Mary Carver and Marion Russell scrapbook, 1933 | Amistad Research Center

Scope and Contents: In the summer of 1933, Marion Russell and Mary Carver of the Home Mission Board in Boston took a trip by car throughout the eastern and southern United States visiting projects of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and Congregational Christian Churches. This scrapbook and photo journal comprises a rich documentary source of religious and rural life in and around the Appalachian Mountains in 1933.  Ephemera and photographs depict the home of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision; Barbara Fritchie; Harper’s Ferry; Lincoln Academy (King’s Mountain, North Carolina); the 1933 American Missionary Association and Congregational Extension Board Conference (Blue Ridge, North Carolina); Daily Vacation Bible School (Black Mountain, North Carolina); Campbell Folk School (Brasstown, North Carolina); Pilgrim Congregational Church and the Union Congregational Church (Chattanooga, Tennessee);  the Cumberland Mountain Sanatorium (Pleasant Hill, Tennessee); Berea College; and Congregational churches Daisy, Tennessee, and Crossville, Tennessee; among other places. The scrapbook includes a map and an itinerary for the month-long road trip that spanned Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia as well as Washington, DC. Two items of correspondence from Fredrick Brownlee and Priscilla Chase compliment Marion Russell on her work with rural churches on the trip.