Special Collections Research Center

This pathfinder contains materials written about the early home missions movement covering the years 1880-1940, which includes the local color writing period, the Christian America movement, the Social Gospel movement, and the early crafts revival activity. The years 1880-1940 saw major changes happen in the Southern Appalachians primarily as the result of influences originating outside the region. Capitalists and missionary intellectuals alike came to the region with the idea of “modernizing” it, and to bring “mainstream” American culture to the area. The missionary intellectuals were mainly from the northern states, such as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York. They set up craft schools (settlement and folk schools), established Sunday schools, Vacation Bible Schools and established their personal denominations in the area. Though they came as missionaries, the Southern Mountain region was already predominantly Christian, with many mountain inhabitants belonging to such Baptist denominations as Old Regular Baptists, Old Regular Baptist Universalists, and German Anabaptist denominations such as Mennonites, Moravians, Brethren churches, etc. Other mountaineers were Cherokee, and still others Jewish. All, Christian and otherwise, were seen as prospective converts by missionaries. Though not as well remembered for having done so as the “mainline” Protestant churches, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Catholic Church, and the Seventh-Day Adventist Church also sent missionaries to the Southern Mountains.