, it all was an outgrowth of Hindman Settlement School. 32:00Even though the Board of Education of Hindman, of Knott County was in existence from the time the county was marked off in eighteen eighty-four. The Hindman Settlement School though was like a separate entity. It was still controlled by the board of education, but they owned the buildings, they owned the books and they hired all the teachers. Well, in nineteen twenty-eight, which was twenty-six years after the settlement school was started. Now, first of all you have to know that the settlement school began in nineteen oh two, as it is now. But in eighteen eighty-seven, a man by the name of Professor George Clark came here and was convinced that he should start a subscription school, 33:00which he did. He came to be a lawyer, he was going to be a lawyer. He thought, because all the feuds in eastern Kentucky came up around Ashland. He came in this part of the country thinking, that as a lawyer he could represent feuding parties, you know. Because everybody was fighting everybody, you know, in those days. Well, he got here and found out there were lawyers in Hazard and Pikeville and Prestonsburg and everywhere. They had more lawyers than they had feuders almost. And so he was about ready to go back to Ashland and somebody here said, well you're an educated man. Actually Professor Clark was raised, his daddy was a subscription teacher. So, he knew all about running a subscription school, which is basically you pay so much and then you stay, kind of almost like a boarding school too. So in nineteen, 34:00in eighteen eighty-seven he started a school, which grew to an enormous size. He taught college classes and shorthand and violin and everything that was taught. It was like a little college. It was called the Bruckner Academy. And then in nineteen oh two, he had married a woman by the name of Lucinda Everidge. Lucinda Everidge was the grand-daughter of Solomon Everidge. Now this is where we get a little bit of history crossed up. I don't know how it all got crossed up so bad. But we know, we learned from some writer. I think Lucy Furman wrote some of it and I'm sure that Una Ritchie, sister of Jean Ritchie, wrote a history one time of the settlement. At any rate, all of it got turned around and we made a hero out of Solomon Everidge, which is wonderful. I don't object to that, because 35:00he was a hero. But the point that he was.... [Tape stops and starts] N.M.: We were talking about Solomon Everidge.

YOUNG: Right. And Uncle Sol, we've heard about him, saying, you know, he walked over to Hazard and asked the lady, said, "nobody's ever come to lam the young uns." Well, his grandson-in-law, Professor Clark had been here since eighteen eighty-seven running one of the biggest schools eastern Kentucky ever had, the Bruckner Academy. But for some reason, nobody knows at this point exactly why Professor Clark-I 36:00think he may, maybe he got tired, I don't know. Became aggravated at some point and decided that he didn't want to teach the grade school and the high school students. He wanted to, what he really wanted to do, I believe, was center his attention on training teachers, students to prepare them to go out and be teachers. He wanted to be a teacher of teachers. Because that was the greatest need here in eastern Kentucky at that time. There were no teachers. They had schools all over the place and nobody to teach. And so he really wanted to prepare people to teach. So, for whatever reason, Solomon Everidge did in fact, 37:00ask these ladies to come. And they came and they struck a bargain with Professor Clark. And they purchased from him .... He had built a building. It was where that old grade school building, where the public library is now. It was a huge building. It was a big, frame building with a steeple and all that, where his academy was. He had been in several different places since eighteen eighty-seven, I'm told, all over Hindman. But he finally had acquired some land and built a building. He had a huge number of students, they had books and they had arrangements to stay at homes and all this kind of stuff. And then out of the clear, blue sky, he decided to sell it. Well, I don't believe Uncle Sol and Professor 38:00Clark were estranged to each other by any stretch of the imagination. I think probably they were working in concert somehow or another. I think he probably suggested, he must have suggested to Uncle Sol to go and talk to those women about coming and buying his school, which they did in nineteen oh two. The Women's Temperance, let me see, the Women's Temperance Christian Union or something, league. I don't remember what it was. But anyway, they came and they purchased building, students, books, everything from Professor Clark. Now, he then retreated back to his home, downtown in Hindman. Now he didn't actually build that big, stone building 39:00that's down there now. That was his home until nineteen fourteen. But he did have a big, frame building that burnt down. But he retreated back there to teach teachers. And he became a state examiner. He gave the .... all you had to do was take a test. If you made the highest score in math and reading and so on, you could get a certificate to teach. And he was called a state examiner. And he continued to do that for sometime, for a few years anyway. And then he went to Campton and set up a school there. Then he came back to Hindman, or came back this direction. He went over to Bosco, which is close to Hueyville, over in Floyd County. Set up a school over there. And then eventually he came back to Hindman and continued to train teachers and was a state examiner. There was a period of time in the late 40:00eighteen, I mean nineteen, early nineteen twenties, I suppose. He spent four or five years as Superintendent of Schools of Letcher County. So, he was a wonderful educator. And made an impact that you wouldn't believe here. But these women came and started this school, the Hindman Settlement School. It became a settlement school. It didn't receive the name Settlement School until about nineteen, I believe nineteen thirteen, nineteen fifteen, somewhere along through there, became the Hindman Settlement School, Incorporated.

N.M.: Incorporated.

YOUNG: So it is still Hindman Settlement School, Incorporated. Did you know that? [Laughing] Well anyway, all that to say... .I just feel like Professor Clark 41:00needs a plug, because has been, he has been kind of shelved.

N.M.: Left out of the picture.

YOUNG: He had been left out of the picture, when he had a very integral part of getting it started. He had set the stage for these women to come. When they came in nineteen oh two. In nineteen oh three, the building burnt down. Somebody burnt it down.

N.M.: On purpose?

YOUNG: I think so. The women always thought it was. That it was destroyed on purpose. Well, they built back a huge, log structure right after that, that housed the housing, the dining room and the school, and everything. Everybody lived there, a huge building. They've got pictures of it. A log structure. Well, then in nineteen oh nine, it burnt again. And the women said, 42:00hey, we can take a hint. They left. Catherine Pettit went back to Lexington and May Stone went back to Louisville, and started thinking about what they were going to do with their lives. And the people in Hindman were just devastated, because there was several bad apples. Whoever burnt the buildings down, was creating a problem. Well, Hillard Smith, he was a lawyer. They called him, Big Hillard. He was a little, bitty man, but he was Big Hillard because he was the oldest. There was another Hillard Smith. You probably remember Hillard Smith, at the Methodist Church. He was Baker Bill's brother. They called him Little Hillard. They were not related, but they were both named ... .I guess Little Hillard was named after Big Hillard. Nevertheless, there were several people in Hindman 43:00that conspired with the ladies to please come back. So they had a pledge of an incredible number of hours, like two thousand man hours of labor had been pledged. People said, I'll work for so many hours free. Other people said, well, I'll give ....

N.M.: I'll donate.

YOUNG: I'll donate this, I'll donate money, I'll donate wood or whatever. And they agreed to come back under one condition. We'll come back if you'll--you'll build one building for a schoolhouse, one building for a dormitory, one building for a girl's dorm and one for a boy's dorm, a dining room. If you'll build buildings, so if one burns down, we won't be out in the cold. And so, with the money and the pledges and all that, they bought the land 44:00where the May Stone Building is now.

N.M.: They bought more land?

YOUNG: They bought a huge, they bought that whole farm. I believe they paid five hundred dollars for it. A man by the name of Kayrue Smith had owned it. And he had gotten it from his father-in-law, William Wellington Baker, who owned the property and lived ....His home was where the Mighty Mart is now. And he owned a huge portion of Hindman, clear up nearly to, up here at Frogtown. He owned an awful lot. All where the settlement is, he owned all of that. And then his daughter, Marybelle, who married Kayrue Smith, who incidentally in nineteen oh three is the father of the Bank of Hindman. You remember Baker Bill Smith? You've heard of him. Baker Bill Smith, that's Billy Miller's daddy.

N.M.: Oh.

YOUNG: Was 45:00the child of Kayrue Smith. And my Uncle Afton Smith, was one of them. Grep Napier, who died just recently was one of the children. Ruth Green, Hillard Smith, it was a huge family. And most of them were born over there, up on the green. above where the parking lot is behind May Stone. There was a big, nice, frame building there. And their well was there in the yard. And when I was growing up, the well was still there, in the upper part of the green, behind the Orchard House. That's where we had the May Day programs.

END OF TAPE 20 A 26a, ROBERT CHARLES YOUNG, SIDE A BEGINNING OFTAPE 20 A 26a, ROBERT CHARLES YOUNG, SIDE B YOUNG: When the women came back in nineteen ten, they started building buildings. They built Orchard House, they built the Grade School Building, 46:00they built the Kindergarten Building. And pretty soon after that, by nineteen fifteen, I'm guessing, they had a high school building built, which was a huge, log structure, that sat right next to the ... .i fyou come across. Let's picture the settlement, over here was the Orchard House, right here is the Pettit Building, now, Recreation House is up there, Stuckey Building is right back over here, that was the, they called that the hospital then. And Hillside was up there where Miss Watts is buried. That was the main office and the Girls' dormitory. And then the Orchard House housed the dining room and the kitchen and a whole bunch of stuff, dormitory too. Eastover was where the, nearly where the Pettit Building is, 47:00in that general vicinity. Eastover was back closer to the bridge, about where the parking lot is now. But if you come down from Orchard House, you cross the bridge and you walk a line that would be generally -you know where the bridge that goes across, way back over here, close to the old high school? There's a walk bridge.

N.M.: Yeah, that little walk bridge.

YOUNG: Okay. From the bridge down at the settlement, there was a straight line to that bridge, when I was growing up. And on that road, on that walkway, there were flowers planted all along. In the spring, the first thing that bloomed, there were thousands, literally thousands of daffodils. And then 48:00the next thing behind the daffodils were irises. Irises bloomed, daffodils bloomed, nothing else bloomed then. Then the irises bloomed, nothing else bloomed then. Then the next thing that bloomed behind them were, we always called them peonies, but the correct name is peony, I think. Miss Martha Burns took care of the grounds and saw that the grounds were mowed and the flowers were planted and transplanted and separated.

N.M.: Pictures look pretty nice.

YOUNG: Oh it was a gorgeous place. It was a garden of Eden. You just can't imagine. There were flowers everywhere, bushes and trees. There used to be a Gingko tree that had little fan like leaves right outside the Orchard House.

N.M.: I bet somebody would be surprised if they came into eastern Kentucky at that time and looked around. And then stumbled into ...

YOUNG: Absolutely. 49:00And people came from everywhere to see it, because it was beautiful. It was an unusually gorgeous place. But you come down that walk, over here's Orchard House, you come down this walk, all these flowers, everything growing. Everywhere there was a walkway there were flagstones you walked on. You never, there was no wooden, there was no stone, I mean, you know, stacked up, masonry work, none of that. It was just flat rocks, everywhere there was walkways. It was gorgeous, it was just like a storybook. And you come along this way and there was a little walkway up to the Kindergarten building and all these beautiful flowers. And the first thing you come to was the Fireside Cabin, which was absolutely beautiful. It had basically three rooms in it, just like it does now. 50:00A room on the right, a room on the left and one across the back. Absolutely looked like a storybook, a fairy tale, little building. Right in, kind of beside it, was the old, log structure, that when I was in high school, it was originally the high school. My dad said he remembers when they built, in nineteen twenty-eight they built the new .... Hindman Settlement School built Hindman High School, that stone structure. They were the ones that saw to it, that they had that built. That belonged to them. And then they just turned, they just gave it to the board of education in nineteen thirty. That's why I say, and it's none--none of my business and they aren't going to pay any attention to me, I don't expect. But I believe if the Knott County Board of Education did what was right, what was reasonable 51:00and right. They would simply turn that back over to the Hindman Settlement School. That's who built it and that's who made it what it is.

N.M.: Well...

YOUNG: That's not going to happen, I know.

N.M.: I wouldn't say, not going to happen.

YOUNG: Well, I hope it does. It should.

N.M.: They're bidding on a new location, the board of education is.

YOUNG: I hope that happens. That's the right thing to do.

N.M.: The settlement school still has a little clout.

YOUNG: Well, I hope so. Well anyway, my dad remembers when they moved. My mother was in high school. My mother's a little bit older than my daddy. But he remembers helping them carry the chairs and the books and all that stuff over to the new stone structure, the high school, from the old log building. But when I was in high school, that log building was the Manual Training Shop. Jethro Amburgey, wonderful person, 52:00the dulcimer maker. That dulcimer with the green flag on it over there. He made that. He was the great dulcimer builder of eastern Kentucky. He learned from, actually he didn't have lessons. But he learned to make dulcimers from .... Tum that off a second. [Tape resumes] but he remembers how to, how they carried the books and everything back over to the new building. And then of course, he had high school all together in that building. But I had Manual Training and Jethro Amburgey was the teacher. And almost all of the furniture, chairs, everything in the Hindman Settlement School, in those days, nothing was brought in. 53:00Everything was made. Everything was made there. I have, there's actually a dresser sitting there in the kitchen. I use it as a buffet. But my dad made that in high school. My brother when he was in high school, made twin beds. And all the beds, all the desks were made there. It's most all made out of walnut, none of it was varnished and all of that. It was oiled, beautiful stuff, absolutely gorgeous stuff All the stuff, you probably remember being in Miss Watts' apartment in Knoxville? All her furniture was made at Hindman Settlement School, beautiful stuff. Well anyway, Jethro Amburgey, the impact that he made on 54:00Hindman through his wood working is incredible. He died in nineteen seventy-one. And the last years of his life, he worked for the Health department. I don't know if he was a health inspector or I'm not sure what. But he, at one time he was Superintendent of Knott County Schools, Jethro Amburgey was. And he of course, is the man who owned the house that James Still owns now. That old, log house over on Wolf Pen. You've been to that, of course. That was, Jethro had "heired" that. He and his twin brother, Woodrow had "heired" that. That was where they were born and raised. That house was built in eighteen twenty-seven. 55:00When Mr. Still was looking for a place to live, in nineteen thirty-nine, he went over there to live, and rented for years from Jethro. And then after a period time, I don't know when, when that actually happened. But Jethro gave him that farm for his lifetime. So it's his now and will be for his lifetime. Of course, it goes back to Jethro's family when Mr. Still passes away. Jethro Amburgey was, I started to tell you about.. ..He had been raised up, of course, on Burgey's Creek. And the old dulcimer maker, Uncle Eddie Thomas, was the man who made dulcimers. The first man who made dulcimers. He's the first man who ever made dulcimers in production, as far as I know. 56:00There probably was others, but I don't know who they are. Practically everybody that makes dulcimers today, bears back to Uncle Eddie. And he was not all that wonderful a musician. He could sing and sang some old songs. And where he learned to make dulcimers, nobody will ever know, because he was born and raised over there. But there were dulcimers in North Carolina during that time and so somebody suggested it to him. Anyway, he made it his life's business. And Uncle Eddie made something like fifteen hundred dulcimers in his lifetime.

N.M.: That's a lot of dulcimers.

YOUNG: Incredible number. Well anyway, Jethro Amburgey had gone away and had a degree, a college degree. And had come back and was teaching Manual Arts and whatever else he did, working for the settlement school. And he went over to Uncle Eddie and said, "I'd like for you 57:00to teach me how to make dulcimers." And Uncle Eddie said, "I'm not going to teach you. You're the one with the college degree. [Laughing] You can make one, you don't need me." And he said, "yeah I want you to show me how you do it." And so he said, "well I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make a dulcimer, but I'll not put it together. I'll let you put it together." And so that's basically what he did. He made this dulcimer and he showed him how you put it together. He told him about it anyway. And the story is, I believe. I hope I'm getting this right. I've heard Jethro tell this story. That he said, "well. Well, Jethro when he got ready to go," he said, "how much do I owe you?" He said, "well I usually get six dollars for a dulcimer, but I'll just charge you five, 58:00because I didn't put it together." [Laughter] Isn't that good? So he paid five dollars for it. Well, Jethro brought those pieces back to his home. And he never put that one together. He used it as a pattern. He kept the fret board, stayed exactly the same. Nothing changed about the fret board. But he changed the shape of it a little bit. They were, the ones that Uncle Eddie made were more like, fuller shaped, bodied, like this one. But Jethro sleeked them down, changed the shape a tiny, little bit, changed the shape of the scroll, the part where the picks go. Changed it, designed it a little bit differently, made it a little bit thicker this a way, 59:00made a deeper fret board and voila. He invented a whole new style. And that one, of course, now is called the Amburgey-Thomas design. We refer to it as the hourglass shape. I don't think Uncle Eddie made any other shapes. I think he made all hourglass shapes. But some other dulcimer makers have made different shapes, like tear drops and this one over here is called a fish. There are a lot of different shapes. But Jethro basically stuck with that shape and he made thirteen hundred and thirty-seven. He was working on his last one when he died. He died suddenly in nineteen seventy-one. But the dulcimers 60:00have always been associated with this part of the world. And primarily because of Uncle Eddie Thomas and Jethro. Anybody that knows anything about dulcimers, that collected them and played them and studied folk music, somewhere in their background, their history as a musician comes back to these two men. Of course, Hindman has always been a real hot spot for folk music too. Because in nineteen oh seven, a woman by the name of Olive Dame Campbell came to the Hindman Settlement school. Now her husband was the famous John C. Campbell. You've heard of Brasstown? The Folk school in North Carolina, Folk 61:00Arts. Well, his wife was Olive Dame Campbell. I think he had died and anyway she was carrying out his work. And she came to the Hindman Settlement School, which by the way was the first settlement school in the world, established in nineteen oh two, as a settlement school. Others came and patterned themselves after this school. All other settlement schools, to my knowledge, except Pine Mountain Settlement School, there may be some others, are no longer in existence. Now Brasstown is a little bit different. It is a Folk school. I don't think it was ever called a settlement. It's still in existence. But all other settlement schools went defunct. They're not doing, of course even this one is doing a little bit different service.

N.M.: Changed with the times.

YOUNG: It changed with the times. 62:00But the rest of them, except Pine Mountain Settlement School. And it of course, is no longer a school at all. This one at least has a dyslexia school, you know. So, you can still call it Hindman Settlement School. It's still a school in that sense of the word. But all the rest of them are gone. It's the oldest one, and it's the only one still in existence, to my knowledge. But in nineteen seven, Olive Dame Campbell came and she heard children like Josiah Combs, who were students here then. Josiah Combs was one of the first people to publish folk songs, write down folk songs that he had been taught at home. And really at the very beginning, Catherine Pettit encouraged him 63:00to write down the words to some songs. Of course, all we have are words. We don't have the tunes now, the way that he sang them. In his book, some of the tunes have been written out. But most of them are just words. But the first instance of folk music being written down was done by Catherine Pettit and I think, Josiah Combs. There may have been some other students. I don't know who they were. But they sang these old songs and played dulcimers. And Olive Dame Campbell came here on a visit and she heard these children sing and was absolutely astounded by it. And she was somewhat of a musician, so she set down the words and wrote out the music to these songs. And took them back to 64:00North Carolina with her. And in several years, not until probably, well I don't know. She might have used them and told about them and sang them, and whatever, all that time. But in nineteen seventeen, she contacted a man by the name of Cecil Sharpe, who had come from England to America to see if there were any remnants of old English folk songs in Appalachia. Now he was up in Boston or somewhere. He was headed toward these parts, but he didn't know quite how he was going to get here. But Olive Dame Campbell sent him copies of some of these old songs. Now, I don't know what they were. I would guess that they were Barbara Allen probably and some of those ....

N.M.: Ballads.

YOUNG: Old ballads that we sing now, today. I would guess that Fair Elindor was one of them, and The Brown Girl 65:00might have been one of them. I don't know what they were, which ones were sent to him. But he saw this music and he said, well of course, those are English ballads. And so he came to Hindman Settlement School in nineteen seventeen. Now Pine Mountain Settlement School was founded by Catherine Pettit in nineteen thirteen. So, she had left and gone over to Harlan County. And so he spent, Cecil Sharpe spent some time here and some time at Pine Mountain Settlement School, and went all into the area, gathering up these songs. He has an enormous collection of songs that he collected. He went down in North Carolina too. He 66:00just traveled all over Appalachia. And he carried back all these marvelous songs that were in a pure form of how they left England. In England they died, but they stayed alive here in Appalachia. Well, that was in nineteen seventeen. In nineteen fourteen, a woman by the name of Lorraine Wayman and a man by the name of Howard Brockway, who was a musician, a very fine pianist and able to write music at great speed. And they went together. They came and lived at the Hindman Settlement School. And then went over to Pine Mountain, too. They went out all in Harlan county and Breathitt County--and Perry County and Floyd County and all this, Letcher County, and all this area around here. And collected about a hundred songs. She was not a musician. She was an 67:00English teacher, maybe, I don't know. Anyway, she was interested in the poetry of these songs, the lyrics of these songs. She collected the lyrics. And he set down the tunes. And then in nineteen sixteen they published a book called, "The Lonesone Tunes." And a great number of them came from right here in Hindman. One of the songs that you may know, that came out of that collection was, I had cat. My cat pleased me. I fed my cat under yonder tree. Cat goes fiddle I fee. I had a hen. My hen pleased me. I fed my hen under yonder tree. Hen goes chimee chuck, chimee chuck, cat goes fiddle I fee. It is an accumulative song. And there's about ten or fifteen verses probably. [Laughing] But that was one of the songs that was in the lonesome tune, Lonesome Tunes. Barbara Allen, Lord Bateman, which is also called The Brown Girl, Fair Elindor, 68:00all these old songs were in that collection of songs. Sourwood Mountain was collected over here in Letcher county. Chickens crowing on Sourwood Mountain, heigh ho, doodle on the day. I don't know exactly how it goes. But that's one of the songs that's in The Lonesome Tunes. And that was published in nineteen sixteen. And it was written for of all things. Howard Brockway was quite a musician. He took these old tunes and because they were in these unusual minor modes of keys. He couldn't just write chords and say, this is how you sing these. Because there were no chords to go to these modes. So to sell it, nobody was going to buy music with just a tune and words. They 69:00wanted to sell that book. They wanted to make money on it. So, he wrote these elaborate piano accompaniments, elaborate, big, huge, wonderful things. That goes on behind these haunting melodies and these words. And it sold. And so The Lonesome Tunes is a very famous book. It's out of print now. I'd love for somebody to revitalize that book. Marvelous book.

N.M.: Do you have a copy of it?

YOUNG: I have a copy of a copy. The settlement owns a copy. And Mrs .... .I put it on the copy machine and copied it, is where I got my copy. But Beulah Bell, Mrs. Bell has a copy of it, and she told me that she would someday give me that book.

N.M.: Well, Bob, that looks like all we've got on this tape. I'll turn it off a minute. 70:00END OF INTERVIEW ROBERT C. YOUNG, INTERVIEW# 2 INTERVIEWED BY NANATHAN MULLINS JUNE 29, 1998 HINDMAN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL NATHAN MULLINS: Okay, if you could, do you want to talk about Miss Standish?

ROBERT CHARLES YOUNG: Yeah, Miss Standish.

N.M.: Tell me about her.

YOUNG: Miss Standish was the librarian at Hindman Grade school. Well, she was librarian for the whole business. And she had come there, I'm not sure when. I think Mr. Still 71:00was the librarian before her, immediately before her and then he went off to the war.

N.M.: This World War I?

YOUNG: This was World War II. Now, I'm not sure. He might not have been. I think he taught. He taught typing and I'm not sure what all else. And I think he ran the library at that time, too. The library at that time, in nineteen twenty-eight, when they moved into the big, new, newly built Hindman High School, the stone structure that is still there. There was one room that faced Hindman. A long room, that was the library and they taught typing in there and I'm not sure what all else. But Mr. Still was in there. That was, of course, before I can remember. At any rate, he went off to serve in World War II and was in Africa and I'm not sure where all. 72:00And then he came back. I'm not sure when he came back. But in the meantime, they had built the new library building, which is there now. It is called the James Still Building. But it was built, I'm guessing in nineteen forty-five. I think I heard somebody say that it was.

N.M.: What was the original name of the building?

YOUNG: Hindman Library Building.

N.M.: Hindman Library Building.

YOUNG: Yeah. If it had another name, I'm not aware of it. It might have. I know that it was built. It became James Still just a few years ago. I know that Miss Watts had something to do with the design of the building. It's designed after a building up east, one that she, maybe her home or a relative's home.

N.M.: Someplace special to her?

YOUNG: I don't think it was a library. But it was some kind of a real special building to her. And she loved 73:00the way it looked. And it's an exact replica of some building somewhere. [Music] That's my cuckoo clock. It's a little cuckoo, but it's all right. But anyway, she was very instrumental in the building being like it is. And that was, I believe, built in nineteen forty-five, but I'm not sure. And the library was moved into that building. Well, I went to school in forty-seven, I believe, as a first grader, the Fall of forty-seven. And my first, second and third grades, Miss Standish was the librarian. The first and second for sure, but I believe Mr. Still was there, when I was in the fourth grade, probably. But she retired. She was an elderly lady, and very sweet and very kind. I remember loving to go to the library. We'd sit 74:00on the floor. There were two huge rooms in the front of the library, and the one to the right was for elementary children. And the one to the left was for high school, basically. And there were little, bitty chairs and a huge fireplace in the elementary side, and not nearly as many books. But there were little tables and a lot of chairs. And we would, more times than not, sit on the floor. Most of the time, we would sit on the floor and she would read to us. I really loved going. And I loved Miss Standish. I can see her face in my mind right now. A very kind person, old and gentle. And then when I believe, when the year I was a fourth grader, Mr. Still, James Still came back as full 75:00time librarian. And then he was there throughout my grade school years. And then in high school, when you are a Sophomore I believe, when I was in high school. Maybe it was Freshman, Freshman or Sophomore year, one or the other. You took a class under Mr. Still called Library Science. I still have the little textbook that we had. You had to learn the Dewey decimal system and all about how to catalogue books. We learned all about the card catalogue and how to use it, and what should be on every card. It was a wonderful class. And the little textbook was a little paperback book. I still have it in there on the shelf. 76:00It was wonderful. And he gave a grade and everything, it was on the report card. And at that time, Mr. Still was just somebody that I admired and looked up to, and would never have approached him. He was not unapproachable by any stretch of the imagination, but he was somebody like, well I kind of had him like a principal. I would never have gone up and said blah, blah, blah, to, "How you doing?", that kind of stuff with the principal.

N.M.: Hold a conversation.

YOUNG: I kept my mouth shut. Well, I was that way with Mr. Still. I recognized him as a high authority, I suppose and somebody that in a sense was not available to me to discuss the weather or whatever. 77:00N.M.: Did he carry more authority than most of the other teachers?

YOUNG: He never raised his voice, he never gave me the first reason ... . . . I wasn't afraid of him. It wasn't that.

N.M.: Yeah.

YOUNG: It was just an authority figure that demanded a great deal of respect, more respect than just small talk. But I'm sure that was just in my head. Now, he wasn't putting out those kind of vibes. It was just me. It was me. But it was a real, genuine respect. In those days, I would never have thought of myself as someone who would be going to dinner every Friday night with James Still.

N.M.: When you got older.

YOUNG: Right. [Laughter] As an old man, I look at him quite differently than I did then. But even in high school, when I had a class under him, I 78:00had a great reverence for him.

N.M.: What kind of a teacher was he like?

YOUNG: By some people's standards, probably kind of dry. But he covered the material. He touched every base. He was an excellent teacher. And he had, as now, he does very much now have this mesmerizing effect on whoever he talks to. You listen to him. I mean you're just fixed on him when he's talking. Almost the sound of his voice, I don't tend to have any reason for why it is that way. But even then, well when I go to dinner with him now on Friday night, he has my full attention. 79:00There's something about his voice, that just, I guess, I don't know. But anyway he was recognized I think , by me and everybody else, as somebody who's coming from where they know what they're talking about. He puts out vibes of being a sage or a storehouse of wisdom. He comes across like that even still. But in those days, I guess that's how I looked at him. And he along with several other teachers, represented really the Hindman Settlement School to all of us who were students. There were several teachers who were hired by the settlement. 80:00But they were the people who made Hindman High School what it is. For instance, the music teacher was a settlement teacher, Ruthie White, who was my piano teacher. I started taking piano lessons with Ruthie White in my second grade. When I entered the second grade, I started taking piano lessons. And Ruthie White was a person, unlike any other person I've ever known. She was just an ordinary music teacher. I know now that she was just an ordinary music teacher, exceptionally good, but just an ordinary person. But I looked at her, like some kind of saint, or some kind of angel, special messenger. But she was paid by the Hindman Settlement School and provided a place to live. And 81:00as far as the Knott County Board of Education was concerned, she was just gravy. You know it didn't cost them anything. And James Still was the same way. Edith Orrick taught Home Economics at the high school, lived at the settlement, was a, made a wonderful contribution to Hindman High School. Jethro Amburgey, the dulcimer maker taught Manual Arts, Manual Training. He was hired by the settlement. As far as I know, these people never were paid, maybe they were, I don't know. I don't think they were paid their full salary. They may have had some kind of system worked out, where the settlement paid 82:00part of it and the board paid part. At any rate, the board was getting a wonderful deal. There was almost always, well, there always was, from the time I started in the first grade until I graduated from high school, a folk dance teacher. When I was growing, when I was in elementary school, there were several wonderful people, one named Miss Winthrop and one named Miss Bishop. I'm not sure, they may be the same person, because one of those women did get married. And her name changed. When I was in high school there was a Baldwin, whose first name I can't tell you. A wonderful folk dance teacher. And of course, Raymond McClain was always there helping with the folk dancing. And in high school, when 83:00we folk danced, he usually had someone who was calling the dance, giving directions. And he more times than not, played the accordion for us to folk dance. Raymond McClain.

N.M.: So you all danced to the accordion?

YOUNG: Yes, we danced to the accordion, yes at the high school. And now ....

N.M.: Would you have these classes at the high school building?

YOUNG: In the gym, yeah, in the gymnasium. And one whole class, like all of the freshman class that wanted. Everybody didn't have to dance. If you didn't want to dance, you didn't have to. They made it, I guess, during study hall. I don't remember when it was. But we were allowed to go in. And I loved to dance. And on several occasions, after I was in high school, we went on trips. We went down to Homeplace 84:00and folk danced with those people down there, where Homeplace Hospital used to be. Are you familiar with that place? It's a clinic now. Ary, Kentucky, down beyond Dwarf, towards Jackson on the old road. But at any rate, they had folk dancers down there. And they would come here, on occasion. We'd go there on occasion. There were some other places we went. I don't remember specifically where they are, so I'll not mention them. I might goof up on that. But the folk dance teachers were always there, provided by the settlement school. And for a lot of years, before I got into high school, there was an art teacher, Frances Bradley, that worked for the settlement and was the weaving teacher at that time, and taught Art in the basement 85:00of the old Kindergarten Building. When she retired or left or whatever happened to her, they never had another art teacher. In other words, I didn't have an art teacher. I never had an art lesson in my life. I regret that too, because a lot of times, people that have musical ability, have artistic ability as well. I think I probably do, but it's never been developed. That's the only thing the Hindman Settlement School didn't do for us, they did practically everything else. The influence of the settlement school on every student that came through Hindman, grade school, especially, and Hindman High School, is beyond explanation. It was just 86:00a wonderful contribution.

N.M.: Why do you say the grade school especially?

YOUNG: Because the grade school building, as long as I was in grade school, as long as the grade school was on the settlement campus, it was a different picture. After they moved the grade school down below Hindman, it was out of reach of the settlement school. Now, they still provided the music teacher. Ruthie White went down there for years, after it moved down there. Well, not too many years, because she retired in a few years after it went down there. But she went down there. The music teacher still went. And I'm guessing they had a dance teacher, who went down there. But I was gone from here. They built that school, they opened it in the fall of sixty, down below Hindman, the grade school building. 87:00And in the Fall of sixty, I went away to college, so I wasn't much familiar with what happened down there. But I'm saying basically, the grade school especially, because it was on the campus. Every spring we had a picnic, the whole grade school. Now, we didn't all go at the same time. One grade would go at a time, I expect. But we would go, there was a wonderful, little picnic area. I don't know if you've ever been up to it or not. It's up above the road. You go up like you're going up to the water reservoir. You know where the reservoir is? Go on above the reservoir and there's a wonderful place up there, that had rocks set around for seats, marvelous picnic place. And every grade would take turns going up on that hill. 88:00And of course, the Recreation Building up there where they, they call it the John Priest Building now. That was one big, open room, when I was growing up. And we went over there to folk dance as grade school students. We didn't folk dance at school. We went over to the settlement, up on the hill, to the Recreation Building. That's where we did folk dancing, when I was growing up. And that's where the settlement folk danced in the evenings. They would go up to the Recreation Building. Now there used to be another building on above the Recreation Building, that they called the Rest House. People would go up there and be completely alone in solitude for a time. You know, people who worked at the settlement, instead of going on vacation 89:00and taking the weekend off somewhere. You couldn't travel off. There was no place to go and no money to do it. But you could go up there to the Rest House and it was like camping out for a while. Stay up there for a few days.

N.M.: Just to get away from it.

YOUNG: Just to get away from the world. A wonderful place, that is no longer there. But the influence of the settlement was always, always present. In the early years in grade school, until probably, I must have been the sixth or seventh grade, probably seventh grade, when they built the new gym over by the high school. And they put a lunch room in it. 90:00And then when we started going to the lunch room there. We walked over to the high school and went to the lunch room, which was underneath the gym. But before that.. .. You know where Hindman High School now has the big, long place where the board of education and all that is? That's the new part. It's a concrete block. It goes back toward town.

N.M.: Big rooms?

YOUNG: You know, and the hallway where the board of education, the superintendent's office and all that is? That was not there when I was growing up. There was an old, frame building. It was a home, it was a dwelling house that was there. And that was where our lunch room was.

N.M.: For the grade school?

YOUNG: For, well, no that was everybody's lunch room.

N.M.: High school and?

YOUNG: High school and grade school too, that was the lunch room. 91:00And I remember the first person that I associated with the lunch room, was Molly Bray. Now you may have known about Molly Bray, but she has been dead for a lot of years. You know the old building? It's really beginning to look kind of dilapidated now, but if you are going toward town from, say the public library? And you pass the house, the Pearl Combs house, where Moses lives?

N.M.: Yeah.

YOUNG: The next house going towards town?

N.M.: Yeah.

YOUNG: That was Molly Bray's home. Her husband's name was Crawford Bray. And she lived there then. It's a really nice home. She was raised in the house, where Bill Weinberg's home is, that was.. .it was a Combs. 92:00N.M.: The farm that went...?

YOUNG: Yeah, anyway. You know how the bottom part of their house is stone and the upstairs part is, they have their kitchen, I believe and so on, downstairs. Well, Molly Bray's house is back there. It's got stone downstairs, that's where they lived. And most everything upstairs was the dwelling part, bedrooms and so on. Well anyway, Molly Bray was working in the lunch room. And they had food, they cooked them in big kettles, I'm sure. And in those days in that old house, we went through the back porch, which was a screened in back porch, seems like. It couldn't have been in wintertime, though. But anyway, we went through a part that had been a back porch. And you come in the back door and you went across, 93:00down this way. And their tables were here and they had food in huge dish pans, like steel or big aluminum dish pans. They served, they dipped it out of there. Now, you go into a cafeteria and they've got a steam table and all that. They didn't have a steam table then, just a long table with dish pans of food. Well, we had these trays, even in those days, metal trays with compartments in them. I was carrying my tray along and they were putting things in it, as I passed by, and Molly Bray started to put peas in my plate and I pulled back my plate. And she said, "Now come on, you have to try these peas." I said, "Miss Bray, I don't like peas." And she said, "Well, now I tell you what. Let's make a deal. I'll just put a little bit on your plate, if you promise that 94:00you will taste them. You don't have to eat all of them, if you'll taste them. Will you do that?" I said, "Okay, I'll do that." So, she put them on there and I tasted them and I didn't like them. So, the next time we had peas, she said, "Will you have some peas?" And I said, "Well, I tasted them and I don't like them." She said, "Now you try it one more time. Okay?" Well, when I tasted them that time, they tasted good. And to this day, peas are my favorite thing. [Laughing] I think she put a whammy on me or something. The lunchroom was in the little, frame building there. When they built the new gym, Mr. Dean Williams, who was the janitor for us, moved into that little house. When they moved the lunchroom into the gym, he, as janitor, lived in that house. 95:00He had a great, big family. I was stuck on his daughter for a while. Back to the settlement, the connection to the school. Everything that was pleasurable, at Christmas time, the Hindman Settlement School provided every child with a Christmas gift. And I remember, even after I went to high school, we got, one of the things ....Yeah, they usually gave us an apple and an orange and a little box. Now, if you've seen these little boxes that you buy animal crackers in. Have you seen the little? They look like little train cars that would have animals from a circus. You've seen the little ...?

N.M.: Yeah.

YOUNG: Okay, now the Hindman Settlement School 96:00gave us a box, it had -looked like a Christmas card on the outside, had pictures of the Nativity scene and things like that on it. Most always were blue with bright colors on it. And when you opened up this little box, it had a little string across the top of it. You opened up the lid and it had two compartments. One side had hard candy in it and the other side had peanuts in the shell. And you got that. That was the gift to every student in Hindman Grade School and Hindman High School at Christmas time from the Hindman Settlement School. And usually an apple and an orange. It all came in a little bag. You can't know how important that was, unless you were there. I looked forward to that. Now, we weren't rich, wealthy people. I usually got 97:00nice things, you know. But there were a whole lot of kids, at Christmas time that maybe the only thing they got. ...

N.M.: Was from the Hindman Settlement School.

YOUNG: Was from the Hindman Settlement School. And that was such a meaningful thing to me. I came to....not just because oft hat, but because o fall the things that happened. I came to think of the Hindman Settlement School as the most wonderful place. It was the most, strongest influence on every aspect of my life. It gave me music, it gave me folk dancing, it gave me all the pleasures, the wonderful side of life and living. 98:00And then when I got to Hindman High School, I had struggled. I think I share with you, not on tape, but I struggled academically all through grade school and high school too, for that matter, for various reasons I expect. But the things that represented all the beautiful things, the Manual Training under Jethro Amburgey was absolutely incredible. I learned all about recognizing trees and kinds of woods, how to do all kinds of wooden craft things, joints and all of that.

N.M.: What were some things you would make in class?

YOUNG: I started to say there used to be a little table right there, that I made. I made a little table. 99:00N.M.: If you made it, did you get to keep it?

YOUNG: Yeah, uh huh, right. Now if you used a reasonable amount of wood that had to be purchased, well you were expected to pay for your wood and so on like that. And I bought, several times I bought pieces of wood. There used to be a lumber company up here in Frogtown, Compton Lumber Company. It became Promart. They moved from here up there, to where Promart is, and it was Compton's Lumber Company even then for a long time. And then Ed Compton, the man that owned it, died. His children ran it for a long time and then they sold it to, I'm not sure who. Anyway, Bob Thacker owns it now. That's something different. But there was lumber available. I made a little lamp, 100:00that looked like a water pump. You push the little pump, it turns the light off and on. [Laughing] Had a little string up to the light. Had a little base and a little post. Numerous things, there's a dresser in my dining room here. I keep my table cloths and things in it. My father made that in high school. There's a desk around that corner in that room, a walnut desk that my father made.

N.M.: So you all made some nice stuff.

YOUNG: We made some really nice things. And all the furniture in the settlement, well there's not much of it there now. But all the furniture in all the rooms, beds and the dressers, tables and corner cabinets and all that stuff, the chairs, 101:00was made at the settlement by settlement students. And then any student that came through Hindman High School made things, who didn't live at the settlement, that they took home with them. My brother made twin beds, cherry twin beds. They're, my family still has those beds, beautiful, turned cherry, beautiful. That's what I'm trying to say. The influence of the settlement was not just a select people. The people who lived at the settlement, just as far as I was concerned, lived in heaven. But all of us, our lives were made better, because of the settlement school. The building that is the Hindman High School now, the big stone building, was built by the settlement school and literally given to the Knott County Board 102:00of Education. It was built in nineteen twenty-eight. I think they moved into it in nineteen thirty. I'm not sure, maybe they moved into it in nineteen twenty-eight. Of course, I wasn't here. I remember reading about it. After a period of time, they signed it over to the board of education, lock, stock and barrel. So I would .... The board of education, I'm thinking, should see that and remember it. I don't know if they will or not. About the building of the Hindman High School, there were Italian stone masons that came here and built that. They 103:00were Italian, I can't think of a single, solitary one of them' s name now. Well, one of them' s name was Parello. Most of them ended up in Whitesburg. They stayed in Kentucky. They worked in Whitesburg after they did this work here. I guess, retired and just stayed. There's several people over there. Mr. Still has a good friend that he sees, Frank McCarty. McCarty? Is that his name? No! Gerodo. I don't remember for sure. Anyway, they were Italian stone masons and they came here and built Hindman High School. And the Presbyterian church where I work, in 104:00Whitesburg, Grand Memorial Presbyterian Church was built by those same stone masons. And on the front of that church, being from Italy, they form fashioned a stone in the shape o fa boot. You know, like the country of Italy is in the shape of a boot? It's not exactly like a boot, it looks more like Santy Claus's boot. But it is on the front of that building.

N.M.: One of the stones is ....

YOUNG: There is a stone there, that's in the shape of a boot. Now, I can tell you where it is, I can show you. It's still one stone, but the people of the church were not happy that there was a big boot on the front of the church. And so, before they left the job, they took a chisel and put some marks on the boot, so that it doesn't look like a boot anymore. But that was their little way of saying we're 105:00Italian stone masons.

N.M.: But if you look, you can still see it?

YOUNG: Oh yes, it's still quite visible, if you know where to look. I wish I could remember those men's names, some of them, that worked over here and over there. The stone that was quarried for Hindman High School is in there behind, most of the stone, I think, for the high school came .... You know where Tommy Cody lives? There in the hollow, close to the Hindman High School, behind the gym, basically. Up in the hollow, there is a stone quarry. It's still there, where they cut that stone right out of the mountain. They were right there and built this wonderful courtyard. The courtyard is one unique place. When I was in 106:00high school, there was some bushes in there, I think. They were just little shrubs. But we used that. Now, when you go in there, it's there's big trees and bushes, some great, big things growing in there. But there was a flagpole in the middle. It was basically open, like it is now. We always came and went from the front door, up the steps, through the gates. Those gates are very picturesque and beautiful and they appear in everything, in all the annuals. The gates of steel, iron gates at the front of the building are there. Now, I don't remember exactly when it was. I expect when they built the gym, they opened the end 107:00of one of the hallways -not a hallway, but a court, the opened end of it, to go out. And now you can go out the side of the building over to the gym. Every classroom was used. I can tell you who all the teachers were in all the classrooms, when I was there. When you came in the front, the gate of the high school, immediately to your right, was the Principal' s office. Claude Fradey was the Principal. His wife, Eloise, was the school secretary. Juanita Singleton was the guidance counselor. There was a room immediately to the right of the principal's office, 108:00that was kind of like a book room. I'm not sure what all happened in there. Except I think, the teachers maybe kind of used it like a lounge. And then you went on around and then steps went down into a restroom. That was the men's, the boy's restroom, downstairs. And then you come on around and facing town there was a huge, long room. Juanita Hall was the teacher there. She taught junior English. And all the years that I was in high school, that was her room. She was one of my favorite teachers. Later on I'll talk about Juanita Hall, she's a wonderful person. And the room next to hers was Bevie Pratt. She taught English, Freshman and Sophomore English. And then you go on up the 109:00steps on the next level up. And the room on the corner, facing town, I suppose, was the Home Ee Department. Edith Orrick, who was a settlement teacher, taught in that room. I never was in that room, except to pass through. I'd seen in it a lot of times, but boys didn't go to the Home Ee Department. And then coming on around, by the time I got into high school, they had transformed the gymnasium into several rooms. And the first room that you came to, had the stage. And about half of the gym was a study hall. And there were one hundred and twenty-five students when I was a freshman. 110:00And that was our home room, freshman home room. It was a study hall. And it was half of the old gymnasium. Just a huge room, high ceilings. And Bevie Pratt was my home room teacher, when I was a freshman. And then you come back out and go around the court a little farther and there was a door that entered at the other end of the gym, what used to be the gym. And they had about three rooms in there, that were biology and those kinds of classes, Science Department. And then you come out of the courtroom, corner room, on the corner next to the gym, the new gym, was General Science Department. Cyrus lngel taught 111:00in that room. Come out and come back along the court, in the first room on that corner of the court, Lawson Cornett taught math. Also, that room had several teachers in it. It had, a few years later, Gordan Sparkman and Lawson Cornett kind of shared that room. They both taught in that room. And then the next room was Pearl Combs' room. He taught math and geometry and algebra. And then in the corner facing the gym was a little, bitty, narrow room. That was the typing room. Jack Cornett, who works in the bank, was the typing teacher. And then you come back out and in the front classroom 112:00next to the creek, which would be, if you come through, you've gone fully around the court. If you were back at the front gate, it's the room immediately to the left. Geneva Moore taught American history in that room. And later Beulah Bell taught in that room, music. That was the music room, after I graduated from high school. And over in, there were two rooms upstairs in the gymnasium, two huge classrooms. The one nearest the creek upstairs was Ralph Carter. He taught math. And the other room was Betty Combs. She taught senior English. 113:00And she also taught Latin and I'm not sure what, some other classes. And there was the gym, the main floor of the gym housed just the stage and the concession. That was all that was on that level. And then the downstairs part of that was the lunch room. And everybody ate in that lunch room, in the grade school and the high school, both. And there was a bridge and a walkway between the high school and the grade school. Also there was students going over that bridge to the library, the James Still Building, which was the library at that time. Also there were high school students crossing that bridge going over to the Manual Training Department, 114:00which was a huge log building sitting kind of back slightly from the Fireside Cabin, which was on that walkway that went back all the way over to the settlement. Now the Fireside Cabin is the one where the office is now. It used to sit over in the field, kind of behind the Kindergarten Building, which was up next to the road. The Manual Training Building was originally the old high school. That was where they were having high school classes when they built the Hindman High School that is over there now, the stone building. All right, in behind, here goes the walkway, here's the Fireside Cabin, here's the old high school building, where we had Manual Training, 115:00between them back there, next to the creek, was the old Solomon Everidge home, Uncle Sol's cabin. All that was down there in the field and every time the flood came, they all got drenched. [Laughing] That's why they eventually had to, they just had to move them. And so when Raymond McClain was director, I think the first thing they moved, probably was the Fireside Cabin. They moved it over there, where it is now, where Mike's office is and Genevieve and all that's in there. The back part, back where Rebecca's office is, was built on later. It was just the two log rooms and the one 116:00where Genevieve's office is. That's all there was of the original building. And then they eventually moved Uncle Sol over there. And they tore down the old high school building. The old Manual Training Building, they just tore it down. I don't know what happened to it. But then ....

END OF TAPE 20 A26b, ROBERT C. YOUNG, SIDE A BEGINNING OF TAPE 20 A26b, ROBERT C. YOUNG, SIDE B YOUNG: Well, out of the clear, blue sky it burned. Burned up everything they had. Burned up all of the records. Burnt, burned, just burned down. But there was a dormitory in there too, a boy's dormitory. A bunch of boys lived there. Well, they were homeless, so what did they do? For a little while they 117:00fixed the chicken house, so they could live in it. They lived down there, where Mrs. Earp's house is, that was the chicken house. [Laughter] They lived there for a little while, until they got the Fireside Cabin renovated and added all that stuff on to it.

N.M.: On the back.

YOUNG: You know the little room above...

N.M.: Yeah.

YOUNG: The little floor that's like this? [Laughing] N.M.: It's a slanted floor.

YOUNG: That was little Raymond's bedroom. That was a bedroom for little Raymond. Was that thunder?

N.M.: I believe so.

YOUNG: That is. And so they built all that on and added to it, and Raymond and Betty and all their children moved into the Fireside Cabin. And that became the home of the Director.

N.M.: Still doesn't seem....

YOUNG: And then they put the office in Uncle Sol's cabin.

N.M.: Still doesn't seem like it would be big enough to 118:00hold ...

END OF INTERVIEW