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CHAPTER XXIX.

SOME FORMER RESIDENTS OF SHELBY COUNTY AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS. (CONT'D)

REV. PARK W. FISHER.


Rev. Park W. Fisher, son of Mr. and Mrs. Cary William Fisher, better known as C. Will Fisher, a pioneer photographer of Harlan, was born in the building in which his father had his studio. This building was about where Paul Rettig's harness shop now stands, the date of Mr. Fisher's birth being April 24, 1880. He attended the public schools of Harlan. In 1889 the family removed to Demorest, Georgia, where Mr. Fisher again entered school, completing the course at the Demorest Normal School in 1897. Between 1897 and 1907 he worked at various trades in Demorest and in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1907 he entered the Atlanta Theological Seminary, where he remained two years. Then he entered the Hartford (Conn.) Theological Seminary, where he remained one year, being graduated in 1910. At Atlanta June 7, 1910, he was married to Miss Elinor Sugg, of Tarboro, North Carolina. He and his wife then came to Hindman, Kentucky, the latter part of June, 1910, where he hecame instructor in manual training in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union settlement school of that city. He and his wife started a Sunday school three miles distant, on Mill creek, where he held preaching services.

As readers familiar with the book will recall, "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come" lived in the pine mountains of eastern Kentucky, on the north fork of the Kentucky river. About fifty miles westward, on the middle fork, is a place known by its inhabitants as "Hell fer Sartin." Half way between these, and a little north of them, is Hindman, the county seat of Knott county. Hindman is forty-five miles from a railroad, the nearest station being each a two-days' journey over very rough mountain roads. In this region July 15, 1910, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher started a Sunday school of one hundred and one members. They had no Sunday school literature and no lesson helps and each Sunday went only with their Bibles. The Sunday school steadily grew and at Christmas the school had on its rolls one hundred and seventy names, with an average attendance of about seventy-five each Sunday, all the little school house would seat. Through the generosity of home churches in Georgia, New York and Connecticut, these primitive mountain people were enabled to have their first Christmas tree. The little school house filled to overflowing. It was a great treat, not only for the children but for the older persons, isolated as they had been all their lives. An amusing incident is this: A friend in Florida sent a box of oranges, and one little mountaineer began eating his orange as he would an apple, peeling and all. The Sunday school grew rapidly, regardless of bad weather, mud and poor bridges, fathers and mothers coming afoot and carrying their little children two or three miles. On one occasion a dozen men met at the crossing place of the creek, where there had been only a foot log and made a bridge of logs with a plank floor, so that the children might have a sure and safe way for crossing the creek in times of frequent high water. Later one man offered to donate all the logs needed to build a "church house" and a house for the preacher. Another man donated the ground on a pretty southern hillside and others gave the use of their teams and performed labor sufficient to erect the church and parsonage. In October, 1911, Mr. Fisher found the need of funds very urgent and, armed with fifty lantern slides made from pictures taken with his own kodak while in Kentucky, he started for New England, where he met a hearty response from friends there.

Mr. Fisher has not only taught these people and their children in the Sunday school and preached to them in their rude church, hut he plans for the future a small shop in which they can construct their own furniture and where men and boys may be taught the use of tools whereby they may make things for their homes: a brass band will he organized and instruction provided in domestic science, sewing, etc. Mr. Fisher has done a very helpful and creditable work and he and his wife have suffered privations of which the people in Shelby county know but little.


Transcribed by Cheryl Siebrass, October, 2023 from the Past and Present of Shelby County, Iowa, by Edward S. White, P.A., LL. B.,Volume 1, Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Co., 1915, pp. 541-542.


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