Appalachian History

Alice Jane Meek (1877-1961) could trace her roots to members of pioneer families in Eastern Kentucky. Her resourcefulness emerged early when, amid serious competition, she wooed and wed a teacher from a one-room schoolhouse in Van Lear who had been her instructor.

She bore John C.C. Mayo ---“Calhoun” to her--- two children, John C.C. 2nd and Mary Margaret. A highly focused woman, Alice contributed greatly to the rise and success of the man who became the wealthiest man in Kentucky by the time of his death. He was a pioneer in the development of the coal industry in the Big Sandy Valley.

Mrs. Mayo traveled with her husband as he met with local landowners to acquire their coal interests. She would often speak with the wives and work out deals for the interests behind the scenes. Her nicknames of “Alkie Jane” and “Alka” were well known, and Mr. Mayo named a steamboat after her that was misspelled as “Thealka” rather than “The Alka.” When the steamer was built in 1899, Alka Mayo became president of the Paintsville and Catlettsburg Packet Co., which operated the boats.

The Thealka, classified as a batwing boat due to the position of her paddle wheels. Instead of a single stern paddle wheel, she was equipped with two smaller side wheels, set well towards the stern of the boat. Photo undated.

In 1906 the North East Coal Company had created Muddy Branch, an unincorporated community in Johnson County, but in 1911, renamed it "Thealka" after the steamboat.

Alka worked hard to develop the public relations of Calhoun’s enterprises and helped to get railroads to Pike County to move the coal to market. From 1905 to 1912 she spent a great deal of time directing construction of the couple’s new three-story mansion in Paintsville, KY.

By 1913 the Mayos were comfortable enough to take a lengthy tour of Europe. They’d already traveled together to New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago and Minneapolis. Soon after their return from Europe, however, Mr. Mayo learned that he had Bright’s Disease, which in 1914 was incurable. He consulted physicians in Cincinnati, where he was briefly hospitalized. He was eventually moved to New York City in search of the most eminent doctors, but to no avail, and he died in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on May 11, 1914.

After her first husband’s death in 1914, a distraught Alice moved to Florida. In 1916 she met Dr. Samuel P Fetter of Portsmouth, OH when he was recuperating from an illness in Palm Beach, where she frequently visited. He was a bachelor several years her junior, whose “mother presides over his household.” The couple married at his friend Cyrus Preston's home, and moved to Ashland, KY in 1917. They purchased a Victorian home there, but due to war rations, were not allowed to build a new house.

Alice received permission to “remodel” and henceforth rebuild almost the entire house. During this period she became a director of the Mayo Companies. Before the marriage, she had formed the Mrs. John C.C. Mayo Company, transferred all the property of the estate to this corporation, and divided the stock between her children. She donated the Mayo home and land to Sandy Valley Seminary. In 1918 the grounds and buildings of Sandy Valley Seminary were acquired by the Methodist Episcopal Church/South, and its name changed to John C. C. Mayo College.

The marriage to Dr. Fetter only lasted 4 years. He was 37 when he died. Like his predecessor, he had gone to New York just months before his death in hopes of finding a cure for his illness, but was similarly diagnosed as incurable. Alice, “for business reasons related to the administration of the properties and enterprises inherited from the late John C. C. Mayo,” changed her last name legally back to Mayo, reported the Paintsville Herald in 1927.

After years of financial struggle the Methodist Church Conference reluctantly closed Sandy Valley Seminary in 1928. A bitter legal battle promptly erupted between the Conference and Mrs. Mayo over ownership of the properties; she claimed that “the purposes having failed, title to the lands had reverted to and was vested in her as the surviving donor;” the Conference disagreed. Mrs. Mayo eventually won ‘Board of Missions of Methodist Episcopal Church v. Mayo’ and received undisputed title to the school property in 1936.

She then sold the house and property to E. J. Evans, a friend and employee of John Mayo. Mr. Evans leased the mansion and other buildings. In 1938, Paintsville bought the Mayo College property and the Kentucky General Assembly created and opened the Mayo Vocational School.

In 1945, Mr. Evans sold the mansion and grounds to the Most Reverend William T. Mulloy, Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Covington, KY, and his successors in office. Under the guidance of the Sisters of Divine Providence from Melbourne, KY, Our Lady of the Mountains was opened in October, 1945. It is currently under the auspices of the Catholic Diocese of Lexington, KY. Alice Meek Mayo died in Ashland on Sept 5, 1961 and was buried behind the Mayo mansion in Paintsville.


sources: The Kentucky Encyclopedia, by John E. Kleber
www.johnsoncountykyhistory.com/education/sandy.html
http://home.catholicweb.com/OurLadySchool/index.cfm/NewsItem?ID=9376&From=Home
www.pikevillerotary.org/newsletter/2007-2008/news020608.pdf
http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/p/r/e/Clara-Preston-OH/GENE11-0169.html
Ashland Daily Independent, Front Page September 5, 1961
Board of Missions of Methodist Episcopal Church v. Mayo
CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS, SIXTH CIRCUIT, OHIO, 1936
A standard history of the Hanging Rock iron region of Ohio: an ..., Volume 2 edited by Eugene B. Willard et al.
New York Times, March 19, 1921, page 11, “Samuel P Fetter Dead”

FDR's government established several agencies to give relief to unemployed artists during the Depression. The Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture (later known as The Section of Fine Arts) was established in October of 1934 to provide decoration for New Deal structures, most commonly post offices and courthouses. Art created by "The Section" is often mistaken for WPA art, since the WPA funded the construction of post office buildings.

The artists who produced murals in Alabama received the award based on work submitted for other sites, or for work done previously in Treasury programs. Twenty-four works were created in Alabama, twenty-three in post offices and one in a courthouse. The standard New Deal post office carried a decorative allotment of $650-$750, covering a space about twelve by five feet above the postmaster’s door. Courthouses could pay a commission of $3,000 and covered more extensive surfaces.

From the allotted funds the artist was required to purchase all the necessary supplies and pay the costs of installation and photographs. Payment to the artist came in three installments: when the initial sketch was approved, when a scale drawing was approved, and when the final panel was verified as in-place by the local postmaster.

Highlights from Appalachian Alabama:

Fort Payne: "Harvest at Fort Payne," Harwood Steiger, 1938.
Steiger, of New York, admitted he had never been as far south as Fort Payne when he received the invitation to produce a mural there. Steiger did make a trip to Fort Payne within a month and found the postmaster most helpful as he prepared his sketches. The postmaster, in fact, told Steiger that he was pleased to be getting a mural although he had never heard of one before, and he drove Steiger out into the country to see waterfalls. Steiger proposed two different sketches for the mural: one showing the cotton industry in town and the other a landscape. He and the Section both chose the "pretty landscape" as more pleasing.

Huntsville: "Tennessee Valley Authority," Xavier Gonzalez, 1937.
The Huntsville mural was the largest and most expensive panel commissioned in Alabama and the only one placed in a federal courthouse rather than a post office. Gonzales received the invitation for the panel based on designs he had submitted for a competition in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1936. He originally proposed a rather odd allegorical panel that the Washington office criticized for both its style and its lack of meaning for the people in Huntsville. Instead of making allegorical allusions it was suggested that Gonzalez place emphasis on the realities of life. Using a realistic style and basing his new theme on the work then being done by TVA in northern Alabama, he redesigned the panel several times, finishing it in October of 1937.

Scottsboro: "Alabama Agriculture," Constance Ortmayer, 1940.
Ortmayer was teaching at Rollins College in Florida when she received the invitation to do a panel in Scottsboro. She chose a theme based on Alabama agriculture, especially cotton and corn. She described the final images: "Three phases of cotton growing form the theme of the central panel. On the right the cultivation of the crop is symbolized by the young man working with a hoe among the new plants. Opposite a young woman is depicted picking ripened bolls, and for the background, the processing and shipping of cotton is represented by the bales and the strong figure of a second young worker standing between them. Both of the flanking panels interpret the growing of corn. The young man and woman shown on the right are examining the fruit on the ripened stalks and the couple on the left are represented as workers who have harvested the new crop."


sources: www.arts.state.al.us/downloads/Al_Arts_Mag_PublicArt.pdf
www.alabamamoments.alabama.gov/sec49det.html
www.wpamurals.com/alabama.htm


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