1_Penland Appalachian School collection

The Appalachian School was an Episcopal school for children located in the town of Penland, North Carolina. The school was founded by the Reverend Rufus Morgan around 1912. Although Rufus left around 1918, he urged his sister, Lucy Morgan, to come back to North Carolina to teach at the Appalachian School. Lucy Morgan arrived in 1920 and soon became the principal of the school. Over the 1923 winter break Lucy Morgan traveled to Kentucky and attended Berea College’s first 9 week long comprehensive weaving course. When she returned to the Penland community, she brought weaving skills and a design for a light-weight weaving loom. Lucy Morgan began a program in 1924, with the Bishop’s grudging support, to instruct local women in textile crafts as a means of perpetuating the art of weaving and to create a source of cash income for local households. In 1929 Lucy Morgan founded the Penland School of Handicrafts on land adjacent to the Appalachian School and the Penland Weavers formally became a department of the Penland School of Handicrafts in 1937. While not institutionally related, the two schools co-existed side-by-side until 1964 when the Appalachian School closed its doors. Penland School of Crafts purchased all of the Appalachian School's lands and buildings from the Episcopal diocese in 1965.