Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (20) View all

Riceville photograph album, page 3

  • wcu_craft_revival-6140.jpg
  • This is a page from an early photograph album kept by Frances Louisa Goodrich that records her first mission posting in the Riceville/Brittain's Cove area of Buncombe County, North Carolina. The caption at the bottom of the page reads: "Home Industrial School, Asheville." Very lightly in pencil, Goodrich has written "Miss Florence Stephenson, principal." Stephenson encouraged Goodrich to move to the mountains to do mission work. The Home Industrial School was established by the Women's Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in 1887 on land donated to the church by Rev. L. M. Pease who, with his wife, directed the school. In addition to regular academic work, the school emphasized home training and religious instruction for girls and young women and had an average yearly enrollment of 140 students. In 1892, the school expanded and became the Asheville Normal and Collegiate Institute, which provided schooling for young women from the southern Appalachians and trained teachers. Olive Campbell included the school on a 1921 list of schools that taught crafts in the mountains. By 1930, the elementary and high school divisions had been phased out because of the improvement of the public school system, and, in 1940, the Presbyterian Board of Missions withdrew its support of the college. The school, by then renamed Asheville College, was closed in 1944. The site on which the school stood is now part of the campus of Memorial Mission Hospital.