High-resolution, full color images available online
Search, browse, read, and print yearbook pages
View college, high school, and military yearbooks
Browse our digital annual library spanning centuries
Support the schools in our program by subscribing
Privacy, as we do not track users or sell information
Page 20 text:
“
Early in life, Martha Berry started visiting the cabins of the mountain folk in the Blue Ridge Mountains around her home near Rome, Georgia. Here, she saw the bitterness of the poverty-stricken lives and realized even as a young girl their lack of opportunity to better themselves. These descendants of the old Scottish, English, and Irish families who had settled in the hills were prevented from competing in the local labor markets by lack of skills, inherent pride, and fierce independence. Hence, they did not have even the small pay they could have derived from such work, but struggled along tending their mountain patches for a bare existence. Martha McChesney Berry was born in 1866, the second of eight children. Her father, Thomas Berry, left his plan- tation home in Virginia when he was twenty and settled in North Georgia. At an early age, Martha Berry persuaded her father to allow her to attend school at home. He built a log school- house in the grove at Oak Hill, where she was tutored by a governess. At sixteen, she was sent away to Madame LeFebre’s School in Baltimore, where she remained for only one year, preferring home, her family, and native surround- ings to finishing school and the European tour, most well- to-do families considered important for their daughters. On a Sunday afternoon in 1900, while playing the small melodeon in the schoolhouse, Miss Berry was surprised to see several small mountain children, as shy as fawns, peering in the window. Inviting them in, she asked if they had been to Sunday School, only to learn that these chil- dren of an innately religious people had never even heard of Sunday School. While spending the remainder of the afternoon singing and playing hymns and reading Bible stories to the children, she little dreamed that she was founding the nucleus of the renowned Berry Schools that have since lighted the way for many thousands. On the following Sunday the children returned with their friends and relatives. Before long, Miss Berry found herself with four Sunday Schools in different parts of the foothills. Along with spiritual training, she began teaching in the schools on weekdays. She built a schoolhouse across from the little cabin and engaged another teacher. Day schools did not prove practical. The children were often kept at home to perform farm chores or lived so far back in the hills on the mountain trails that it was impossible for them to reach school in bad weather. Realizing this, she took a large part of the inheritance from her father and built a large dormitory to house the boys who were going to work with their hands to provide History of Our Schools the means for a formal education. She was determined that these students should live, learn and work in physical and spiritual beauty. To accomplish this, she was most careful of the school’s architecture and she herself, with a natural talent for landscaping, planted the grounds, which she deeded to the schools to make sure the children attending would be her only heirs. ° The boarding school opened on January 2, 1902, with a few select boys from her surrounding day schools, and the Martha Berry School at Mount Berry, Georgia, started. The tuition could be paid or earned, but the boys had to do some work regardless of how the tuition was paid. They were taught to cook, to wash clothes, and Miss Berry consulted experts on farming and dairying to enable her to guide the boys in field and dairy work. Her zeal in extolling the virtues of the mountain people won the audience and this was the beginning of many such expeditions all over the country. Word of the school and the happiness of its students spread throughout the hills and it soon became a problem to take care of all the boys who wished to attend the school for a time, and put in three months’ work for a year of study. In 1909, the Berry School for girls opened, the first buildings being built by the boys. Today, there is the Mount Berry School for Boys and the co-ed Mount Berry College. The Berry Schools now have more than one hundred buildings, more than thirty thousand acres of pasture, fields and forests, and a campus said to be the most beautiful in America. Its buildings in Georgian Colonial, Greek Re- vival, and Gothic architecture make an impressive sight along with the simple original log structures. One of the most generous gifts ever made to the school was that of Henry Ford, who stopped by for a visit and was so impressed with what he saw that he gave three million dollars to construct the Girls’ School. The Mount Berry Chapel, which seats 1600 people, is one of the most beautiful buildings on the campus. The Frost Memorial Chapel, located on the high school campus, is constructed of native stone the boys at the school cut. They also built its pews and carved the pulpit. There have been sixteen thousand graduates from the Berry Schools. Its alumni include scientists, teachers, law- yers, editors, and, in fact, people in almost every pro- fession. Each year, thousands of people visit the Berry Schools. Here, they see the realization of the dream of unassuming, gently bred Martha Berry.
”
Page 19 text:
“
MRS. ETHEL COLQUITT Dedication as one of our most precious high school memories. Words can’t express our appreciation for their various contributions; but to show how much we love, honor, and respect them, the senior class dedicates the 1961 Torch to their housemothers Mrs. Mary Morton Winton and Mrs. Ethel Colquitt.
Are you trying to find old school friends, old classmates, fellow servicemen or shipmates? Do you want to see past girlfriends or boyfriends? Relive homecoming, prom, graduation, and other moments on campus captured in yearbook pictures. Revisit your fraternity or sorority and see familiar places. See members of old school clubs and relive old times. Start your search today!
Looking for old family members and relatives? Do you want to find pictures of parents or grandparents when they were in school? Want to find out what hairstyle was popular in the 1920s? E-Yearbook.com has a wealth of genealogy information spanning over a century for many schools with full text search. Use our online Genealogy Resource to uncover history quickly!
Are you planning a reunion and need assistance? E-Yearbook.com can help you with scanning and providing access to yearbook images for promotional materials and activities. We can provide you with an electronic version of your yearbook that can assist you with reunion planning. E-Yearbook.com will also publish the yearbook images online for people to share and enjoy.
