Katherine Pettit
| Katherine Pettit | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 23, 1868 Fayette County, Kentucky |
| Died | September 3, 1936 (aged 68) |
| Occupation | Educator |
Katherine Rebecca Pettit (February 23, 1868 – September 3, 1936) was an American educator from Kentucky who contributed to the settlement school movement of the early 20th century.
Born the child of Benjamin Pettit on a prosperous farm in Fayette County, Kentucky, Pettit attended two years at Sayre School in Lexington. A member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs, she became a progressive educator.
Under the auspices of by the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs beginning in 1899, Katherine Pettit and May Stone spent three summers in social settlement work in Kentucky at Camp Cedar Grove, Camp Industrial (which later became the Hindman Settlement School), and Sassafras Social Settlement. Their journals, filled with words to local ballads and idiomatic expressions of their students and families from homes nearby, describe in detail their classes in health and homemaking, as well as teacher training. A local elder Solomon Everage watched the two women—"quare fotched-on women from the level land,"—for some time and eventually asked them to establish a permanent industrial school in the Troublesome Creek area.
In 1902 with financing from the Women's Christian Temperance Union, Katherine Pettit and May Stone co-founded Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, Kentucky. Pettit said that the goal of Hindman was "to know all we can and teach all we can." The Kentucky WCTU sponsored the school until 1915, when it was formally incorporated as a private, non-profit, non-sectarian, and non-denominational corporation.
May Stone remained at Hindman as principal until 1936. Many of the graduates remained in the area. Carl Perkins, a native of Hindman who served thirty-six years in the United States House of Representatives, was a graduate of the settlement school.
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