Elegies of Lost Things

Shorter Stories: Hattie Part II

Lisa M. Russell — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 03:27:00 GMT

Hattie C. Cooper, educator

Frederick was dead. The sooty train carried a young widow as it wound south from Manassas, Virginia, to North Georgia in the summer of 1861. Hattie Cooper, whose quiet strength would reshape education in Rome, Georgia, though history forgot her name.

Hattie would not collapse into despair. She carried his death silently, bearing grief alongside the unborn life within her. The reality of her new world became clear as the train approached home. She was not only a widow but the sole architect of her family's future.

The statistics are stark. According to Angela Esco Elder's "Civil War Widows," 200,000 white women became Confederate widows during the war. Confederate widows were not honored or supported by their country. Georgia in 1861 would become a place of reconstruction and uncertainty, with burned farms, hollowed towns, and unemployable widows. For these women, their dreams died with their husbands and they were on their own.

The Cooper family held the funeral for Frederick at Glen Holly, the grand estate in the company town of Etowah. The irony was bitter—there was no longer a family business. The ironworks that built the Cooper fortune was decimated by war, but Mark Anthony Cooper had to bury his son.

Captain John Frederick Cooper died from complications following wounds received at the Battle of Manassas, the first major engagement of the Civil War. A local newspaper captured the moment: "His father, mother, and wife were present at his demise and accompanied his remains by way of Lynchburg and Dalton to Etowah, where they arrived on Monday morning last about 9 o'clock, and about 3 in the afternoon, the friends, and neighbors assembled. The father then arose and read from the family Bible various passages of that sacred volume which had been most consoling to the deceased during his last illness. He told of his conversations, his hope and strong confidence of a blessed future, and the scene was most touching and impressive."

In a letter Mark Anthony Cooper wrote to inform the extended family about Frederick's death, he spoke with admiration of his daughter-in-law's composure and strength, praising Hattie for giving his son "a good death"—the highest compliment a grieving father could offer.

The funeral concluded with bowed silence, followed by a hymn and prayer as his son's body was moved to the family cemetery. He concluded by saying simply, "Friends, we have done all that is left for us to do; we will retire."

Hattie, pregnant and widowed, had grim prospects. Her father-in-law, once one of Georgia's wealthiest industrialists, had sunk his fortune into the Confederate cause. When the South fell, so did his wealth. Her own father, a merchant, would start over with nothing in a failing economy.

Yet family bonds provided a lifeline. Family history preserved by Laure E. Smith reveals that Hattie's father still owned a modest cottage in Rome. After spending time in Alabama during the latter part of the war, Hattie returned to Rome to rebuild her life. Her father, despite his own losses, settled his family as best he could, giving "to my poor sister, Hattie, all he could and a home for herself and her three boys."

Frederick had left behind three sons to carry his name. For a young widow in the post-war South, raising three children alone was an enormous challenge. Rather than surrender to circumstances, Hattie refused to let her situation dictate her children's fate. She possessed natural talent for education—a gift that would prove both her salvation and her community's blessing. Recognizing that formal schooling had largely disappeared from war-torn Rome, she made a bold decision: she would create her own.

Gathering her three boys and neighbors' children, Hattie began teaching them in a small school she built from scraps of her own determination and meager resources. In that single act of defiance against despair, she carved out both a survival strategy and an enduring legacy.

Word of Hattie's small school spread quickly through Rome's rebuilding community. Her teaching and natural leadership caught the attention of local leaders, including Pastor Luther Rice Gwaltney of First Baptist Church.

What had begun as necessity blossomed into passion and mission. Pastor Gwaltney, a visionary, saw the tremendous value of Hattie's educational work. Gwaltney approached her with a proposal: would she consider closing her school to open a school for girls at First Baptist Church? The church would provide financial backing and help her small institution grow into something much larger.

Hattie viewed this as both an opportunity and a sacrifice. She would gain resources and stability, but give up independence and control. Understanding that her students' needs outweighed her own, she agreed. Hattie's role shifted—from founder and owner to employee.

Pastor Gwaltney harbored a grander vision than even Hattie's successful school. He dreamed of providing Georgia's daughters with higher education—something nonexistent in the post-war South. Hattie's school evolved into Cherokee Female College, meeting initially in the church building as it continued to grow in enrollment and reputation.

As the institution's success became apparent, civic leaders recognized it should expand further. Their timing proved fortunate when Alfred Shorter, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist, agreed to provide substantial funding for a proper college. In gratitude for his generosity, the institution was renamed in his honor—Shorter Female College.

Through all these transitions, Hattie continued her lifelong service to the college in various capacities. Yet as the college grew, the official history left her out. Graduation programs began acknowledging her as "Lead Teacher." How did the woman who founded the institution go from founder to footnote?

At my graduation from Shorter College, my religion professor, Dr. Robert Gardner, handed out copies of his 1972 book, considered the definitive history of the institution. I was surprised to see that in 475 pages, Hattie Cooper was only referenced three times. Just three mentions of the person who birthed the idea that would become Shorter College. The book notes that "Mrs. H. C. Cooper gave up her own school to become the principal and Lead teacher for English and Humanities." It acknowledges that she remained "associated with the college for 14 years, longer than anyone else except for Gwaltney."

This is a slight misrepresentation. Hattie didn't simply "give up her own school" to join an existing institution—her school WAS the institution. Her educational efforts after a personal tragedy led to the college's creation.

Dr. Gardner's book, like other histories of Rome from this period, does not mention the extent of Cooper's contribution. This collective memory loss likely stems from multiple sources: prejudice against women in leadership that dominated the era, the conventional belief that women were incapable of governing or establishing educational institutions, and perhaps Hattie's own humble nature.

As a woman of her time, Hattie was raised to be a humble servant who did not seek personal recognition. She seemed content to accept the title of "Lead Teacher" even though it completely obscured her founding role and transformative contributions. Her willingness to step back for the greater good ultimately contributed to her own historical erasure.

What makes Hattie's erasure from institutional memory even more tragic is the breadth of her intellectual contributions. Harriet C. Cooper was not merely a devoted teacher—she was a serious scholar whose academic work gained recognition far beyond Rome's city limits. Her books on history and botany were well-received by academic reviewers and remain available to researchers today. Most notably, she authored a biography of James Edward Oglethorpe, the founder of the Georgia colony, motivated by her concern that Georgia students were not studying state history.

Perhaps the most poignant evidence of how thoroughly Hattie's contributions were overlooked comes from private family correspondence discovered years later. Two of her sons, Eugene and John Paul Cooper, were making her funeral arrangements, discussing the best way to honor their mother.

Then, at the very end of their correspondence, almost as an afterthought, appears a small postscript with a question that reveals everything: "Do you think it would be going too far to put on the base of the monument the words 'The real founder of Shorter College' or else this? 'Shorter College is her living monument.'"

In those hesitant words—"Do you think it would be going too far?"—we see both the truth of Hattie's legacy and the tragic uncertainty of her sons about whether they could publicly acknowledge what everyone in the family knew to be fact. Even her own children, who had witnessed her transformation from desperate widow to pioneering educator, questioned whether it would be appropriate to tell the truth on their mother's gravestone. Those loving, truthful words never made it onto Harriet Cornelia Cooper's memorial stone.

“Do you think it would be going too far to put on the base of the monument the words ‘The real founder of Shorter College’ or else this? ‘Shorter College is her living monument.’”

Hattie is still Rome's hidden figure—a woman whose vision, determination, and sacrifice created an institution that has educated thousands, but whose name appears nowhere on its buildings, in its official histories, or on the monuments that dot the city she helped rebuild.

Shorter College was her living monument, as her sons knew, built from her tragedy and strength. Perhaps it's time the rest of us acknowledged that truth as well.

Friends of Martha: Betty Zane Morris

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 13:13:23 GMT

Betty Zane Morris remember the influence of Martha Berry

It was 1982, and I was drowning. My sophomore year at Shorter College had been unforgiving. I’d just failed my oral interpretation exam. I dragged myself to an Epsilon Sigma sorority meeting, my legacy sorority, one that had existed since Shorter’s founding. I felt defeated. Out of nowhere, someone put their arms around me. It was Betty Zane Morris, our communications instructor. She reassured me with certainty: “You’re going to be okay. You’ll pass the class. Don’t worry.”

This small act of kindness changed the trajectory of my life. I call it immediacy. Immediacy is a concept in communication theory that describes the act of connecting with someone and showing them, you care, enhancing their performance whether at work, school, or home.

Betty Zane Morris was a distinguished communications instructor at Shorter College for forty-six years. She agreed to sit down with me, and I was thrilled. How often do we get to acknowledge what our favorite teachers meant to us?

Her early years shaped who she became as a teacher. She spent them at the Berry Schools. She shared:

“We lived at the Brickyard at Berry for about four years. It was a little house furnished by Berry. My father worked in the machine shop, and my mother worked in the bookstore. Before work my dad would get up early to build a fire on cold mornings.

My first memories there on campus began when I was four, and we moved away when I was probably eight. We were allowed to play all over the inactive property which contained kilns, rail tracks, and cars for moving the bricks.

The spur brought the railroad track in front of our house. Watching trains come on it was always exciting. We rode in them several times.

And we had a vegetable garden. I remembered playing in the dirt.

I had a leg infection and someone on main campus sent a pint of milk for me each day.”

Betty also remembers the spoonful of castor oil dosed everyday, whether they needed it or not.

Given to young Berry students like Betty Zane

She shared how her early years at Berry had significantly impacted her. Unknowingly at the time, those years would shape her students, including me.

Betty grew up at the Berry schools, encouraged to excel beyond her years and even skip grades at Possum Trot School. This foundation led to further studies that allowed her to teach in higher education.

She vividly remembers Martha Berry’s funeral in the college chapel. Red and white roses were arranged in strips. Flowers shaped like a log cabin covered her casket. She was eight years old. It was a cold day in March.

Then there was one of Henry Ford’s visits to the school. After a day filled with school events and Ford’s presence on campus, her parents asked her about her day. They were excited. Betty did not understand their enthusiasm. Unbeknownst to her at the time, she had sung a solo for Henry Ford.

She also recalled how clothing crates arrived from New York. They were called “missionary barrels.” Martha Berry’s wealthy friends sent them. They were distributed to needy students. These acts of kindness revealed Martha’s vision of care and generosity. They left a lasting impression on Betty. They would later define her teaching philosophy.

What I understand now, decades later, is that Betty Zane’s encounter with me in 1982 was not random. She was practicing what Martha Berry had modeled: immediate, personal care. Berry’s culture of generosity became part of Betty’s marrow. She saw a student in crisis and stepped in. Every time I teach, I remember Betty’s approach to immediacy and how she lifted me when I was down. It wasn’t until recently that I realized she is nearly the same age as my mother. Her motherly support was pivotal in my life.

Inspired by her example, I pursued higher education. I earned my Master of Arts in Professional Writing from Kennesaw State University in 2012 and began teaching in the communications department. I later moved into a full-time English position at Georgia Northwestern Technical College, where I now serve as Assistant Dean of English and Fine Arts. In every classroom, I carry Betty’s lesson: that immediacy, genuine human connection, can change someone’s trajectory.

Morris retired from Shorter as a distinguished professor in 2007 after forty-six years on the teaching faculty.

I reflect on legacy now. The profound impact we can have on others is extraordinary. Martha Berry passed forward her vision of care to Betty. Betty passed it to me. And I hope to pass it forward to my students.

I begin a new series, “Shorter Stories,” and finish this Friends of Martha series. I invite you to share your memories of Shorter College or University. Who showed you immediacy? Whose kindness shaped your path? You can reach out to me directly or visit my Facebook page, “Shorter Stories,” and leave a message. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter at lisamrussell.substack.com.

Thank you, Betty Zane Morris, for your time and the elegant influence you’ve had on countless Shorter students and on me. It’s comforting to know I expressed my gratitude before it was too late. As we start a new school year, let’s remember the unseen legacy we may leave behind, impacting those around us in profound ways.

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The Things She Carried

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 13:14:13 GMT

On Friday, February 27, 1942, Martha Berry died at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta, seventy-six years old, after a battle with cancer that had begun the previous fall. By then, she was a substantial woman in Georgia’s history. She was the founder of a school that had grown from a one-room log cabin into a fully accredited college. A woman who persuaded Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and Theodore Roosevelt to open their checkbooks for children they would never meet. The obituaries would say all of that. They would not mention her purse.

A black woven purse was beside Martha Berry at her passing. Inside the hand-woven product of the Berry Schools was her simple square calling card, a plain hanky, newspaper clippings, and a recipe written on the back of an envelope. Among the contents was a folded note with an address and a name. Perhaps it was someone to write, to call, to see on one of her “Begging Trips.” Stuffed in that purse were four pairs of glasses. One labeled for the house. One for reading. One for every day. A fourth that was not labeled at all.

Known for great things, the purse told a different story. Achievements show what someone did. A purse shows how she actually lived.

Start with the glasses. Four pairs, each assigned its own job, is not the packing list of a person with limited vision. This is a packing list of a person who refused to let poor eyesight slow her down in any room she inhabited. There was a Martha Berry for the house, one for the page, one for the world at large. She did not have time for the daily irritation of finding the right fit for her vision.

And then there is the fourth pair, the unlabeled one. Every biography needs a mystery. This is hers. Maybe she had an extra pair, just purchased and with no label attached - yet.

The recipe may have been meant for Aunt Martha, or maybe it was Aunt Martha’s own recipe that Martha wanted to share. At this point, Aunt Martha was blind from cataract surgery and unlikely to follow this recipe. She was always fundraising, writing correspondence with presidents, and traveling relentlessly to raise money for a school built on land nobody else wanted. We forget that she apparently also meant to cook something. The recipe is evidence of an appetite for ordinary life and continuity. It shows a woman planning a future dinner even as she carried, in the same bag, the accumulated business of a life spent asking wealthy men for money on behalf of children who had none.

The note with the address is perhaps the most quietly devastating item. Somebody was owed a visit, a letter, a call. Martha Berry, despite decades of work by 1942, was still pursuing her mission at age seventy-six. She had not caught up. Nobody who does that kind of work ever really does.

Other things, like her bank book, remind us that she handled her own finances along with college business. The hanky is simply there, carried by a woman who ‌believed one should always have one on hand. A pen, a knife, and a spoon remained in her purse. The first two are obvious, but maybe she was hungry.

What the purse adds or subtracts from Martha Berry’s legacy. The contents of her pocketbook say that she had an unfinished to-do list. A recipe not yet cooked. An address not yet visited. Glasses sorted for a life that assumed there would be more rooms to see clearly in. She died mid-errand, the way most of us will, carrying the small, low-key evidence of a person still planning her next ordinary day.

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Visit the Museum at Oak Hill at Berry College to see the items in her purse in the display on Martha Berry’s “Begging Trips.”

Martha Berry’s birth year is sometimes confused. This column uses the date on her tombstone in the Berry College chapel cemetery – 1866.

Friends of Martha: Martha Freeman “Aunt Martha”

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:36:15 GMT

Martha and Martha

She called her “Boss.” But Martha Berry knew who the real “Boss” was.

Martha Freeman was born in Georgia around May 1844, enslaved. She would live through the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the occupation of Rome by General William T. Sherman’s troops in 1864. By 1867, when she was around 16, she began working for Thomas Berry and his family in Rome. She came to cook. To care for the home. To raise a small girl who would one day change the world of education in the mountains of Georgia.

We know from the historical record that Martha Berry was born on October 7, 1866, in Alabama, and her family moved to Rome that same year. Martha Freeman arrived roughly a year or two after that, when the child was still small. After slavery ended, Captain Thomas Berry refused to hire other formerly enslaved workers because he believed the master-slave relationship had to end completely. Martha Freeman came anyway. She chose to stay. And what began as work became something far deeper

Martha in front of Oak Hill

No one recorded the moment they became essential to each other. But the weight of that bond appears first in Martha Berry’s words when grief broke through her careful public voice.

In January 1927, after her mother’s death, Martha wrote to her friend Kate Macy Ladd:

“I am all alone at home with only Aunt Martha. I miss my mother’s light burning the window at night.”

Then, in language that reveals everything about who held real power in that house:

“Poor old Aunt Martha is heartbroken and wants me to wear a heavy black veil all the time. She feels that ‘Ol’ Miss’s memory is not honored unless I do this.”

This was not the sentiment of a servant speaking to an employer. This was Aunt Martha, as keeper, when everything else fell away. And Martha Berry, the woman who would move millionaires and presidents to tears, who would build the schools and change education, listened to her.

Five days later, Martha wrote again:

“I miss my mother very much, but I am glad that I am still at the old home place with my black mammy” (the language of the era).

For decades, Martha Freeman held the Oak Hill together. She did have her life for a time. The census records document her journey: in 1875, she married Enoch Freeman, and they lived in a two-room cabin on Berry’s land. By 1900, she was a mother of seven children, though only two had survived. When Enoch died in 1895, she moved into a small cottage called the Schoolhouse, beside Martha Berry’s house. That is where she would remain

While Martha Berry built an empire of schools across the Georgia mountains, traveling to New York and Europe to solicit funds from industrialists and philanthropists, the woman who had raised her remained at home. Steady. Demanding. Never letting Martha forget that some things mattered more than work.

The passage of years did not diminish their bond. By December 1926, Martha Berry was confiding to Kate Macy Ladd that Martha Freeman had lost one eye to cataracts. The woman who had given her whole life to this family was failing, and Martha Berry watched it happen.

But by 1939, everything had shifted. Martha, now approaching seventy and exhausted from forty years of relentless fundraising, found herself needing what Aunt Martha had always offered: wisdom wrapped in sass, care disguised as complaint. The roles had not just reversed. They had completed a circle.

In August 1939, Martha wrote:

“I have been sitting on the back porch of my home and Aunt Martha sits in the doorway of her little cottage near by and we call back and forth. Aunt Martha tells me that I must have patience that when I am anxious to go out and work for my boys and girls, I must pray to God for them that that would do more good than anything else anyhow, and it was time I settled down to more prayers and less active work.”

This is the spiritual heart of their story. Aunt Martha was telling Martha Berry that presence mattered more than productivity. That prayer mattered more than plans. That staying still, sitting on a porch, calling back and forth, as the dusk arrived, this too was work. This too was ministry.

Three years later, crisis stripped away every pretense. In July 1936, when Aunt Martha faced surgery for cataracts that would leave her blind in both eyes, Martha did what she had learned to do only in her most unguarded moments. She went home. Not to the schools. Not to the donors. Home.

“I rushed home because of the serious illness of my old colored mammy, Aunt Martha, cataract surgery, and was blind in both eyes. I stay close, and she brightens up when I am with her.”

From her own hospital bed, Martha Berry sent two dollars, insisting that her Aunt Martha hire some help. She wrote a letter to a friend with the cash,

“I do not know what I will do if something happens to her.”

That same year, May 1935, Martha Berry had already given Aunt Martha something that publicly marked her worth. During the Berry Schools and College’s 33rd annual commencement, Martha Berry awarded Martha Freeman a silver medal for her 25th anniversary. It was a small object. It held everything. Seven other loyal workers received medals that day. But none of them had been there since the beginning. None of them had raised Martha Berry from a child. None of them had held her through grief and guided her toward faith. The medal was the closest Martha Berry could come to saying what words could never contain: “You are not my servant. You are my foundation.”

For nine more years, Martha Freeman remained at Oak Hill. The records show her as a retired servant, the head of household in Martha Berry’s home. Frances Berry Bonnyman, Martha’s sister, said that Freeman was their “Brown Mother.”

She became a minor celebrity in Rome. On her seventy-fifth birthday in February 1947, Berry Schools officials decided to celebrate, choosing February 6 as her birthday since her real birthdate was unknown. Two years later, in February 1949, the Coca-Cola company sent her a case of “Co-cola” for being one of the oldest people in Floyd County.

Berry girls baked a cake for Aunt Martha’s “Birthday”

On February 27, 1942, Martha Berry died. The woman who had been the center of her life was gone. Martha Freeman centered her remaining interests in the Berry Schools, honoring the legacy of the child she had raised, who became an educator. She was now alone, not young, not strong, but still tending what Martha Berry had built. Aunt Martha left all her savings to Berry College.

Martha Freeman lived for another 9 years at Oak Hill. The home where she had arrived around 1867, where she had raised children and buried a husband, where she had learned to pray with and counsel one of Georgia’s greatest visionaries. She lived there until May 1951, when illness took her.

Martha Freeman was buried on the north side of the Berry College Chapel. Martha Berry is on the south side. Freeman was the only African American buried in the cemetery; she was not beside Martha, but close to her.

Even in death, the boundaries held. But Aunt Martha Freeman had never needed permission to run the show. For seventy-five years, she had ordered Martha Berry around with a sharp wit and a sassy mouth that no amount of fame or college endowments could override. Eat something. Rest. Pray instead of working so hard. Stop killing yourself for those schools. Martha Berry listened. She always listened.

The colleges are named after Martha Berry. The buildings stand in her honor. But the woman who made sure the founder of Berry College lived long enough to see what she had built—that was Aunt Martha Freeman. She was the real boss. Her “Boss” was never really the boss.

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Coming up: More Martha, and then we will move across town to Shorter University (their long-time rivals) to explore more Elegies of Lost Things.

The Reluctant Colony: Last to Rebel, Last to Leave

Lisa M. Russell — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 16:06:10 GMT

The victory at Brier Creek allowed British forces to maintain a foothold in Georgia and led to the invasion of South Carolina.

Georgia came late to the Revolution and left it last. The youngest, smallest, and poorest of the thirteen colonies did not rush toward independence. This colony, named for King George II, was founded under the leadership of James Oglethorpe, who brought a load of prisoners from the debtor jail. The Georgia experiment was not a rousing success. Maybe the first settlers had issues with the work required to establish a new colony.

As the northern colonies prepared to separate from England, Georgia faced difficulties. It remained split between loyalists and patriots. Because of a loyal royal governor, it stayed attached to England and followed the King’s rules. But it eventually escaped British rule. But in Hamilton, the musical, King George III kept singing with a deranged look on his face, “You’ll be back!” Sorry, George.

The story is more strange and more complex than the textbooks teach us. Here are ten things worth knowing about Georgia during the American Revolution:

1. Georgia almost sat the Revolution out. The colony had prospered under Royal Governor James Wright. The governor was a loyalist to the end. He used political tricks to convince his state that revolution was not a good idea for economic and protection reasons. Many Georgians believed they still needed British soldiers for protection against Native American attacks. When the other colonies sent delegates to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1774, Georgia sent no one. Governor Wright was run out of town twice. In 1776, he fled to a British battleship and returned in 1779 to reestablish British rule. When Savannah finally fell in 1782, he left again.

James Oglethorpe, 1696-1785, Founder of Georgia and Philanthropist, an engraved memorial, bears this inscription: “He was the friend of the Oppressed Negro.”

2. It was the only colony that sold the stamps. The Stamp Act made the rest of the colonies ungovernable. Mobs shut the system down. Georgia was the only colony to sell stamps during the crisis. But the Liberty Boys were not happy and joined the Sons of Liberty in chanting, “Liberty, property, and no stamps.”

3. Georgia is the only one of the thirteen colonies that the British reconquered. Savannah fell in December 1778. Governor Wright returned in July 1779 and reestablished royal rule. Georgia became the only colony in rebellion to be restored to royal allegiance. For a time, it had two governments at once. A royal one in Savannah. A rebel one in the backcountry.

4. The royal governor was hauled out of his own house. When a British fleet appeared in the Savannah River, the Council of Safety placed Wright under house arrest. He escaped and fled with the British. Then he sailed back to govern again. No other royal governor lost his colony and returned to it.

Royal Gov. James Wright

5. The war’s first Georgia action was a gunpowder heist. After Lexington and Concord, Georgia revolutionaries broke into a Savannah powder magazine on May 11, 1775. They shared the powder with revolutionaries in South Carolina. The war began here, not with a battle but with a theft.

6. The 1779 attempt to retake Savannah was one of the bloodiest days of the whole war, and it failed. A combined American and French force besieged the city. The assault collapsed with massive casualties. One reason was a courtesy. When the French demanded surrender, the British asked for twenty-four hours to consider. The allies agreed. The British used the time to dig in.

7. Haitian soldiers fought for American independence at Savannah. The French relief fleet was enormous. Among the thousands of troops were five hundred men from Saint-Domingue, free men of color who came to fight and bleed in the siege. Georgia, the baby colony, needed help from a stronger force.

8. Kettle Creek was small but pivotal, and it produced a Black war hero. On February 14, 1779, outnumbered Patriots routed a Loyalist force in the Wilkes County backcountry. For his bravery, enslaved militiaman Austin Dabney was freed by legislative act. The 1786 Georgia law that freed him, copied by Will Graves for the Southern Campaigns American Revolution project at the Georgia Archives.

Kettle Creek 1779

9. Enslaved people made their own bid for freedom in the middle of the invasion. James Oglethorpe had founded Georgia as a slave-free colony, but the ban proved unworkable for large-scale agriculture. The Trustees lifted the prohibition in 1751, and Georgia became a royal colony in 1752. By the 1770s, enslaved people made up more than half the population.

Ninety enslaved people from George Galphin’s estate escaped to the British, accepting their offer of freedom. David George, their preacher-leader, founded one of America’s first Black churches before fleeing to Sierra Leone. He also left one of the earliest first-person enslaved narratives in American history.

George’s oral testimony, recorded in 1792 and published in the Baptist Annual Register in the 1790s, is the primary source. A historian at UC Santa Cruz studying George recently pointed out that this story is much older than the well-known slave narratives written later, like those by Douglass, Northup, and Jacobs.

Land given to a former slave for his Revolutionary War service

10. Savannah stayed British almost to the very end. Yorktown as the effective end of major fighting and the turning point that produced British withdrawal, not the end of the war. The war legally continued until 1783. Even after Yorktown, the British held on. They did not leave Savannah until July 1782. Only then did Georgia elect its first post-colonial government. Last to rebel. Last to leave.

Link to my Revolutionary Sources Bibliography in NOTES

Friends of Martha: The Other Martha

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 13:18:06 GMT

Martha Berry and Martha Freeman with a young boy

“One more trip ain’t gonna hurt you.” In an oral history, William Autry recalled Martha Berry weighing whether to travel despite her doctor’s concerns. Martha Freeman, known as “Aunt Martha,” stood in the back doorway and told her plainly: “Martha Berry, go on!” She added, “You ain’t got no sense no way. You done killed your fool self for them schools. Go on, woman.”

The exchange captures the complicated relationship between Martha Berry and Martha Freeman: affectionate, direct, unequal, and deeply influential. This bossy treatment was not reserved for Martha Berry alone. For more than fifty years, the people who passed through Berry told the same kind of story. Aunt Martha said this. Aunt Martha made me do that. The woman they described was not a servant in the background. She ran the house.

Martha Freeman came to the Berry household in 1867. She was about sixteen. The war was two years over.

She had not been enslaved by Thomas Berry. She arrived as live-in help, hired, a young woman starting a life of work in a house that was not her own. Martha Berry was a baby then. Freeman helped raise her.

That was the beginning of fifty years.

Freeman could not read. She had been born into slavery. None of that mattered to the girl who grew up trusting her judgment above almost anyone’s. When Martha Berry faced a hard choice, she went to Aunt Martha.

Money was always an issue for the college. Berry would have to make another of her Begging Trips, the long campaigns north to ask the rich for what the school and the students needed. Her health was failing. She did not know if she could go.

She said she would pray about it. Then she would talk to Aunt Martha.

She prayed. She went to Freeman. Freeman told her to go.

Against doctor’s advice, she went.

In another oral history stored in the Berry College Archives, L. G. Cannon, a 1932 graduate, was then Martha Berry’s traveling companion and secretary. On the way out the door on an Atlanta trip, Cannon explains, “Miss Berry would go out to Aunt Martha and tell her goodbye, and she’d say, ‘Martha Berry, where are you going?’ and she would say, ‘We’re going down to Atlanta.” And she would say, “Yeah, you’re going to keep messing around, and y’all’re going to get killed on these highways.” And she’d say, “You ain’t got no business going down there, you better stay here.” And she talked to her just like that, you know, Miss Berry wouldn’t say anything. She would just turn around and walk on.”

Martha Freeman lived to over 100 years old

Evelyn Hoge Pendley said of Aunt Martha, “She seemed to grumble about quite a bit, talking to herself, fussing at her help, warning Miss Berry about overdoing.” In Alice Wingo’s narrative about Freeman, she said that when Martha Berry was traveling, Aunt Martha worried about what she was eating, “Nobody but me knows what to fix for her.” When she got home, Freeman made sure she had a meal no matter the time of day. She did not like all of Martha Berry’s traveling, and she would say, “You sure do tote yourself around a lot.” Aunt Martha was deeply concerned for the other Martha.

Domestic help was what was left of the enslaved system after the Civil War. Both Marthas were part of that lingering Southern social structure. They called her Aunt Martha for more than a hundred years. The word was meant kindly. It was also a way to make affection and ownership fit in the same sentence. More on that, next time.

This series on Martha Berry would not have been possible without the support of Michael O’Malley, the Berry College Archivist. All of the sources used in this series are on my Substack. www.lisamrussell.substack.com.

Sources:

^{Bonnyman, Frances Berry. “Aunt Marthe.” Paper presented to the Knoxville Chapter, United}

^{Daughters of the Confederacy, 16 May 1956. Berry College Archives, Mount Berry, GA.}

^{Byers, Tracy. Oral history interview. 10 June 1964. Interview no. BOHI 19640610-02, Berry}

^{College Archives, Mount Berry, GA.}

^{Cox, Karen L. Dixie’s}^{Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy a}^{nd the}

^{Preservation of Confederate Culture. New ed., UP of Florida, 2019.}

^{Evans, Stacie. “Not Your Auntie.” Qtd. in O’Malley, Michael, “Martha Freeman,” Berry History}

^{LibGuide, Berry College, libguides.berry.edu/marthafreeman.}

^{Gunby, Ruth Hart. Oral history interview. June 1964. Berry College Archives, Mount Berry, GA.}

^{Henry, Inez Wooten. Oral history interview. 10 June 1964. Interview no. BOHI 19640601-04,}

^{Berry College Archives, Mount Berry, GA.}

^{Hoge, Caroline Bostick. Oral history interview. 9 June 1964. Interview no. BOHI 19640609-03,}

^{Berry College Archives, Mount Berry, GA.}

^{McElya, Micki. Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America. Harvard}

^{UP, 2007.}

^{O’Malley, Michael. “Martha Freeman.” Berry History, Berry College LibGuides, last updated 23}

^{Mar. 2026, libguides.berry.edu/marthafreeman. Accessed 24 June 2026.}

^{---. “Martha Freeman: U.S. Census.” Berry History, Berry College LibGuides, last updated 23}

^{Mar. 2026, libguides.berry.edu/marthafreeman/census. Accessed 24 June 2026.}

^{---. “Martha Freeman: Timeline.” Berry History, Berry College LibGuides, last updated 23 Mar.}

^{2026, libguides.berry.edu/marthafreeman/timeline. Accessed 24 June 2026.}

^{---. “Martha Freeman: Reminiscences and Oral Histories.” Berry History, Berry College}

^{LibGuides, last updated 23 Mar. 2026, libguides.berry.edu/marthafreeman/archival.}

^{Accessed 24 June 2026.}

^{Phillips, Ted. Oral history interview. 6 Oct. 1988. Interview no. BOHI 19881006-01, Berry}

^{College Archives, Mount Berry, GA.}

^{United States, Bureau of the Census. Population schedules, Rome, Floyd County, Georgia, 1880,}

^{1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1950. Qtd. in O’Malley, “Martha Freeman: U.S. Census.”}

^{Veale, Nell Purcell. Oral history interview. 15 June 1999. Interview no. BOHI 19990615-11,}

^{Berry College Archives, Mount Berry, GA.}

Winner of the 2026 Georgia Press Association Feature/Columns. Lisa M. Russell and Rome News Tribune. Third Place..

Friends of Martha: Coolidge

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 13:15:59 GMT

Calvin Coolidge at TR Medal Ceremony 1925

Martha, Martha, Martha. Always courting the powerful to grow your school. Calvin Coolidge must have tested even her patience. They called him Silent Cal. He spoke when the office required it and rarely otherwise. Martha wrote him letters. She reminded him that his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, had been a benefactor and had spent a day on her campus. She offered. She invited. She enclosed literature. Her nudging did not move the reserved man in the White House. He never came to Berry. So she went to him.

She wrote to him on May 7, 1925, days before they would meet in Washington at the awards ceremony. The letter is all warmth and invitation.

“Dear Mr. Coolidge
I appreciate having the opportunity to meet you on the 15^th of May when you awarded the Roosevelt Medals. I have not had the pleasure of being at the White House during your administration, but I feel that you are interested in agriculture and that Mrs. Coolidge is interested in teaching, that perhaps you will be interested in the Berry Schools. I am sending you some literature which I hope you will take time to read.”

She kept on, reminding him that Roosevelt had spent a day at the school in 1910. She noted that TR had hosted a dinner for her at the White House and gathered friends who might help the Berry Schools. The message was plain. Roosevelt opened his home to her. Surely Coolidge might open a door too.

And here is the irony. The silent man spoke. When a president speaks, people listen, and the New York Times keeps the record. On May 15, 1925, three recipients of the Roosevelt Medal for the most distinguished services in 1924 met in the East Room of the White House, for the welfare of women and children.

The New York Times reported:

Governor Gifford Pinchot, Miss Martha Berry, founder of the Berry schools in the South, and George Bird Grinnell, editor and publicist, received from President Coolidge today the Roosevelt Medal for the most distinguished services in 1924 for the welfare of women and children and the promotion of outdoor life and conservation.

President Coolidge said to Miss Berry:

“Miss Berry, I know that the gentlemen who have been awarded the other two medals will not misunderstand me when I say that, greatly as Theodore Roosevelt would be gratified if he could see a distinction bearing his name bestowed upon these old friends, he would yet be most stirred to see this Roosevelt Medal bestowed upon you.

“He believed in you and your work, and it was characteristic of him that, believing in you, he should have upheld your hands and done what he could to win you friends. In building out of nothing a great educational institution for the children of the mountains, you have contributed to your time one of its most creative achievements.

“Because of you, thousands have been released from the bondage of ignorance, and countless other thousands in the generations to come will walk not in darkness but in light. You have built your school by faith-faith in your vision, faith in God, who alone can make visions substantial.

“Few are privileged to receive so clear an answer to their petitions as you have received. Your achievement brings the mystery and beauty of divine guidance closer to us all. This medal will be a testimony to you that your fellow-Americans are proud of you and wish you well in your labors.”

It was a generous tribute. It was also the most Coolidge would ever give her. Martha answered with her own words.

“Mr. President: I accept this medal humbly for myself but proudly for my boys and girls. This hour recalls the brightest page in the history of the Berry Schools, the day when Colonel Roosevelt came to Berry and with genuine boyish enthusiasm, declared himself a part of its spirit and aspirations…

May the time come when the streams of young boys and girls, ever increasingly great, may go out from our schools to make the world brighter and happier and better. May they take up their life work fired with the zeal of conservative Americanship, and intense loyalty to the Constitution and to the Flag.”

Martha Berry was the first woman to receive the Roosevelt Medal. She brought five of her recent graduates to the White House to share the moment. When reporters seemed surprised, she answered, “Who deserves the honor more?”

Then the ceremony ended. The Southern Highlander recorded the moment without drama. “After a time, Mr. Coolidge quietly withdrew, and the audience dispersed.” That is the whole of him in one line. He spoke his words, then withdrew.

Martha kept writing. She invited him to Berry again and again.

He never came.

Coolidge left the White House in 1929. He went home to Northampton and to a quiet law practice. He died there on January 5, 1933, of a sudden heart attack. He was sixty. Even then, Martha was still reaching for the Coolidge connection. She wrote to the former first lady after his death.

“My dear Mrs. Coolidge-
I am sending you a photograph of Mr. Coolidge, made just after he had presented me with the Roosevelt Medal; and I am also enclosing a copy of the speech he made at that time.
We held a memorial service for Mr. Coolidge on Saturday, January 7^th, in the Mount Berry Chapel, at 11:20 a.m. A thousand boys and girls and more than a hundred members of the faculty, with their families, were present. We were all great admirers of Mr. Coolidge and we feel that we have lost a real friend.
With heart felt sympathy and with the earnest prayer that you may have great help and strength through these trying days,
Faithfully yours,
Martha Berry”

Read the dates again. Coolidge was buried in Northampton on Saturday, January 7, 1933. That same Saturday and at the same time, in the Mount Berry Chapel, a thousand of Martha’s students bowed their heads for him. He had answered her once, in a room full of medals and reporters.

Silent Cal stayed silent. Martha never stopped speaking to him.

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Bibliography

“2002 Georgia Agricultural Hall of Fame Recipient - Martha Berry.” YouTube. Last modified September 18, 2013.

Berry College - Best Private Colleges in Georgia. n.d. https://www.berry.edu.

“Berry College - The World’s Largest Campus.” Berry College - Best Private Colleges in Georgia. Accessed April 1, 2026. https://www.berry.edu/about/campus.

A Berry Graduate. “Miss Berry Receives a Roosevelt Medal from the Hand of President Coolidge.” Southern Highlander 18, no. 1 (Summer 1925), 7-9.

Berry, Martha. “Correspondence from Martha Berry to Calvin Coolidge.” Reading, Berry College, 1925.

“Berry with Henry and Clara Ford · Martha Berry Digital Archive.” Berry Digital Archives. Accessed May 1, 2026. https://mbda.berry.edu/items/show/7611.

“Henry and Clara Ford Visit the Berry Schools · Martha Berry Digital Archive.” Berry Digital Library. Accessed May 1, 2026. https://mbda.berry.edu/items/show/7607.

“Letter to Martha Berry from Clara Ford · Martha Berry Digital Archive.” Berry College Library. Last modified 1936. https://mbda.berry.edu/items/show/486.

“Martha Berry.” Today In Georgia History - Just Another WordPress Site. Last modified September 10, 2025. https://www.todayingeorgiahistory.org/tih-georgia-day/martha-berry/.

“Martha Speaks in 1935.” Digital Archives of Berry College. Accessed April 1, 2026. https://digitalarchives.berry.edu/.

“Nytimes.com.” The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos. Last modified May 10, 1925. https://www.nytimes.com/1925/05/10/archives/bringing-light-to-the-mountaineers-how-miss-martha-berry-winner-of.html.

Oglesby, C. Corra Harris, and the divided mind of the New South. 2008.

Oglesby, Catherine. “Corra Harris and the Divided Mind of the New South.” YouTube: GBH Forum. Last modified April 9, 2014.

Talmadge, John E. Corra Harris, Lady of Purpose. 1968.

“WILDERNESS OF MIND NEAR LAST PLACE” MENTIONED IN CORRA HARRIS LAST LETTER.” Southern Highlander. Winter 1935.

Friends of Martha: The Man Who Drove the Oxcart

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 13:32:25 GMT

It was raining the day a former President stepped off the train at the Rome depot. It was October 8, 1910. A little rain could not stop a “Bull Moose” from keeping a promise he made to Martha Berry. He wrote to Miss Berry on New Year’s Day 1909 while still in office on White House letterhead:

Dear Miss Berry:
I have your letter of the 30^TH. There is no school in which I have taken more interest than in the Berry School, which is in very fact a Christian Industrial school for country boys. I believe with all my heart in the work you are doing. When I return from Africa, I intend to come down myself, if possible, with Mrs. Roosevelt so that we can see the school and wish you and the boys well in person. My only regret is that you haven’t a school for girls too. I have sent your letter to Mr. Taft.
Wishing you a very happy New Year. I am
Sincerely yours.
Theodore Roosevelt

Berry took his suggestion and opened the Martha Berry School for Girls on Thanksgiving Day in 1909. It was built on a work-study basis alongside the existing boys’ school.

When the former president arrived on October 8, 1909 it became Roosevelt Day at Berry Schools. The Southern Highlander records the events of that cold rainy autumn day.

The special train at the Berry School station arrived at 8:30 AM. Cheers and yells welcomed President Roosevelt. They were singing school songs and verses they created just for Teddy with this endearing line: “We know this as much/ as he is Georgia Dutch.”
Across the entrance of Recitation Hall was a large banner that read, “We’ve been waiting for you Teddy, and we’re mighty glad you’ve come.” Everyone knew, especially Martha Berry, that the popular past president refused hundreds of invitations to speak at other places along the way on his southern trip.

In the Hall, many people spoke including Roosevelt. The students presented the President with a big stick and said, “And now that you O Jungle King, may remember us in the name and in behalf of the student body I present to you this corporate scourge, this purifier of politics, this tyranny tranquilizer, this big stick.” The Southern Highlander reported:

“Miss Berry then told in her own inimitable way how she had met President Roosevelt, as he then was, and how he had become interested in the school and had come to her aid at a time when she was in desperate need of assistance in raising the money for running the school.”

The assembly ended and a tour ensued. In a gentle Georgia rain, they visited the industrial work areas, the office, the dining hall, the kitchen, the cannery, the agricultural area, and two areas needing help were announced. “The dairy was too little for our needs.” In the area where a tool shop stood there was a sign painted on the wall: “We need a blacksmith shop.” The students learned from their teacher, Miss Berry, how to ask for what they needed.

After the tour, Roosevelt announced to the students surrounding him, “Well, boys, if you’ve enjoyed the day half as much as I have, you’ve had a bully time!”

Theodore Roosevelt had been out of the White House for a year and a half. He had hunted in Africa, toured the courts of Europe, and been cheered through the streets of New York. Now he had come to a red clay campus north of Rome to see a school built by a woman almost nobody outside Georgia had heard of.

The weather did not cooperate, and Roosevelt did not care. The party climbed into one of the schools’ oxcarts to ride across the grounds, and Roosevelt, being Roosevelt, insisted on driving it himself. Picture it. The man who charged San Juan Hill, who broke trusts and dug canals, hunched in the rain at the reins of a Berry oxcart, steering oxen through the mud while students watched. It is the most Roosevelt thing imaginable

They served him a meal in the log cabin that stood at the heart of the early school. A student named Walter Johnson was assigned to wait on his table. We do not know what passed between the boy and the former president over the dishes, but we know what it meant to be chosen. To be the student who served Theodore Roosevelt his lunch was to carry that day for the rest of your life. The next morning, Martha Berry renamed the building Roosevelt Cabin.

Roosevelt Cabin

How did a mountain school land a former president? The same way Martha Berry landed everyone. She asked. She had a gift for finding the people who could help her and refusing to be intimidated by them. Roosevelt was not flattered into coming. He was recruited, the way she recruited Carnegie and Ford and the Vanderbilt cousins, by a woman who believed her students were worth bothering the rich and powerful.

Roosevelt, for his part, did not condescend to her. He counted himself among her genuine admirers. He saw in her schools the things he prized in people. Work. Grit. The refusal to lean on anyone when you could stand on your own.

That, in the end, was the meeting of two like minds. Roosevelt preached the strenuous life, the conviction that character is built by effort and hardship rather than ease. Martha Berry had built an entire school on that exact principle. Her students worked for their education with their own hands, laying brick, farming land, keeping the campus running. She did not give charity. She gave opportunity in exchange for labor. Roosevelt looked at that arrangement and saw his own philosophy standing up in overalls.

On January 6, 1919, Theodore Roosevelt died suddenly in his sleep at the age of 60. The former President was expected to run again for a third term the following year.

In 1925, Martha Berry received the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Service. The award was presented to her at the White House by President Calvin Coolidge. She was recognized for her pioneering work in establishing schools that provided educational, agricultural, and industrial training to the rural poor and Appalachian Mountains students.

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Listen to the Mill Town Story

Lisa M. Russell — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 14:43:11 GMT

Underwater Ghost Towns Revisited

Lisa M. Russell — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:38:04 GMT

Happy 70th to Lake Lanier

Friends of Martha: Ellen Axson Wilson

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 14:34:57 GMT

Myrtle Hill at Wilson’s Grave. Berry student’s bring flowers. Courtesy of Berry Digital Archives

She accepted the invitation in May.

The letter came on White House stationery. Rome’s newly formed Chamber of Commerce had planned a celebration for the summer of 1914. They had raised $ 10,000 for a celebration featuring illuminated Broad Street. The stores would close, and the buildings would be draped in flowers. Ellen Axson Wilson, First Lady of the United States, would return to the town where her father had preached and where she had first seen a young lawyer walk into First Presbyterian Church on an April Sunday in 1883.

Rome’s own First Lady would be the Guest of Honor. Her letter noted gently that she was uncertain whether the rest of the family could attend.

She came home that summer of 1914, and there was a procession down Broad Street, but the buildings were draped in black. She came home to rest beside her parents on Myrtle Hill.

In the short months Ellen Wilson was the First Lady, she was busy. She designed a garden, the first rendition of the West Wing Rose Garden. She was devoted to beautifying the nation’s capital.

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Mrs. Wilson visited impoverished neighborhoods with shacks in filthy alleyways. She petitioned for legislation to clean up these dark places. Her daughter, Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, in her book, The Priceless Gift, recorded a poignant scene. In her bed, surrounded by her daughters, days before she died, she tells them, “My bill has passed. Did you know?” They did not tell her about a war that was igniting in Europe; she only knew that she had made a small difference in her world.

Why would the First Lady, who was suffering silently for months, be concerned about those alleys? Why would she worry about her husband? According to McAdoo, she recorded what Ellen said and lived by:

“I wonder how anyone who reaches middle age can bear it if she cannot feel, on looking back, that whatever mistakes she has made, she has on the whole lived for others and not for herself.”

She was concerned about Woodrow and what he would do after she was gone. She made the White House doctor, Dr. Grayson, promise her he would tell the President, “later, when he will listen,” that she wanted him to marry again. She knew her husband. It was August 6, 1914.

Five days later, church bells rang as mourners lined Broad Street, silently watching the funeral carriage ascend Myrtle Hill.

Georgia historian Lucian Lamar Knight was there. He wrote this in 1914:

“Long before the sun was up, every road was thronged with travelers from the neighboring farms and hamlets, while every train brought its burden of souls from the remoter towns and cities. It was a day to be remembered by the youngest child when an aged man or woman. But instead of the emblems of rejoicing, the symbols of grief were displayed on every hand. No sound of hammer or anvil smote the air. Shops were closed. Mrs. Wilson was returning home, and many friends gathered to silently welcome her back, a Georgia native famous across the nation.
Her funeral procession moved from First Presbyterian Church to Myrtle Hill Cemetery via Broad Street, where many people stood watching. As the graveside service began, rain fell.

Ellen Axson Wilson, born in Savannah, but with most of her young girlhood passed in Rome, has been laid beside her father and mother in the old Myrtle Hill Cemetery at Rome. Her gravestone inscription reads:

Sacred to the Memory of Ellen Louise Axson, Beloved Wife of Woodrow Wilson. Born 15 May 1860 at Savannah, Georgia. Died 6 August 1914 at Washington, D.C

A Traveler between life and death- the reason firm the temperate will- Endurance foresight strength and skill- A Perfect woman nobly planned- To warn to comfort and command- And yet a spirit still and bright with something of angelic light.

(”She Was a Phantom of Delight” by William Wordsworth)

But what about Martha? There is no proof that Ellen and Martha were intimate friends like Emily Hammond and Clara Ford, but they shared a passion for the children Martha helped. Ellen established a scholarship in her brother Edward Axson’s name. He died in a tragic accident in 1905 with his wife and child. In his memory, she funded it with the proceeds from her paintings. Though little of their correspondence remains, they must have connected on some level. They both loved the seven hills of Rome.

The image of the students in coats at the freshly dug grave must have touched the President. This must have happened in the fall of 1914. Woodrow Wilson did not forgedwhat Martha Berry did for his beloved wife. Over the years, when Martha came calling, President Wilson supported her and encouraged her to keep up the important work.

A letter in the Berry Digital Archives survives on White House letterhead. Wilson wrote to Martha after the funeral:

November 21, 1914

My dear Miss Berry:

Thank you sincerely for your kindness in sending me the pictures of the young ladies who carried the beautiful flowers to Mrs. Wilson’s grave. Will you not let me express at the same time my very deep interest in the school and in all that concerns it? Mrs. Wilson had its welfare very much at heart, and therefore it touches me very deeply that the children of the school should think of her as a true friend who is gone.

I am glad to find the fame of the school spreading rapidly in this part of the country and hope that as it is better known, it will be more and more generously supported.

Cordially and sincerely yours,

Woodrow Wilson

Like Martha Berry, Ellen Axson Wilson is not as well-known as even Wilson’s second wife. Berry is celebrated in Georgia, but her legacy may be confined to Northwest Georgia and the multitude of students who graduated from Berry.

Ellen has a bronze statue at the Town Green in downtown Rome. Sculptor Stephanie Hunter gave her a paintbrush and an easel. She stands looking out over the Oostanaula River, toward the hills she loved. The statue stands where the funeral carriage once passed on its way to Myrtle Hill. Some who pass her do not know her name.

The Chamber of Commerce invitation of 1914 was answered, though not as anyone had planned. Ellen Axson Wilson came home.

Thanks for reading Elegies of Lost Things! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Bibliography

Accessed May 20, 2026. https://file:///Users/lisarussell/Downloads/Day2McGrawFordFoxtrotGuide.pdf.
“Edward William Axson.” Mine & Mill. Last modified July 6, 2013. https://mineandmill.wordpress.com/.
“Ellen Axson Wilson.” The White House – The White House. Accessed May 20, 2026. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/about-the-white-house/first-ladies/ellen-axson-wilson/.
“Ellen Wilson.” Miller Center. Last modified August 28, 2023. https://millercenter.org/president/wilson/essays/wilson-ellen-1913-firstlady.
“First Ladies Ellen Wilson and Edith Wilson.” C-SPAN.org. Last modified September 23, 2013. https://www.c-span.org/program/american-history-tv/first-ladies-ellen-wilson-and-edith-wilson/319868.
Foster, Feather S. “Ellen Wilson’s Great Sadness.” Presidential History Blog. January 19, 2023. Accessed May 20, 2026. https://featherschwartzfoster.blog/2016/08/08/ellen-wilsons-great-sadness/.
“Just a Moment...” Find a Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records (blog). n.d. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7262142/edward-william-axson.
“McgrawFord Foxtrot Guide.” June 18, 2017. https://file:///Users/lisarussell/Downloads/Day2McGrawFordFoxtrotGuide.pdf.
Tabler, Dave. “The First Lady Who Missed Her Homecoming.” Appalachian History. Last modified September 4, 2021. https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2014/03/first-lady-missed-homecoming.html.

Friends of Martha: From a Distance

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:18:38 GMT

The road to the river ran straight.

Edward Axson knew it. He had driven it before. On April 26, 1905, he drove it again. Florence sat beside him. Their son, Edward Stockton Axson, was two years old, small enough to be held with one arm. They were going to a picnic. The dogwoods were still white along the Etowah.

A quarter mile from the bank, the horses bolted.

There was no bridge at the Creighton crossing. A flat, a wide-bottomed ferryboat, waited on the bank in the road’s direct path, the way it always waited. The horses hit the flat without breaking stride, and the river took them all.

The Etowah River ran fifteen feet deep at that bend.

Edward Axson

Edward William Axson was thirty-one years old. He had been born in Rome. He had graduated from Princeton in 1897. When he returned to Georgia, he was the superintendent of the Franklin gold mines in Cherokee County, residing at the Pascoe House with his wife, Florence, and son. Edward was good at his work. He was settled. He had a life in front of him and a picnic ahead and nothing more dangerous than a pair of horses on an April morning.

When the carriage went into the water, he did not give up. He found Florence. He found the boy. He pulled them both against him and turned toward the bank. The Etowah was cold in spring while the humidity rose. The current was strong and unforgiving. He gathered his wife under one arm and his son under the other, and he fought for the bank until he could fight no more.

The bodies of Florence and the baby were found near the dam before dark. Edward’s body was not recovered until the following day.

The Rome Tribune reported it on April 29, 1905:

“Mr. Axson accompanied by his wife and child were going to a picnic a few miles distant from Creighton. He was driving a nettlesome span of horses. About one-fourth of a mile from the river the horses ran away. Instead of a bridge the river is crossed by means of a flat and this is always left on the bank directly in the path of the road. The horses dashed across the flat, carrying their human burden and plunged into the river, which was about 15 feet deep at this place. Mr. Axson sought to rescue his wife and child. He gathered them under each arm and struggled to gain the task, but it was too great a burden. The bodies of Mrs. Axson and baby were washed towards the dam and were found immediately. Mr. Axson’s body was not found until late yesterday.”

Florence and a 1-year-old Edward Stanton Axson

Ellen Wilson was at Princeton when the news arrived.

She was forty-five years old. She had been Eddie’s sister, but the truth was closer than that. Sixteen years stood between them. When their mother died in childbirth and their father’s mind broke under the weight of it, Ellen became what the family needed. She was the one who kept the household. She was the one who wrote Eddie’s letters when his stammer closed his throat, and the words would not come. She watched him grow past all of it. Past the grief, past the stammer, past the long shadow the Axson family carried. He had found Florence. He had found work he was good at. He had a son. He had, at last, found solid ground.

The river took him on a Wednesday in April. Him and Florence and the boy.

This was Eddie. He was the child she had raised. Finally, she thought this was the one that had escaped the sorrow.

Eddie

She picked up her brushes.

She had always painted. Now she painted with a different intention. She sold the work. The proceeds went south in letters addressed to Martha Berry in the mountains of northwest Georgia. Ellen could not pull Eddie from the water. She could do this one thing.

Martha Berry and Ellen Wilson never met. They did not need to. They were contemporaries, women shaped by the same Georgia, bound by the same loves. Both had grown up knowing Rome. Both had given themselves over to the belief that children deserved more than circumstances allowed them. Martha had stayed and built Berry College from the mountain ground up, one student at a time. Ellen had carried Rome with her to Princeton and then to Washington, and she carried it still, in the letters she wrote and the paintings she sold and the money she sent back to the hills she had left behind. Her return to Rome was imminent.

A scholarship was established at Berry College in Edward’s name. Mountain children, the kind Martha Berry had given her life to educate, would go to school in his memory. Ellen directed the painting sales toward it. She wrote Martha the letters. Ellen Wilson never saw the students her money helped send to class. The First Lady never walked the campus. Neither she nor President Woodrow Wilson ever visited Berry College. She gave to it the only way left to her, from a distance, through correspondence and canvas and grief made useful.

That was Ellen’s way.

She would come home one more time.

In August 1914, her body traveled by train from Washington to Rome. The city had spent months planning her homecoming. Parades. Illuminated streets. A celebration long overdue. She had been the First Lady of the United States. She had been Rome’s own. They wanted to honor her while she was still alive to receive it.

They were too late.

A horse-drawn carriage took her from the station to First Presbyterian Church, her father’s former pulpit, and then to Myrtle Hill Cemetery, her parents’ resting place in the Georgia clay. She was buried beside them.

Martha Berry sent students to Myrtle Hill to decorate Ellen’s grave. President Wilson wrote to thank her. It was a muted acknowledgment from a man hollowed by grief, an understanding that Martha Berry had honored the woman who had loved her work from a distance for nearly a decade, never once seeing it with her own eyes.

The Etowah still runs through Cherokee County. It still runs fifteen feet deep at the Creighton bend. It does not remember what it has taken. Rivers never do.

But Ellen remembered. Every painting she sold, every letter she sent, every dollar that traveled south to Martha Berry’s mountains in Edward’s name. She remembered.

That is what the living do for the dead when there is nothing else left to do.

In the next column, we will read a few letters left between the First Lady and the President.

Bibliography

Accessed May 20, 2026. https://file:///Users/lisarussell/Downloads/Day2McGrawFordFoxtrotGuide.pdf.
“Edward William Axson.” Mine & Mill. Last modified July 6, 2013. https://mineandmill.wordpress.com/.
“Ellen Axson Wilson.” The White House – The White House. Accessed May 20, 2026. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/about-the-white-house/first-ladies/ellen-axson-wilson/.
“Ellen Wilson.” Miller Center. Last modified August 28, 2023. https://millercenter.org/president/wilson/essays/wilson-ellen-1913-firstlady.
“First Ladies Ellen Wilson and Edith Wilson.” C-SPAN.org. Last modified September 23, 2013. https://www.c-span.org/program/american-history-tv/first-ladies-ellen-wilson-and-edith-wilson/319868.
Foster, Feather S. “Ellen Wilson’s Great Sadness.” Presidential History Blog. January 19, 2023. Accessed May 20, 2026. https://featherschwartzfoster.blog/2016/08/08/ellen-wilsons-great-sadness/.
“Just a Moment...” Find a Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records (blog). n.d. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7262142/edward-william-axson.
“McgrawFord Foxtrot Guide.” June 18, 2017. https://file:///Users/lisarussell/Downloads/Day2McGrawFordFoxtrotGuide.pdf.
Tabler, Dave. “The First Lady Who Missed Her Homecoming.” Appalachian History. Last modified September 4, 2021. https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2014/03/first-lady-missed-homecoming.html.

Friends of Martha: The Fords, Part II

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 19 May 2026 13:29:40 GMT

Clara Ford looks at a student’s handiwork. Clara Ford had the most influence on the money Henry Ford donated to Berry College.

“I have so much to tell you.”

Martha Berry writes to her friend Clara Ford. She wishes the Fords had stopped in Floyd County on their journey back to Detroit from their winter retreat.

Letters, written mostly in cursive, were how friends stayed in touch. Emails, texts, social media, and FaceTime have numbed the power of a handwritten letter. Reading old letters makes us realize what’s missing, and we’ll lose more if kids don’t learn cursive. A certain intimacy was lost when the keyboard replaced the pen.

Martha Berry often wrote with a typewriter (then a fairly new invention), though many of her letters were her own script. Clara Ford’s letters came penned in her scrawl on stationery headed “FAIR LANE DEARBORN, MICHIGAN,” or wherever she was staying. The letters centered on fundraising for Berry’s new buildings, but both women added personal notes throughout. The salutation was always formal, Mrs. Ford or Miss Berry, but each letter closed: “Affectionately.”

They were born in the same year. Martha McChesney Berry was born in 1866 on an Alabama plantation; Clara Jane Bryant was born in Wayne County, Michigan, the third of ten children in a farming family. Their lives moved in different directions for decades. Then the letters began.

Clara Ford, "The Believer"

Martha Berry met Henry and Clara Ford in 1921 through their mutual acquaintances, the Edisons. Berry had spent years combing through Fortune magazine for influential donors. She had already secured Theodore Roosevelt and Andrew Carnegie. The Fords were next.

The connection took. The Fords developed a fondness for Berry’s educational ideals and began making substantial donations to the campus. But the friendship between the two women lived apart from the institutional relationship. It was personal, and it lived in the letters, especially after the first visit.

One hundred years ago, Henry Ford and his wife, Clara, visited Berry College founder Martha Berry in Rome, Georgia. That 1923 visit anchored a relationship that would last for decades.

The Henry and Clara Ford Series in the Martha Berry Digital Archive comprises more than 100 items spanning nearly two decades. Most are institutional: fundraising, logistics. But threaded through the collection are letters in another register entirely, letters between two women who had become friends.

In February 1928, Clara Ford wrote to Martha Berry with simple domestic warmth, thanking her for the lavender sachet and the Berry girls for the Christmas cake. She noted they would start south on the 15th but could spare only a day before returning in time for Europe on April 1st.

A lavender sachet. A Christmas cake from the girls. These are the gifts of genuine affection, not philanthropy.

That same year, an undated letter from Clara to Martha survives with a different tenderness. Clara invited Martha to Dearborn to chat, see her gardens, and take a ride in her boat.

Martha, for her part, was often in fragile health. On June 30, 1928, she wrote to Clara from somewhere north, en route to Battle Creek for a check-up. She was heading to the sanatoriums of Michigan, but she wanted to stop and see her friends first. She wanted to go fishing.

The relationship continued. The Fords often stopped at the Berry Schools on their private train car, Fair Lane, and stayed at one of the cottages on campus.

Other gifts speak to the sincerity of that friendship: repaired clocks, exchanged recipes, a school provisioned with Ford-milled flour.

By 1931, Clara was sending Martha a thank-you note. The archive preserves it: handwritten, dated to that year. What prompted it has faded. The warmth remains.

By October 1936, Martha Berry was seventy and still writing. Two letters to Clara survive from that month alone. One invited Mrs. Ford and her husband to a relaxed visit, not for a ceremony, not for a ribbon cutting, but to come and be present among the young people both women had worked to serve.

Clara’s 1936 letter, a blend of news and gossip, reflected public thought after the King’s abdication:
“Evening papers have just come, with photos of the new King and Queen. I am heartsick about this affair. We liked Edward VIII so much, and I am afraid his happiness will not last, as this woman has loved two men before…”

Then, on the last day of that year, Martha wrote again. December 31, 1936. She had missed Clara and sent her regrets that Mrs. Ford had passed through Rome without stopping. She hoped the next visit south would include Berry. She had so much to talk over.

The letter continues with institutional urgency, inviting the Fords to the school's 35th anniversary, describing Dr. Chase of New York University as the chapel speaker, and mentioning dinner in the Ford Dining Room and a gathering in the Ford Gym. But the personal breaks through: Berry wanted to see the Fords’ house in Savannah. She wanted to know their life the way they had come to know hers.

A telegram survives, undated. Martha told Clara she would arrive in Detroit that Wednesday afternoon. No ceremony. Just a friend, arriving.

Martha Berry died on February 27, 1942, in Atlanta, leaving instructions that the school award Clara Ford an honorary doctorate.

She had done it herself, one last time, for Clara. The relationship was that deliberate.

On March 26, 1947, the school awarded Clara Ford the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humanities. After the commencement, Henry Ford planted a magnolia tree where Martha was buried. It was his last visit to Berry. He died a week later at his home in Dearborn. Clara made one final trip to Berry before her death in 1950.

Martha’s final wish for her friend, Clara Ford, was an honorary Doctorate in Humanities. Courtesy of the Henry Ford Museum.

Clara Ford came back without her husband. She came back to the place where she had once wished for a stove that worked. She came back to the school her friend had built.

Clara Bryant Ford was a philanthropist, suffragist, and advocate for women’s education. She and Henry Ford were lifelong benefactors of Berry College, drawn to its mission of “education through service,” and to its founder.

The correspondence in the Martha Berry Digital Archive is not the record of a benefactor and a school director. It is the record of two people who gave each other lavender sachets, shared boat rides, and missed each other when they passed through the same town without stopping.

The archive holds only a portion of what passed between them. Some letters are lost. Some sit unread in boxes. Some are difficult to read. The surviving letters chronicle two women, born the same year, living vastly different lives, who found in each other something noteworthy. Ben Franklin once said, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” Martha and Clara did both.

Sources for this information include the Henry and Clara Ford Series, the Martha Berry Digital Archive (mbda.berry.edu), and the Benson Ford Research Center in Dearborn. Many thanks to the archivist at Berry, Michael O’Malley.

Friends of Martha - The Fords, Part I

Lisa M. Russell — Wed, 13 May 2026 17:47:39 GMT

Henry Ford, Clara Ford, Martha Berry

In her Oak Hill office, Martha Berry read Fortune magazine and strategized. She kept lists of men with money. She tracked them through the press before she ever reached for a pen. Henry Ford first appeared to her in print before he appeared in person. She wrote to him for years with no reply.

She had already found Thomas Edison. The two met in the early 1900s, and Berry worked the friendship as she worked every friendship, with purpose and genuine affection in equal measure. When she learned Ford wintered alongside Edison at Fort Myers, Florida, she saw her opening. Edison’s estate and Ford’s sat side by side on the Caloosahatchee River. Berry wrote to Edison. She asked him to speak on her behalf.

She was not above working through a friend to reach a stranger. She was never above that.

They finally met in 1921. Ford was drawn to Berry’s philosophy of education through work. Martha told him about the Berry Schools. She described the girls’ and boys’ boarding schools and the six thousand acres of north Georgia mountain land they occupied. She told him what it took to work that land. She told him that her students were cutting it with push-mowers.

Six thousand acres. Push-mowers.

Henry Ford looked at her and said he would send a tractor.

She thanked him and went home. Then she waited. Weeks passed. The tractor did not come. She wrote to him. She wrote to him again. Months passed. She kept writing. Her letters said the same thing each time: I hope you have not forgotten that you promised us a tractor.

The tractor came, and so did the Fords.

They arrived at Berry in 1923 and saw for themselves the log cabins where the female students lived. Clara Ford noticed a spotless kitchen where the girls cooked, but also the broken stove. The Fords agreed the girls deserved something better.

Henry looked to his wife and said, Callie, maybe you’d like to give the girls a bigger stove.” She replied, “Wouldn’t it be nice if the girls’ school had a stove that worked?” That broken stove started a chain reaction of giving.

The Fords agreed the girls deserved something better — a castle, they said. Plans for the Gothic Ford Complex followed. The Ford Buildings, Clara Hall, Mary Hall, Ford Dining Hall, Ford Gymnasium, and the Old Mill and reservoir (1930) all originated from a single stove.

Henry Ford dances with a student

Sometimes the truth gets buried in a good story. On March 12, 1930, the Palm Beach News reported that Ford gave $1,250,000 to the Berry Schools, but the “Dime and Peanuts” story is a myth. The newspaper reported Ford refused help, then gave Berry a dime. He reportedly told Martha to make something of that dime donation. The story goes that she used it to buy and sell peanuts, growing her money to $1,000, convincing Ford to give $1,000,000 for her hard work. Berry flatly denied this account. She told the Press there was not a word of truth in it and doubted Ford had ever heard the story himself. The article also said that she hated to deny it because it was such a good story that she could have used. The true story needed no embellishment.

Over the next two decades, that first broken stove opened into this:

The Ford Complex (1925–1928) — all still standing

These buildings were constructed over three years by the Thomas Starrett Company of New York under a $1 million contract. The architect was Harry Carlson of Boston. Three plans were drawn before Ford was satisfied

The individual buildings within the complex:

Clara Hall (1925) — women's dormitory for 100 students, named for Clara Ford.
Ford Hall (1925) — originally the dining hall. Ford Hall was modeled after the dining hall at Christ Church, Oxford University. The Ford campus also has the Gymnasium, Mary Hall, Recitation Hall, Ford Auditorium, and the Lamar Westcott Building, which once held the food processing plant and laundry.

The Old Mill (1930) — still standing and operational on special occasions, Henry Ford had an iron hub moved to Berry, where the wheel was rebuilt. The wooden overshot waterwheel, considered one of the largest in the world at 42 feet in diameter, was constructed by student workers.

The Brick Plant

When Henry Ford donated funds to purchase a brick plant in nearby Rome, students were taught to make bricks and lay them in finished walls. As a result, many buildings at Berry College from the 1920s and 1930s are documented as having been built by students using their own bricks, including Thomas Berry Hall, Cook Building, Laughlin Shops, and others that still stand.

Normandy Dairy Barns (1931–1938) — still standing, now WinShape Retreat

Center Berry College students built the dairy in the 1930s with funding from Henry Ford, President Herbert Hoover, and others. Ford was a co-funder here, not the sole donor.

In the next column, the Berry/Ford legacy continues to grow. Letters between the women are warm, newsy, and gossipy. There is more to this story than buildings and donations.

Friends of Martha: For a Lifetime

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 05 May 2026 13:16:28 GMT

Emily Vanderbilt Sloane Hammond. Friend of Berry

She was born into one of America’s great fortunes and spent her life giving it away.

Emily Vanderbilt Sloane was born in Manhattan on September 17, 1874, the granddaughter of William Henry Vanderbilt. She grew up in Manhattan and summered at Elm Court, the family’s sprawling estate in the Berkshires. The world expected her to enter society. She had other ideas.

She preferred a seat in Sunday school over a place in the debutante circuit. Faith shaped her early. Guilt, the particular kind born of inherited fortune, may have sharpened it. She understood, from a young age, that her wealth was an obligation.

On April 5, 1899, she married John Henry Hammond at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in New York City. Their home became a gathering place for musicians, reformers, and thinkers. Their son John Henry Hammond Jr. would become one of the most important figures in American music, discovering artists across racial lines at a time when few white men dared.

She heard Martha Berry speak in New York in 1922. Berry stood in Hammond’s drawing room and told the story of the Southern Highlands children who were being given a skill, a faith, a future. Hammond listened and it changed her. She was a patron of many organizations. But Martha was different. In 1924, Hammond went south to see the schools for herself. The mountain and the candlelight and the students working with their hands did something to her.

She came back the next year and the next. She founded the Berry Pilgrim Society and led it for forty years, bringing wealthy and influential Northerners south to see what their dollars did in students’ lives. Berry College Archives hold hundreds of letters between Martha and Emily. Most who watched from the outside would have called it philanthropy. The letters said otherwise.

A poem often attributed to Brian A. Chalker offers a familiar framework: people enter your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. That framework fits Martha and Emily precisely. Their friendship began in 1922 and lasted until Martha’s death in 1942. Twenty years of shared purpose, honest correspondence, and deepening trust.

Berry had practical reasons to cultivate this friendship. Hammond’s wealthy circle became a pipeline to the schools. Letters document scholarship funds gathered through her network and sent south. She redirected gifts, bundled donations from her circle, and asked practical questions about dormitories and gymnasiums. She was a partner, not a patron.

Hammond’s New York network helped grow the institution Berry built. Martha had to go on many “Begging Trips,” as she called them, and her friendship with Emily paved the way. (Visit the special exhibit “The Begging Trips” at Oak Hill Museum.)

Beyond the Pilgrim Society, Miss Berry’s mountain retreat, the House o’ Dreams, was financed by contributions from Hammond, alumni, and friends. In 1939, Berry directed Hammond to arrange the Berry College display at the World’s Fair, in a telegram:

We are sending exhibit from Berry to World Fair in New York to be in Georgia State Building. Could you please arrange for someone assemble the exhibit in place…will appreciate beyond words.

A few letters crack open something more personal. Martha shared her heart with Emily on January 4, 1927:

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Dear Mrs. Hammond:

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My dear mother passed away Thursday at 2:30 P.M. …I am here all alone now with Aunt Martha as all the others have gone. I do not know what disposition will be made of the place….I thought of telegraphing you because I knew that wherever you were I would be sure of your love and prayers. I shall go back to the office and take up work again in a few days.

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With a great deal of love,

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Faithfully yours

They planned trips to the Hammond summer home and visits in New York that were not all business.

The Archives have shared many of these letters on their digital platform. Others are still buried. More were lost or destroyed over time. What survives confirms an intimate and lifelong friendship.

Emily outlived Martha by nearly three decades. The giving continued. When she could no longer make her yearly pilgrimages south, she continued her work on behalf of Berry until near the end. She went more than forty times, into the early 1960s. Emily Vanderbilt Hammond died at her home in New York City on February 22, 1970. She was 95.

What grew between the two women was friendship, the kind that outlasts a single visit or a single gift. Martha Berry was not an easy person to know at a distance. Emily Hammond did not keep her at one.

The last line in Brian A. Chalker’s poem: “It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.” Each saw clearly in the other what the friendship required. Martha knew what Emily could do to build the Berry Schools. Emily shared Martha’s vision and made it a reality. They were not only friends for a special reason, a limited season, but for a lifetime. Friends.

Hear Emily introduce Martha on a 1930s radio program: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=449068862446244

Emily Hammond introduces Martha

Sources: (across the series)

“2002 Georgia Agricultural Hall of Fame Recipient - Martha Berry.” YouTube. Last modified September 18, 2013.
Berry College - Best Private Colleges in Georgia. n.d. https://www.berry.edu.
“Berry College - The World’s Largest Campus.” Berry College - Best Private Colleges in Georgia. Accessed April 1, 2026. https://www.berry.edu/about/campus.
“Berry with Henry and Clara Ford · Martha Berry Digital Archive.” Berry Digital Archives. Accessed May 1, 2026. https://mbda.berry.edu/items/show/7611.
“Henry and Clara Ford Visit the Berry Schools · Martha Berry Digital Archive.” Berry Digital Library. Accessed May 1, 2026. https://mbda.berry.edu/items/show/7607.
“Letter to Martha Berry from Clara Ford · Martha Berry Digital Archive.” Berry College Library. Last modified 1936. https://mbda.berry.edu/items/show/486.
“Martha Berry.” Today In Georgia History - Just Another WordPress Site. Last modified September 10, 2025. https://www.todayingeorgiahistory.org/tih-georgia-day/martha-berry/.
“Martha Speaks in 1935.” Digital Archives of Berry College. Accessed April 1, 2026. https://digitalarchives.berry.edu/.
Oglesby, C. Corra Harris and the divided mind of the New South. 2008.
Oglesby, Catherine. “Corra Harris and the Divided Mind of the New South.” YouTube:GBH Forum. Last modified April 9, 2014.
Talmadge, John E. Corra Harris, Lady of Purpose. 1968.
“WILDERNESS OF MIND NEAR LAST PLACE” MENTIONED IN CORRA HARRIS LAST LETTER.” Southern Highlander. Winter 1935. https://digitalarchives.berry.edu/Documents/Detail/southern-highlander-1935-winter-volume-22-issue-3/3212?item=3633.

Friends of Martha: Emily Vanderbilt Hammond

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 13:40:48 GMT

Female students lined up at the Gate of Opportunity welcoming the NY Pilgrims to campus.

It was eight o’clock in mid-April. The sun had gone down over the Berry campus. At the tree-lined approach, the Gate of Opportunity stood open, and on either side of the road, young women held candles. A corridor of light. A welcome made of flame.

Their voices rose in song.

The students had come from the dormitories and the cottages and had taken their places along the road. One candle each, held against the dark. This was what Berry looked like when it opened its arms.

The cars arrived and slowly drove between the girls on either side of the road.

The women inside them saw the flames first. A double line of light stretching back into the Georgia night. Youthful faces behind each one, steady and still. No crowd noise. No performance. The candles and the mountain and the students of Berry, lighting the way in.

Students kept the flames burning each night. The tradition continued for the special guests after the annual pilgrimage dinner. The candlelit ritual with students outside Roosevelt Cabin was a memorable experience for visitors. (Look for more on the Berry Pilgrims in the next column.) Long after Martha Berry died, they returned from New York City, and Emily Vanderbilt Hammond led the way.

Emily Vanderbilt Hammond may have been the only Vanderbilt the students would ever meet. She was a lifelong friend and supporter of Martha Berry

Emily Vanderbilt Hammond had first seen this mountain by moonlight. That was how she remembered it, how she told it afterward. Sloan Hammond started these events to finance the work of her lifelong friend, Martha Berry. Hammond remembered the candles among the dogwoods and said it looked like fairyland. Emily had never forgotten it.

She heard Martha Berry speak in New York, was inspired by the Berry Schools’ story, and wanted to visit. Then she saw it. The blacksmith shop. The printing press. Girls working with textiles. Boys in the garden working with purpose. She saw the beautiful working campus and a chapel full of voices singing “Stand Up for Jesus” as though they meant it. She came back the next year. And the year after that. Martha Berry had a gift for drawing people in and holding them. Emily Hammond was drawn in and never left.

For forty years, she came back.

Emily Vanderbilt Hammond did not just attend these pilgrimages; she founded the Berry Pilgrim Society and led it for forty years, bringing wealthy and influential Northerners south to the schools. They saw what their dollars did in students’ lives. She was an intimate partner in Martha Berry’s life and legacy. While Berry died in 1942, Hammond continued the work until her final years and died in 1970. She stopped her yearly pilgrimages in the early 1960s, but she was still arranging things.

Emily Vanderbilt Sloan Hammond (1874-1970)

And each year, the candles flickered along the road to opportunity and outside the cabin windows. Small flames held steady by steady hands. Emily Vanderbilt Hammond, whose grandfather was William Henry Vanderbilt, is represented by a family portrait at Biltmore House. She was distinguished as a “Daughter of Berry” since 1922. This night, she sat at the table, enjoying the light and the music from Berry’s students. Over the years, Martha and Emily’s friendship deepened, beginning with that initial candlelit welcome and nurtured through all subsequent Pilgrimages. She had written once, in her own signed words, what it felt like to stand on this campus. She said it filled her, she wrote, with new faith in America’s future.

The candles burned on.

In the next Substack, we dig deeper into the correspondence between Martha Berry and Emily Vanderbilt Hammond and their separate lives.

Friends of Martha: The Woman Who Wrote Back

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:29:09 GMT

Martha Berry, Ida McCullough (seated), and an unknown woman with Corra Harris at her home in Rydal, Georgia, ca. 1920s. The unknown woman may have been the young girl Corra was introducing Martha to as a potential student. Can anyone identify her? Courtesy of Berry College Digital Archives

Another letter arrives from Mount Berry. Corra Harris reads it and sets it aside to finish her work. She was in the middle of a fourteen-hour writing day, behind on a deadline for Country Gentleman. She needed to keep writing, but Martha Berry was persistent.

These two-woman lived nearly forty miles apart, but they corresponded more than visiting. Letters in the Berry College archive run from 1922 until two months before Harris’s death in February 1935.

Over the years of the letters grew and covered a variety of topics. Martha Berry kept nearly everything. Letters from presidents, industrialists, and first ladies fill the archives at Berry College, each one a thread in the larger story of what she built in Rome, Georgia. But among the most revealing of those letters are the ones exchanged with Corra Harris; sometimes she wrote about jelly: “The Christmas jar of jelly came.” (January 3, 1928) She wished her a fruitful new year and signed as usual, “Faithfully Yours, Corra Harris.”

The letters were friendly but formal. Not one letter began with Dear Martha or Dear Corra. It was “Miss Berry” and “Mrs. Harris.” In two letters, she addressed her as Dr. Berry. This may have been the practice of the day: writing formal letters; maybe they were not on a first-name basis. Their friendship was not all business, even though that’s pretty much what they talked about.

Deep admiration grew on both sides in the language of these letters. Corra writes of Berry in a southern voice, “She is like an old hen scratching for her chicks, breathlessly concerned every moment and delighted at anything she turns up.”

Martha continually invited Corra to come speak to her students. On September 25, 1923, she writes, “I have my heart set on your coming to see us and talking to our boys and girls…” She gives her several dates. In the correspondence, she had to decline writing deadlines, and sometimes, due to her poor health. A photograph survives to prove they eventually met.

They never quite managed it easily. The letters make that plain.

In January of 1922, Martha wrote to Harris at her home in Rydal, inviting her to the twentieth anniversary celebration of the founding of Berry Schools. She wanted a letter from Harris, even if Harris could not come in person. Letters received on the thirteenth, Martha explained, were to be printed and bound in book form as a souvenir of the occasion. She also asked, with characteristic directness, whether Harris might send an autographed copy of one of her books and a photograph for the library.

Harris wrote back three days after the anniversary. She had long wished to visit and see the schools, she said, but it was not fate that kept her away. It was hard work. She was writing fourteen hours a day, trying to deliver a serial promised by the middle of the month and another by the end of March. She did not have an hour to spare for the next four months. But then, she wrote, when this work is done, she meant to take a year’s rest.

She never quite managed the rest either.

By July of that same year, a woman named Emma Calhoun Connally was writing to Martha on Harris’s behalf. Mrs. Harris had suffered an attack of indigestion, the letter explained, and was quite weak and nervous. It would be some time before she recovered her normal health and strength. She asked Miss Connally to convey her regrets and her promise to try again later.

Martha did not give up. She rarely did. In March of 1923, she wrote again, this time with a tone that was less inviting than appealing. She told Harris plainly that since her own illness, she had not been able to raise money by going out and meeting people as she had done for twenty years. She was depending on letters and published articles to tell the worth and need of these boys and girls. She wanted Harris to come, see the problem firsthand, and write a short piece for the Ladies’ Home Journal or the Saturday Evening Post.

This is a real cry for help, Martha wrote, and I beg you not to turn it down.

By September of 1923, Martha was begging again, telling Harris she had her heart set on her coming to talk to the boys and girls. She offered two dates in October and asked Harris to let her know which would suit.

Harris’s reply came in October. All of Berry’s letters had arrived, she wrote, and she should like very much to accept the invitation, but she could not. She was leaving the following Wednesday to see the editor of The Post about another serial. She had just finished a serial for The Country Gentleman that would begin in December.

I purchased this copy of Country Gentleman with Corra’s article

And then, tucked into the middle of her apology, Corra Harris said something that must have meant everything to Martha Berry. Harris wrote something in it that Martha must have read more than once: “I have given myself the great pleasure of writing something about you and the Berry School. Please accept it with my sincere admiration of you and your great work.”

That is the thing about this friendship. It was sustained entirely through longing and the written word, which is fitting, since both women lived by the written word. Neither could give the other what she most wanted: time and presence. But they gave what they had. Martha gave persistence and a frank accounting of what the school required. Corra gave admiration, fundraising letters, and a promise to publish a portrait of Berry and her work in a national magazine.

Between two women with that much work and that much conviction, it turned out that was enough. The last letter was recorded in Berry’s Winter 1935 edition of Southern Highlander magazine. She died in February 1935, and her final correspondence to Martha was a heartfelt and reflective letter:

When we grow old and tired, and little depressed at the thought of that we, who also must die, nearly in sight of the Promised Land of Our Dreams, it is a comfort to be praised a little, even by those who cannot know the wilderness of mind and hardships through which one passed to this last place. So, I am writing you this letter, not for publicity, but as the offering of one woman to another.
I send you my respect and admiration.
Faithfully Yours,
Corra Harris

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Friends of Martha: Corra Harris and the Woman Down the Road

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:14:43 GMT

Martha Berry visits Corra Harris, “In the Valley,” 1922. Courtesy of Berry College Digital Archives

Two women lived within a short drive of each other in Northwest Georgia in the early twentieth century. Both loved the Appalachian people. Both were building something — one with words, one with stone and soil and a child’s willing hands. Both were women alone, accomplishing what men said could not be done. Yet history remembered one and set the other aside. That is not entirely fair, and it is worth looking again.

Corra Harris lived in Rydal, Georgia, at a place she named “In the Valley.” Martha Berry lived in Rome, Georgia, at a place she named Oak Hill. The distance between them was roughly forty miles. Their temperaments were even closer. Though Corra was fiery and impatient, Marthawas persistent and long-suffering.

Martha Berry was building Berry Schools, which is now Berry College. This was a place where mountain children could come with nothing and leave with a trade, an education, and a sense of their own dignity. She gave them work and learning, and she believed those two things could not be separated. Her life was the mountain children.

Corra Harris was telling the world what those same mountains looked like from the inside. She wrote novels, essays, and columns that ran in the largest national magazines of her day. Her1910 novel, A Circuit Rider’s Wife, made her famous overnight. By the height of her career, she was earning more than $100,000 a year in today’s dollars. She was one of the most commercially successful women writers in America.

They needed each other.

The letters between them survive in the Berry College archives. The letters show how much these two strong women in the rural South cared about each other, their jobs, and their daily challenges.

When Martha needed a piece of writing done — perhaps a speech, perhaps a nomination letter- she knew where to turn. Why not ask one of the most prolific writers of the time? The woman who had spent decades shaping words for national audiences?

January 9 th 1925
Dear Miss Harris:
This is a real call from Macedonia. Our need is so great that no one can understand how great it is. We have no one to help us who knows how to write articles that would be read by people who are continually giving. Could you not help us to get out an article or two?

Corra Harris lived down the road, and they visited each other. Sometimes Martha brought friends to Corra’s log cabin in the valley in Rydal. Important friends like Henry and Cora Ford were guests at the Pine Log estate.

There is a photograph from 1922 of the two women standing together as friends in front of Corra’s home, “In the Valley.” We do not know the purpose of the visit or what was on their minds. But that they were together this day means something.

Scholars have noted a tension in Corra Harris’s body of work. Harris scholar Catherine Oglesby called it the divided mind. Harris wrote two kinds of things. She wrote what she believed: stories of mountain faith, of Southern women’s interior lives, of the moral landscape of rural Georgia.

And she wrote what sold: pieces that sometimes confirmed the stereotypes a Northern audience still carried about the South since the Civil War, because that is what paid well, and Harris was a professional. She understood the market and worked it skillfully. She was not ashamed of making a living.

Perhaps the divided mind cost her something in the end. Writers who serve two audiences sometimes lose the thread back to their truest work. Harris made her living, and she made it well. But the woman who sat in the valley knew what the mountains meant, and that the writer deserved a longer memory than the market gave her. History set her aside, and now only a few know who she was.

Martha Berry had no such division. Her life was her mission, and her mission was her life. Every letter she wrote, every gift of cotton or jelly or hand-woven cloth she sent from her students’ hands, every friendship she cultivated — it was all of one piece. Martha Berry gave people something to believe in, and they gave back. That singleness of purpose is why history held onto her name. But we should not let that explain away Corra Harris. Corra’s writing added value to Martha’s mission.

Some friendships are for a season. Some exist for a reason — a writing project, a shared errand of the heart, a place in the valley where a friend can come and rest. And some last a lifetime. We cannot know the full measure of what these two women meant to each other. The archive gives us fragments: the letters, the photograph, the mutual care. It does not give us the complete story. People rarely keep records of their truest moments.

What we can say is this. Two women in Northwest Georgia, both working at the edge of what was considered impossible for women in their time, found each other. One brought the mountains to the nation’s reading public. The other brought the mountain children into a future they had not thought possible.

Corra and Martha had a great deal to say to each other during their time together.

In the next column, we will dig into their letters, including the last letter Harris wrote to Berry. Maybe history will turn back to these women and give them a second look.

Primary sources are courtesy of the Berry Archives and archivist Michael O’Malley.

Sources

“2002 Georgia Agricultural Hall of Fame Recipient - Martha Berry.” YouTube. Last modified September 18, 2013.

Berry College - Best Private Colleges in Georgia. n.d. https://www.berry.edu.

“Berry College - The World’s Largest Campus.” Berry College - Best Private Colleges in Georgia. Accessed April 1, 2026. https://www.berry.edu/about/campus.

“Martha Berry.” Today In Georgia History - Just Another WordPress Site. Last modified September 10, 2025. https://www.todayingeorgiahistory.org/tih-georgia-day/martha-berry/.

“Martha Speaks in 1935.” Digital Archives of Berry College. Accessed April 1, 2026. https://digitalarchives.berry.edu/.

Oglesby, C. Corra Harris and the divided mind of the New South. 2008.

Oglesby, Catherine. “Corra Harris and the Divided Mind of the New South.” YouTube:GBH Forum. Last modified April 9, 2014.

Talmadge, John E. Corra Harris, Lady of Purpose. 1968.

Friends of Martha

Lisa M. Russell — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 18:21:32 GMT

Friends of Martha: An Introduction

The lamp is still burning in her Oak Hill office.

She is writing another letter. Under the Georgia night, the campus she established from nothing, with a playhouse, a few children, and woodland walks for learning, lay quiet. Now there are buildings, acres, and students who earn their keep with their hands. She built it all by asking. And so she is asking again.

Martha Berry was born in 1866, the year after the Civil War ended. Rome had been gutted by it. But Thomas Berry left his daughter land and means enough to live quietly, and she refused. Instead, she opened a small cabin on the family property and began teaching the Bible to the mountain children who found their way to her door. That Sunday school became a school. That school became a college. Berry College now holds the distinction of having one of the largest campuses in the world by land area. According to the college’s website, “At 27,000 acres, Berry’s campus is (by far) the world’s largest.” Every acre of Berry exists because someone said yes when she asked.

She asked without apology. She asked without surrendering. She asked until they said yes.

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Mrs. John Henry Hammond asked her friend, Martha Berry, to speak at the Hotel Roosevelt on Thanksgiving Day 1935 to an audience of over 800 people. The speech was part of an NBC radio recording. Miss Martha Berry, seeking new supporting friends, explains how her school began.

“On my own homeplace, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge in Northwest Georgia was a little log cabin I fitted up as a study. I’d hope to become a writer. Sitting in this cabin on a Sunday afternoon, reading. I heard the voices of children coming down from the hillside. I called them in and asked them what they did on Sundays, and they said, ‘Nothing.’ So, I told them to come back and bring their brothers and sisters. Well, they came and brought not only their brothers and sisters but babies and dogs. This little cabin became the beehive of humanity…. They just needed an opportunity. I began thinking about who I could get to help me with this and give them a chance at life. I thought of myself.”

She knew she needed support and began networking and forming genuine relationships. Martha asked the famous, the powerful, the well-connected, and the wealthy to look at what she was doing — first with boys from the hills, then with girls. She made many friends in the asking. And those friends shaped everything.

Theodore Roosevelt came to see what she was building and left a believer, a cabin named in his honor. Henry Ford and his wife [Clara] sent lumber and machinery on a scale that transformed the campus. Andrew Carnegie made her work for every dollar before he gave — but he gave. Calvin and Grace Coolidge offered something quieter: steady faith, without theater.

Emily Vanderbilt Hammond wrote to her, visited her, and stood beside her vision for decades with a constancy no headline ever fully captured. And author Corra Harris, a North Georgian, resident of Pine Log in Bartow County, was something rarer still: a peer. Two women who had each chosen to stay rooted in Georgia soil while the world came to them. They understood each other in ways a New York drawing room never could.

Each friendship tells a different story. Together they tell the story of a woman who knew, in her bones, that nothing worth building is ever built alone. In the Berry Magazine, friendships or relationships “Inscribed above the fireplace in Roosevelt Cabin, where Martha Berry lived for a time, is the phrase ‘kindle friendship.’ She understood the power of a caring residential community to ignite relationships that shape, heal, and invigorate hearts and minds.”

What is clear from the letters Berry wrote and received is how consistent she was. Martha was Martha — the same woman with Roosevelt that she was with a mountain child who had walked three miles through the cold to sit in her classroom. She did not perform for the powerful. She did not condescend to the poor. She simply told the truth: what she saw, what she needed, what she believed was possible. That is what her friends saw. A woman who meant what she said.

The lamp in her Oak Hill office burns low. The letter she has been laboring over is nearly finished. In a few days, it will reach someone who has never been to Rome, Georgia, who has never driven the road past the campus gate, who has never seen the mountains she loved.

But they will write back.

They always did.

Find a list of sources for this article at www.lisamrussell.substack.com

Next: Friends of Martha: Emily Vanderbilt Hammond and the close friendship that held Berry College together.

Sources:

“2002 Georgia Agricultural Hall of Fame Recipient - Martha Berry.” YouTube. Last modified September 18, 2013.
“Berry College - The World’s Largest Campus.” Berry College - Best Private Colleges in Georgia. Accessed April 1, 2026. https://www.berry.edu/about/campus.
“Martha Berry.” Today In Georgia History - Just Another WordPress Site. Last modified September 10, 2025. https://www.todayingeorgiahistory.org/tih-georgia-day/martha-berry/.
“Martha Speaks in 1935.” Digital Archives of Berry College. Accessed April 1, 2026. https://digitalarchives.berry.edu/.

Revolutionary Voices: What We Have Heard

Lisa M. Russell — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:39:41 GMT

In 1776, while Patriots and Loyalists fought along the coast and in the backcountry, something else was happening in Northwest Georgia. The Creeks and Cherokees lived in a complex society along the rivers and at the foot of the mountains. They were not isolated from the American Revolution. They lived it, fought in it, and paid a price for it—even when the choice of sides was never truly theirs to make.

The British had offered some measure of protection against colonial encroachment through the Proclamation of 1763, an attempt to limit westward expansion into Native lands. The Patriots offered no such protection and made no promises. To many Cherokee leaders, the Revolution was not a fight for freedom. It was a land grab, and they were standing on the land.

Not all Cherokees agreed on how to respond. Older chiefs like Attakullakulla and Oconostota had spent decades negotiating with colonial powers and understood the cost of open warfare. But a younger generation, led by the brilliant and uncompromising Dragging Canoe, son of Attakullakulla, refused to watch their homeland disappear treaty by treaty. In 1776, Dragging Canoe led coordinated strikes against frontier settlements in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Georgia—the opening campaign of what historians call the Cherokee War of 1776. He warned colonial negotiators that the lands being sold away would become “dark and bloody ground.” He was not wrong.

The Chieftains Museum has many resources about Cherokees in NW Georgia

The American response was swift and devastating. Colonial militias burned Cherokee towns, destroyed crops, and drove thousands of people from their homes. Ustanali was burned. Dragging Canoe and his followers retreated south and west, establishing new towns along Chickamauga Creek near present-day Chattanooga, where they continued their resistance for nearly two more decades. Their story is one of the most overlooked chapters of the Revolutionary era.

The Women Who Held the Nation Together

While warriors commanded the battlefield, Cherokee women held the cultural and political fabric of the nation together. In Cherokee society, women were not peripheral figures. They owned the homes, managed the agricultural fields, and held significant influence in council decisions.

Among the most remarkable was Nanyehi, known to Anglo settlers as Nancy Ward, who held the revered title of Ghigau—Beloved Woman. Nanyehi walked one of history’s most difficult paths, advocating for peace while fiercely defending her people’s sovereignty. She warned frontier settlements of impending attacks, yet also stood before the Treaty of Hopewell negotiations in 1785 and delivered a speech urging both sides toward lasting peace. She was not a collaborator. She was a strategist who understood that her people’s survival required more than warfare alone could guarantee.

Less celebrated but equally significant were the women of Ustanali and the surrounding towns, who maintained households, preserved knowledge, raised children, and kept Cherokee identity alive even as the world around them was being dismantled piece by piece. Their names rarely appear in the colonial record. They were there nonetheless.

What the Revolution Really Meant on This Ground

The Declaration of Independence promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For the Cherokee people of Northwest Georgia, the Revolution delivered something else entirely—the legal and moral framework that American settlers would use to justify taking everything.

The new nation was hungry for land. Georgia’s western boundaries were contested, and the pressure on Cherokee territory intensified with every passing year. The Revolution did not end the Cherokee story in Northwest Georgia. It set in motion the forces that would culminate, sixty years later, in the Trail of Tears.

We have heard so many voices in this series—voices I once thought were lost to silence. Patriots and politicians and war stories. Those loyal to the crown stated their case. And the women, Native American women, colonial women, and African American women, all the people who shaped the ground beneath our feet in this region, left behind few surviving documents. What they left instead were traces: a name in a courthouse record, a narrative recorded, a story carried forward in memory across generations. This series has been an attempt to find those traces and follow them.

What We Have Heard

The American Revolution did not deliver on its promises equally. The men who signed the Declaration in Philadelphia in 1776 believed they were speaking for everyone. The women in this series were not consulted. The enslaved people were not consulted. The Cherokee were not consulted. They lived through the Revolution anyway, made their choices under impossible conditions, and left behind whatever traces of themselves survived the long indifference of history.

To stand in Rome today, at the confluence of the Etowah and Oostanaula rivers where the Coosa begins, is to stand on ground that has held all of these stories at once. The Cherokee called this place home before it had an English name. Enslaved people worked this soil, shaped this culture, and saved lives that history credited to others. Loyalist women and Patriot women and frontier women who belonged to no tidy category lived and endured and sometimes prevailed within miles of where you are reading these words.

They are not the past. They are the ground beneath our feet.

This series has been an attempt to hear them—to lean in close enough to catch the voices history tried to silence or simply forgot. It has not been exhaustive. There are more voices waiting in courthouse records, British archives, and family stories passed down in the community and in living rooms across Northwest Georgia. We need to preserve these voices.

The work of listening is not finished. It never is.

But for two hundred and fifty years of silence, this is a start.

Next time, a New Series: Martha and Friends: The Friendships of Martha Berry