I recently came across this letter from the Tanner-Brice Company, whose tag line was “Wholesalers of Everything.” I was skeptical when I first read that, thinking they were being a little ambitious, but as I continued reading I think it may have been a fairly accurate statement.

In their desire to help the work of the Berry Schools, The Tanner-Brice Company and Mr. Brice concocted a brilliant marketing plan for Martha Berry that came with a little profit for themselves. They proposed a new brand of “high grade coffee” that was to be the equal of Maxwell House coffee. It would have a label with a picture of Martha Berry and some buildings on campus and each can would contain a little booklet of information on “the wonderful life of service” Martha Berry led as well as on the Berry Schools themselves. The company would initially send a shipment of complimentary coffee to the Schools and then periodically have “profit sharing sales” to raise money for the Schools.

Mr. Brice ended the letter by begging Martha Berry to accept his offer of goodwill toward her mission, unless she thought it too presumptuous and motivated by commercial gain for the company.

Berry responded saying that she is “greatly complemented that you care to name your coffee for me” but as a matter of policy she must refuse to have her name and the Schools on commercial products. She said that she has had to turn down many similar offers. She thanked Mr. Brice for his kindness and wishes him the best of luck with his new product.

For some reason, I find these letters really amusing. Can you imagine sitting down to breakfast every morning drinking Martha Berry coffee? I think it is interesting that although she was brilliant at marketing, there were places she wouldn’t go. She was shameless in asking for money on many occasions such as Mother’s Day and in sympathy letters to grieving families like this one. It’s obvious that she worked really hard to make profitable connections with wealthy and powerful figures in the early twentieth century like the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies, educators like Booker T. Washington, the publisher of the New York Times, various presidents, authors and so many others. She wrote to various companies like Frigidaire to ask for donations of supplies, but she did draw the line somewhere. And apparently, that line is drawn at coffee with her face on it. I certainly can’t wait to see what other Berry products she turns down in the letters in this collection.

Martha Berry’s work for the schools had been tied to the road since their founding. Unable to find sources of funding in her community or the South in general, Berry took her first trip north in 1902 to try to establish connections with philanthropists in New York. The only contacts she had were the names of girls she had attended school with in Maryland for a brief time in her teens. Berry was able to secure an opportunity to speak at a Brooklyn church, and the event granted her access to several prominent contacts in the city. Throughout the School’s early history, Berry came to rely on her trips north to raise the funds she needed to operate the schools and to create opportunities for the ever-growing amount of students vying for a place at Berry and a chance for an education. She was able to form meaningful relationships with many of the school’s frequent donors, including Emily Vanderbilt Hammond, who also assisted in fundraising efforts by appealing personally to her friends and organizing yearly trips among her acquaintances to visit the schools.

Even at  63 years old, Martha Berry was still campaigning for her Schools as hard as she could. Much to her frustration, her doctor insisted that she stop traveling and speaking so much. She had to turn down many requests for her to speak at commencements, other schols, luncheons and conferences like the Virginia Congress of Parents and Teachers because of her health.

She did continue to make trips to New York to see her friends there. Sometimes she was more than delighted to make a visit especially to the Hammonds, saying “It was such a joy to see you…and to sun my soul in your happiness.” Other times she hated to make the journey, and quoted Aunt Martha saying “I’ll have to toat myself up to New York.” IIn this letter, Martah Berry comments to Mrs. Carlisle that traveling between New York and Rome is extremely tiring and she has to “spend a day in bed” afterwards.

It was often necessary for her to leave the Berry Schools to take a rest. She spent a lot of time at the Battle Creek Sanitarium to rest and be treated as well as at Tate Springs. She also enjoyed making the long trip across the ocean to be treated by well-known European doctors and to recuperate in the sea air.

It is no wonder all of this traveling taxed Berry (in her 60s!). Today, it is about a 14 hour drive to New York City from Rome, Georgia  – imagine how long it took to travel in a slower train with frequent stops.

In a letter written by Inez Henry, Berry tells Miss Bonner that they are both “tired to death of this life.” Yet Berry kept pushing on and continued traveling a little bit raising money through her speaking engagements as well as letter campaigns and other ways of inspiring people to help her help the mountain children. She certianly dedicated her life, time and energy to the children and schools she loved so much.

You can read the full letter here.

This letter is one of the most interesting and uncomfortable letters I have found so far. Guy Loomis asks Martha Berry to do him a favor and research witchcraft in the South. He says that he has friends (to whom he owes much) who are interested in all forms of witchcraft, especially after “the Pennsylvania episode.” I searched the Internet to find what on earth happened in Pennsylvania, and didn’t find much satisfactory information. I did find out, however, that there was a murder trial in York, Pennsylvania on January 7-9, 1929 in which witchcraft was suspected. The one reputable source I was able to find was this book, but there is only a limited number of copies that have been published and circulated. There seems to be a lot of mystery involved in this case, which of course only makes me more curious and eager to do more research.

Loomis writes Berry because he assumes that in her “wandering around the mountains” she would have come across many examples of witchcraft practiced by the poor Appalachian whites and African Americans. Not only does he assume she’s seen such things, he supposes that she knows a lot of information about “‘spells’, bewitchings, the casting of the evil eye” and other similar superstitions.

Berry writes back to him with what I would like to imagine is a bit of sarcasm at his somewhat ignorant request. She explains that she doesn’t think that any witchcraft is practiced, only harmless superstitions and “nothing that would lead to anything like the Pennsylvania episode.”

I think Loomis’ letter displays another example of many people’s ignorance of what the South was actually like during this time in America’s history. Loomis, like many others, believed that there were all kinds of “primitive customs” practiced in the South, and while I’m sure there were some, most citizens of the South were just regular people – the same as everyone else in the rest of the US. Obviously, there were “primitive customs” that took place in other parts of the country as we can see with the mysterious “Pennsylvania episode,”so I am unsure why the South is always suspected.

While I can’t be sure what Berry meant, I think it is a reasonable assumption that she was less than pleased with Loomis’ inquiry. Not only was he asking her to devote a huge portion of her time researching for him so he could repay his friends, he was assuming potentially offensive things about the people Berry spent so much time loving and serving. She maintains her professional manner in her reply, but makes it clear that she does not think the superstitions of the day “amount to anything serious,” and maybe do not amount to anything at all.

You can find the rest of the letter here.

As most Berry students know, President’s Day was earlier this week and, of course, we were not out of school. Even though it is a national holiday recognized by many schools and organizations, we watched President’s Day come and go while sitting in class and working on papers or doing homework. Luckily for me I was able to make my President’s Day worthwhile by actually enjoying my work while editing some documents.

My favorite group of documents is the collection of letters and images regarding the presidents and their interactions with Martha Berry and her schools. Although many people might already be familiar with the famous photograph of President Theodore Roosevelt driving Martha Berry in a wagon, I will soon begin scanning other images of the Presidents and Berry. I have also already tagged a number of documents relating to almost every president from Teddy Roosevelt to FDR. Moreover, while visiting Oak Hill and the Martha Berry Museum with my family last weekend, I found many portraits, signed photos, and documents between Martha Berry and U.S. Presidents including Calvin Coolidge and Teddy Roosevelt. It’s exciting for me to find these different connections between Martha Berry and the Presidents.

One of the most interesting of the Presidential documents can be found in the FDR tag. I discovered correspondence between Martha Berry and FDR written in 1927 when Roosevelt was Vice President of the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland. In this letter he discusses his future plans for Warm Springs, Georgia and his inability to visit the Berry Schools because of his crutches. I have always been interested in FDR’s presidency and in this time period in American history, so you can guess at how excited I was to find this letter. It is always fascinating to see how influential Martha Berry was with a select few of the Presidents, even before they were in office.

You can find more Presidential documents and images on the MBDA site under the collection ‘U.S. Presidents and the Berry Schools’ here.

To everyone working on the MBDA project, I am new this semester and am so happy to be able to help. My name is Angela and I am a sophomore biology major at Bloomsburg with hopes of someday becoming a vet. Although it may not seem like this would be the type of project for me based on my major, I can assure everyone that I am up for the tasks which will be assigned to me.

I am on the Pennsylvania end of the project at Bloomsburg University aiding Dr. Schlitz in any way I can. I am learning more each week and I would like to thank Dr. Schlitz for her confidence in me. One characteristic that I possess is a great attention to detail and I feel like this is something that will really help me in the editing and critiquing processes. I am a hard worker, and even though I have a crazy school schedule, I plan to manage my time so that I can participate in MBDA as much as I possibly can. Even though right now I am focused on the sciences, I have always had a love of art and I enjoy creating things. This could be another characteristic that would benefit me in helping with this project.
Right now I am not too involved, but that is alright with me. It is all a learning process and I hope to learn much more. By the time MBDA goes public, I hope to have gained a much more extensive knowledge and an understanding of every aspect of the project. Look forward to contributing and can’t wait to continue learning!