Isabelle Ambrose Endowment Scholarship Fund

Submitted by Gail Rose Berish

 

Isabelle Ambrose Scholarship Fund written by her son, Luther Ambrose.  She
must have been quite lady, for she insisted on moving from Owsley Co. to
Berea in order for her children to receive a college education.  She paid
for their education by making quilt coverlets and selling them in Berea.
 

 

At the Ambrose-Carmack family reunion in Berea, July 19, 1970, three of the children of Barton P. and Isabelle Carmack Ambrose decided to establish an Educational Endowment Fund at Berea College in memory of their mother and to solicit contributions to the fund from her descendants, relatives and friends.  This Fund is to make possible the education of young people of limited means and keep alive the memory of a mother who, deprived of formal education, dreamed of and worked for the education of her children.  She lived to see seven of her twelve children become teachers—seven of the eight who lived to maturity.

 

When she was old enough to go to school the Civil War began and there were no schools for five years.  Her father was killed in the battle of Mill Springs when she was eleven.  She and four sisters left Tennessee to live with an uncle in Clay County, Kentucky.  At thirteen she became a “hired girl,” working for board and keep for herself and her younger sister Lucy.  When she married at seventeen she had been to school less than two school terms but could read and write and had mastered the “blue back speller” to in-com-pat-i-bil-ity.

 

The craving for learning, the love of reading, the determination that her children should be educated-these were not dampened by the bearing of 12 children in 28 years nor the work of a farmer’s wife under pioneer conditions—cooking, washing, cleaning, carding, spinning, dyeing, weaving, knitting, sewing, preserving food.

 

Then she discovered Berea College!  In 1896 extension workers from Berea visited Owsley County.  Charles Spurgeon Knight, F. E. Matheny, President William g. Frost, Mrs. Frost were welcomed to her home.  At Berea her children could learn more than the meager three R’s of the five-month schools.  They were promised work to help pay expenses.  The college would buy handwoven blandest, linen, coverlets.

 

So in 1898 with joy and worry mingled, she sent her daughter Nellie, along with a large group of young people—Flannerys, Gabbards, Seals, Pendergrasses, to Berea.  The next year her son Nathan joined the Owsley County group in Berea.

 

The death of two sons, the birth of her 12th child-a son, the suffering of arthritis, the dampness of the fogs from the river, the urging of Mrs. Frost and the dream of a better chance for education for the three youngest left to her, all helped to tip the balance in the decision to sell the farm and move to Berea in 1905.  By this time four girls were married, four boys dead and Nathan ordered to Colorado because of suspected tuberculosis.

 

In the remaining 22 years of her life she realized many of her dreams.  Nathan regained his health and worked his way to graduation from Colorado College in Colorado Springs.  Effie and Luther graduated from Berea College and Luther became a member of the college faculty.

 

After 50 years of teaching, Luther was given the Distinguished Alumnus Award by the Berea College Alumni Association.  On accepting the award, he paid tribute to his mother whose vision, sacrifices and labors had made it possible for him to be an alumnus, and to his teachers, represented by Nathan, who started the formal education process as his first-grade teacher.

 

Other descendants have continued their quest for education at Berea College, the University of Kentucky, the University of Arizona, Transylvania, University of Michigan, University of Chicago, University of Colorado, Union College, Morehead, Georgia Tech, University of Mississippi, Hiram College, Lincoln Memorial, and Whitman College, earning 21 Bachelor degrees, seven Master’s, three Ph.D.’s, one Bachelor of Divinity, and one Bachelor of Laws.

 

Berea College donors have invested in our family over $100,000.  Let us repay this by investing in the education of others.  Gifts, bequests, trusts, and other donations may be sent to the Berea College Alumni Association for the Isabelle Carmack Ambrose Memorial endowment fund.

 

For further information write:

Office of Development and Public Relations

CPO 2316, Berea College

Berea, Kentucky 40403