Centennial Celebration

John C. Campbell, born in Indiana and raised in Wisconsin, was a theologian, educator, and humanitarian. His wife, Olive Dame Campbell of Massachusetts, graduated from Tufts College and joined her husband on a fact-finding survey of social conditions in the Appalachian mountains in 1908–1909. The Campbells outfitted a wagon as a traveling home and studied mountain life from Georgia to West Virginia. While John interviewed workers, farmers, preachers, and educators, Olive collected Appalachian ballads and studied the handicrafts of the mountain people. Both were hopeful that the quality of life in the region could be improved by education, and in turn wanted to preserve and share with the rest of the world the wonderful crafts, techniques, and tools that the mountain people used in everyday life. The folkehøjskole, “folk high school,” had long been influential in the rural life of Denmark. These “schools for life” helped transform the Danish countryside into a vibrant, creative force. The Campbells talked of establishing such a school in the rural southern United States. After John died in 1919, Olive and her friend, Marguerite Butler, traveled to Europe and studied folk schools in Denmark, Sweden, and other countries. They returned to the U.S. full of purposeful energy and a determination to start such a school in Appalachia.