Oneida Baptist Institute Records

Oneida Baptist Institute in Clay County, Kentucky was founded by James Anderson Burns, a participant in the deadly feuding activity that plagued Clay County in the early 1900s. In his 1928 autobiography, The Crucible, Burns tells of how his participation ended when he was left for dead after a gun battle. He escaped to a mountain-top where he stayed for three days and underwent a transformation, finding that his “…urge for vengeance was gone.”

With the help of a West Virginia Baptist group, Burns entered Dennison University in Ohio where he began to think about how to stop the violence. His solution was “to teach the children of the hostile clans to love each other.  This done, the feuds will stop automatically.” Burns eventually returned to Clay County where he brought contending factions together and convinced them to send their children to a school he proposed to build at Oneida. Despite their limited education, he viewed area residents as … [possessing] a high degree of intelligence … [being] intensely religious and patriotic... [and] having in tradition what the world had in books.”  His confidence in the people’s innate intelligence and the transforming effect of Christian love, were the essence of Burns’ philosophy.

With the donations of small sums of money and large amounts of labor from the community, the first schoolhouse was finished in the winter of 1899. On the first day of school, January 1, 1900, four teachers met 125 students, several of whom were considerably beyond normal school age.

By 1917 there was a larger classroom building and a girl’s dormitory. The boys were being housed in town at that time because their dormitory had burned in 1913. In addition to educational basics there were courses in domestic science and manual arts.  By 1916 the Institute had begun operating extension schools in nearby communities, and Oneida teachers were teaching in “Moonlight Schools” conducted at night for working adults.

T.L. Adams, a mid-westerner with a background in teaching manual arts, became the Associate President in 1917.  While Mr. Adams’ papers were not among the extant Oneida records, how he viewed his role at Oneida and his attitudes about area people are well conveyed in articles he wrote for the Oneida Mountaineer.  He believed it was the Institute’s task to teach not only young people, but the whole community, which he described as being composed of the “purest Anglo-Saxon stock.”  He felt that the Institute should begin teaching better farm methods, convert its industrial operations—sawmill, grist mill, cane and cider mills—into small community industries, build a cannery to preserve local garden products, and expand flour and pork production for local consumption and sale outside the area. Some of Mr. Adams’ programs were implemented during a relatively brief tenure that extended only to about January, 1922.

James Burns’ 1921 retirement saw the Institute in serious financial difficulty. However, Associate President, Sylvia Russell, who assumed the directorship in 1922, soon achieved financial and administrative stability for the school and restored the confidence of the community and its donors.  By the time she left in 1928, the school’s $32,000 debt was repaid in full and there was a full staff and all the student’s that could be accommodated.  The March, 1930, Mountaineer reported that in 1928-1929 the Institute had the highest enrollment in Clay County—98 percent of whom were “true-born mountaineers” –as well as the highest percentage of over-age students, highest number of pupils from large families, and the highest percentage of girls.

Mrs. Russell was followed by a number of other dedicated administrators, of whom all but Eri Shumaker (1946-48), were native Kentuckians, and several of whom were OBI graduates.  J.H. Walker, who felt indebted to James Burns for persuading his father to send him to college, returned to the school as Vice-President from 1928-30.  Saul Hounchell became vice-president c. 1931-34 and again 1941-46; Charles Goins, c. 1934-41; Chester Sparks, 1948-62; David Jackson, 1962-72; and Barkley Moore, 1972-present.  Of these, only David Jackson was not an OBI graduate.

There appear to have been few major changes in the school philosophy or in the basic components of the program 1930s-1950s.  The school remained dedicated to providing as complete an education as possible through an emphasis on academics, manual labor, and religious instruction.  The economic woes of the Depression and WWII years hit the school particularly hard.  By February 1931 financial giving had dropped 60 percent. Later in the 1930s, austerity measures included teachers working without salaries for long periods, laying off office staff, and shutting off the electricity.  For a time during the 1940s the school asked students to contribute food from home gardens.  The program continued to succeed, however, for in 1945 Saul Hounchell reported the largest high school enrollment in the school’s history, and in 1953, Chester Sparks noted that the school had received more applications than it could accept.

During the 1960s the school began to describe its program as one which was geared toward students with “special needs” and started admitting more students from outside the immediate community, including some from urban areas and a small number of foreign students.  Despite the change in student body makeup, the educational program remained similar and the majority of the students came from Appalachia.

When the current president (1980s), Barkley Moore, assumed the administration in 1972, the school was in another period of serious crisis. Enrollment was down and staff morale was low, and the school was not doing well financially.  At a time when the status and the future of Church-affiliated boarding schools in Appalachia were highly uncertain, Moore implemented a wide-ranging program, which began to attract increased interest and support.  The strong emphasis on religious instruction, guidance, and practice was continued and a successful effort was made to upgrade academics, including an increase in library holdings, adding computer instruction, and stronger emphasis on Art, Science, Foreign Language, Vocational and Physical Education.  As a result, enrollment steadily increased in the 1970s, and by 1982 there were 90 staff members serving 470 students in grades 7-12.  This growth required physical plant expansion but the school was able to continue relying heavily on its own farm products for food.

As of 2016, the Oneida Baptist Institute (OBI) is a coeducational Southern Baptist boarding school affiliated with the Kentucky Baptist Convention.