A Maine Woman Goes South

Nellie Pottle of Otisfield taught at Spelman College in Atlanta from 1925 to 1927. Her 158 surviving letters home describe teaching, friendships, family, travel, and daily life. Jean F. Hankins transcribed the collection in 2003.

Read the letters

The correspondence is organized by month. Each installment includes individual letter headings and references to the original PDF pages.

• September 1925 — 9 letters
• October 1925 — 16 letters
• November 1925 — 11 letters
• December 1925 — 16 letters
• January 1926 — 15 letters
• February 1926 — 14 letters
• March 1926 — 16 letters
• April 1926 — 11 letters
• May 1926 — 13 letters
• June 1926 — 2 letters
• September 1926 — 1 letter
• October 1926 — 9 letters
• November 1926 — 6 letters
• December 1926 — 4 letters
• January 1927 — 3 letters
• February 1927 — 5 letters
• March 1927 — 2 letters
• April 1927 — 2 letters
• May 1927 — 3 letters

About this edition

Read or download the original complete PDF. The web edition retains the transcription’s historical spelling, nicknames, bracketed notes, and omissions. References to ownership and family circumstances in the introduction describe the situation when it was written in 2003.

Introduction by Jean F. Hankins

This book contains 158 letters written by Nellie E. Pottle from September 7,1925, through May 16, 1927. They begin with her trip from Otisfield, Maine, to Atlanta, Georgia, where she spent two academic years teaching at Spelman College, a school for African-American girls. The last letter in the collection was written not long before Nellie packed her trunks and suitcase and headed back to Maine.

Nellie Pottle was born in Otisfield on June 4, 1904, the fifth child and first daughter of Fred Leroy and Annette (Wardwell) Pottle. Her father died in 1914 of tuberculosis, leaving his widow to raise their five children. These children were, in order: John Kemp Pottle, born in 1895; Fred Albert Pottle, born 1897; Albanus Moulton Pottle, known as "Moult," born in 1903; Nellie, born 1904; and Estelle, born 1907 . A sixth child, Reginald, was born in 1903 and died in 1910.

Annette Pottle supported her family partly by becoming a housemother at a number of schools. One of these was Hebron Academy, not far from Otisfield. While the Pottle boys were off in College or working, Nellie and Estelle Pottle were at Hebron with Annette. Nellie graduated from the academy in 1921. The letters in this collection frequently mention Hebron classmates with whom Nellie formed lifetime friendships. Later Annette followed two of her children to Lee Academy, where she was a housemother and apparently also did some of the cooking. In the fall of 1926 she accompanied Nellie back to Atlanta where she was employed for the academic year as housemother in one of the Spelman dormitories. In the fall of 1927 Annette moved on to a housekeeping position at Colby College, where her youngest child, Estelle, was then a senior.

All five Pottle children graduated from Colby College. John, the oldest of the family whom Nellie calls (only partly in joke) "the illustrious Pottles," took a year off now and then in order to pay his college expenses. He taught at Lee Academy in Lee, Maine; at Ricker Academy in Houlton; at Winthrop High School; and at Mechanic Falls High School. He married Sarah ("'Sade") McMannus. During the period covered by these letters, John was also employed as an agent of the Phoenix Insurance Company, where he was closely associated with George Ellis, also mentioned occasionally in these letters. Fred Pottle, the next oldest of Nellie's siblings, graduated from Colby in 1917 and earned a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1925. He then went on to a distinguished career as an English professor and scholar at Yale. He married Marion Starbird of Oxford, Maine, in 1920. The third son in the family, Moulton Pottle, became headmaster at Lee Academy and in the summer of 1925 married Winifred Carroll, whom he met when she was teaching at Lee. Nellie's younger sister, Estelle, was born in 1907, and graduated from Colby in 1928. She married Ellis Stone of Otisfield.. Most of these individuals are mentioned in the letters. Another frequently mentioned name in Nellie's letters is "Marion." Usually Nellie is referring to Marion Cummings, one of Nellie's lifelong friends, not to be confused with Fred Pottle's wife, Marion Starbird. Marion Cummings graduated from both Hebron Academy and Colby College a year before Nellie. She was teaching at Lee Academy while Nellie was at Spelman. In 1927 Marion married Gordon Mann; the couple lived most of their lives at Hanson, Massachusetts.

Nellie was one of three Colby classmates who began teaching at Spelman in the fall of 1925. The other two were Marjorie A. Everingham, probably a New Hampshire native, and Leota Schoff, who probably came from Paris, Maine. The strongest link in the Spelman-Colby connection was probably Anna Erickson, a member of the preceding Colby class, who began teaching there in 1924. Interestingly, the president of Spelman at that time was Lucy Hale Tapley, a native of West Brooksville, Maine.

After returning from Atlanta in June 1927, Nellie took a year's job as "preceptress" and teacher at Lee Academy, where Nellie's brother Moult was headmaster. Nellie spent the following year studying at Yale for her master's degree in English. It was there that she met her future husband, John Hankins. Nellie taught at the University of New Hampshire from 1929- 1930. She and John Hankins were married in 1930 and went to Lawrence Kansas, where John taught English literature at the University of Kansas. Nellie died in Maine in March 1993.

For Nellie, writing letters was not just a duty but a pleasure. Fortunately for us, the recipients of these letters obviously thought the letters were worth saving. The 158 letters in this collection were written to her mother, her aunt Betsy Kemp, and her sister Estelle. The original letters written to Annette Pottle and Betsy Kemp are now owned by her son David Hankins; Callie Zilinsky owns the letters which Nellie wrote to Callie's mother, Estelle Pottle Stone. I borrowed (and returned) the letters sent to Estelle in order to transcribe them. It is obvious that some of the letters Nellie wrote during this period did not survive, but the remaining 158 tell a rather complete story of the two years Nellie spent in Atlanta, years that may have been the best of her life.

Nellie was very close to her mother, with whom she corresponded until Annette's death in 1958, except for the periods (such as Nellie's second year at Spelman) when the two women were together. Most of these letters have survived and are now stored in the attic of the Albert Kemp house at 202 Scribner Hill Road in Otisfield., now owned by Nellie's son (and my husband) David Hankins. In a sense the letters have come full circle, because this is the spot (though not the house) where Nellie's mother, Annette Kemp Pottle, was born in 1873.

Nellie's letter of January 14,1926, apparently written to members of the Lee Academy community, gives a brief history of Spelman College. When doing some research on Spelman, I was astonished to discover that the two founders of Spelman, Sophia Packard and Harriet Giles, both were natives of New Salem, Massachusetts, the town where my mother, Dorothy Bullard, was born, and where so many of my forebears lived. The official history of Spelman College includes photographs of New Salem Academy and mentions Eugene Bullard, the New Salem historian, who happened to be my great-grandfather. So, without knowing it when I began this project, I, too, have a bona fide Spelman connection.

A word about the nicknames in these letters: Nellie was known within her immediate family as "Nellie Sam" to distinguish her from a cousin also named Nellie. This nickname frequently becomes "Sammy" or "Sambo." Nellie addresses her sister Estelle with a variety of fond nicknames, none of which I can explain, such as "Brute," "Sweet Pickle," "Sweet Potato," and "Jumbo," the last of which apparently corresponds to "Sambo."

Most of the letters I have transcribed in their entirety. Fortunately, Nellie's handwriting was easy to read, and her letters are carefully and neatly written. I have deleted short portions from a few letters. The deletions, usually repetitious details, are indicated by three dots. I have tried to retain Nellie's original spelling and punctuation.

Jean F. Hankins Otisfield, Maine, November 2003