James Anderson Burns

James Anderson Burns (1865-1945), founder of the Oneida Baptist Institute, grew up as the youngest son of a Primitive Baptist preacher in the hills of West Virginia, where he hunted and sold ginseng roots to buy books so he could attend the first school in a nearby settlement. Eager to see and learn more, as a teenager he visited his father's homestead in Clay County, Kentucky, where he was pulled into the violence of defending family honor. Burns survived four years of feuding; after a close call, he had a religious experience that prompted him to stop fighting and resume his studies.

With the help of the Baptist Education Society he planned to study first at Denison University and then at a theological school. But after only seven months in the cooperative and peaceful academic atmosphere of Denison's Ohio campus, he felt compelled to create a similar opportunity for his people in Kentucky.

After marrying Martha Sizemore in 1897, Burns taught at Berea College where he met H. L. McMurray, a Baptist preacher from Kansas. McMurray shared Burns' dream of building a Christian school for mountain children and together they planned to make it a reality. They selected a site in Oneida on a small hill where three small streams converge to form the South Fork of the Kentucky River. The ten acre site in Oneida was donated by Martha "Granny" Hogg, and the Oneida Baptist Institute opened on January 1, 1900.

References

Burns, James Anderson. "The Crucible: A Tale of the Kentucky Feuds". Oneida, Kentucky: The Oneida Institute, 1928.

"'Commercialism' in the Mountains." "Courier-Journal", Louisville, Kentucky, June 15, 1913.

Hough, Emerson. "Burns of the Mountains." "The American Magazine", December, 1912.

"Letting Light into Kentucky Mountains." "Courier-Journal", Louisville, Kentucky, June 8, 1913.

"The Oneida Mountaineer", Oneida, Kentucky, May 15, 1916.

"The Oneida Mountaineer", Oneida, Kentucky, Vol. 61 No. 2, October, 1981.

Richardson, Darrell C. "Mountain Rising". Oneida, Kentucky: Oneida Mountaineer Press, 1986.

Thomas, Samuel W. "Dawn Comes to the Mountains". Louisville, Ky.: George Rogers Clark Press, 1981.

Thomas, Samuel W. "The Oneida Albums: Photography, Oral Tradition, and the Appalachian Experience." "The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society", 80, no. 4 (Autumn, 1982): 432-443.

White, Ann McNielly. "A Miracle of the Mountains." "Courier-Journal", Louisville, Kentucky, March 2, 1913.

External links

* [http://digital.library.louisville.edu/collections/matlack Claude C. Matlack Collection, University of Louisville Libraries]