Berea College -- Affiliated Schools -- Normal School

Scope and Contents

Four records showing the connection between Berea College and the American Missionary Association including data regarding Berea College, information on John G. Fee's commission by the Association, and a letter (1867) of J.A.R. Rogers posturing for Berea to be the association's choice for their Normal School in Kentucky.

Abstract

John Franklin Smith taught in both the Berea College Academy School and the Normal School from 1911 to 1931.  Originally drawn to Berea to teach Rural Social Science, Smith also served as a publicity agent for serveral years and directed the College Sunday School for fifteen years.  Smith was a prolific writer, including a poet. Smith retired from Berea in 1931 due to illness.

Abstract John F. Smith taught in the Berea College Normal School.  As part of his Composition and Rhetoric course, Smith asked students to write down the names of banjo and fiddle songs and tunes known to them in their home districts of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee.  The results are a large, varied body of material that includes ballads, songs, fiddle and banjo tunes, and games.  Several students also included lists of musical instruments present in their home communities and descriptions of music...

Abstract Louis Charles Karpinski (1878 –1956) was an American mathematician born in Rochester, New York.  Karpinski received a Teacher’s Diploma from Oswego State Normal School in 1897.  In 1898, he went to Kentucky to teach at the normal department of Berea College.  He would leave Berea in 1899 to enter Cornell University and would go on to receive his Dr. Phil. Nat. from the American College of the Kaiser Wilhelms-Universitat zu Strassburg in 1903.   He also studied (1909–1910) at Columbia, where...

Abstract

Nora Baker was a 1932 graduate of Berea College. She also attended the Normal (Vocational) School and graduated in 1916. Baker returned to work as a teacher in Berea and to work at the College later in life.