The Blossom Woman: Miss Katherine Pettit First Visited Hindman during the Feuding Days of the Late 1800's

Katherine Pettit, 1869-1936 62 The Blossom Woman MISS KATHERINE PETTIT FIRST VISITED HINDMAN DURING THE FEUDING DAYS OF THE LATE 1800'S by LUCY FURMAN The close, life-long friendship between Katharine Pettit and Lucy Furman began while they were students at the old Sayre Female Institute in Lexington, Kentucky. Katharine Pettit came from the local Bluegrass region, Lucy Furman from the western part of Kentucky at Henderson. It was through this friendship that Lucy Furman, already a writer of note (Stories of a Sanctified Town), came to The Hindman Settlement School, Hindman, Kentucky, the general scene of many of her later stories. Katherine Pettit came of pioneer stock, both sides. Her people were among the earliest settlers in Kentucky. One ancestor, John Bradford, brought the first printing press across the Appalachians, and published the first newspaper, the Lexington Gazette, in the new country. Katherine was born on her father's large bluegrass farm just outside of Lexington. From early childhood she had heard much about the mountain third of the state from a family friend, Dr. Edward Guerrant, a Presbyterian minister who had worked for years in the little known regions , which had been isolated from the rest of the world for more than a hundred years. Ellen Semple, famous Kentucky geographer of the past century, explains why: "The Cumberland Plateau, north of Pine Mountain," she writes, "is an upheaved area whose surface has been carved out by drainage streams into a maze of gorge-like valleys separating the steep slopes. Railroads skirt the outer edges, but nowhere penetrate it, and the streams are not navigable. Roads there are almost none, —those that exist follow the creek beds. It is easy to understand why the settlers who went into these fastnesses seldom came out again, and for a century continued to live the pioneer life." For one purpose they always came out, —at the call of their country. With the blood of Cromwell's Ironsides and Scottish Highlanders in their veins, many fought in the Revolution. Soldiers returning from the War of 1812 not only called many of their daughters Lake Erie, but in honor of their hero had a new county cut out and named it Perry, with the county seat Hazard. And like the old Scottish chiefs, when there was no outside call, they waged wars among themselves. One of the fiercest of these feuds had been the French-Eversole "War," which centered at Hazard, and in which seventy men had been killed, many more wounded, and four counties finally involved. Reading in the papers in March 1895 that this feud was ended by the death of the last fighting man, Katherine decided to visit the mountains taking with her a 63 friend, Lucy Shelby, and two other ladies of Lexington. Traveling one day by train, on the new railroad to Jackson; and two more days by wagon, they reached Hazard. This place, now a large, highly prosperous city, was then a village of 500 people; cows wandered in its one street, hogs wallowed in its deep mud holes. The woman who kept the newly built hotel was ailing, and said she couldn't take the strangers unless they would cook for themselves, which they agreed to do. They then began making the acquaintance of the women of Hazard , who dropped into the hotel kitchen to see them and their "quare" ways. Upon finding the strangers friendly, they invited them to their homes, where tales as tragic as those of ancient Troy were heard, of husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, killed in the "war." The visitors were also taken to the graveyard, where lay the bodies of many of the feudists. It was a community of heart-broken women, fearful lest their sons grow up in the ways of their fathers. Katherine liked and pitied these women, and longed to stay with them and build what she called a "Home Industrial" where she could live and befriend them. At the time this was not possible. All she could do during the three years following was to return each summer for a visit, bringing with her traveling libraries of the Women's Temperance Union and the State Federation...