75-year ministries still
evolving to address needs
in Southeast Kentucky

photo by Sharon Rasmussen A group of boarding school students from Maryland take a forced thundershower break on benches outside the Opportunity Shop before returning to the hard work of beating back kudzu vines with hand hoes. They were beginning a two-week workcamp experience promoted by their school each year. One workcamper who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, said she’d never before been to the South or held a hoe in her hand.

“We’re living out the vision now: to meet the needs of the community whatever they might be,” Tim Crawford, executive director of Henderson Settlement in Frakes, Ky., told Episcopalians on an Appalachian Pilgrimage in late May.

The vision was born in 1925 when a Methodist minister, the Rev. Hiram Frakes, decided the best way to reach the proud, isolated people in the hollers of Southeast Kentucky was to educate their children.

“There was not even a road that came in here,” Crawford said. “Community residents gave over 100 acres to open a school in a small log cabin.” One resident, Bill Henderson, responded wholeheartedly, giving all 68 acres of his land to the settlement, which was named for him and eventually educated five of his children. One of them, Mabel Henderson, went on to Berea College, and she returned to the settlement as a teacher.

Residents of the area known for its feuds, moonshine stills, limited income and high unemployment supported the growth of Henderson Settlement. It has expanded to 1,600 acres, and it operates a workcamp center in White Oak, Tenn., near the Mountain Community Parent Resource Center, a Jubilee Center of the Episcopal Church.

As the settlement grew, so did its range of services: On the grounds are a farm that raises wheat, corn, potatoes, apples, cattle and pigs; a grist mill; a saw mill; a clinic; a community recreation center; a store where residents can purchase secondhand clothing and household goods; a craft shop where they sell their handmade items; a feeding program; services to new mothers; an emergency shelter, a recycling project and more.

The settlement responds to need as it arises; it serves two-thirds of the area’s residents.

Donations are counted on, and governmental and social services programs assist with costs and organization, such as MIHOW: Maternal Infant Health Outreach Worker and Save the Children programs. “Permanent” volunteers who come for a month or a year at a time are vital to the work of the settlement.

Elizabeth Parker, one such worker, arrived a week ago. She’ll be there at least a year as the settlement librarian and was busy the day of the pilgrimage organizing the library and determining needs. When asked which subject area was most in need of donations, she promptly responded, “adult nonfiction — especially how-to books on agricultural topics and making crafts.”

Additional needs for donated goods include household appliances and larger-sized women’s clothing.

Ministries are taken into the community through workcamps. Area residents apply for home repairs or other projects. Approved projects are detailed on a Web site, www.hendersonsettlement.com. Caring people select a project, raise funds to pay for the materials and stay at the settlement while doing the work. Dormitories house more than 150 workcampers.

“We put 3,000 people through here in a year’s time,” said Wendell Stoneburner, Christian education coordinator and chaplain.

For more information, contact Harry Chase, St. James, Knoxville, communicant and Henderson Settlement board member, 865-524-0551.

The entire Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee is located in the Appalachian Mountains, and the diocese has an active Appalachian Ministries Resource Team that evaluates and meets needs creatively. For more information, visit the team's Web page.

Also, all dioceses of the Episcopal Church that contain areas within this mountain chain focus on issues about the region through Episcopal Appalachian Ministries, which is based in Knoxville.

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