Olive Dame Campbell

Olive Dame Campbell (1882–1954) was an American folklorist.

Olive Dame Campbell was born Olive Arnold Dame in 1882 in Medford, Massachusetts. From a young age, education played an important role in her life, as her father was the head of a private high school. She graduated from Tufts College in 1900 during a time when most women did not pursue higher education. In 1903 she met her future husband John Charles Campbell (1867-1919), 15 years her senior, who was a missionary school teacher, marrying him in 1907, after which he went on to become a noted educator and social reformer.

Olive was Campbell’s second wife, and together they traveled to Appalachia, where John had received a grant in 1909 to study the area’s social and cultural conditions in hopes of improving their school systems. While there, Olive noted that ballads sung by the residents had strong ties to both English and Scots-Irish folk songs. The ballads that she collected would eventually be published as English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians by Cecil Sharp and Olive D. Campbell in 1917. This collection would later influence several productions, particularly the 2000 drama film Songcatcher.

After only 12 years of marriage, Olive’s husband John died in 1919. After his death, Olive worked on collecting and organizing his notes from their work together so that a report of his survey could be published. Attempting to follow the writing style of her husband as much as possible, Olive Campbell successfully published “The Southern Highlander and His Homeland” in 1921 under John’s name.

In 1922 Olive was back to work and ready to embark on a trip to Copenhagen via a fellowship provided by the American-Scandinavian Foundation in order to study the Danish Folk School style of education, in hopes of finding a way to revitalize the local Appalachian school system. Accompanied by her sister Daisy Dame and colleague Marguerite Butler, the women spent 18 months traveling between Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, visiting local schools along the way.

In 1925 upon her return, Olive founded the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. This folkehjskoler, or folk school dedicated to her late husband was based on noncompetitive Scandinavian schools for common people, where no grades were given and no one ever failed. Instead, students and teachers formed a community that worked together in the process of improving their quality of life through education. Keith House, the heart of the school was built on land donated by the parents of Fred O. Scruggs, with materials and labor pledged and donated by local people who were delighted to have a school dedicated to their well being. At first the curriculum centered around improving agricultural practices to relieve poverty. For decades regional folk dancing was also encouraged. With Olive's encouragement, idle men sitting outside of Fred O. Scruggs' General Store found a way to bring much-needed income to their families by carving realistic animals. The Brasstown Carvers began with Olive's designs then branched into original work.

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