Visits to The Mountains

Who is Harold Johnston? Harold Johnston was a regular student at Berea College just like my fellow classmates and me. What's the difference between regular students now and Harold Johnston? He wrote letters that are preserved to this day about his experiences at Berea College to his friends and family back home. We have taken and analyzed some of his letters in order to share them with you. Harold Johnston was from New York, meaning he is an outsider to the Appalachian culture. In his letters he is filled with awe and wonder about the "mountain people" and his outlook on life and perspective change once he is immersed in a different culture that is unlike his own, the culture of the mountain people. In this exhibit, we analyze and interpret the contents of the letters he constructed to his family and friends specifically focusing on the "mountain people" and how they influenced him. We have numerous subdivisions on the topic including the following: mountain women, mountain men, mountaineer culture, lifestyle, and sense of self. In these subdivisions, there will be a detailed description and examination of the written words of Harold Johnston along with images that can be used as a visual representation of his written ideas.

There are many misconceptions of the mountain people in these letters, as well as premade judgment on Johnston's part about the mountain people. We can see how his judgment changes throughout the course of his letter writing. We will also dive into some of Daisy Nickum's letters on the mountain men and women and how they acted at the time. She was a female college student at Berea College and it is another interesting point of view coming from a different perspective.

Letters have been used to express feelings and emotions both positive and negative and to be able to share their ideas with like-minded others who also take part in the writing process. The main purpose of Johnston's letters was to bring awareness to his family members about his experiences in Berea, Kentucky. As well as this we personally think that there can be a sort of calmness in writing letters and using them to convey your inner thoughts, somewhat like a diary. Harold Johnstons was using his letters to reveal his more personal side, something that we tend to do in our journal writing, as we will see in the following exhibit.