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Lillie Shull Dougherty: Co-Founder of Appalachian State University

Written by Dorris Perry Stam, October 2021

Tucked in the northern mountains of Western North Carolina is a major regional university that had small beginnings nearly 125 years ago. Watauga Academy, which became Appalachian State University, was established in 1899 by the Dougherty family at the request of the people of Boone. The Doughertys saw the need for education and gave their all to the cause.

A remarkable trio built the school we now know as Appalachian State University. They are my maternal great-grandparents and my great-great uncle. I know them as “Papa” and “Mama Dougherty”, and Uncle Blan. 

The story of Appalachian cannot be told without Lillie Shull Dougherty (Mama Dougherty). Less prominent and less well-known than the Dougherty brothers, Dauphin Disco (D. D., her husband) and Blanford Barnard (B. B.), she was none the less the third pillar, equally holding the weight of the whole undertaking.

These three answered the pleading of local families to establish a high school for the area.[1] Prior attempts had not succeeded.[2] The Doughertys shared the vision to give a future and a hope to their mountain neighbors through education and the training of teachers for rural schoolhouses. If the endeavor was to endure, sustaining this calling would require a joint effort of total devotion, which they gladly gave. For nearly half a century Lillie Shull Dougherty provided invaluable support, undergirding the work of two men, one her husband, one her bachelor brother-in-law, while helping shoulder the load in multiple ways. What were this remarkable woman’s unique contributions? 

Working first as a teacher at Watauga Academy, and later as Business Manager and Treasurer of Appalachian State Teacher’s College, Lillie had not one but two distinct careers. These are the more formal evidence of her contributions, but beyond these we find her abundant influence in hospitality as informal college hostess, her involvement in the campus and town community, and as homemaker for both the Dougherty brothers and her five children. 

  1. Preparation for Teaching

The Village of Butler, Tennessee

Ida Lillie Belle Shull was born January 6, 1874, in Butler, Tennessee, the fourth of seven children[3], to David Harrison Shull and Martha Lewis Shull.[4] David was born in 1844. Coming with the early settlers to the area, still covered in virgin forest, David Shull’s father, John Shull, moved from Valle Crucis in the early 1800s to this fertile valley at the convergence of the Watauga River with Roan Creek Valley. Bottomland for farming was limited in Valle Crucis and the surrounding areas, forcing many to move further west as Tennessee offered more agreeable land opportunities. Martha’s father, William, also came from North Carolina to this area of Tennessee and began clearing land with other pioneers in the 1820s.[5]

Lillie’s father, David Shull, was a farmer who had little schooling but possessed a strong mind and was said to be very engaging in conversation. [6] He believed in high ideals — educational, moral and religious. The Baptist Church was central to his life, and Father Shull made certain his family regularly attended. Friends and strangers were always welcome, with preachers given special honor in the Shull home. Father Shull was noted for having a godly focus and a godly character.[7] Casual attitudes toward school attendance, so common in the rural South, were not tolerated in the Shull family. It was the prevailing view in the mountains that young people did not need school, for life and vocational skills were learned on the farm or in the craftsman’s shop, and civic and moral instruction took place in church and on county court day.[8] But David and Martha Shull strongly supported the broader and literary education of all their children.[9]

Butler was a small community when Lillie was a child.[10] Today it lies under the waters of Watauga Lake, a project of the Tennessee Valley Authority, or T.V.A., during the 1940s to bring electricity to rural Appalachia. The “town that refused to drown” was relocated nearby, house by house, including the moving of a cemetery. Not to be forgotten, an historical museum honoring Old Butler is currently in operation in the new Butler village.[11] Using today’s highways Butler lies about an hour’s drive of 30 miles northwest of Boone, but before the roads were built in the 1920s, it was a 2-day buggy trip.[12] A wagon trip in 1894 from the N.C.- Tennessee state line village of Trade, Tennessee, involved two days of a rough wagon trip winding through the gorge down Roan Creek to finally reach Butler.[13] The settlement of Smith’s Mill, later named Butler, had its first store, livery stable and hotel in 1872 just when a school, Enon Seminary, was being established on the bluffs overlooking the river. A seminary in such a remote location? The term seminary was in general use at that time for institutions established by churches, and similar to the broad use of the term “college,” both had a looser definition at times.[14] A train line was not extended to Butler until 1901 when logging companies became active in the area.[15] David Shull’s obituary says that what grew into the town of Butler was built on the Shull farm.[16]

A school catalogue from 1895-96, some twenty years after Lillie’s birth, describes Butler as “a small village of about two hundred inhabitants, containing three good stores, cabinet shop, a fine roller process flouring mill, and other industries” which have grown up around the school. “Also, a good iron bridge, spanning both Watauga River and Roan Creek is now completed and adds materially to our place.”[17]

Having three older siblings and three younger ones, Lillie helped in managing the household of nine, which she would later find, as a career teacher, was not much different than managing a classroom full of youngsters. 

Enon Seminary 

With the school’s founding in 1871, the Shull family began sending their children to the Baptist-associated Enon (or Aenon) Seminary.[18] Enon, which means “spring” or “fountain” in Hebrew, where John the Baptist met Jesus, was an apt term because of the large spring at this spot near a giant holly tree. 

Enon Seminary, with its attachment to a wider Baptist audience in Tennessee, drew educators with college degrees – quite unusual at that time in the mountains.[19] Teachers with education beyond the 8th grade were rare, even until 1925 when state normal schools were established. Most mountain teachers had no opportunity for schooling beyond the Common School course in the poorly funded and poorly taught public schools, with their emphasis on loud, group memory drills for reading and “ciphering,” or arithmetic, lessons.[20] “Common schools had no standard course of study or plan of advancement,” wrote James LeLoudis. “Students moved ahead at their own pace and stayed in school until they had exhausted the neighborhood cache of readers and spellers or until their parents had decided that they [their children] had acquired enough book-learning.”[21] “As late as 1925 “only a few of the elementary teachers in this northeastern part of Tennessee in Johnson County had more than a few hours of college education, and many had no college training at all.”[22] Tax payers in this area just after the Civil War resented supporting schools “for the poor,” the public schools, referring to them as “pauper schools,” and preferred to rely on private schools .[23] In the 1870s, when the Shulls began attending Enon, there was still a prevailing negative attitude towards public schools, which had sparse financial support and whose quality was low.[24]

Pioneers who came across the mountains from North Carolina or down the valley of Virginia and Pennsylvania colonies brought with them a desire for education for their children. But ill will developed over the Federal Government Compact of 1806 and the designation of public lands for schools, political wrangling and squabbling over so-called vacant land that was in fact settled, some with permanent homes. These landowners resented the take-over of their property. Taxpayers in Tennessee objected strongly to supporting public schools and felt that people should educate their own children at their own expense. This negative bias toward public education seems to have placed a stigma on “free schools,” or Common School, often referred to as schools for the poor. Those with means sent their children to private schools. State funding for public schools was exceedingly low, and the quality of teaching equally low prior to 1873. The U. S. Census of 1870 revealed significantly dropping literacy rate in Tennessee, prompting interest in education and school legislation in 1875, though not without enraged opposition from opponents of public education who persuaded legislators. The bill passed only because of a pocket veto by Governor Porter, a friend of education.[25]

Civil War 1861-1865

All schooling had ceased during the Civil War, leaving many parents greatly concerned about their children’s education during Reconstruction. Bitterness between neighbors was rank in Northeastern Tennessee, where Union sympathizers dominated but Confederate supporters sprinkled each area, and guerilla warfare continued between the Southern Home Guard and Union Bushwhackers. Herman Tester writes about the incessant violence during and following the war in his book, Butler: Old, New, and Carderview. “Many of the young men who called themselves ‘home guards’ actually had not joined any army” Tester said, “and would not be commanded by anyone. On their own they raided and terrorized the countryside, robbing, stealing, and killing as they pleased. These young undisciplined outlaws were a constant threat to every loyal citizen. Guns for hire, these men were given the ‘kill list’ with names of 14 loyal citizens they were to track down and kill on sight.”[26]

Growing up so soon after the war, stories and local family alignments would naturally have been common topics for a child like Lillie to hear. Johnson County had voted 787 against secession, and 111 for the Southern cause, as did most of East Tennessee.[27] Butler was similarly fiercely divided in Northern and Southern loyalties.

When he founded Enon Seminary in 1871, Reverend L. L. Maples brought a reconciling presence and message to the county, becoming a strong influence for healing, as well as an advocate for the lasting power of education. Maples’ example and beliefs informed Lillie’s maturing young mind. 

One of the few college-educated men in the area, Rev. L. L. Maples [28] was elected as a young man to the state legislature for Mossy Creek [renamed Jefferson City in 1901] and Jefferson County but retired in 1871 from the Tennessee Legislature[29] to return to his first love, preaching.[30]  

After the Civil War Maples had moved north about 100 miles and rotated preaching in several churches in Johnson County where his revivals were attended by former slaves and former soldiers, some from each side. His Christian love for all people drew many to his services and to his God during the 60 years of his Baptist preaching. “He was well known by Union and Confederate soldier [s], as well as slave owners and underground operators alike. ‘One of a kind’, they said of his oratory.”[31] This was the Shull family pastor, who surely had a strong influence on each family member, including young Lillie Shull. 

Accustomed to “having both coloreds and whites at his revival meetings”, Maples barely escaped the violent hatred of deep Southern bounty hunters during the war in Jefferson County, Tennessee, where, with the slaveholder’s permission, he was preaching to a group of slaves when the group was attacked and Maples tied to a tree while his congregation was loaded into a wagon cage full of captives (blacks and mixed race Melungeons[32]) from west of Sevier, Tennessee and some from Virginia. The local slave owners Maples had spoken with became aware of the attack, burst upon the scene, guns blazing, killing four of the six bounty hunters.[33] Rev. Maples must have been an unusually conciliatory presence in Johnson County, in the areas of Butler and Taylorsville [renamed Mountain City in 1885].

Education During Reconstruction

The Shulls, like other families during Reconstruction, were beginning to think towards the future for their children since schools had been closed during the years of fighting. Education, with Rev. Maples at the helm of Enon, was viewed more and more as a pathway towards hope.[34]

Lillie Shull was fortunate to have such a school to attend, with a man of Maples’ character as the headmaster. Rev. Maple’s wife, Amanda, taught music at Enon, having been a full-time voice and piano teacher in Jefferson City, Tennessee. The four Maples daughters became “well-instructed in voice and piano.”[35] Together the Maples brought the gift of classical music and training to Butler, so very rare in the mountains. Lillie Shull would eagerly learn and excel at music– Mrs. Maples was her first teacher.[36]

The Maples built a large house on the bluffs over the creek running to the Watauga River. Because of its location, the Maples’ house was often referred to as ‘the house on the hill.’ It was always open to students who were taking music or who just wanted to study with his daughters. 

Music grew in importance in Lillie’s life, but after running the school for ten years Rev. Maples focused his energies on his ministry and on public service in Nashville where he again served in the legislature, this time from Butler and Johnson County.[37] Maples had brought a high level of education to the area, insisting on college-trained leaders for the Enon Seminary. However, in Mrs. Maples absence would music training cease for Lillie?

Holly Spring College

In 1882, when Lillie was eight years old, James H. Smith, who had distinguished himself as a graduate “with high honors” of Milligan College in Elizabethton, Tennessee (where his father was a District Chancery Judge) took over leadership of Enon Seminary.[38] Enrollment had dwindled, but soon grew to over 200 students under the new Principal, reaching full capacity in 1886.[39]  

To Lillie’s delight, a music teacher was hired, Miss Selma Rosenblatt, from Greenville, Tennessee. Smith built a new large, brick facility, and he changed the name to Holly Spring College.[40] The term college is misleading because the Preparatory Department of younger students through high school was a significant part of the enrollment.[41] When Lillie was age 16, Mollie Shull, older sister of Lillie by four years, married President Smith in 1890. None could foresee that another Shull daughter would follow the same path as a well-regarded partner in leading a large educational endeavor.

In the early years of Smith’s presidency, the performing arts at Holly Spring College grew as a priority which boasted a school auditorium seating 600 –room for the entire local community and student families from surrounding areas. Lillie gave dramatic recitations with the literary society on programs and commencement exercises at the College. Saved among Dougherty family artifacts was a sheet with the following: “Programme, Young Men’s Literary Association” from May 1894, and lists two numbers by Lillie: “Recitation – An Old Man’s Story,”; and “Comic Song – Georgie, Georgie”.[42]But it was her musical, accomplishments on piano, guitar, and voice for which she was most highly regarded in Butler, and later in Boone.[43]

Dauphin Disco Dougherty and Romance

During her classes at Holly Spring College, Lillie caught the eye and heart of her geometry teacher and a new graduate from Wake Forest College in North Carolina, who had won top honors in mathematics.[44] Her May 10, 1893, report card indicates geometry grades of 93 for the 1st month, 97 for the 2nd month, and 98 for the 3rd month.[45] Family letters show that Professor Dauphin Disco Dougherty was immediately captivated by Lillie, a student in his classroom in 1892. Letters also reveal that she had other suitors and was probably in no hurry for marriage. [46]  In a school literary society photograph Lillie holds her head high while gazing confidently past the camera, poise and polish evident to all. 

Professor “Dauph”, as he was known by students and faculty throughout his life, (although he is now generally known by his initials, D.D.), grew up in Boone, N. C., but had close connections with grandparents and extended Dougherty family near Butler, close to Neva, Tennessee. Having attended Wake Forest College, at that time a Baptist college, he continued a strong life-long Southern Baptist attachment. 

Professor Dougherty’s admiration for the talented and attractive Lillie Shull never diminished while he pursued her for five years.[47] Letters indicate that they were both deeply committed to the church and Christian life, (and both were to spend their lives in service to the church.) The extended, often one-sided, romance eventually blossomed. Finally, at ages 22 and 28, she accepted his proposal and the two were married June 9, 1897. She called him “Professor” all her life.[48]

2. Teacher: Butler and Boone

Heading the Primary Department

It is likely that the Shull family could not finance further education for Lillie and needed the income from her teaching to enable the younger ones in the family to attend Holly Spring College, and for music lessons. The Carter County, Tennessee, Board of Education minutes and records list Lillie B. Shull of Butler as receiving a teaching license in 1890, when she was only 16, and again for the years 1891, 1893, and 1894. This verifies that she was a teacher in the public schools in Butler and other parts of the county. Lillie was away from the Butler area and teaching school in another district for part of 1894 at Elk Mills and Happy Valley, Tennessee.[49] Examination marks for Teacher Certification covered the subjects of Orthography, Reading, Writing, Mental Arithmetic, Written Arithmetic, Grammar, Geography, U. S. History, and Theory & Practice. Ranking merely average points when she was 16, she earned the lower 2nd grade certificate with at least nine others, and 8 others earning the grade 1 certificate for working with high school students. But her marks tied with the highest results in 1891 and 1893, with a written comment of “good” by the examiner for her excellent results in 1894, earning her a grade 1 certificate.[50]

Sometime in 1895 Lillie was hired as a fellow faculty member to Professor “Dauph” Dougherty, who was teaching mathematics, science, and German.[51] Because of her reputation as a musician, one might assume that Lillie taught music, but instead it was the Primary Department of the larger Preparatory Department of Holly Spring College that she led.[52] The school already had a new music teacher, Miss Nannie Hill[53]. Perhaps Lillie’s abilities with young children had been seen at church[54], at the school, or simply with her siblings. Wherever it was that she worked with children, she must have been noticed and respected enough to have been given this responsibility for young students.

The school catalogue for 1895-96 lists a very brief curriculum for the: “Primary Department: First Reader, Oral Drill in Numbers, Etc. [sic].”[55] The Intermediate level for young students included: “Written Arithmetic, Second and Third Readers, Primary Geography, Primary Grammar, Popular Science, Spelling, Etc.” The cost to parents is listed as: Primary, per month, $1.25; Intermediate, per month, $1.50; First Advance, per month, $1.75, and Second Advance, per month $2.25.[56] “Special attention is given,” the Catalogue says, “to the classes in the Preparatory Department, and great care is taken to start them aright, and train them to that course of study and discipline which will assure an easy, rapid, and thorough scholarship.” 

It was my career own choice to be a teacher, as well, and having taught first grade for several years, and given music lessons to young children for decades in schools and in my home, I can imagine Lillie with the youngest children in their first school experience, where socialization skills, getting along with others, as well as the habits of following rules and classroom behavior were ingrained in little minds and bodies. It would take a tender, patient heart and a firm hand to stay the course, which she had learned in the Shull home. 

Brother Blanford Barnard Dougherty

Blanford Barnard “Blan” Dougherty, generally remembered today as B.B. or Dr. Dougherty, was the younger brother to Dauph and became Lillie’s college classmate at Holly Spring College for the spring semester of 1893. At that time Dauph had been working as a professor for 6 months. Dauph had made preparations for Blan to attend because other college plans for Blan had fallen through. Finances for education were severely limited for Blan.[57] Dauph had secured a loan for himself to attend the highly respected Wake Forest College, which he paid off in 1906.[58] The Doughertys, as with most mountain families during the economic hardships of the 1890s, had little extra cash for schooling. 

Having lost their mother to death when the boys were ages 7 and 5, Dauph often helped his little brother Blan, particularly with his education. The younger brother greatly respected his older brother’s abilities and accomplishments and leaned heavily upon him. After one semester in Butler, though, Blan accepted the job as Principal of Globe Academy, which he held for two school years, then enrolled at Carson-Newman College and graduated. Blan worked as Principal at Globe again for one year. 

Blan returned to Holly Spring College for the school year 1897-1898, this time as a fellow faculty member, no doubt arranged by his older brother.[59] Having lived with Dauph as a student, Blan lived with him again and with his newlywed wife, Lillie. 

Dougherty Brothers Teaching

For the school year 1897-1989 the Dougherty brothers taught high school and college students: Professor Blan teaching Latin and mathematics and Professor Dauph, science, mathematics, and German. Blan received a salary of $300 per year, while Dauph was paid $540 per year, because of his greater responsibility and his highly respected Wake Forest qualifications.[60] Lillie was home with infant Clara, but likely kept up her relations at the school and with the student families, perhaps teaching some children piano, which she would do in Boone in later years. The professional trio that would run the school they would later establish in Boone was already beginning to function.

Father Daniel Baker Dougherty

Lillie knew that Daniel Baker Dougherty, the brothers’ father, had been writing to his sons, Dauph and Blan, about educational needs and possibilities in Watauga County as far back as 1896 and again in 1899.[61] Blan, feeling the need for further training, relied on his brother Dauph and others to see him through financially during this season of widespread economic depression.[62] Pursing his desire for more education, Blan entered the senior class in Chapel-Hill and in May of 1899 finished a degree at The University of North Carolina. He was in the first pedagogy class with the newly formed Department of Education under the renowned educator Dr. Marcus Noble.[63] As Blan considered his next employment, letters among the three family members opened the idea of the new school in Boone. 

The extended Dougherty clan lived less than 15 miles from Butler near Neva, Tennessee, and several of Dauph’s cousins were his students and Lillie’s classmates at Holly Spring College. Dauph’s grandfather, Elijah, was an intellectual among his peers, with an enterprising energy for many endeavors, who also urged his grandchildren in higher education.[64]Dauph and Blan’s father Daniel Baker Dougherty, a progressive entrepreneur and well-informed man for his times, had little opportunity for formal education before the Civil War in Johnson County, Tennessee but intended to be certain his children went to school. In naming their first-born, Daniel Baker and Ellen Dougherty prophetically revealed the high expectations they had for their son, for Dauphin means “heir to the throne”, and Disco is a form of the Latin verb díscere, ‘to learn’, meaning “I learn.”[65]

Known locally as “Squire” Dougherty, Dauph and Blan’s father was respected in Boone. The aging father, born in 1833, was persistent in his attempts to persuade his two sons to return to Boone and set up a school. In March, 1899, he again wrote Dauph about the matter.[66]

Our Legislature has appr. [sic] $100,000 additional School fund. Have re-organized the school law. Elected a Bd. of School Directors for each county. Dr. Adams, Prof. Francum and L. G. Maxwell are elected for Watauga. There is an impression among our people that you will return to Watauga and build up a school at Boone with B. [Blan] It is taken for granted by the people…and I am often asked about it, but I can’t tell them anything for I know nothing. Dr. Adams was here a few days ago and requested me to write to you and B. both as he wants his bd. [sic] to elect either of you Co. Supt. Says the people desire this and he is for either of you and for you and B. to decide the matter whether either will accept the Supt. place. Of course, I have no choice but would be pleased for either of you to have the place. Dr. says it will pay from $2 to $4 per day…

A school here conducted by you and B. would be well sustained in my opinion the finest opening I think anywhere new. Consider this and let us know your desires. …Write to me at once about matters, especially of the Tenn Boom, & of your school ideas. …[67]

Boone Pleads with the Doughertys

Several attempts at a permanent secondary school had proved futile for Boone during the 1890s while his, Daniel Baker Dougherty’s boys, were beginning their careers elsewhere.[68] Higher education was simply unavailable in the town.[69]Citizens contacted Daniel and begged him to convince his sons to return to their hometown. As co-editor of the local paper, The Watauga Democrat[70], townspeople also looked to Daniel to also stir up the locals and help solicit financial support that would be needed for a new school endeavor at a time when money was very scarce.[71]

Dauph left Butler and made the 2-day trip to Boone after school finished at Holly Spring College.[72] Blan, who had just finished his Bachelor of Philosophy degree at UNC, made the long trip home from Chapel Hill[73], and the brothers met their father in Boone in late June 1899, to talk with town leaders in person and make a final decision about starting a new school. Local leader Tarlton P. Adams, of Mast near Cove Creek, Chairman of the Watauga County Board of Education, beseeched the Dougherty brothers to commit.[74]

Troubles in Butler

Lillie was aware that both Dauph’s father, Daniel Baker, and brother, Blan, had written to Dauph encouraging him to leave Butler. Why is not clear, but there are hints of troubles at the Butler school, with low tuition for the poor population but high expenses with the facility and payroll.[75] Perhaps Dauph was anxious to be the head of his own school, not subordinate, but making his own decisions for oversight. Also, the Cleveland Panic had made for desperate times in much of the mountains.[76] Correspondent and close friend to Dauph from his high school days at Globe Academy, Robert L. “Bob” Moore, accepted the Presidency of Mars Hill College in 1897 at a time when financial support at Mars Hill, a fellow Baptist institution north of Asheville in North Carolina, was so low that closure seemed almost certain because of the burdensome lack of money. B. B. Dougherty had been offered a co-principalship with Moore at Mars Hill, but declined, probably sensing his options were more attractive elsewhere.[77] During the depression of the 1890s it is estimated that twenty percent of the national workforce was unemployed at one time or the other, and that fifty percent of all businesses failed.[78] Perhaps the financial stability of Holly Spring College was similarly threatened? Yes, it turned out that it was. Smith sold the school soon after, in 1902, rather than go bankrupt.[79]

Certainly, Dauph’s capacity for leadership was evident and in time was validated in Boone. A special closeness between the motherless boys had developed when they were young, and the possibility of working together seemed natural and desirable, even with their differences in temperament and personality.[80]

Rumors in Boone

That summer of 1899 married now for two years, Lillie and their 1-yr.-old baby girl Clara stayed with her family in Butler, whom she was loath to leave until Dauph could ensure that the situation in Boone was more definite. The decision to move was a tough one. “While there is no comparison between Boone and Butler today, that was not the case at the beginning of the century.”[81]  Rev. Ronda Horton described Boone in 1895, the year he was born, as having four or five wooden stores on Main Street [now King Street], which was a muddy road with plank sidewalks. “All the rest of the land area here was just farmland, pastures and corn patches.”[82]

News had spread about the possible new school in Boone. Beginning in January 1899, displaying optimistic views of their father, the Watauga Democrat had printed:

“It is rumored that two educators of no small worth are thinking of opening a high school in Boone. This, if it is true, is indeed encouraging, for there is nothing we need worse. The gentlemen [speaking of his sons] are pushers and if they undertake it, they are sure to succeed. We trust they may.”

Lillie to Teach Music and Art

Lillie’s name is not mentioned in the August 24, the Watauga Democrat advertisement for the opening of Watauga Academy, announcing classes set to begin on September 5th, 1899. The advertisement listed: “Instruction in Music, Art, and Business; three Common School courses; Academic Course and Two years’ Collegiate Course”.[83] Lillie would be the instructor of music and art, areas in which the brothers had no training. Common School classes were divided into three levels and ended with the eighth grade. The Academic and Collegiate Course was college preparatory curriculum.[84]  

Capitalizing on the benefits of having a woman join the mix, the Watauga Democrat local news column for September 28, 1899, read: “Prof. D. D. Dougherty arrived yesterday from Butler, Tenn. He brought his family with him, and we learn that his wife will take charge of a music class in connection with Watauga Academy.”[85] The paper continued to carry advertisements for the new school, and students continued to enroll although classes had begun on September 5th. The brothers had been consumed with preparations in August and teaching in September before Dauph was able to return to Butler and move his wife and daughter to Boone into his father’s home on King Street with the family farm behind.[86]

News of a woman joining the brothers, especially one with a baby girl, might have been an encouragement to potential student parents. Mountaineer families, known for their skepticism about schooling and new ideas in general,[87] might have felt more comfortable trusting their young ones to a team with a wife and mother, who could also offer the rare (at least in the mountains in 1899) refinement of music. On the other hand, the dominance of male leadership, secure with Dauph and Blan, probably assured others.[88]

As part of the plan proposed by local leaders, the brothers discussed the position offered to either man, the superintendency of the Watauga County public schools. Dauph had a wife and child; therefore, the more flexible man for traveling and staying with student families out in rural areas was obviously the unmarried brother. Blan did not intend to remain single; it was his desire to marry yet Clara Powell from Lenoir found Boone too remote, too muddy, and too poor at that time and had turned down his proposal of marriage.[89] The two were to visit regularly for nearly sixty years but never marry.[90] The single brother accepted, and B. B. Dougherty became Superintendent of the Watauga County Schools on July 11, 1899[91], a position he held for the next 16 years.

Low or No Salary

The Watauga County Board of Education[92] contracted with the Dougherty brothers to teach “free school,” i.e. public school, or Common School, for a combined salary of $25 dollars per month[93] as part of the new Watauga Academy. It seems that Lillie, when she arrived in Boone, would be part of this agreement, thus giving the Academy “two for the price of one”, or in this case, “three for the price of one!”[94] After the ten weeks of “free school” (public, tax-supported) closed, Watauga Academy would continue as a private subscription school for a small tuition fee.[95] All three Doughertys were actively “talking up” the school, seeking students and subscriptions wherever they went.[96]

Educational Challenges in Boone

The Dougherty trio faced a number of serious problems in Watauga’s public schools, problems similar to those found elsewhere in North Carolina in 1899. Local leaders were well aware of these challenges and had sought the Doughertys help. “Attendance was poor because of parental indifference, ignorance, poverty, or lack of transportation.”[97] Watauga County had had a number of private academies and high schools from 1845 to 1890, but none were successful for any extended period.[98]

Ruby Lanier wrote about the situation in her biography of B. B. Dougherty: 

Watauga County was still isolated because of its lack of good roads and a railroad, and farming was the chief occupation of its people. Production on the farms was mainly for home use, though a few farmers drove cattle down the mountain or hitched their teams to wagons and hauled apples, potatoes, cabbage, wool, and chestnuts to the Piedmont markets.[99]

The school picture in Watauga County readily revealed a need for a permanent secondary school and also much work for a county superintendent. The population of Watauga County in 1899 was about 13,400Of this number, 4, 974 were of school age, but the daily school attendance was under half that. Public schools were open for about ten weeks during the summer months. [100] There were no public secondary schools in Watauga County or elsewhere in North Carolina in 1899, for the state had not yet developed a system of public high schools. The private academies and high schools provided secondary education. These schools were very important to the public school system, however, for a majority of the public-school teachers received no training other than that provided by them.[101]

A Home for Lillie

Another problem weighing on Professor “Dauph” was establishing a home for his family. This was a priority and had to be arranged before Lillie could make the final decision to move from Butler. Joining the extended family in the homeplace on King Street in late September with toddler Clara, Lillie faced a swirl of emotions. Dauph was constantly pulled away with work, with few moments to spare for her and little Clara. The added duty of her teaching would no doubt have made those first few months in Boone stressful for Lillie. Father Daniel Baker, as well as Dauph’s sister Etta Mae and her husband David Greene, with Dauph, Lillie, Clara, and Blan all lived in what was the original Jordan Councill, Jr. log home, by then covered with wood planking and expanded.[102] Etta and Richard had lived in his home community of Meat Camp for their first five years of marriage but had moved to Boone in 1899. Presumably Etta cared for her aging father, Daniel Baker, and helped with boarding the anticipated new students, there being no dormitories yet. This house stood until the 1950s on the current site of a surface parking lot near the movie theater on King Street and was operated as Greene Inn for many years by Etta and David Greene.

Boone was called “Councill’s Store” until 1849, named for Jordan Councill, Sr., wealthy landowner, whose store was the only post office in this remote part of the state. But Jordan Councill, Jr., his son and heir, was disillusioned and fearful after the war. He and other family members had suffered raids and extreme distress at the hands of Union men. Councill, who had extensive land holdings,  sold much of his property in and around the village to Daniel Baker Dougherty with a cash deposit and a credit bond, who in turn sold acreage to pay his remaining debt for the property.[103] Daniel Dougherty and J. F. Hardin together donated six acres of prime land in a white pine grove for the new school, (this property being at the heart of the campus today, between the present site of I. G. Greer Hall and food services building, the former Central Dining/Wellborne Cafeteria.) With property secured in 1899 work then began on the new school, given the name Watauga Academy.

Out the back porch of the Dougherty house on King Street, directly southeast to the current location of the D. D. Dougherty library, was a site dedicated to building a new house for Dauph and Lillie. Meadow View, as the new and roomy two-story house was called, became a boarding house as well as home to Dauph, Lillie, Clara, and Blan. It was the first structure completed on the school campus.[104] Porches above and below the wood frame house afforded a view down to Boone Creek[105] and across the narrow valley. By late October ten students had moved in, making a busy boarding house.[106]  Later the house was occupied by Mr. Cottrell, the college farmer at the time, and family, renamed Cottrell Cottage in 1906, and continued to operate as a boarding house for students[107]

Watauga Academy Begins

School opened on September 5, 1899, in an old and cold borrowed building. The prospects at the old Boone Academy building, which housed Watauga Academy until the new building was ready in January 1900[108], “were rather bleaker” than the brand-new Meadow View house. “The old, battered structure was in poor repair,” wrote Jim Thompson for The Mountain Times during the 100th Anniversary of Appalachian.[109] Built by the Three Forks Baptist Association in 1888, it operated for two years as an academy and then intermittently until 1898, with several unsuccessful attempts at a high school.[110]  Knot holes in the pine and cracks went straight through the walls. “Lillie pitched in to plug them and to try and keep the students and teachers warm.”[111] Blan Dougherty told of stuffing corn cobs in holes to keep out the wind and cold, allowing the pot-bellied stove to do some good during the cold weather of November and December.[112] Ruby Lanier described the Boone Academy as “a two-room building, with one room above the other connected by rickety stairs running up the outside wall.”[113] No photograph exists of this structure, which stood behind the present day Boone First Baptist Church.

Lillie Co-leads the School

Lillie immediately found herself joining Dauph to co-lead the school as the regular substitute teacher in her brother-in-law’s absence. Blan was needed to supervise the work on the construction sites for Meadow View and the Watauga Academy building. Sometimes Blan was away for many days to examine or train county teachers.[114] The October 5, 1899, issue of the Watauga Democrat included: “As Prof. B. B. Dougherty’s services were needed at the new buildings being erected for school purposes his sister-in-law, Mrs. Dougherty, is efficiently filling his place in the school room.”[115]

Sacrificial Effort and Community Project

Lives of self-sacrifice on the part of these three — emotionally, physically, and financially — can be verified with many examples from these early years and decades to follow. A Watauga Democrat article quoted B. B. Dougherty saying in May of 1905: Few “really knew how much expense, hard work, and nervous anxiety it took to agitate this enterprise,….[and the] heavy personal and financial load.”[116] “The family had pooled their cash and assets to raise nearly half the anticipated cost of $2,000 for the new school building.[117] Meanwhile, construction work continued along with the campaign to finance it. Local people gave labor, materials, and $1,100. Even a recorded gift of 25 cents showed important support when little cash was available in the area. It was truly a community project.[118]  

Brains and Brawn

With no extra money to pay workers, the brothers’ brawn as well as their brains were needed to build a Watauga Academy building, literally and physically. After teaching each day the brothers helped with the construction. Dauph, who had grown accustomed to blacksmith work helping in his father’s business as a boy, was also skilled with the hammer and an excellent carpenterBlan was a master of horses, who excelled in handling teams of even six horses, drove loads of lumber from the sawmill.[119] Christmas vacation was spent driving a team hauling additional lumber while Dauph and a helper completed the ceiling of the auditorium. Lillie’s help was needed in seen as well as unseen ways. In addition to teaching, Lillie kept food on the table, cared for little Clara and managed the new house with its growing number of students.[120]

Some students bartered for tuition and worked on the construction.[121] My paternal grandfather, Henry Baker Perry from Beaver Dams in the western part of Watauga County, worked construction after classes. Interestingly, Henry’s mother was Sarah Dougherty, a cousin who came to live with the Dougherty family when Dauph and Blan were ages 6 and 5, before their mother died, and before their 1-yr-old sister Etta Mae was given to relatives to raise. Sarah loved to recount that she was the one to teach Blan his letters and early reading. In years to come Lillie Shull Dougherty would welcome this beloved Sara Dougherty Perry into her home in Boone many times.[122]

Teenager Henry Perry and his father had been working in a field of rye when Professor Blan came by on horseback, no doubt visiting area schools. A discussion ensued, and the decision was soon made to send Henry to the first year of Watauga Academy. Family funds for such were nonexistent, but Professor Blan assured the Perrys that young Henry could earn his tuition, as well as money for room and board, by working on the building site after school and on weekends. [123]

Work-Study Gives Opportunities

The repercussions of offering financial aid and help for education in Watauga County and the surrounding mountain areas cannot be overstated. Evidence of changed lives abounds and positive economic impact for the county.[124] Among the first to graduate from Watauga Academy, Henry Perry entered The University of North Carolina and went on to earn his medical degree, returning to serve in Watauga County for over 50 years, becoming the doctor for Appalachian and the Dougherty family.[125] His opportunity for a career beyond farm work came only with high school and secondary education, at that time beyond the reach of almost all the families in the county. In most areas there was no opportunity for schooling beyond 8th grade. The Doughertys made what was essentially a work-study program available to countless students.[126] Smith Harman, the first student enrolled in 1903 at Appalachian Training School, bartered lumber for roof shingles in exchange for tuition.[127]

Lillie may have continued her classroom teaching for several years, especially with Blan’s need to be away on his famous faithful horse Bob and often gone for many days, to survey remote county schools and teachers. But by the fall semester, 1903, when Watauga Academy became a state-supported school with a new name, six teachers had been hired for Appalachian Training School: among them Julia Hardin, who headed the Primary Department, and Margaret B. Rhea, who taught Music and Art.[128] Lillie stopped teaching sometime before the birth of her second child in March of 1903, another girl, Annie Lewis Dougherty.

A New Home on Rivers Street

The Meadow View boarding house where Lillie, Dauph, and Blan lived had afforded little privacy for the young couple. A private home had been their dream as well as their need, and together Lillie and Dauph worked on the plans for the family home, which would overlook the campus from the south on Rivers Street though there was no “street” at that time. Her son, Barnard, would later say that he grew up “in the country” before 1930, for the home sat on a farm, among other farms, even though today it appears to be so close to downtown Boone. An abundant spring flowed from a rocky area on the hill just east of the site.[129]

Music for Boone

Though her official teaching ended, Lillie’s musical contributions did not stop but continued throughout her life. A biographical sketch of Lillie written for the dedication of the campus building later named in her honor noted: “Her main field was music, and she particularly enjoyed teaching choral groups.”[130] Music at the school and at church benefitted from Lillie’s leadership and abilities.

Jesse Curtis, a student at Watauga Academy in 1901 and 1904, recalled that Lillie taught music and other subjects. Once a year the two [literary societies] would present a joint program, Curtis said, which was an important event in the school year. Group singing had an important place in the activities of the students. “In society halls and school assemblies, vigorous voices, attuned to the North Carolina Hills or other patriotic songs, would ‘let music swell the breeze and ring from all the trees,’” with Lillie’s help and direction.[131]

For many years the school had no funds to purchase a piano. But the Doughertys had purchased one, which is still in the family — a massive square 1895 Mathushek concert instrument. Boys would carry it down from Lillie’s home, across the little valley, up the steps and stairways and place it on the stage in the auditorium; then return it, back over the creek and up the Dougherty front steps.[132] Her children and several grandchildren were taught by Lillie at her piano in the living room parlor, as were other students from the college, the church, or the town.[133] At least nine of her descendants have become music teachers and church musicians, as of the year 2021, including me.

Annie Dougherty recalled that her father bought a Victrola record player for the college, with records that were “mostly classical …” Between sessions at the school Dauph would bring the Victrola home, to the delight of the family.[134]

Granddaughter Ellen Brown Surratt Otterbourg, now in her 90s, clearly remembers as a child observing Mama Dougherty in the living room on Rivers Street with her guitar singing “The Church in the Wildwood” and other songs in the 1940s. “The North Carolina Hills” was a family favorite and was also sung frequently at the college.[135]

A Bargain for Boone

As a teacher, Lillie Shull Dougherty added more to Appalachian than might initially be acknowledged. In a very broad way, Lillie’s presence as a classroom teacher allowed the school to remain functioning. The salary of $25 per month was already low for one person yet was designated as a joint salary, initially intended to be for Dauph and Blan, but became the only salary for all three Doughertys.[136] No other money was available. Who else could step in for Blan, for free? One of the brothers had to be at the building sites, or the project could not be completed before January 1900. [137]Without Lillie’s help the brand-new educational undertaking may have been forced to close, for the school could not have continued during winter weather in the dilapidated temporary location with its exposure to the elements. Because of her involvement it was possible to finish two classrooms at the new Watauga Academy building, so that school could begin there in January.[138]

To restate the obvious, the “2-for-the-price-of-1” husband-wife team provided the low overhead without which the school may not have financially survived the first year. 

From her first days in Boone, and throughout her life, Lillie would participate in the financial sacrifices it would take to establish Watauga Academy. Could poor mountain families fund this endeavor? Money was very tight and the severe economic hardships of the 1890s lingered long in the mountains. It seems she readily accepted the lack of salary for her teaching and the many other sacrifices and inconveniences this new commitment asked of her.[139]

Another aspect to consider is that when Blan vacated his teaching while away on County Superintendent trips, someone had to be found who could partner with Dauph, even with with classes already underway. Of course, his former teaching colleague and wife could! Dauph had experience with older students, college, and possibly high school, but no experience teaching young ones. Even though Blan may have had experience teaching a wider range of ages, neither brother had younger siblings growing up, nor a mother in the home. Raised in an all-male home, the boys had not experienced the softening that came with a mother’s care which could have helped develop in them an even great aptitude with young children. 

Building Trust in Boone

Establishing relationships of trust with townspeople was critical for longevity of this new school. Lillie’s rapport with children and with parents was certainly a positive influence. Boone was a small town village in 1900 of only 155[140], where each person was unavoidably known. We cannot know all the factors in the failure of previous attempts at a secondary school in Boone in the 1890s[141], but the respect for the Dougherty name and reputation before they arrived, –Dauph and Blan were hometown boys –combined with the quality of their teaching and parent-teacher relationships after they were settled in town, made for a solid foundation of stability and growth.[142]   Lillie’s teaching contributions need careful consideration as well in the evaluating of the early years of Appalachian.

3. Business Manager and Treasurer

Running the Boarding Department

But teaching was only one aspect of Lillie Shull Dougherty’s contributions. Lillie developed her management and bookkeeping skills, assisted her husband when he became ill again with flu in late 1928[143], and then, upon his death, June 10, 1929, became Business Manager and Treasurer from 1929-1938. For 40 years Lillie was part of the leadership team at Appalachian in multiple ways. 

As a capable woman of 24, Lillie was manager of the first boarding house on campus — her own home. Built with family money, the promise of Meadow View must have sustained Lillie during her initial adjustment to life in Boone. They moved in October.  Blan moved in, too, and made his brother’s home his own — for life! As already mentioned, students were soon living in Meadow View so that in a short while four grew to fourteen![144] Extra duties for Lillie included overseeing childcare for little Clara, plus cooking, cleaning, and laundry for the large household.

It may have been while running Meadow View that Lillie began some bookkeeping for the school that would train her for her later role as Business Manager and Treasurer. College math classes under “Professor Dauph” gave her the necessary basic skills. Describing the first years of state support after 1903, a 1934 newspaper clipping said: “Dr. B. B. Dougherty was elected superintendent, D. D. Dougherty was principal, and Mrs. D. D. Dougherty ran the boarding department. She was then, as she always has been, a large factor in the welfare of the school.” [145]

Town families boarded students in their homes for “break-even” rates, as did the Critcher, Blair, and Blackburn hotels. Enrollment doubled the first year, from 53 to 100, creating a great need for housing. Serving as liaison to homes and hotels, Lillie was also an important emissary to the community and to parents. But it was her home, first Meadow View and then the Dougherty house on Rivers Street where people often came, and in which Lillie developed the ability to manage a hospitable environment open to ever-changing demands and numbers of people. 

Commenting on her mother’s extensive and often spontaneously required responsibilities, daughter Annie Dougherty Rufty, born in 1903, recalling her childhood years, said: “There were not many hotels or eating places in Boone. When families brought children to school they landed at our house. We never knew when we would actually sit down as a family. We did a lot of cooking! We would usually have help in the kitchen — children from the county would board and work for board. We had two or three like that from time to time.”[146]

Work Ethic

A first-hand account from Rebecca Greene, a girl who boarded and worked in the Dougherty home around the years 1914-1917 gives a hint of the managerial abilities of Lillie Shull Dougherty: 

“After I finished the sixth grade I went to Boone and stayed with the Doughertys. The Doughertys owned our house we lived in there on the Buckeye [an area and road name in the county north of Boone]. And they would come over to the house and begged Daddy and Mama for me to stay with them. And she just got in with Daddy and Mama to let me stay with her and go to school up there in Boone. Well, they let me.

In their house, there were three bedrooms in a row, a big house, upstairs…. We didn’t have no heaters upstairs, we had fireplaces. … There was one more big bedroom she called her company bedrooms upstairs just beyond that little den where he [B. B.] studied all the time. Cause she always kept it real nice and a white spread on it and everything. That was her company bed. 

I did housework, cook, wash dishes, make beds, clean the house, wash the walls if they needed washing. The walls were wood and painted. We did anything that had to be done.

I went to school from 8 to 12 noon, went home and helped Mrs. Dougherty … for lunch. She’d have it on. Everybody went home for dinner. It’s just across the meadow there. Wadn’t [sic]no buildings hardly, just across the meadow, you could walk it in five minutes. 

We cooked three meals a day. We cooked on a woodstove, the old thing wouldn’t half heat. 

Old Mrs. Dougherty would work your butt off. Her name was Lillie. She was the prettiest woman ever been in Boone. She wanted you to work all the time. But she was good and kind to me. …She was a beautiful woman.[147]

All six granddaughters have consistently expressed how beautiful Mama Dougherty was, how kind she was, and also how hard they had to work when they visited her.[148]  Always a luncheon, dinner or tea was in the making, or company expected, requiring extra cooking or cleaning or other special preparations. Lillie enjoyed hosting the Faculty Dames, a group of female faculty spouses which she initiated, and the Friday Afternoon Club social gathering of local ladies, which continues today with members’ descendants[149].

Manual Labor for Women

Monday was wash day; no classes were held.[150] Washing was a laborious and difficult job, which usually involved scrubbing the clothes in a tub on a washboard with homemade lye soap, then dropping them in a big iron pot of boiling water, often yet another pot of bluing water to make them white, finally a pot to rinse and wring them in. Clothes were hung outside on the line to dry, then came ironing.[151] Granddaughter Virginia Brown, who, as a young woman in the 1930s and 1940s, periodically lived with her grandmother, remembers the all-day job of laundering and preparing the starched collared shirts that her “Uncle Blan” wore, using flat or sad irons heated at the fireplace or on the stove.[152]

Those were busy days of family gardens to tend, produce to clean and prepare, cows to milk and butter to churn, home canning, home meat curing, hand laundering, barbering, hand-making of clothing, darning, mending and quilting, etc.. In addition to the daily chores, let’s not forget how cold it can be in Boone in the winter, and the job of tending to fireplaces and wood stoves for heat and cooking was physically demanding. 

Home Economics Department

Household chores, particularly cooking, were more tedious then, of course. Modern appliances had not yet been created. Lillie and Dauph together promoted the establishment of the Home Economics Department, seeing the vital need for practical instruction for these high school students who would soon manage their own homes.[153] According to daughter Annie Dougherty Rufty, her mother taught Home Economics during Annie’s high school years at Appalachian, and when electric appliances became available, Lillie Dougherty was the first in Boone to have these inventions, whether a mixer or wringer-washer[154], all with a view towards helping the college girls. 

Always Economizing

Lillie was part of the hard-working Dougherty team; it was a trio of understanding, and of shared sacrifice and endless effort. Frugality, of necessity, as well as manual labor were familiar to all three. Each was born in the aftermath of the Civil War into families who had “made-do” with little during those hard years. Economic depression hit the area again in the 1890s. By 1897 the Watauga Democrat wrote: “Our opinion now is that we in Watauga will see the hardest times next year that we have ever seen financially. During this fall our people have sold all their cattle and sheep, not even saving our cows and heifers. What we will have next year to sell for money is a serious question to consider.”[155]

Jokes about the fiscal conservatism of B. B. Dougherty still abound, but all three Doughertys were conservative. They had to be!  For the most part, mountain people were poor. The Doughertys chose to live and to run their school in the modesty that surrounded them, no pretense or display. A certain humility and realism combined to set the course of the three. No dreams of personal gain or material possessions fogged their calling to provide education and teacher training to this part of the state. Better paying and surely easier jobs could have been found off the mountain. Devotion and calling caused them to them stay the course. They were of the mountain people and for the mountain people.

Yet, it was not easy. Lillie economized and supported the school in every way that she could.[156]

Burnout

The stress and strain of running the school was wearing on Dauph, and in 1921 he resigned from being Principal and from teaching to focus on his job as Business Manager and Treasurer. A serious heart condition had developed by 1924 causing shortness of breath and the necessity of sleeping upright in a chair. [157]  Doctors required rest and a year of absolute confinement.[158] His bedroom became his office as he continued his work, with Lillie’s help[159]. Lillie was learning more and more about the business and treasurer positions when functioning as the liaison between Dauph and the world outside their bedroom. To ease the strain of the situation, Lillie’s niece, Ruth Barker, left her job with the Red Cross and agreed to be hired as a personal secretary for “Professor Dauph”.[160]

After 1925 Professor “Dauph” was able to return to his regular office and work for several years before his condition worsened, with the complication of flu compromising his body.[161]

Husband-Wife Partners

As husband and wife, Lillie and Dauph had worked together for the future of Appalachian for 30 years. Developing the Music Department was a joint endeavor for them, as was the Home Economics Department, the Printing Department, and the Manual Training Department, later called Industrial Arts. Home Economics and Manual Training were considered very progressive courses for a school to offer at that time.[162] “I cannot take credit for these,” Blan made clear. Blan was given credit for the development of Appalachian, given that he was President until 1955, and because he outlived his brother by 28 years. The legacy of Dauph Dougherty has been overshadowed by his younger brother. And so typical in our society’s history, men overshadow women.

Lillie shared in Dauph’s loves and dreams for Appalachian. Professor Dauph was described by his son-in-law, O. Lester Brown, as “an intense and devoted lover of order and beauty, [who] wanted the Appalachian campus to have harmonious connection to its setting.”[163] Together they discussed a master plan for the positioning of structures to complement the topography. LeVerne Fox, who moved to the campus at age eight when his father was hired by Dauph Dougherty in 1924, remembered Dauph and Lillie together planting decorative flowers and shrubs around the campus.[164]

Revealing some of the additional tasks that fell to her mother, daughter Annie said: “Before D. D. died Lillie was doing everything –feeding people, entertaining…. She would buy flowers and plant flowers all over the campus. She had some help. She even helped clean out dorms when students left.”[165]  When the popular summer terms brought large number of teachers to the cooler mountain climate for renewal credits, the town and campus could become suddenly overrun. Dauph hurried to the house one day exclaiming, “Lillie, we must let the dormitory on the hill have some furniture and bedding; students are everywhere around here and we’ve just got to take care of them.” An upstairs bed was taken apart and handed down through the front portico piece by piece.[166]

Other Mountain School Women

Until her official installment as Business Manager after her husband’s death in 1929, Lillie worked, as she had from the first year of Watauga Academy, on Dauph’s salary, two for the price of one, except for some music lesson earnings. This arrangement was not unique to Appalachian State. Women who led similar lives in the mountains of northwestern North Carolina have shed light on Lillie’s occupations as first teacher and then business manager, as well as hostess and homemaker. 

Studying the lives of those in leadership at peer institutions in the N. C. mountains can reveal parallels to the sacrifices required of the Doughertys, and particularly of the wives of the presidents. 

Mars Hill College

In ways similar to Lillie Dougherty, Edna Moore, wife of President Robert Moore at Mars Hill College, became essentially the Mars Hill Business Manager. Edna taught public elementary school in association with “the college” for two years beginning in 1885. The couple then moved into the girl’s dorm where they lived from 1887 until 1913 caring for students with Edna serving as dorm matron or manager.  Robert L. Moore, close friend of Dauph Dougherty from high school years at Globe Academy and Wake Forest College, became overwhelmed with the work load as President of Mars Hill College, so Edna took on management duties, as “lady principal and treasurer”, a title which later was changed to “bursar”, a position she held until her death in 1950 for an amazing total of 51 years at that college.[167] There is no record of her having a salary. After studying the overwhelmingly generous habits of the Moores towards their college, it seems extremely unlikely that she would have accepted one. [168] When considering the Moores of Mars Hill College, John Angus McLeod could have been describing the leading couple of Appalachian, so similar were the Moores to Lillie and Dauph, “– who each possessed the related virtues of independence, industry, and integrity. They never had money to waste and seldom allowed themselves the simplest luxuries; yet they always gave generously,…”[169]

Lees-MacRae College

Another woman whose life was similar to Lillie Shull Dougherty was Bessie Tufts, wife of Rev. Edgar Tufts. Bessie’s piano and organ music added greatly to school occasions at Lees-McRae in Banner Elk, a school which they began in 1900 and continues today.[170] When Edgar died prematurely in 1923 from pneumonia attributed to prolonged exposure to cold while riding his horse from Banner Elk to Blowing Rock, Bessie continued to serve the school, church and community alongside their son, who was appointed to lead the school.[171] There is no record of her receiving a salary. [172]

Glade Valley School

At Glade Valley School, fifty miles north of Boone near Sparta, Mr. and Mrs. Eldridge ran that Presbyterian school for 45 years on a shoestring. Mrs. Clyde Eldridge worked as a paid staff member alongside her husband for 35 years, serving as dietician and cook for 75 or more students, three meals a day, decade after decade–no small task. The couple lived in the girls’ dorm where they also raised their three children. Although she was paid, her salary would have been a very low, given the financial situation of the school and clients, and the frugal leadership and generosity of the Eldridge husband-wife team.[173]

Cullowhee State Normal School

Cullowhee, which became Western Carolina University, was slightly different than the above schools, but is significant as another example of a Presidential couple where both devoted professional skills to their school. Ella Richards Madison, wife of President Robert Madison, had joined the faculty as a single woman but continued, for many years following her marriage to Madison, to teach music, drawing and painting in the school as paid staff.[174]

I mention these women and their circumstances to illustrate the economic situation in the mountains was not the same as that in the central and eastern sections of North Carolina at the same time, where transportation and industry was rapidly developing. Lack of roads and railroads in the mountains had created “the lost provinces,” developmentally 50 years behind the rest of the state.[175]

Farm to Table

With very limited means, these mountain schools were able to provide food for students by growing it on campus farms. “The school had cattle, hogs, chickens, and raised a great many vegetables.”[176] Annie Dougherty Rufty said: “The students would sometimes bring in vegetables to pay on their room and board”.[177] LeVerne Fox reported: “The school at that time tried to be self-supporting, at least for most of the food they served. Very little money came from the state. As a result, Appalachian owned and operated several dairy and meat barns [sic]. There was a dairy and hog barn where the east ticket gate of present-day Conrad stadium is located. To the right rear above Newland Hall (about where Belk Residence Hall and H. W. Wey Hall are presently [sic]), there was a horse barn. Hogs, cows, sheep, and chickens were also kept there and slaughtered for food to serve in the dining hall.” Bowls of potatoes, beans, and bread were served family style. Sometimes there was a little meat. Food was scarce in those days and they did not really like it if you went back for seconds, but you could.”[178]

For the fall semester of 1931, two years into Lillie’s position as Business Manager, the local paper reported that the school had an influx of students who had left higher-priced institutions in the state for the lower costs at Appalachian. Board, which were meals prepared and served in dorm dining rooms, was provided at $100 for the full nine months of schooling.[179] “This is largely made possible by serving quantities of food produced on the college’s fine farm on the New River.”[180]  The A. E. Edmisten Farm, off State Farm Road in Boone near today’s Watauga County Hospital, was purchased in 1908, and is the origin for the road name. A cafeteria was built in 1924 where students ate family style meals of school farm produce.

As Lillie collected the cash from students during enrollment, many would not have the required amount, but allowances and provisions were always made. No eager student was turned away. In 2010 an elderly man told Bartlett and Dianne Dougherty that as he stepped up to the table where Lillie was working in the 1930s, he admitted to her that he did not have enough cash to enroll, and she softly said, “It’s all right. We’ll make a way. Now, you go on down to the school farm. I’ll make arrangements and you can work your way through school.”[181] She sent him off to work that very day and gave this young man a future. I had known that Dauph and Blan quietly and privately made arrangements for students who lacked means, a story I have heard over and over. Ned Trivette, who held major leadership roles at Appalachian for decades, told me Dr. Dougherty “made a way” for him, a poor Watauga County farm boy.[182] But it was wonderful to hear that Lillie helped students, as well, and did it confidentially.

 Blan, as President of Appalachian, made decisions and wrote reports, but keeping records and paying the bills was the job of the Business Manager and Treasurer. Lillie had a role in keeping the school from bankruptcy during a time when many other nearby institutions did not survive either because of economic strain or changes in the area.[183] Her service as Business Manager was invaluable in Appalachian’s school history.

4.  Unofficial Roles: College Hostess and Homemaker

Unnoticed Contributions

Sometimes someone who is not supposed to be important in an endeavor ends up being very significant, even without official titles by their names. The most impressive aspect of the legacy Lillie Shull Dougherty left may lie not in her role as teacher or Business Manager, but in less conspicuous areas.[184] Making a home for the Dougherty brothers may be her number one contribution to the story of Appalachian, but there is something else. Today colleges and universities have development and alumni divisions, food and hospitality services, catering and venues, conference and guest services; back then they had the “College Hostess”.

College Hostess

This unofficial position has continued as part of the assumed and unofficial job description of institutional leaders and spouses. A New York Times article describes what was required of those who headed large schools during the 1980s: “Many presidential couples live in official university mansions, the campus equivalent of the White House. They [or their spouses alone] are administrators, hostesses, menu planners and decorators. They also attend dozens of events outside the home, ranging from faculty teas and freshmen orientation to football games and alumni reunions.”[185] Extrapolating from this comment about the 1980s and going back to the early twentieth century can make clearer the multifaceted role of college hostess Lillie fulfilled, not on the campus, but in her small home.

In describing Lillie and her involvement at the school her biography for the county heritage book says: “Lillie was the ‘Appalachian Hostess.’ Her home was always open to visitors. She gave receptions and parties in her home.”[186]

In family photos given to AppState are family weddings, wedding receptions, and family reunions –all large gatherings held in the small home and spreading out onto the lawn. In addition to college gatherings, family events, and ladies’ clubs, Lillie and Dauph often hosted visiting speakers to the college and the church as dinner and sometimes overnight guests. As President of the Women’s Missionary Society for over twenty years, Lillie did her share of hostessing.[187]

Clubs and Organizations

Lillie helped to organize the first literary societies for students at Appalachian. These had been important to her at Holly Spring College where, as at almost all colleges and secondary schools of the times, she had learned the skills of declamation, recitation, and simple rhetoric for evaluating and debating. Performance opportunities in drama, music and public debates developed confidence in students as well as social skills from participation in literary societies. At Appalachian, initially there were only two societies: the Euterpean Society for the girls and the Watauga Literary Society for the young men. Both met on Friday nights and hosted periodic social gatherings, sometimes joint meetings, often with a debate or performance aspect.[188] By 1932 there were eight literary societies.[189]


A student writing for the 1929 Appalachian yearbook, The Rhododendron, stated: “Dating far back into the history of the school, literary societies have played an important part in school activities.” Their aim: “the social, literary, and forensic edification of the students,” was so successful one alumnus was quoted in the yearbook as saying, “The greatest thing at Appalachian is the literary societies.”[190] Lillie led the group singing and other musical aspects during the early years, which were significant parts of literary social events.[191]

The Faculty Dames, which Lillie helped organize, gathered at the Dougherty home for meetings, teas, special events and holiday gatherings.[192] For Christmas each year Lillie gave a gift, and D. D. chose a book, to give to each faculty member. I assume Lillie hosted a faculty Christmas gathering or tea. Rotating hostess responsibilities among its members, all prominent women in Boone, the Friday Afternoon Club was another priority for Lillie, who enjoyed preparing dainty sandwiches and luncheon dishes or desserts for her friends[193]. My mother, Lillie Perry, delighted to talk about working in the kitchen with her grandmother preparing for special events. Especially memorable was making colorful nasturtium flower sandwiches. My mother also remembers “Mama Dougherty” cutting flowers from the yard to take to sick friends or making sprays for funerals.[194]  The granddaughters each testify to “Mama Dougherty’s” active life in the community of the school and the town, and her frequent hosting.

People skills, as we now label the ability to talk with others, came naturally with Lillie’s genuine interest in others. She was at ease with all manner of people, as noted at her funeral by her pastor who said: “I have had people who could neither read or write along with the leading college professors to tell me that she was a most thoughtful woman. She was concerned about the welfare of all, and she showed it in her daily life and work.”[195]

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

The lines become easily blurred between College Hostess and Homemaker for Lillie Dougherty, because so many visitors came into her home through the years. Daughter Annie Dougherty recalled: “The Blair, Critcher, and Blackburn Hotels served meals, but people did not go there much to eat. Many a time after the family had eaten, Uncle Blan would come in and say, “Lillie, do you have anything left from dinner? There’s two men out here who haven’t eaten.” “Yes, I can find something.” And we’d hurry and grab and change the tablecloth.”[196] Blan, who would often be an hour or more late for meals, “Sometimes, without advance notice, he would bring a friend or two for a meal, not appearing to realize that it was an embarrassing thing as well as an occasion for more work for his sister-in-law.”[197] “During the first quarter century of her life in Boone, hundreds of people, other than her own and those of Professors Dauph and Blan, knew what it was to eat at her table. Although none of the family had planned it that way, her new home [on Rivers Street, after 1903] came in time to be a kind of boarding house.”[198]

Guests and extended family were so often in the home that, when still a young child, Clara said to her mother “Why don’t you run a hotel, then all these people who stay here and eat here would pay you, and you would have some money.”[199]  Herein is acknowledged that money was always lacking; generosity and hospitality were not. Once, before 1910, Lillie was constrained to lend several hundred hard earned dollars to the school that she had saved from her music teaching, which the school was not able to repay.[200]

Almost all records related to the college were burned in the 1946 blaze that burned the original Watauga Academy and Science Hall or in the completely consuming 1965 fire of the Administration Building. It is likely that the Doughertys helped to financially float the school during some very lean times, but it cannot be proven. Among items saved by Lillie Dougherty is a bank loan slip for $1,000 dated April 15, 1925. “You may renew if you want” is handwritten under the due date.[201] B.B.’s wallet had several canceled loan stubs from decades prior to his death.[202] Family stories still circulate about how the Doughertys gave generously of themselves and their assets. We count the campus and the school as our heritage and our Dougherty family inheritance.[203]

A President’s Home

The tangible reminder of our ancestors is the school campus, though the evidence of the Dougherty family dwelling is gone. The house, Lillie’s home, was never simply a single-use family house, never truly a college president’s dwelling, yet the diligently researched book, The Architecture of Watauga County, says it was “known as ‘the President’s Home’ until B. B. Dougherty’s death in 1957 and hence was a focal point of campus.”[204] Though not actually the President’s wife, Lillie functioned in that capacity when D. D. Dougherty was Principal of Appalachian Training School from 1903 until 1926. Blan was designated as Superintendent of Appalachian during those same 23 years, as well as Superintendent of Watauga County Schools from 1899-1916. Not until 1926 was the Office of President designated at Appalachian. B. B. Dougherty held that title until he retired in May of 1955 at the age of 85. 

The State of North Carolina did not build a President’s home in Boone until after B. B. Dougherty’s death in 1957, just as he desired it, having turned down repeated offers by the legislature to build one.[205] “The needs of my brother and me are few and simple,” B. B. once said to his nephew.[206] As a bachelor, provided for by Dauph and Lillie almost all of his adult life, he may not have taken into consideration the view from the perspective of a wife, mother, and provider of endless meals and official hospitality. Until her death in 1945 Lillie was hostess in “the President’s Home.”

A Modest House

The Dougherty home, built in 1902-1903, was no mansion.[207] The simple two-story home, which Lillie helped design, was a typical in farmhouse at that time. The Architectural History of Watauga County North Carolina states: “A historical photograph shows it with a two-tone paint scheme and its original porch posts with sawn brackets. The original porch had three sets of steps in line with central and flanking entries, an unusual entry arrangement that bespoke the house’s role as not only home to the Dougherty family, but also a reception and lodging place for official visitors to campus.”[208]Because of the generous water supply from springs on the hill behind, the home was one of the first to have running water when built. The moss-covered rocks surrounding the spring behind the garage created a well-known refreshment to many.[209] The west end of the front porch was enclosed to create a room. By 1915 a toilet was installed in a small room built by the kitchen door, accessed outside from the porch. The kitchen wood stove had an extension into this room to heat water.[210] Until then it was chamber pots or the privy outside even though the sink had running water! Wood stoves and fireplaces provided the only heat until after 1919.[211] A remodel was done of the kitchen and dining room in 1918, which was the same year that plumbing was added to the women’s campus dormitory.[212] Prior to and after the death of B. B. Dougherty in 1957 the house was occupied by daughter Annie Dougherty Rufty and her husband Roy and stood on the campus until 1988. When expansion plans were announced by AppState, the structure was saved from demolition by a community effort and moved to storage at the school owned State Farm Road property.  In 1989 the home was purchased by Wayne Underwood for $10 from the N. C. Department of Transportation just before the house was scheduled to be burned. With the help of community donations, the house was restored and now stands at Mystery Hill on the Blowing Rock Road as the Appalachian Heritage Museum.[213]

No Fine Buildings

Quarters were tight in this family home with Blan taking one bedroom, four children upstairs, sometimes a cousin or grandchild living with them and attending high school, possibly a boarder to help with the workload, and the continual flow of family and college guests. No long-standing fine president’s home can be found on the campus to give testimony to early days, as at many colleges and universities, such as at East Carolina or Chapel Hill.[214] In fact, the Dougherty insistence on economy allowed for no fine buildings of lasting quality to be erected anywhere on campus. 

When the family relocated in 1903 into what became their long-term home, Dauph never intended this house to be a permanent residence and always wanted a finer abode for his wife; that opportunity never came.[215] He recognized the modesty of the home did not match the dignity of the many events Lillie hosted, nor did the home afford lasting privacy. Simple family time did not exist in such a busy household, nor had it in the Meadow View crowded boarding house where they had lived for four years with a toddler, B. B., plus ten students beginning in 1899. The quieter, less public life she and Dauph sought always remained elusive.

Yet this family home served well and was a venue for countless special occasions. Even Lillie’s expansive front yard was the setting for receptions and reunions, where chairs were brought for seating under the large mountain catalpa “cucumber” tree. My parent’s wedding reception was held on the front lawn in 1943. Millstones from the Dougherty mill, which stood nearby, were made into a small table that stood under the large tree canopy, a reminder of times past. Her large garden and berry patch by the house provided some of the party and family food; her beloved flowers provided beauty and color. 

In this home Lillie experienced the joys and sorrows, as well as the private pressures of life. Here she birthed four of their five children and mourned the loss of their 2-year-old son, Disco, from diphtheria, while her granddaughter, Virginia, and her brother-in-law, Blan, continued to struggle with the same illness at the same time in her home. Weakened by the extra exertion of caring for the sick, Lillie later experienced several months of depression.[216] She was no super-human but experienced the range of emotions that come with the ups and downs of life. 

Here in this home, she and Dauph tried to keep their restless teenager Clara secluded from the pursuits of her classmate, a poor mountain farm-boy, encouraging her painting and music skills to blossom while trying to focus her on her high school studies. Upon receiving the news that Clara and her sweetheart had eloped in Tennessee, several people outside the family witnessed a distraught Lillie pacing the front porch of the house in her bathrobe sobbing.[217]

Grandchildren

When they eloped Clara was only 16, and Lester was 19, neither having graduated from high school. Their youthful marriage resulted in the joys of many grandchildren for a young grandmother who insisted, at the age of 40, on not being called “Grandmaw.”[218] “Mama and Papa Dougherty” were the new names settled upon. My mother, Lillie Brown Perry, who died recently at the age of 98, was the third-born of eight children[219] and named for “Mama Dougherty”. Clara and Lester, my mother’s parents who had eloped, lived in Meadow View, the boarding house and home built for Lillie in 1899, and worked on campus. After a few years, in 1920, they moved into and were put in charge of the newly built boys’ dormitory, Justice Hall, which stood near the Dougherty homeplace, with the family farm between them. My mother spent many happy times with her grandparents and recalled joyfully running and playing in the large front yard and playing the big square piano in the parlor, which spurred her on to a career as a church pianist and organist. 

Most summers and holidays were spent by Clara and her children with the grandparents at this happy home back in Boone, my mother said, even after her father, Lester, became a pastor and the family moved downstate.[220] My mother treasured memories of helping “Mama Dougherty” in her Business Office during summers and being entrusted to walk uptown to the bank by herself with the daily deposit.

Not only were there grandchildren which Lillie, Mama Dougherty, helped to care for, and nieces and nephews often living in the house, but Lillie also had two difficult teenage boys of her own at home when Dauph died at the age of 59. Soon to be age twenty, son Barnard would mature to come alongside his mother as Assistant Business Manager, learn the ropes, essentially the family business, and take over as Business Manager in 1938 when Lillie retired. Edwin, last-born, would later join the faculty of Appalachian as a professor of history. 

Homemaking had many facets for Lillie Dougherty; she was pulled in so many directions, and she was called upon to care for so many. Two of her sisters died leaving children which Lillie sometimes had in her home; aging, ill, or impoverished extended family from all sides found a place under Lillie’s care. Rarely did she ever leave Boone. As far as is known among her descendants, her travels included her honeymoon in Nashville[221], a visit to her parents in Butler once every year or two, and once to help daughter Clara after childbirth in a mill town near Charlotte where Lester was pastoring.[222] Her priority was always her husband and their cause. At the surfacing of any challenging situation, what she valued was immediately evident to all. Her children and grandchildren told stories of hearing Lillie exclaiming, “The School, the School!” — always the priority.[223]

Pressures Year After Year

She tried to ease the pressures on Dauph when the school was threatened with closure by the legislature and by Governor Locke Craig in 1910, 1913, and again in 1915[224]. (Craig wanted one Normal School in Western North Carolina in his home area of Asheville and tried to shut down both Appalachian and Cullowhee/Western Carolina to establish one consolidated mountain teacher training center.) Lillie sought to encourage Dauph when he was sometimes in Raleigh during World War I, and when he headed the war effort in Boone as Watauga County Food Commissioner.  During the ensuing pandemic, Lillie worried over Dauph who took responsibility of taking food to dangerously ill and quarantined Clara and Lester, while she cared for Clara and Lester’s two little girls. Lester had caught the Spanish Flu while quartered with hundreds of men working for the U. S. Postal Service in Washington, D. C.[225] After being sent home on the train with the flu, Clara contracted the contagious illness from her husband and miscarried a child during a month of high fever. Every year held challenges for Lillie coming alongside her husband, with Dauph constantly responsible for teaching, school finances, expansion, building projects, and lack of funds. 

Lillie, ever her husband’s supporter, encouraged Dauph to attend graduate school at Peabody College, Nashville, Tennessee. He studied at Peabody in 1924 as preparation for leading the school through state mandated changes that would see Appalachian become a Junior and then a 4-year College. His health began to show the strain. Scaling back his work, he stopped teaching classes in 1924, and concentrated on the business of the school. All this was transpiring while their two sons were yet young, and countless hosting of grandchildren, extended family, and countless guests continued. 

Suffering

In May of 1929 Blan wrote a letter explaining his absence from an important meeting in Raleigh and exposing some of the hard times faced by the family: “Since last January I have suffered as no man ever did. … my brother [Dauph] remains very unwell. He is unconscious almost all the time. His wife [Lillie] also has been very ill; his daughter [Clara] is just from the hospital in Greensboro where she underwent a serious operation; our sister has also been for days and weeks lingering between life and death. We had our time with 150 cases of flu in the school. I am now up many times every night, try to sleep a little, it is very little.”[226]

Dauph died on June 10, 1929, at home and having heard the bell from the school ring just before he passed, signifying that the school was now Appalachian State Teachers College, a 4-year college, at last.[227] Lillie was now a widow. Being a widow myself, for 10 years as I write, I can attest to the blur of activities and new responsibilities that came to me upon the death of my husband, and the ever-present longing for your loved one, as well as the steadying calm that can come from an earnest Christian hope of a future without death or sorrow.

Life goes on after the death a family member. Sharing her home and caring for others was a constant part of life for Lillie. Evident to her friends and family was her deep satisfaction and joy in loving and serving others in this home. 

Her Brother’s Keeper

After her husband died Lillie continued to care for Blan. She was essential for him to function in his expansive role as President. As long as she was able, she kept watch over her brother-in-law’s personal appearance; image consultant could be added to Lillie’s posthumous job description. If she had to stop him as he was leaving the house he would usually say, “Oh, I’m just going to my office and won’t see hardly anybody.’ But she knew better and saw to it that he was dressed suitably for meeting any and all he might see during the day.”[228]

To her brother-in-law, time meant little; his big silver-cased watch often went unwound, making him miss family meals.[229] “Unless he brought a guest home, he might take a cup and go to the [cooking] pots to get his food,” or in later years help himself to food in the refrigerator, setting his dishes anywhere in the house when he had finished eating.[230]Vegetables and fruit were the main diet for Blan, a man with a simple appetite, a sensitive stomach and picky eating habits. Sometimes without advance notice, he would bring a friend or two for a meal, not appearing to realize that it was an embarrassing situation as well as an occasion for more work for his sister-in-law. And all too often it meant the changing of her plans altogether or the leaving off of something she wanted and needed to do around the house.”[231]

When sickness came upon the family, Lillie tended not only to her husband and children, but also to her brother-in-law, whose constitution was not strong. He lived in the apartment-office over the garage after Lillie and Dauph’s children left the home, but Lillie still fed and in a general sense took care of Blan until she died in 1945. He outlived her by 12 years, and he outlived his brother by 28 years.

Habits of the Heart

The Biblical Fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control, were surely things Lillie sought to cultivate in her life. Family and friends have testified that it was her steadfast faith and trust in God which energized her for service with patience and kindness. Lillie’s daughter-in-law Grace Dougherty, wife of Barnard, told others that it was Lillie’s habit to place extra food or left-overs in the windowsill of the kitchen for those in need. Grace thought that John Adams, who became an employed assistant to Lillie in the 1930s and 1940s, may have become acquainted with the Doughertys in this way. John Adams, an African-American, not a Boone native and possibly illiterate, lived on the family property as a welcomed and needed helper.[232]

Clara helped her husband Lester write the book B.B. Dougherty: A Man to Match His Mountains, and in it he included a chapter about her mother Lillie. Here is description of some of Lillie’s community service and leadership: “Her devotion to and work for her church, the First Baptist, was next to that for her family and Appalachian. She was called upon to serve in various places and she always found time to do a good job in whatever she undertook. The outstanding contribution she made to her church was in the capacity of president of the Woman’s Missionary Society for some twenty-five years. Time and again she was re-elected to the office over her protests, but the society was unwilling to let her go because of her able leadership and her superb personality.”[233]

Hospitality

Clara and Lester wrote: “Church workers always found a welcome at the Dougherty home and a sympathetic interest in their labors. Some of these people were top men in the Baptist State Convention. Frequently when a revival or other important meeting was in progress at the church the visiting pastor and several other workers would eat together at the home and discuss their work with both Professor Dauph and his wife. For a long time the home was regarded as a mecca for such groups.”[234]

“Until her health began to fail in the late ‘thirties, Lillie was Appalachian’s hostess. Men in high educational circles, including state superintendents of public instruction, were entertained in the Dougherty home. Not infrequently the commencement speaker was among guests, for in those days it was not the custom to send visitors to a hotel. Many others came on school business and remained for a meal or two it not for the night.”[235]

Hospitality was instinctual to Lillie and part of her chosen and expansive service as homemaker. Lillie Dougherty’s functional hostessing, feeding and entertaining of guests strengthened relationships with the college and the community. 

5. A Lasting Unseen Influence

Unanswered Questions.

As I have tried to demonstrate, Lillie Shull Dougherty was the unseen, and unsung, influence of the first 45 years of AppState. With some speculative imagination, consider if Appalachian had been founded by one person, B. B. Dougherty; if he alone had begun Watauga Academy; if Dauph and Lillie had decided to stay in Butler, Tennessee? Would B. B. Dougherty have been able to sustain Appalachian as a one-man show — a bachelor — if there had been no brother and no woman to help? 

No one could have had the time, or tenacity, like B. B. Dougherty, to spend months each year in Raleigh attending legislative sessions fighting for school appropriations, and to hobnob with the rich and powerful to slowly secure funding for Appalachian. His fierce determination to extend North Carolina public education through tax equalization might not have come to fruition by 1929 with the Hancock Bill.[236]

Although he continued to regularly visit his life-long sweetheart from Lenoir, there was no time for marriage. Blan was too busy to marry and was essentially married to the college.  Surely a team effort helped the school to run smoothly, and the softening presence of a female was not insignificant. 

Peacemaker, Counselor

The stabilizing influence of a homemaker cannot be overlooked. Lillie provided a home for both brothers; a loving, lovely, clean, and comfortable environment. These brothers were “temperamentally opposites,”[237] yet in their own ways both were dependent upon this woman. 

Son-in-law Lester Brown wrote: “Professor Dauph, …was a large man who resembled the robust, hardy Dougherty forebears more than his brother. He possessed great energy of both mind and body, and so was an active somewhat restless man. He was not well satisfied unless he was deep in study or engaged in work.”[238] Rev. Bradshaw, college classmate of Dauph’s, contrasted them in his message delivered at the Memorial Service for D. D. Dougherty on the Appalachian campus in October 1929, four months after Dauph’s death. Bradshaw said: “They were different in almost every detail of life, … although so different, and often times they did not agree, they had absolute faith in, and were deferential always to each other.”[239]

Could they have worked together without her? Blan, thin and wiry, was soft-spoken, quiet, and patient. Dauph, a large and robust man, was warm-spirited and at times quick to show his anger, though a quick and hearty laugh came easily to him. His sense of humor helped to buoy him.[240]  Both were totally and stubbornly indifferent to the opinion others had of them.[241] LeVerne Fox, who grew up on the campus where his father worked as plumber, carpenter, and painter described Blan and Dauph during the 1920s as “very “colorful”, alive people, different as ‘night and day.’ Dauphin Dougherty … reminded me of “Santa Claus” as he was “very jolly” and friendly.” … “Now, “Blan” Dougherty, the other brother, was completely different,” commented Fox.[242]

The brothers, along with Lillie, shared one bank account and each freely drew from it as needed. These three jointly owned properties.[243] The two men did not always see eye-to eye.[244] Though no one ever saw the brothers differ in public, might Lillie have been a crucial unifying factor, the glue, the peacemaker?[245]   

Lillie’s Lasting Contribution

If Lillie Shull Dougherty had not been part of Appalachian would there have been an important lack of beauty? Of music? Western Carolina did not have a music department until 1935! Appalachian has always had a strong music program through the decades, particularly in training of music teachers. Would this have developed without that initial influence from Lillie?

No one will ever be able to quantify to what extent Appalachian benefitted from Lillie Shull Dougherty.  She shared in the self-denial, long hours of work, dreams, disappointments, and triumphs of Dauph and Blan Dougherty. After her husband’s death she continued to carry on at the college in the same spirit that had characterized their work through the years. Lillie showed a deep commitment to Dauph and to their life-long work at Appalachian.

As I consider my great-grandmother Lillie I see an unwavering Christian faith, tempered with endurance and common sense. It is interesting to me to ponder how she endured so many hardships and losses, and to observe in her an inner strength of character through them.[246] I wish I had known her, for her daughters all spoke so highly of her. The example of her love for her husband, through thick and thin, was obvious to all who knew Lillie and Dauph and is an enduring thing I treasure as I wear her simple gold wedding band. With obvious focus and faithfulness, she shared with Dauph and Blan an abiding love for young people and a belief in the edifying value of education for individuals and society.[247] The total devotion to the cause of education for the mountain people is unquestioned.

Whatever recognition the Dougherty men may have received for their accomplishments, it must be acknowledged that Lillie Shull Dougherty’s skill, understanding, and faithful labor, in every challenging situation they faced, was a factor for good. We have heard the quip “Behind every successful man is a woman.” For Appalachian it was one remarkable woman behind two remarkable men. 

The life of Lillie Shull Dougherty cannot be measured solely by her visible achievements or official jobs as teacher or business manager, or her informal roles as hostess and homemaker. The foundation of all her work was her steadfastness of purpose to serve the school and the integrity of her character in doing it. For this she is worthy of honor.


[1] Corbitt, Tom, Editor, “Development of Public Education in Watauga County North Carolina” compiled by a Bicentennial Committee, Appalachian State University News Bureau, Boone, N. C., 1976, p.74;  Bingham, Paul W., “The Growth and Development of Education in Watauga County,” Appalachian State Teachers College, August 1950, p. 79;  Brown, O. Lester, Blanford Barnard Dougherty: A Man to Match His Mountains, (Charlotte, N. C.: O. Lester Brown, 1963), p. 43 [“The people all over the state were awakening to the value and the need of more and better schools, particularly for children.” A push for education was on the political agenda of politicians in the 1890s.];  Dougherty, Daniel Baker, letter to son Dauph, April 10, 1899, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. [“I wrote to you some time about the demands and the desires of Watauga people about you and B building up a school, you have not answered.”];  

Eggers, Herman R., The First Baptist Church of Boone, North Carolina, (Boone, N. C., privately published, 1969), pp. 4-5;  Lanier, Ruby, Blanford Barnard Dougherty: Mountain Educator, (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1971), p. 25 citing Watauga Democrat, 19 May, 1898;  LeLoudis, James L., Schooling in the New South: Pedagogy, Self and Society in North Carolina, 1880-1890, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 1, 84-89,108, 113,123,132, 140. [Aycock was elected N. C. Governor in 1900 and dubbed the “Educational Governor” because of his efforts to spur education in the state.];  Minute Book “A” of Watauga County Board of Education, UA 30.026, Ruby Lanier Papers, University Archives Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.;  NCpedia.org/biography/noble-marcus-cicero [After a teacher institute was held in one part of the state: “…the people would gather from the whole countryside round-about and these meetings would resolve themselves into a sort of educational revival.” Two Teachers’ Institute was held in Boone in 1885.]; Swift, Carlton and Daniel J. Whitener, “Schools Since 1900: Status 1900” in The History of Watauga County: A Souvenir of Watauga Centennial, (Boone, N. C., 1949), p. 66. 

[2] Bingham, p. 79, Minute Book “A” of Watauga County Board of Education; Corbitt, pages 30ff. 

[3] The grave marker and family Bible list Lillie’s birth year as 1874, but several other documents from later generations have wrongly indicated 1875 for the year of her birth, and her birth year is incorrectly given as 1875 in Mountain Educators: The Dougherty Family and the First Fifty Years of Appalachian, by Doris Perry Stam. 

[4] The Dougherty Family Bible lists William (born 1866-77, died age 11), Alice (1867-1947), Mollie (1869-1948), Lillie (1875- 1945), Virginia “Nettie” 1876-1912), Corda (1877, apparently died as an infant), Victoria “Vinnie” (1883-1919), and Edgar (1886-1920).

[5]  Gaffney, Sanna Ross, Editor, The Heritage of Watauga County North Carolina, Volume I, 1984, (Winston-Salem, N.C.: The History Division of Hunter Publishing Company), p. 166.

[6] Ibid. Farming at this time in this area was mainly corn, and potatoes, cultivated with horse or oxen and plow, hand-planted and picked. It was labor intensive, but the fertile river valley soil was rich. 

[7] Smith, James H, “The Life of David Harrison Shull,” obituary, in possession of the Dougherty family. [ “During his last illness I visited father [sic] Shull on several occasions. I always found him confident about his future welfare and many times he was heard murmuring a prayer: “I love him, I love him, [speaking of the Lord Jesus] he is so precious to me”, was often heard from his feeble lips.”]

[8] LeLoudis, p. 13.

[9] Smith, James H., “1895-96 Annual Catalogue of Holly Spring College, Butler, Tenn.,” (News Job Office:  Elizabethton, Tennessee, 1895), p. 2. A copy is in possession of the family.

[10] Crowe, Dan, Old Butler and Watauga Academy, (Butler, Tenn: Dan Crowe, 1983), pp. 7-11; Depew, Michael and Lanette, with the Butler Museum, Images of America: Old Butler, (Charleston, S. C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2005) pp. 6-7; Tester, Herman, Butler: Old, New and Carderview, A Story of Butler, Johnson County, Tennessee 1768-2006, (Johnson City, Tennessee: C. H. Tester, 2007), pp. 57, 60-61, 66-70.

[11] Crowe, pp. 32-51; Fontaine, Harry E., I Remember “Old” Butler, (Butler, Tenn.: Harry E. Fontaine, 1984), p. 3; Tester, pp. 110-127.

[12] Brown, p. 117.

[13] Brown, p. 117; Hyatt, Rebecca Dougherty, The Dougherty Family in America: 1744-1965, (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Edwards Brothers, Inc., 1965), p. 77; Jenkins, George, “The History of Watauga Academy of Butler, Tennessee”, M. A. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of Education, Appalachian State Teachers College, August, 1950, the Ruby Lanier Collection, student paper file, Appalachian State University Special Collections, pp. 24-25; Morley, Freddie C., Staff Coordinator, History of Johnson County 1986: Sesquicentennial Edition (Waynesville, N. C.: County Heritage, Inc., 1985), pp. 32, 39, 40; Tester, p.24. [Dougherty relatives lived in the Bethel area of western Watauga County, south of the Stone Mountain ridge that separated N.C. from Tenn., with a steep road over Stair Gap or Locust Gap connecting the families and farming areas.] 

[14] Deweese, Charles, W., Baptist Mountain Mission Schools: Featuring A. E. Brown and Mars Hill University, (Mars Hill, N. C.: Mars Hill University, 2016), p. 14, [“Through the efforts of Brown and others, mountain schools exerted a strong educational influence, functioning primarily as high schools while carrying the names of academies, institutes, and even colleges; however, some schools off so offered instruction for elementary and middle grades.; McLeod, John Angus, From These Stones: Mars Hill College, the First Hundred Years(Mars Hill, N.C.: Mars Hill College, 1955), p. 19, [In relating the history of the school to the school President Moore in 1945, it was related by a close associate of the 1852 founders, Mr. Sams. Part of that history includes: “At a meeting, the name Mars Hill College was selected and adopted, not that it pretended to do college work, but just simply the name of the school.”]; https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/seminary.

[15] Depew, p. 25; Morley, pp. 19, 24, 108; Tester, p. 8, [The original town of Butler, Tennessee now lies at the bottom of Watauga Lake. It was a three-hour buggy or “hack” ride from the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina train depot in Allentown, Tennessee, requiring multiple fording of the Doe River.] 

[16] Ibid.

[17] Smith, “Catalogue,” p. 2. 

[18] Morley p. 41; Tester, p. 65. [Aenon is another spelling for the same school. Both spellings have been used in publications.] 

[19] Corbitt, p. 29. [Baptist Reflector (Nashville, Tenn.), printed a news article about Holly Spring College written by D. D. Dougherty in the 2 December, 1897 edition, accessed through newspapers.com on Oct. 27, 2021.

[20] Bicentennial Committee, Reka W. Shoemake, chairman, Maxie G. Edmisten, …[et. Al.], Development of Public Education in Watauga County, North Carolina, edited by Tom Corbitt, (Boone, N. C.: Appalachian State University, 1976), p. 29.

[21] Brown, p. 53; LeLoudis, op. cit. pp. 13, 14, 16.

[22] Morley, p. 42, [“Until the 1925 acts became effective, only a few of the elementary teachers of Johnson County had more than a few hours of college education, and many had no college training at all. … In 1925 there were eighty-two teachers in the [Johnson County Schools] system, five of whom were high school teachers. All high school teachers held degrees. Three elementary teachers had high school education only, and twenty-six had less than high school education.”] 

[23] Ibid.

[24] Ibid, p. 41.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Tester, pp. 45, 46. 

[27] Morley, p. 13.

[28] Carrier, Ernest Edward, “Pilgrims in Paradise: The Story of Baptist Pioneers of Upper East Tennessee,” Chapter 2, (sent to Doris Stam as a copy by the archives of Carson-Newman University, Jefferson City, Tenn., November 2021);  “L. L. Maples: Preacher of 60 Years in the Baptist Church”, The Journal and Tribune, (Knoxville, Tennessee), 14 Jan 1917, Sun. p. 4; Tester, pp. 61-64; . [Tester claimed that Maples was college educated. Perhaps Maples was not a college graduate? Maples did not attend Carson College [later named Carson-Newman.] Maples may have attended The University of Tennessee; however, they did not have a record of his enrollment, but their records are not complete.] 

[29] Biographical Directory of the Tennessee Assembly, Vol. 2 (1861-1901), p. 596, Tennessee State Library and Archives, accessed Oct 21, 2021.

[30] Carrier, Ernest Edward, “The Story of Baptist Pioneers of Upper East Tennessee”, Chapter 2, “Pilgrims in Paradise”, (Carson-Newman College, Jefferson City, Tenn.); The Johnson City Staff, 15 Jan 1917 (Johnson City, Tenn.); “Watauga Association Organized To ‘Accomplish Greater Work’”, Elizabethton Star, Wednesday, 23 October 1968.

[31] Tester, p. 62

[32] Shepherd, Ruth Weaver, Project Director, and the Ashe County Historical Society, The Heritage of Ashe County, North Carolina, Volume II, 1994, (Charlotte, N. C.: Delmar Printing Company, 1994), pp. 20, 21. Melungeon, a Berber word for “white people”, are of Portuguese, North African or Moorish descent.

[33] Tester, p. 62. 

[34] Crowe, pp. 7-14; Morley, p. 42.  

[35] Tester, p. 64.

[36] Abrahamson, Rudy and Jean Haskell, Encyclopedia of Appalachia, (Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press,  2006), p.  1166.Guitars are frequently seen in photographs from this time and were often part of the school’s orchestra at Appalachian, as well as accompaniment for solo or group singing. Not complicated to make, this instrument was affordable by mail-order from Sears-Roebuck (begun in 1888), or could be hand-made in the Appalachian Mountains.

[37]Biographical Directory of the Tennessee Assembly, Vol. 2 (1861-1901), p. 596, (provided by the Tennessee State Library and Archives, 30 October 2021.) 

[38] Tester, p. 65. [According to tncourts.gov, Tennessee’s 95 counties are divided into 31 judicial districts. Hamilton Smith, father of James Hamilton Smith, appears (based on an article from the Jonesborough Herald and Tribune from May 28, 1885) to have presided over the First Judicial District of Chancery Courts, which encompassed Washington, Unicoi, Carter, and Johnson Counties. This response is from the Tennessee State Library and Archives, from October 21, 2021.]

[39] Milligan University, Holloway Archives, Elizabethton, Tenn.; Tester, p. 66. [Milligan University Archivist Katherine N. Banks reported: “Milligan was founded as Buffalo Male and Female Institute in 1866 and promoted to collegiate level in 1882. Milligan is not associated with the Tennessee Baptists, but it is associated with the independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ.” Personal email on Feb.18, 2022.]

[40] Frequently this school has been incorrectly called Holly Springs College, but the singular is accurate. Depew, pp. 43-45; Jenkins, p. 19; Smith,Catalogue, p. 1; Tester, p. 72.

[41] Smith, Catalogue, pp. 8, 14. [A record of Lillie Shull’s college graduation has not been located. She might have been hired with only two years of college classes.] 

[42] Brown, p. 115.

[43] Scoggins, Lib, with the help of Annie Dougherty Rufty and Virginia Brown; A Brief Biography of Lillie Shull Dougherty, (Boone, N. C.: unpublished paper, 1989, in possession of the family), pp. 1-3.

[44] Smith, Catalogue, pp 8-10. [Geometry was actually a college level class at that time, according to the Holly Spring College Catalogue 1895-96, with Analytical Geometry listed as an optional senior year college curriculum choice.] Wake Forest College awarded a degree with high honors to D. D. Dougherty in 1892. Wake Forest University Archives.  A copy of his Wake Forest College freshman report card in possession of the family shows his marks of 95 in Jr. Mathematics, as well as 98 in Jr. Latin and 95.5 in History. 

[45] Holly Spring College, Teacher’s Report to Parents, May 10, 1893, for L. B. Shull, signed by J. H. Smith, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[46] Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. 

[47] Dougherty, D. D. to Lillie Shull: 11 October, 8, 9 December 1894; 9 February, 26 November 1895; 14, 17 June, 13 September 1896, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[48] Annie Dougherty Rufty, recorded private interview, 13 August 2000.

[49] Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. Family letters: Dougherty, D. D. to Lillie Shull: October 11, December 8, 9 1894. A report card from Holly Spring College verifies that Lillie took college classes during the year 1892. 

[50] Carter County, Tennessee, Board of Education Minutes, Record of Certificates Issued 1890, 1891, 1893, 1894.

[51] Jenkins, pp. 22, 23; Smith, Catalogue, p. 14. [Jenkins wrote in “The History of Watauga Academy of Butler, Tennessee,” that there were no more graduates from Holly Spring College after 1894, and gives no explanation, but continues to say that “there were quite a number, however, who completed the prescribed course of study, but transferred to Wake Forest College in North Carolina for further study and graduation.”] This article will refer to D. D. Dougherty as Dauph, and B. B. Dougherty as Blan, as family members called them. Using only the initials can be confusing and difficult to pronounce clearly. 

[52] Smith, Catalogue, pp. 8, 14. [Lillie Shull apparently taught all the primary classes.]

[53]  Smith, Catalogue, p. 6. [Smith lists Miss Nannie Hill, music, among the six faculty members. Whether Miss Hill was full-time cannot be discerned.] 

[54] Butler Baptist Church was closely tied to Holly Spring College, and an integral part of the Shull family. Dauph and Lillie often mention the church services in their letters to each other. Dauph and Lillie later became active in leadership at the First Baptist Church of Boone, N. C. 

[55] Smith, College Catalogue, p. 8.

[56] Ibid.

[57] Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.  [Blan repeatedly mentions a dire need of funds in letters written to his father and brother during his college at Carson-Newman (1896-97) and at UNC (1899). Blan to Brother Dauph, 19 February 1899; 21 April 1899.]

[58] In possession of the family. For this article ‘Blan’ will generally be used to designate B. B. Dougherty. He is remembered in history as Dr. Dougherty, because of his honorary doctorates from Elon College (1926) and Wake Forest College (1936).

[59] Ibid, Brown, p. 40. [Blan to Dauph, 19 February 1896.]

[60] Jenkins, p. 23.

[61] Family letters—BB to DD Feb 19, 1899; Daniel Baker Dougherty to Dauph, April 10, 1899. 

[62] Watauga Democrat 29 June 1893; 22 May 1890, in Hardy, Michael, A Short History of Old Watauga County, (Boone, North Carolina: Parkway Publishers, Inc., 2005), pp. 104-105.

[63] Lanier, p. 40; https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/noble-marcus-cicero.[ Noble was a celebrated professor wrote A History of the Public Schools of North Carolina, published by UNC Press in 1930.] 

[64] Hyatt, pp. 2-4.

[65] https://www.online-latin-dictionary.com/latin-english-dictionary.php?parola=Disco

[Transitive Verb III, 1) to learn, 2) to become acquainted with, 3) to acquire knowledge of

https://www.verbix.com/webverbix/go.php?T1=disco&Submit=Go&D1=9&H1=109. (Ind. Present 1.sg.): disco]

[66] Lanier, p. 21.

[67] Dougherty, D. C. to Dauph, March 1899. Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.  

[68] Corbitt, p. 2; Lanier, pp. 24-25.

[69] Lanier, p. 37. [“In pleading with the state superintendent of public instruction in North Carolina, Thomas Toon, Blan Dougherty has said that there had never been a permanent high school in that isolated section of the state.”] 

[70] https://www.wataugademocrat.com/aboutus/history-of-the-watauga-democrat/article_1f1838fb-a6b0-5d23-965b-d407ae7ee534.html [“The Watauga Democrat was launched in 1888 by the local Democratic party, with help from Joseph Spainhour and John S. Williams. The following year, R.C. Rivers Sr. and D.B. Dougherty took over the newspaper, which had folded after the fall election. Rivers then took over the paper himself [sic] by the end of the year [1889], starting a century-long run of family ownership.” The two were co-editors until after 1900. Rivers and Dougherty had both served as Confederate Soldiers and were fiercely committed Democrats.]

[71] https://www.digitalnc.org/newspapers/watauga-democrat-boone-n-c/. [Rivers, who had been publisher with Dougherty serving as editor, bought out Dougherty in January,1889. Dougherty was associated with the paper until his death in 1902.]

[72] Brown, p. 11; Thompson, Jim, The Mountain Times, (Boone, N. C.: 19 August 1999), pp. 16-17. [O. Lester Brown, who grew up in Ashe County near Creston, between Trade, Tenn. and Jefferson, N.C., and who attended Holly Spring College in 1911, and then Appalachian Training School 1912-1916, wrote that it was a 2-day journey from Boone to Butler, Tennessee, in a horse and buggy. Thompson says the distance was 40 miles between Boone and Butler, though with today’s roads they are closer to 30 miles apart, to the relocated town of Butler.] 

[73] Bingham, pp. 39-40. [Bingham writes the following: “The younger brother, Blanford Barnard, attended the Cove Creek Academy and the New River Academy in Watauga, and Marshall [incorrect!] High School in Lenoir. His stays at those schools were short, not more than two years altogether. When his brother was a senior at Wake Forest, he decided to attend that college. Successfully completing one year’s work at Wake Forest, young Dougherty taught school the next year at Hamilton Institute in Ashe County for $40 per month, an unusually large salary at that time. After Christmas he entered Holly Springs College in Tennessee. The next two years Blanford Dougherty was principal of the Globe Academy in Caldwell County. A boarding department was run and a large number of students from many counties attended. B. B. Dougherty not only prepared students for college entrance, but also got them ready to enter the sophomore class at Wake Forest College. The next year he went to Carson-Newman College. Having been permitted to ”stand off” by examination physics and astronomy, subjects he had been teaching, he was registered as a senior. At the end of the year 1896, he received Bachelor of Science degree. Teaching again at the Globe Academy and then, later, Latin at Holly Springs College, he decided to return to college himself. This time he entered, in 1898, the University of North Carolina to study ”pedagogy” or education, as the first pupil of Dr. M. C. S. Noble. Here he was graduated in 1899 with the Bachelor of Philosophy degree.”]

[74] Ibid, p.75.

[75] Crowe, pp. 16-19; Jenkins, p. 32.

[76] https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/panic-1893. [“A financial panic in May 1893 led the United States into the worst economic depression it had experienced up to that point in its history. Following the collapse of several Wall Street brokerage houses, over 600 banks and 16,000 businesses failed by the end of the year. National unemployment reached an estimated 20 percent in the first year of the crisis, and only a few cities managed to provide relief of any kind. The agricultural sector, already experiencing a slump, also felt the aftereffects of the panic. As thousands of farmers lost their land, the Populist Party gained momentum as a voice of reform and government intervention in the economy. The party reached a peak in 1896 when it endorsed the Democratic candidate for president, William Jennings Bryan, for office. Although he lost the election, Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech in support of a free silver monetary policy became the most electrifying moment in the campaign. Shortly after Bryan’s defeat in the election of 1896, the economy began to improve as prices for American crops began to climb. The four-year depression finally lifted but not before giving impetus to a new era of political and economic reforms.”]

[77] Lanier, p. 27.

[78] Hardy, p. 104.

[79] https://www.thettomahawk.com/accent/watauga-academy-memories-still-alive-in-butler/, Johnson City, Tennessee, accessed September 28, 2021. 

[80] Differences are discussed later in this paper. 

[81] Smith, Catalogue, p. 4; Thompson, pp. 16-17.

[82] Keefe, Susan and the Junaluska Heritage Association, Junaluska: Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community, (Jefferson, N. C.: MacFarland & Company, Publishers, 2020), p. 49.

[83] Watauga Democrat, 24 August 1899.

[84] Brown, p. 53; Smith, Catalogue, pp. 8-10. 

[85] Initial school ads mentioned music and art classes but did not specify Lillie Dougherty as the teacher. Only the Principals, D. D. and B. B. Dougherty were listed in the Watauga Democrat, 24 August 1899. 

[86] According to John Preston Arthur in A Brief History of Watauga County (1915), Jordan Council, Jr. was worried that the U. S. Government would confiscate his lands [for siding with the South] and offered to sell his lands to D. B. Dougherty at half their value. Author continues (on page 182): “Accordingly, on the first day of August, 1865, Jordan Councill gave D. B. Dougherty his bond for title to all his land and property in and around Boone when Dougherty should pay him $3,000.00 cash. (Deed Book M, page 248).” But I, Doris Perry Stam, believe that Arthur is mistaken, or there was a typographical error, for the date in the Deed Book M, page 248 is the year 1888!  The Watauga County Deed books mention a sale from Jordan and Sarah Council to D. B. Dougherty of 300 acres in 1875 and from Jordan Council to D.B. Dougherty of 600 acres in 1888. Arthur goes on to say: Councill moved away but returned and recovered all the property Dougherty had not sold, the proceeds of that which had been sold having been applied to the bond.” Others have quoted Arthur, and confusion may have developed, even among Dougherty family members, me included.  

[87] LeLoudis, pp. 10-13.

[88] LeLoudis, pp. xiii, 73-74, 76, 78.

[89] Lanier, pp. 18-19.

[90] Fox, LeVerne, personal interview with Doris Perry Stam, 9 August 2007; Lanier, pp. 18-19; Powell, Clara letter to B. B. Dougherty, 21 January 1944, personal letter, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.; Mrs. David Barnard Dougherty, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.; Mrs. Zeb “Nurse” Shook, personal interview with Doris Perry Stam, August, 2002.

[91] Brown, p. 86; “Minute “A” Book,”, in Lanier, op. cit., p. 30. [O. Lester Brown states that the school board would have been happy with either brother in the position of county superintendent. Blan was better suited to the travel involved, and to functioning as a public relations man at large.]

[92] Bingham, pp. 75-79.

[93] Lanier p. 25. 

[94] Brown, 50.

[95] “The General Assembly of 1913 enacted the first statewide law compelling school attendance.” https://www.ncpedia.org/public-education-part-4-expansion, accessed on 30 October 2021. 

[96] Lanier, p. 28.

[97] Watauga Democrat, 13 July 1899, in Lanier, pp. 30-31. [Lanier wrote: “Of the white population, 60.8 percent was enrolled in the public schools, and 54.5 percent of the Negro school population was similarly enrolled, but only 33.3 percent of the white and 30.9 percent of the Negro school population were in actual daily attendance during the term. The school term was far short of the constitutional requirement of four months. Teachers were poorly prepared, salaries were low, and a large number of school houses were unfit for use by reason of being uncomfortable and unsafe for the health of the children. All the difficulties arose from a lack of money for operating the schools. … able to keep its schools open an average of 11.25 weeks for white pupils and seven weeks for Negro pupils. …The 1899 Legislature …lengthened [the school term] to 12.33 weeks for white pupils and to eleven weeks for the Negro pupils.”] 

[98] Lanier, 24-25.

[99] Annual Report of the Auditor of the State of North Carolina for the Fiscal Year Ending November 30, 1899, p. 182; United States Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States: 1900. Agriculture (10 vols.; Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1901), V, 110-11, 291; Whitener, pp. 42, 51.

[100] United States Bureau of the Census, ibid., Population, I, p. 295.

[101] Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Carolina, for the Scholastic Years 1898-’99 to 1899-1900, pp. 278-279. Cited by Lanier, but also found online: https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/ncinstruction1898/ncinstruction1898.html, accessed Oct. 30, 2021.

[102] Gaffney, p. 204. 

[103] Altmayer, Bud, A Family History of Watauga County, (Boone, N.C.: Minor’s Printing, privately published, 1994), p. 97; Watauga County Deed Book M, 248. [See footnote #86. Altmayer writes: “Word came that [Union General] Stoneman and his men were coming from the West to devastate the county mountains of Carolina. When they came into the valley of Cove Creek, they selected Benjamin Councill’s meadow, in front of the brick house, for their campground. … they seem to be short of rations, before they came to the house, took every bit of food in the smokehouse and seller, seized all of the chickens, and took possession of the horses. Not satisfied with this, they went to the field where Jacob Councill was plowing and shot him down in cold blood.”]   

[104] Brown, pp. 49, 54-55, 117-118; Watauga Democrat, 13 July 1899, 3 August 1899; 4 September, 1899. [Meadow View seems to have been built with family money, not community. There were also several smaller, simpler structures for students that the brothers were putting up. For those who wished to board themselves they gave firewood merely for the cutting. Three young men “batched” for a time and had their own cow, whose milk they sold to help with expenses.] 

[105] Maiewskij-Hay, Val, “Mountain Made Kraut: The Rise and Fall of Cabbage in the High Country”, (High Country Magazine, Boone, N. C.: October 2009), pp. 76-85. [Boone Creek was later called Kraut Creek because of drainage from the Watauga Canning Company Kraut Factory.]

[106] Brown, p. 49.

[107] Brown, p. 54; Curtis, Jessie, “Memories of Watauga Academy and Appalachian,” (Boone, N. C.: The Appalachian Alumnus, 1 February 1963); Lanier, p. 26; Watauga Democrat, 28 September, 5 October, 19 October 1899.

[108] Dougherty, B. B., Founders’ Day 1945 Program, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.; Dougherty, B. B. interviewed by Wade Brown, 29 November 1956. UA. 33, University Archives Oral History Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. [In this interview B. B. Dougherty noted that the windows and doors in the lower-level classroom were all gone. The upstairs classroom, exposed to the elements through holes in the boarding, was accessed by an outside covered stairway.] 

[109] Thompson, 1999.

[110] Lanier, pp. 24-25.

[111] Thompson.

[112] Dougherty, B. B. interviewed by Wade Brown, 29 November 1956. UA. 33, University Archives Oral History Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[113] Lanier, p. 26.

[114] Lanier, p. 56; Watauga Democrat, September 5, 1899; Brown pp. 86-97.

[115] Watauga Democrat, 5 October 1899.

[116] Watauga Democrat, 25 May 1905, in Lanier p. 56.

[117] Lanier, p. 56. 

[118] Curtis; Watauga Democrat, 14 March, 2 May, 1901; 4 October, 1900, in Lanier p. 28; Watauga Democrat 15, 29 March 1900. 

[119] Brown, p. 92; Phillips, Anna Boyce Winkler, personal recorded interview, 16 October 2021. [The steep terrain often required double or even triple teams of animals to haul a heavy wagon load up an incline.] 

[120] Brown, p. 54.

[121] Personal recorded interview with Ray and Virginia Ward, October 2018.

[122] The Dew Drop 1917, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.  [Lester Brown does not include Henry Perry in his list of students, nor does Curtis, but he is listed in the 1917 Yearbook as having graduated in the second graduating class in 1902! A leger for the school from 1900 in D. D. Dougherty’s handwriting includes Henry Perry.]

[123] Brown, p. 171. 

[124] Warren, Jule B., “New Economic Empire From Educational Vision of Doughertys”, taken from ­We the People (1949), A.S.T.C. News Bureau, Boone, N. C., pp. 1-5. [I, Doris Perry Stam, have heard this testimony from the lips of citizens countless times in my thirty years of talking to people in the county about Appalachian.] 

[125] Henry Perry graduated from Watauga Academy in 1902. Henry Perry earned his undergraduate from UNC, and his medical degree from the North Carolina Medical College in Davidson/Charlotte, at that time a 2-year program. There was no medical school at Chapel Hill at that time. Dr. Perry began his practice at the Mast Store in Valle Crucis in 1905. After the death of Dr. Jones, Dr. Perry was persuaded by the Doughertys to work at the school in Boone. He commuted for a year and then moved his family into the old Lovill Home in 1925 where the Perrys lived for four years before building and moving to a home on Cherry Drive in 1929. Dr. Perry operated a clinic for the campus and a local hospital from this old dormitory until 1929 when funds became unavailable to continue the hospital. Dr. Bingham built what is now the Dan’l Boone Restaurant as a home for his family, but before they moved it functioned as a hospital for a short while, with Dr, Perry as the surgeon, others as staff doctors to care for patients. Dr. Perry was instrumental in the building of the Watauga County Hospital in Boone, which stood on the site of old Lovill Home. Later, with the late 1960s building of a newer Watauga County Hospital east of town, the original hospital building was renamed Founders Hall. It was renamed Watson-Brumit Hall in September 2021. 

[126] Moretz, Mary, recorded personal interview, June 2021; Personal interview with Ned Trivette 2014.

[127] Altmayer, page 84; Moretz, Mary, interview in Boone, NC, June 2021; Ward, Ray, Interview October, 2018, Boone, NC. 

[128] Lanier, pp. 54-55; Whitener, p. 80. 

[129] Dougherty, Edwin, Diary, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C., [son of D. D. and Lillie, from 1929 indicates this mindset of living in the country, although it was only a few blocks away, when Edwin writes: “I drove Mama ..into town…”. Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.]; Thompson, John, “Daughter of D. D. Dougherty Remembers Old Spring,” The Mountain Times, 22 April, 1999; Thompson, John, “Parking Deck Development Threatens Dougherty Spring,” The Mountain Times, 22 April, 1999.

[130] Program of Dedication and Naming: Lillie Shull Dougherty Hall, Appalachian State Teachers College, Boone, North Carolina, Sunday, two-thirty in the afternoon, December 5, 1965, “Mrs. Lillie Shull Dougherty”, p 2, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[131] Brown, pp. 55-56.

[132] Brown, p. 55. [This piano is still in the Brown-Dougherty family.]

[133] Gaffney, p. 166, [The entry by daughter Annie Dougherty Rufty, who wrote that her mother taught piano and guitar lessons.]

[134] Rufty, Annie Dougherty, speech notes. Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. [The quote is taken from handwritten notes by Annie Dougherty Rufty for a speech she gave at Appalachian, probably given at a gathering in the 1960s, but which specific event has not yet been determined.]

[135] Brown, p. 56.

[136] Dougherty, B. B., Founders Day 1949 Program; Lanier, p. 14; Watauga Democrat April 24 and May 8, 1902; Whitener, p. 67. [To put the joint salary for two of $25 per month into perspective, only two years later the Public-School teachers in Watauga County were offered up to $35 per month. Whitener notes that salaries for 1899 were low, not more than $30 per month to any teacher, but averaging $23.30 to white male teachers; $19.41 to female white teachers; $16.08 for “Negro teachers.” B. B. Dougherty had made an unusually high $40 per month at Hamilton Institute in Ashe County in the fall of 1892. The Public School session was four months a year.] 

[137] In an overly optimistic statement the Watauga Democrat, edited by Daniel Baker Dougherty, had announced on July 13, 1899, that the new school building was hoped to be ready by October 1, 1899! 

[138] Moore, Emma, UA. 30.024 Emma Horton Moore Scrapbook, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[139] It seems that Lillie Dougherty was paid for her music teaching, but not her classroom substituting in Blan’s place. The agreement with the Watauga County Board of Education indicated $25/month for teaching to cover both B. B. and D. D.’s salary, with Lillie thrown into the deal as the assumed substitute teacher for B. B. 

[140] http://www.townofboone.net/departments/administration-department/historical-information/ [“U. S. Census population figures for Boone, NC in the year 1900,155 people; the year 1910,179 people; the year 1920, 374 people; the year 1930, 1,295 people.”]

[141] Bingham, p.77; Corbitt, p. 2.

[142] Greene, Nannie and Catherine Stokes Sheppard, Community and Change in the North Carolina Mountains: Oral Histories and Profiles of People from Western Watauga County, (Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2006), dozens of pages throughout the book.  

[143] Dougherty, N. B. to A. T. Allen, May 1929; Allen to Dougherty, 14 May 1929, S. P. I. Correspondence, cited in Lanier, p. 179.  

[144] Brown, p. 118. 

[145] Moore, Emma Scrapbook, 1934 article, UA. 30.024 Emma Horton Moore Scrapbook, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. [Unfortunately, many newspaper clippings in Emma Horton Moore’s scrapbook lack proper identification for name, author, or date. One newspaper was confused and referred to Dr. D. D. Dougherty in a tribute to him upon his death in 1929, when D. D. had not received a doctorate degree, earned or honorary. There was simply no money for such an extravagance as the schooling required to earn a doctoral level degree. The honorary titles were appropriately given to B. B. for his many years of growing knowledge, study, and persistent efforts before the state legislature (committees, boards, …) to expand public education in the entire state of North Carolina.]

[146] Rufty, Annie Dougherty, speech notes. Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. [The quote is taken from handwritten notes by Annie Dougherty Rufty for a speech she gave at Appalachian, probably given at a gathering in the 1960s, but which specific event has not yet been determined.] 

[147] Ragan, Rebecca Greene (b.1902-d.2001), interviewed by her son, Claude Ragan during the years 1995-1997, Box 3, folder 8, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. [A partial transcript was sent to Doris Perry Stam by Mrs. Ragan’s nephew, Bob Greene, in c.2013.]

[148] Perry, Lillie Brown and Ellen Brown Surratt Otterbourg, personal recorded interviews by Doris Stam, 28 December 1007, 14 July, 25, 26 January 2017, 22 June 2019, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. 

[149] The club changed to Saturday meetings but retained the name, often needing the humorous explanatory comment: “the Friday Afternoon Club which meets on Saturdays.”

[150] Culler, Ed interviewed by Wade Brown, “Ed Culler Reminiscences,” 15 November 1988, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.; LeVerne Fox recorded personal interview by Doris Perry Stam, August 2007, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[151] Altmayer, pp. 80-81; Keefe and Junaluska Heritage Association, p. 127.

[152] https://www.collectorsweekly.com/tools-and-hardware/sad-and-flat-irons [Sad irons, also called flat irons or smoothing irons, are thick, triangular pieces of metal that are flat and polished on one side and have a handle attached to the other. “Sad” is an Old English word for “solid,” and the term “sad iron” is often used to distinguish the largest and heaviest of flat irons, usually 5 to 9 pounds. The forebears to modern electric irons, these flat irons are often triangular or come to a point to make it easier to iron around buttons. The heft of a sad iron would help it hold heat, as well as to press the fabric flat.]

[153] Appalachian Alumnus: Sixtieth ASTC Anniversary Edition, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina, November 8, 1963, p. 2, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[154] The tub washer with ringer attached above the tub stood in the Dougherty kitchen until the house was moved in 1988.

[155] Hardy, Michael C., A Short History of Old Watauga County, (Boone, N. C.: Parkway Publishers, Inc., 2005), p. 105; Watauga Democrat, 17 August 1893, written by Daniel Baker Dougherty for the Local News column.

[156] Brown, pp. 54-55, 120-123.

[157] Brown, O. Lester, On the Trail of the Elopers, (Charlotte, N. C.: privately published, 1975), p. 28.

[158] Brown, On the Trail of the Elopers, p. 28. 

[159] Lillie’s niece Ruth Barker (Redman) helped with secretarial work during this time.

[160] Davenport, David, “Why So Many University Presidents Burn Out”, (Malibu, California: Pepperdine University); Hutchins, Ed and Nita Howard, “Found Doughertys Had a Dry Humor”, Watauga Democrat, Boone, N. C., July 11, 1974, p. 4C.

[161] Moore, Emma, “A Worthy Tribute to D. D. Dougherty”, written after his death in June 1929, UA. 30.024 Emma Horton Moore Scrapbook, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[162] Foster, Patrick, “Lesson from History: Industrial Arts/Technology Education as a Case 

https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JVTE/v13n2/Foster.html.

[163] Brown, p. 100.

[164] Fox, LeVerne, Recorded personal interview by Doris Perry Stam, August 2007, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[165] Rufty, Annie Dougherty interviewed by Elizabeth “Lib” Scoggins, Oct 2, 1999, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[166] Brown, 121.

[167] McCleod, pp. 169-170.

[168] Ibid., p. 208.

[169] Ibid, pp. 207-208.

[170] Neal, Margaret Tufts, And Set Aglow A Sacred Flame: History of the Edgar Tufts Memorial Association, 1895-1942, (Banner Elk, N. C.: Pudding Stone Press, Lees-McRae College, 1983), pp. 98-99.

[171] Ibid., pp. 22, 32-33, 90-91, 98-99.

[172] Ibid., pp. 93-107. 

[173] Dickson, Kay Reita, Glade Valley School: 1909-1985, (Raleigh, N. C.: Pentland Press, Inc., 1998), pp. 29, 89, 141, 158-159, 

[174] Bird, William Ernest, The History of Western Carolina College: The Progress of An Idea, (Chapel Hill, N. C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1963), p. 32. 

[175] Currie, Ruth Douglas, Appalachian State University: The First One Hundred Years, (Louisville, Ky: Harmony House, 1998,) pp. 29, 31.

[176] Rufty, Annie Dougherty. Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. [The quote is taken from handwritten notes by Annie Dougherty Rufty for a speech she gave at Appalachian, probably given at a gathering in the 1960s, but which specific event has not yet been determined.]

[177] Ibid. Interview with Annie Dougherty Rufty, August 1995.

[178] Cubbage, Susan C. and Jan E. Moore, “Changes In An Era: 1924-1940: Recollections of Le Verne Smith Fox”, a paper presented to Dr. Ruby Lanier, Section 101, 7 December, 1982), p. 5, UA 30.026, Ruby Lanier Papers, University Archives Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[179]  Dickson, pp. 84-85; Neal, pp. 130-131; UA. 30.024 Emma Horton Moore Scrapbook, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.an undated newspaper article about Appalachian Training School by C. W. Hunt.

[180] Watauga Democrat September 1, 1932, and September 2, 1932, in Lanier p. 108.

[181] Dougherty, Dianne, personal interview with Doris Perry Stam, 19 March, 2021.

[182] Trivette, Mark, interview, 27 July, 2021; Ned Trivette, personal interviews, 2014. 

[183] Peer institutions that were forced to close include: Davenport College in Lenoir; Valle Crucis Mission School; Holly Spring College in Butler [forced to close in 1908, Brown pg 50]; Skyland Institute in Blowing Rock; Boone Fork Institute in Shulls Mills; Globe Academy below Blowing Rock. 

[184] I am indebted to Timothy McKeown for helping me with this concept. Prof. Lori Lake Edwards, UNC-G English Dept., encouraged me to think about how ladies’ clubs, particularly garden clubs, were often a means of great benefit for communities.

[185] Brozan, Nadine, “Role of College President’s Wives: From Helpmate to Colleague,” (New York Times, December 19, 1987); Watauga Democrat, 30 March 1911.

[186] Brown, 119; Gaffney, p. 166; Watauga Democrat, 11 May, 1922. Family photographs.

[187] Ibid.

[188] Curtis, Jessie, p. 4.

[189] The Rhododendron: 1932, (Boone, N. C.: published by the Senior Class of Appalachian State Teachers College, 1929), pp. 90-98.

[190] The Rhododendron: Handbook Edition 1929, Vol VII, (Boone, N. C.: published by the Faculty and Students of Appalachian State Teachers College, 1929), p. 31, “History of Literary Societies” by Lucille Yarbrough.

[191] Curtis, p. 5;  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_society, accessed October 31, 2021. [“There was a specialized form of the literary society which existed at American colleges and universities in the 19th century. The college literary societies were a part of virtually all academic institutions. Usually, they existed in pairs at a particular campus, and would compete for members and prestige, and supplemented the classical studies of the curriculum with modern literature and current events. … These are Latin-named and -themed organizations whose purposes vary from society to society. Activities include but are not limited to: The weekly presentation of papers written by society members, and a debate on its merits; Readings of members work and others’, followed by discussion; literary Productions, which are practices in oratory skill; intramural sports teams; service events; and social gatherings. Meetings were often ended with snacks, such as peanuts or sardines.”] 

[192] Rufty, Annie Dougherty and the five Dougherty granddaughters, personal recorded interviews with Doris Perry Stam, Doris Perry Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[193] Watauga Democrat 27 April, 11 May 1922. 

[194] Perry, Lillie Brown, personal recorded interview by Doris Stam, January 26, 2017, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[195] Canipe, Rev. J. C., Pastor of First Baptist Church of Boone, N. C., message given at the funeral service of Lillie Shull Dougherty, January 22, 1945, in Boone, N. C., Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[196] Brown, p. 119; Rufty, Annie Dougherty, personal recorded interview by Doris Stam, August 1995, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[197] Ibid. 

[198] Brown, pp. 119-120.

[199] Rufty, Annie Dougherty, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. [The quote is taken from handwritten notes by Annie Dougherty Rufty for a speech she gave at Appalachian, probably given at a gathering in the 1960s, but which specific event has not yet been determined.]; Watauga Democrat 30 March 1911.

[200] Brown, 123-124 [The actual year is speculative, as Brown says simply “when the school was still young.”]

[201] Peoples Bank and Trust Co., Boone, N. C., April 15, 1925, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[202] B. B. Dougherty’s wallet, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. 

[203] Much of the Appalachian campus (and all the First Baptist Church of Boone land) was given by the Dougherty family, although some was sold to the state or forcibly sold. 

[204] Pezzoni, J. Daniel, editor, based on the work of Tony N. VanWinkle, Elizabeth C. Stevens, and Deborah J. Thompson, The Architectural History of Watauga County, North Carolina, (Boone, N. C.: Watauga Historical Society, 2009), pp. 122-122.

[205] B. B. Dougherty interviewed by Wade Brown, 29 November 1956. UA. 33 University Archives Oral History Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[206] Brown, p. 100.

[207] The Dougherty home on Rivers Street was saved from demolition by community efforts and moved in 1988 to make way for campus construction. The home was eventually purchased by Mystery Hill and relocated for its current use as Appalachian Cultural Museum (on Blowing Rock Road near Tweetsie Railroad).

[208] Pezzoni, pp. 122-23.

[209] Abrams, Dr. Amos, “Well Do I Remember,” from the 60th Anniversary Special Edition of the Appalachian Alumnus, (Boone, N. C.,1959), p. 6, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[210] Ragan, pp. 8, 14-5.

[211] Ibid.

[212] Pezzoni, pp. 122-124.

[213] Underwood, Wayne, owner of Mystery Hill, personal phone interview with Doris Perry Stam, 2009.

[214] The Rivers Street Parking Deck on the campus of A. S. U. now covers the location of the spacious green lawn and Dougherty home. One cannot help but think of the famous Joni Mitchell song: “They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot.”

[215] Brown, p. 119.

[216] Brown, p. 120.

[217] Culler, Ed, interviewed by Wade Brown, “Ed Culler Reminiscences,” 15 November 1988, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.; Ragan, p.18. 

[218] Rufty, Annie personal recorded interview August 1995 with Doris Perry Stam.

[219] Three of Clara Brown Dougherty’s children died. Clara had suffered a miscarriage during the 1918 flu pandemic, and while 6-months pregnant with Lillie Brown [Perry] Clara’s second child, Pauline, died of diphtheria in the summer of 1920. Her eight-born, Samuel, was still-born. 

[220] Personal interview with Lillie Brown Perry, 1994. [While Lester spent the school year 1923-1924 studying in Atlanta at Emory University’s Chandler Seminary Dauph and Lillie (Mama and Papa Dougherty) helped to care for Clara and the three young children, though Clara and her girls continued to live in Justice Hall where she worked as Matron.]

[221] Personal interview with Annie Dougherty Rufty, Lillie Brown Perry, Virginia Brown Brown, Lib Brown Scoggins, Rebekah Brown Fanelty, and Ellen Brown Surratt Otterbourg, August 1995.

[222] Watauga Democrat, 17 June 1897, Thur. p. 3.

[223] Brown, p. 118.

[224] Lanier, pp. 61, 64, 71, 77-78..

[225] Brown, O. Lester, On The Trail of the Elopers: The Brunette and the Redhead, (Charlotte, N. C.: privately published, 1975), p. 25; Greensboro Daily News, (Greensboro, NC), 29 Aug 1918, p. 4; Ramsey, D. Hiden, personal letter to O. L. Brown, 22 March, 1963, in possession of the family.

[226]  B. B. Dougherty to Allen, May [?], 1929; Allen to Dougherty, May 14, 1929, S. P. I. Correspondence; Lanier 179.

[227] Scoggins, Elizabeth Brown [granddaughter of Lillie and D. D. Dougherty], “A Short Biography of Dauphin Disco Dougherty,” written with the help of Annie Dougherty Rufty [second-born of Lillie and D. D. Dougherty] and Virginia Brown [first grandchild of Lillie and D. D. Dougherty], in 1989, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[228] Brown, p. 123.

[229] Ibid, 119.

[230] Lanier, p. 106. [Lanier took this information from interviews with family members. I learned about Blan’s eating habits from an interview with my cousin, Bartlett Dougherty in 2018.] 

[231] Brown, p. 119.

[232] Personal recorded interview by the author with Dianne and Bartlett Dougherty, July 21 and 30, 2021; phone interview by the author with Ellen Brown Surratt Otterbourg, September 2021. Boone Junaluska native Lynn Patterson did not know where Adams was from or why he came to Boone.

[233] Brown, page 122.

[234] Ibid.

[235] Ibid, p. 123.

[236] Brown, pp. 125-141; Lanier, pp. 163-181.

[237] Brown, p. 98

[238] Ibid.

[239] Bradshaw, Rev. W. R., “Life and Character of D. D. Dougherty,” delivered at the Memorial Service to D. D. Dougherty on October 26, 1929, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C.

[240] Brown, p. 100; Lanier, p. 105.

[241] Bradshaw, Rev. W. R., “Life and Character of D. D. Dougherty.”

[242] Cubbage, pp. 7, 9; written for a class taught by Ruby Lanier at Appalachian State Teachers College, Boone, NC, and submitted December 7, 1982, UA 30.026, Ruby Lanier Papers, University Archives Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. 

[243] Brown, pp. 99-113; Dougherty, B. B. to Sanford Martin, Sanford Martin Papers, Duke University Library, Durham, N. C.; Lanier, p.105; [Lanier interviews with Dougherty family members in August 1970 [Grace, Clara, Lester, Annie, Ruth Redman, Edwin.]; Watauga Democrat, June 13, 1929 and July 7, 1929.

[244] Lanier, page 105.

[245] Eddie Dougherty, personal recorded interviews by Doris Stam, 17 July 2009, 9 March 2017, Doris Stam Collection, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Appalachian State University, Boone, N. C. [I credit my cousin Eddie Dougherty with this possible contribution of Lillie in the relationship between the brothers. Writing in the late 1950s, with evidence of the prevailing attitude women took at that time, Clara and Lester Brown also indicate the wisdom and intelligence of Clara’s mother, Lillie Shull Dougherty, in this except from Lester’s book: “Although she played her role in the home well it was not always an easy thing to do. With the two distinguished school men under the same roof, her husband and his brother, she heard much discussion about plans and methods in the running of the college. Differences of opinion could not be avoided and there were times when she felt that she had something to offer as a solution to a particular problem. Her insight and judgment were good, and the brothers did not fail to weigh her opinions, which she gave only after she was sure it was the thing to do. Having been denied the care and solicitation of their mother from early childhood the interest of Lillie and her good counsel did not fail to have a good effect from appreciative hearts.”]

[246] Brown, p. 123.

[247] McLeod, p. 168. [I have adapted a quote from McLeod as he lauds Mrs. Moore of Mars Hill College.]